Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
“Nah, I can’t take it,” he says. He pulls the sling over his head and then sits at the edge of the bed with his guitar in his lap. “Hopefully, I’ll see it again soon, though. I think maybe it’d be easier to actually leave my fucking arm on the bus.”
“You will,” I tell him before sitting beside him. “Of course you will.”
“I’ve been working on your song, though. I wanted to play it for youbecause I don’t know when I’ll get a chance to do it again. I’m still working on itI was hoping I’d get to play it for you at the last show in Chicago as a surprise. I’d get to watch you hear it for the first time and see the look on your face when you realize that it’s about you. But now you already know.”
“I’m nervous,” I say softly.
He smiles as he strums the strings. “Why?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
But I do know. It’s not because I’m worried that I won’t like it or anything like that. It’s the intimacy of it. And that’s still something I’m getting used to. True intimacy still fits me like one of Luca’s hoodies. It’s warm, it feels good against my skin, and it’s intoxicating when I breathe it in. But when I put it on, I’m drowning in it. If I wore it in public, they’d all be able to see that it didn’t belong to me. And I’m still afraid to get too attached to it because, eventually, he might take it back.
“Ready?” he asks. “I can’t sing as well as Declan.”
“I guess so,” I say. I pull my own hoodie over my head and bring my knees to my chest.
He shakes his head. “Now you’re making me fucking nervous.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. “What’s it called?”
“‘Pretty Poisoned,'” he says.
I rest my head on my knees. “Proceed.”
It was ordinary enough
You didnt think itd go this far
Two normal-looking people
In a normal-looking bar
But one was an addict
The other black licorice-laced cocaine
I knew this batch was poison but shot straight into the vein
My friends dont really like me
They say I come with a warning
And since you never had any
You come with a soul in mourning
And it was poisoned long before you met me
If Im honest, mine was, too
I smile like I mean it, but I only mean it for you
I barely even blink
As it seeps through skin and bone
Into darker corners of my mind
I don’t flinch when she skims the files marked better left alone
I tell her I love you
She says, I dont want to die
But poisoned girls dont get better
And poisoned girls dont cry
I tell her shes poisoned me
She says its the other way around
Poisoned girls dont get better
But they still look pretty in the ground
And its taken hold now
We both know were doomed
We cant hide forever in the darkest of rooms
But before it could kill me, at least I got to say
I made this huge fucking mess
and she loved me anyway
She wrote it on my chest
the night she called me insane
I tell her I love you
She says everything dies
Whether its in bloodstains and ruin
Or from slow-burning lies
Either way, well die screaming
She says you cant be surprised
Death cant be fooled by that normal-guy disguise
But Ill handcuff you to me
So he cant take you away
And Ill always love you
because were both fucking insane
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.