Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
Oh my god is he…
He’s leaving me.
He fucking left me.
They fucking left me.
They said they would never.
I can’t move. I can’t breathe. I can’t think. All I can do is feel pain. Overwhelming, all-consuming agony.
I’m dying.
I’m suffocating as I watch the plane lift off, lights blinking in the distance, leaving me behind, lying in the dirt like I’m nothing.
And then I feel a knee digging into my spine.
“Don’t fucking move!” the police officer shouts before a handcuff closes around my right hand and he pulls it behind my back.
“Just kill me,” I sob.
“What’d you say?”
“I said just kill me! Just fucking kill me!”
“Nah, I’m not going to kill you,” the guy says. “But I could. And no one would care.”
He stands, kicking me in the stomach twice. Coughing and choking, I pull my knees into my chest.
“Walk,” he demands, pulling me to my feet with a tight grip around my arm.
I do what he asks, somehow forcing my legs to move beneath me, even though I can’t think about anything except how much it hurts.
And I don’t mean the steel-toed boot I took to the gut.
I mean the aching, bottomless pit at the core of my being. In the place where my heart used to be.
“These two are both dead,” another officer says. I look over and see him kneeling beside Rhett and Brady’s lifeless bodies, face down in the dirt.
A strangled sound somewhere between a scream and a sob escapes me.
“Yeah? Good fucking riddance,” the officer holding me says.
And then I panic, scanning the area for River and Hazel. But I don’t see anyone else in the fieldno one aside from police officers.
I muster whatever strength I have left and scream. “River! Hazel!”
“Shut the fuck up!” the officer says before kneeing me in the stomach.
With the wind knocked out of me, I double over and gasp for air while saliva and snot drip from my face.
“Keep fucking moving!”
“Teagan!” someone screams from around the front of the old hangar.
“Hazel!”
“I said shut the fuck up!”
We round the corner to the front of the structure in time for me to get a glimpse of River’s blonde hair before she’s thrown into the back of a cop car.
I pass another car and see Hazel leaning against the window with tears streaming down her face. For a second, I think he’s going to put me into the same car, but he doesn’t. I’m read my rights and thrown into the back of a separate vehicle.
“Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?”
“Yes,” I say.
“With these rights in mind, do you wish to speak to me?”
“I have nothing to say.”
He slams the door in my face and leaves me there for about twenty minutes before he gets into the vehicle.
“What’s your name?” he asks as we pull away.
“Teagan,” I tell him. “Teagan Townsend.”
“Where are you from, Teagan?”
“Mission Viejo, California,” I tell him. “But I live in Fullerton near campus with my sister or I did. Can I ask you something now?”
“Can’t promise I’ll answer,” he says.
“Where are we?”
“Southern Wyoming.”
“Why am I going to jail?” I ask. “I didn’t do anything.”
He laughs before answering. “Are you kidding me? There are about a million different things they could charge you with. Just depends on what you say and do next.”
Numb, I lean against the window and cry for the rest of the drive.
Iguess I didn’t say or do the right things.
I’ve been here for two nightsnot that it matters. Nothing matters anymore. I’m numb to everything happening around me. All I can think aboutthe only thing I feelis the excruciating pain in my chest cavity. Each breath I draw hurts. Each reminds me that I’ll never breathe Luca in again, that I’ll never know what it feels like to curl up beside Declan and burrow into that spot just under his chin. I could stay here forever in this cage, and it wouldn’t make a difference.
What am I going to do if they let me out except mourn my loss, attend my own funeral in my head over and over again like I’ve been doing? That version of me who came alive over the last few weeksthe one who fell in love, the one who was better than just okaydied in a dirty, bloodstained field alone. And now, all I can do is stare at the wall while I bury myself in my own sorrow, cycling through the last couple of months over and over in my mind, trying to make sense of it all.
They got you. They never loved you. You fell for it like the fucking idiot you’ve always been.
It was a mistake. They’ll be back for you. You’ll take that vacationyou and Luca will have your secret. And you’ll never be alone, just like Declan promised.
It’s the ultimate con. And here you arealone in a jail cell, ready to die. Declan’s very favorite thing, next only to stabbing women until their torsos are torn to ribbons. You told him he’d never get that from you, and he said, ‘Watch me.’
Luca is alive.
Luca is dead.
Brady and Rhett are definitely dead.
They’ll send someone for me soon.
I’m going to rot away in here for the rest of my life.
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.