Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
“Um, I think I’ll try this one first,” I say, holding up the book he recommended.
“Did you fuck him?” he asks.
“Luca? No.”
“Good. Teagan, I”
“Declan.” I look to the doorway and see Layla looking back and forth between the two of us. Tears well in her eyes. “What are you”
“Enjoy the books,” Declan says, interrupting her. He turns and leaves the room without another word.
Her pain-filled eyes meet mine. “I was just borrowing some books,” I tell her.
“Yeah,” she says softly. “Okay. Um, we’re going to eat soon. Alana ordered Chinese food. Do you like Chinese food?”
She blinks, and silent tears run down her cheeks.
“Yeah but Layla”
I’m not sure exactly what I was going to say, but I never get to say it. She leaves the room without another word. I don’t see her when I go downstairs to eat later, nor do I see Luca, but Declan is there. He doesn’t speak to me; he never even glances at me, and it’s like the entire afternoon never happened.
And when they invite me to watch a movie with them in the theater room afterward, I decline, telling them I’m tired and just want to read and go to bed.
It’s so incredibly quiet in the room that it seems loud. I miss music. I miss hearing the traffic from the 57 outside my window at night. I think maybe I won’t be able to fall asleep, but eventually, I find my eyes heavy. I close my book, turn off the lights, and drift off to sleep.
“Teagan,” a voice whispers. A hand closes around my shoulder, shaking me lightly and rousing me from my sleep. “Wake up.”
Layla kneels beside the bed. I can barely make out her features in the dark room and her tonethere’s something different about it.
“Layla?” My voice comes out raspy from sleep. “Are you okay?”
“Yes!” she says. “Yes! I’m okay. I know what I have to do now. You helped meI wanted to tell you that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bridget!” she says. “She wasn’t an idiot; I get it now. He was so proud of her. That’s what I need to do. Then, he’ll have to forgive me.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. I do my best to process her manic words, but even if I wasn’t coming out of a deep sleep, I’m not sure they’d make sense.
She throws her arms around my neck and squeezes me tightly. “Thank you, Teagan.”
“Um, you’re welcome ”
She releases me, and for the first time, I see her smile. It’s like looking at an entirely different person. That person practically skips across the room. I watch, still trying to piece this together. Moonlight streaming through the window reflects off a butcher knife in her hand just before she reaches the door.
“Take care of my family for me,” she says before she turns the corner into the hallway.
“What?”
Oh shit.
He was so proud of her.
Bridget. The knife.
“Wait! Layla!”
I run into the hallway, but I don’t see her anywhere.
“Layla!” I shout again. I hear the back door open and close downstairs.
“Fuck!” I yell.
Pulse racing, I run back into the bedroom, step into my boots, and race down the staircase. Spotting her as soon as I step outside, I stop to catch my breath. Layla stops merely fifty feet away, where Declan and Luca sit beside the firepit.
Okay. It’ll be okay. They’ll be able to stop her.
I watch them both rise to their feet; I can see that they’re talking, even if I can’t make out any of the words over the blood pumping in my ears.
But I watch her raise the knife, turning it inward toward her body and gripping it with both hands, and neither of them move.
“Layla! Don’t!” I scream, running toward the firepit.
But just as I get the words out, she plunges the knife into her stomach. Before I reach her, she pulls it out, drags it across her throat, and crumples to the ground at Declan’s feet.
“Do something!” I scream when I reach them. “Why aren’t you doing something?! Call 911! We have to stop the bleeding.”
I kneel beside Layla and go for her throat, thinking I should cover the wound with my hands.
“Don’t touch her!” Declan screams. “Don’t you fucking touch her! Luca, get her away from her.”
Luca grabs me by my arms and hauls me to my feet, then wraps his arms around me with his chest at my back, holding me tightly against his body.
I think that he must have been in shockthat he knows what he’s doing, and he’s going to help her now. He lies beside her in the grass and smoothes bloody hair away from her face.
“Oh, Layla,” he says. “My sweet Layla. You’re so beautiful.”
“I’m sorry,” she wheezes. “I love you.”
“I forgive you, honey,” he says. “This is the most precious gift. I’ll never forget it.”
Oh my god. He’s not going to help herit’s just like Bridget. No one made a move to do anything.
He was so proud of her.
Luca didn’t kill Bridget. Declan made her kill herself. He wanted the sacrifice; he wanted the power.
He runs his hand over her bloody abdomen, then brings his fingers to his mouth and licks them clean. Then, he leans in and kisses her on the lips, and she smiles before her eyes flutter closed and her rattling breath ceases.
“What is wrong with you!?” I scream. “Call an ambulance! Luca! Luca, please do something!”
“Why do you want to take her choice away from her?” Declan asks. “How cruel would I be to do something like that when she’d just given me the most beautiful gift?”
“This is cruel!” I scream. “The way you’ve treated her is cruel!”
“You don’t get to decide that!” he snaps. He grabs the knife from the ground and licks it clean, and when he speaks again, his voice is calm. “And now you’ve tainted the moment by acting like it’s something ugly.”
He pulls her body into his, cradling her blood-soaked body against his own, his expression one of peaceful rapture.
He holds her in a way that probably would have healed her if he’d only done it while she was alive. It occurs to me that even as she lay dying, even after she’d given him what he’d called the most beautiful gift, he still couldn’t give her those three words she really wanted to hear.
My heart aches for the girl; I can feel it breaking.
Declan says he’s never given me any reason not to trust him. But he told me he was capable of love, and I know that’s a lie now. The person who smiled at me in the library isn’t real.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.