She had a secret door to another realm. Her bookshelf.
-Shali 

As I've said before, I'm scared of everything -I just hide it really well.

Which is exactly what I have to do while I'm walking through the haunted house, masking everything and my raging heart with indifference and humor.

Something, I'm apparently too good at.

Those scary nurses with large syringes and blood stained scrubs, asking me if I have a appointment with their equally as creepy doctor buddy? All I could really do is shrug and ask if walk ins are acceptable. 

I lost it when a serial killer farmer with a pet raven said "I like to kill people!" and Link responded, with equal amount of joy, "I'd like to be killed!" My stomach hurt because I was laughing so hard, even Asher laughed.

And he's the nice guy.

When zombies rushed us from his corn field instead of running I turned towards the redhead, slapped him on the chest with a smirk. "Zombies eat brains. You're safe." 

Had left my mouth, making him shove me through a set of bars into a fat prison guy in the next set of scares came. "Hi." Prison said, startled but playing alone. 

"Um. Nice to meet you." I said.

Prison paused, blinking rapidly. "No. It's not." 

I shrugged, told him I think he's sweet then ran from him to Gold -who was so disappointed at me when a guy pretending to be Freddie Kruger told me (while motioning to 'dead' kids on the floor) that he's going to make us all his children. I followed that with "Daddy?" and got scolded for a solid ten minutes.

Right now we're walking through a maze a hanging corpses, which actually stink so Link is pale and making a constant kill-me-now look.

Eventually we find a creepy guy sitting in the center, sharpening knives with a cigarette between his teeth. The sight makes a snarl raise on my lips, panic clouding my mind for a split second before I remember what I normally say to myself:

They should be more afraid of me then I should be of them.

Suddenly I'm not afraid anymore, but I'm also mad -which I have no reason to be.

Fixing him with a cold stare the man is completely unimpressed, but I do see him gulp so I start thinking that maybe he's just a good actor.

"My friends." He motions to the corpses with a sharp knife.

I flash my equally as sharp teeth at him and motion towards Gold and Lincoln. "My friends."

"You win." Mr. Knives shrugs, waving a arm for us to pass him. "Need a noose?"

Smirking at Asher's much too obvious worried look, probably because I'm the type of person that might say yes, I turn to roll my eyes at the man. "Sorry, not my kind of friendship necklace. Oh and," I glance at Link. "You can have Weasley over here, he's available."

"Hey! Ash your girlfriend is a evil midget. Fuck this haunted house bullshit and fuck her." Link shouts, storming towards the neon red sign that marks the exit.

Giggling I start to walk after him when a guy with a flaming chainsaw runs towards me screaming. From the surprise I squeal. I squeal.

Something even more shocking is when I'm picked up by the waist and lifted over a shoulder, Asher running out the doors a second later.

Holy shit.

So fast.

I don't like this.

My head spins as he sets me down in his car, slamming my door a second later before he climbs in himself.

"What the fuck?"

"I panicked and couldn't trust your speed." Asher answers, and although he's not driving his hands are tense against the steering wheel.

"Couldn't trust my -Couldn't trust my speed?" I growl. "I'm faster than you!"

"I didn't know that!" He answers in a shout, hands tightening.

"How would you not know that? We have gym together! What's wrong?" Despite my actual concern my voice comes out snappy.

Instead of answering my golden boy turns towards me, making me squeak as he grabs the sides of my face and plants his lips on mine.

Asher losesly holds my waist, letting me know I can pull away at any moment.

It's my choice when I kiss him back, moving over the middle bar and pressing into him.

It's my choice when he lifts me up and sets me in his the center of his lap, because I'm the one who started to sit on him first. The nice guy just made it easy.

It's my choice when our lips become more heated, his cold ones leaving me left with little air.

His hands tighten around my waist before moving down to hold the side of my thighs, kneading into the skin. 

Suddenly one hands slides under my, lifting my off his lap completely. I gasp in surprise, unintentionally deepening the kiss as Asher holds me over his lap, somehow still kissing me. 

"I need to stop." My golden boy says, pulling away from me in a rush. "Sorry."

The sudden make-out session, plus him stopping when shit was about to get really good makes my head spin, and left me in a daze I had to blink myself out of. 

"What? Oh um -did I do something wrong? You're red." I sputter, pulling my hands from where I was cupping the back of his neck to touch his cheeks. He takes blushing to the max. 

This is where I'm glad I got my dad's dark olive skin tone, so it takes a lot for my blush to show.

Hell it takes a lot just to get me to blush.

"No. Blue you're fine." He finally answers me in a raspy voice, his eyes gone forest green once  again. "I promise."

I melt against Asher when he sneaks a kiss on my throat, cold lips lingering on my pulse before he pulls away to look at me again. 

"Then why did you pull away? Not that I'm complaining...okay so I'm actually complaining." I pause, watching as his features go from controlled to amused in a second. "Don't give me that look Gold, actually answer."

"You know...we've defined our relationship before we even talked about what it meant. And you kissing me like that makes most of my self control leave, so I stop when I think I'm about to cross the line from I Can Turn Around to There's No Turning Back because I don't want to do anything drastic with you yet. Not until we've at least talked about it."

"Talk about..." I trail off when I realize what he's talking about and feel myself flush, a giggle escapes my lips before I can stop it. Covering my mouth with a hand I rest my head on Asher's shoulder.

"Stop laughing at me." Gold whines. "It's not like I sleep around."

I laugh, sitting back up to face him -barely aware of his hands under my thighs to keep me in the air. "I don't either."

"You could if you wanted to." Asher mumbles, making my brows furrow and for me to pull away from him to give him a steady what-the-hell look. 

A bright red blush crawls up his cheeks and I want to squish them, kiss him and say "How are you so sexy?" all at the same time.

But I hide that fact and settle for just staring at him, waiting for a answer.

This makes him groan, probably because my stare is genuinely unnerving, but it may be due to the fact he's embarrassed at the moment. 

"I said you could if you wanted to, because you're um...because you're um really beautiful. I don't see anyone turning you down." Gold admits, moving his hands to my hips as he seats me back down in his lap. "You're gorgeous, okay? You constantly look amazing, there's no hiding that. Everyone thinks that. Even Link thinks that, and he loves to hate you."

Though I should be grateful my boyfriend finds me that way, or that 'it's obvious' anyone finds me like that, I'm not.

I'm really not.

Because I see things they don't, all while covering my body with long sleeves and pants and hoping nobody can see the scars sneaking out of the ends of my clothes.

I know about the scars on my body, he's only gotten climps of my arms.

"Is Link taking his truck home?" I ask, and I know to him it's random that I climb back into the passenger seat, completely leaving him hanging.

Asher nods, looking at me weird. "Where do you want to go?"

"To yours."

"Take off my shirt." I tell Asher the second he closes the door.

"What?" The nice guy coughs, obviously startled as he spins to face me. 

"I said take off my shirt." I repeat, stepping closer to him. "I'm not proposing we do anything, well, not now anyway. You called me beautiful but you haven't seen what you call beauty. You saw a glimpse of the ugly. You're not aloud to call me beautiful when you haven't even seen all of me."

Mint green eyes widen.

"Do I need to see all of you?" The golden boy asks with a gulp.

"You said you want to talk about this relationship right? So talk," I step closer, making him press against the wall. My smirk never leaves. "But first, undress me."

"I don't know if I'm really comfortable with this..."

"I'm not asking you to touch me, or look at me in that way, or even asking you to think of me in that way. This isn't about sex Asher," I think me saying his real name caught him off guard. "This is about me. And yes, maybe I am sexy but that's not a problem unless you make it one."

"Why do you want me to take your shirt off?"

"Because you called me beautiful." I shrug, staring relentlessly in his eyes. Even when the green orbs dash away they always find their way back to mine. "And I think that opinion will change. I don't like people lying to me, and I feel like that's a lie because you haven't seen me Gold. You've barely seen me."

"You don't need to see someone to believe they're beautiful." Asher whispers, eyes dropping to his gold rimmed shoes. 

Where did he even find those?

"Would you just fucking do it? I would, but I'm so not forcing you to look at me. This is your decision. But yes I am pressuring you to do it. I won't bite you -Okay, that's a lie. My skin won't jump out and bite you. The hell are you waiting for?" I snap, holding onto the bottom of my shirt so he can grab it and pull my shirt over my head.

"Blue-"

"Please."

And then my shirt is flying across the room, taken off of me so fast that I'm surprised I didn't get whiplash.

This is followed by the nice guy falling back to the wall, a small gasp parting his lips as he stares at my newly exposed skin.

My chest is just as bad as my arms, just more words were carved in me. There's more solid, longer lines. 

There's a heart carved just below my left collarbone, one I got a tattoo over when my dad caught me staring at it the first time I wore a bathing suit after I got out of the hospital. I was wishing it would disappear along with my real heart beat. He took me to a tattoo parlor the next day and helped me pick out one. It's a simple one, since the scar is just bigger than a quarter we had to get creative. He had Mom draw a heart with a dragon curled in it, just a cute little thing. Completely blue all in different hues, it looks awesome and the tail of the dragon curls along the ridge of my collarbone.

My moon was the only tattoo one of my parents weren't there for, and since my mom doesn't like seeing any of her family in pain, or their blood, it has mostly been my dad.

You can still tell it's a scar since there's a indent in my skin, the point wasn't to hide it. 

It was to make it good, make something beautiful out of my pain and keep it beautiful instead of ugly.

That's where his eyes linger before trailing over my chest.

Minutes pass where he's just examining me, the silence becomes nearly unbearable for me, so I start spouting the usually thing my brain comes up with in situations like this, which is code for absolute bullshit. 

"We're born as relatively blank canvases. Each year is like another fucked up paint job, we start adding layers and layers. Freckles here and there, some stretch marks, maybe throw in a few dimples or warts or some shit. I have all these scars, and each one tells one hell of a story. My tattoos are even better, because I get to decide what stories they tell. You can probably guess what most of these scars are from, but there's one on the side of my hips that look like someone stabbed me with a toothpick like twenty times. I got it when I jumped off the back of my brothers bike because I was afraid of falling. I don't know why I just said that..."

"I'm going to kiss you." Is all I have as a warning before Asher's suddenly demanding mouth is over mine. He switches our positions, pushing me against the wall. "And I'm going to kiss so many beautiful places."

I don't think I could respond to that even if I wanted to by the time his mouth it on the heart, kissing around it completely before moving dangerously lower towards more scars.

Then he's kissing me right above my cleavage, where the word worthless lies.

I don't think my heart knows how to work.

"Priceless." He breathes, moving his mouth alone me once again to find more words.

Ugly on my neck.

"Breathtaking." He whispers over it.

Whore on my shoulder.

"Worthy."

Stupid on the inside of my elbow.

"Intelligent."

Fat on the side of my arm.

"The perfect size."

For the two names carved into the skin on my wrist again and again he kisses multiple times, making my heart pound erratically.

"People who will never hurt you again." Asher promises, looking back up to me. "You're beautiful Lisa and I never want to hear anything different. Because these," He runs a hand down my scarred arm, making me inhale sharply. That feels horrible against smooth skin. "Are proof you've gone through life and survived."

Finally he kisses my palm, letting his lips linger there over the reoccurring scar.

One only I've caused.

"Don't be afraid Blue. It only makes those people, the ones that hurt you, stronger."

"I'm afraid of everything." I reply, looking into those mint green eyes once again.

"Tell me something you're scared to say out loud then. Conjure one fear." Gold says, fingers trailing on my jaw, stopping to stroke my cheek.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

"I love you." I whisper, and feel my heart clench slightly because there's no way he'll-

"I love you too." Asher confirms, thumbs now brushing along my cheekbones.

I still don't open my eyes, because I think I might cry.

"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?"

"You're an idiot." I mumble, clenching my eyes shut the second I finally blink, my mind 'noping' me out of my own sight. "That was so fucking hard Gold."

He pauses for a second.

"Why's that?"

"Because I never thought you'd say it back."