Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
“It’s too bad he’s not a plastic surgeon,” she says. “Maybe he could fix you.”
“No one can fix me.”
“What are you talking about? I bet he knows someone. I mean, you can’t be comfortable wearing that dirty hoodie when it’s ninety degrees out.”
She laughs, and it sets me on edge. I tighten my grip on the knife. Tears well in my eyes as I realize it’s taking everything in me not to bury it in my sister’s back right now. I need to drop it. I need to drop it and back the fuck out of the room, but I can’t.
“Or wait ” she starts. “Is he into it? The blood stuff? I mean, that’d be”
She stops mid-sentence, her eyes settling on something above my shoulder. Sebastian’s hand closes around my wrist and squeezes forcefully while the other pries the knife from my fingers. He carries it to the sink and runs it under the water before putting it in the dishwasher, scolding me with his eyes.
“He knows how to load the dishwasher, too,” Blakely says. “He’s a keeper. Maybe you can teach Austin before you go.”
“I’ll help you with those plates,” he tells her.
I stay there, frozen, while they each grab three and carry them out the door and then Sebastian steps back inside.
“Hey,” he says, pulling me into his chest. “It’s okay.”
I wrap my arms around him and let go of a sob.
“You’re okay,” he says, running his hands up and down my back. “I’ve got you.”
“I don’t want to hurt Blake,” I whisper. “I love her.”
“I know,” he says. “I warned you about this, thoughthis is what I was talking about. You need to be careful, sweetheart. It’s okay. Nothing happened; you’re fine.”
I let him hold me there like that for a while until my heart rate slows and my breathing evens out. And when I let go of him, he tilts my chin and kisses me on the lips.
“Is that a lie, too?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Never. Come on, let’s go back outside.”
I nod, taking his hand and following him out the back door. Sebastian doesn’t let go, holding my hand under the table while we eat cheesecake. He rubs small circles inside my palm with his thumb, and I try not to cry while everyone talks and laughs, oblivious as usual to the way I’m feeling.
How did I become this?
And when we finish, he helps my mom with the dishes, who insists he comes back soon, and I walk him out the front door.
When I reach the bottom step, I sink down onto it, dropping my head into my hands.
“Are you going to be okay?” he asks, sitting beside me.
“I’ll do it,” I tell him. “I’ll join The Order and become no one.”
“I think that’s for the best,” he says.
“I don’t want to hurt any of them; they don’t deserve that so I can’t stay here. But I do want to go to Vegas. And I want to go to the wedding like I said. For closure. My mom has been trying to talk me into moving in with her sister in North Carolina and trying to be someone different there, so I’m going to tell her that’s what I’m doing. And then maybe we can make them think I died in a car accident.”
He nods. “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s not what I want,” I tell him. “But it’s all I get, isn’t it?”
“Do you want me to stay with you tonight?” he asks. “I can. I’ll hold you.”
“But why would you do that? You don’t even like me.”
“That’s not true,” he says. “I told you that I really do care about you. I told you that I can’t love you, but I can’t love anything. It’s hard to explain but I like you like the way I like my favorite song. Or my favorite quote from a book. Both of those thingsand youmake me feel something. Something real. I like you like I want to own you and put you on a shelf.” He leans in close and whispers in my ear, “I like the way your body feels wrapped around my dick. But none of those things are love, baby.”
“I don’t want you to stay. I want some space.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Space?”
“Yeah. And I want to go with my sister to Las Vegas without you following meand without anyone else following me, either. For closure, like I said.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“Yeah. I just need to be more self-aware.”
He’s quiet for a minute, thinking it over. “I’ll bring you a phone,” he says. “Don’t take your other one.”
“Thank you,” I tell him. I wrap my arm around his back and slip my hand inside his shirt, forgetting about the scars until my fingers touch the rough, damaged skin. He flinches, and for a moment I think he’s going to pull away, but he doesn’t.
“You know what I used to wish for when I was a kid?”
“Hmm?”
“I just wanted people to see methe way they see Blake, but no one ever did. And then, I wished I could be the thing they were afraid of. Now, I regret becoming just that.”
“When I was a child, I wished for death,” Sebastian says. “Wishes are for children, regrets are for the dying. You’re not dying yet, are you, Teagan?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
He presses two fingers to my neck, finding my pulse and looking deep into my eyesstraight through me. “Still very much alive,” he says.
“Is that your professional opinion, Doctor?” I ask.
“It is,” he says. He leans forward, pressing his lips to mine before standing. “I’ll bring you the phone tomorrow,” he says. “Call me if you need anything.”
“Okay,” I tell him.
“This will be good for you, Teagan,” Sebastian says. “You’ll see. Most people like you don’t get a chance to exist like this. But you do.”
“Yeah yeah, I guess you’re right.”
“I know I’m right. Bye, Teagan.”
“Bye ”
He turns and heads for his car, and I stay there on the front step until the headlights disappear. Once inside, I pause at the bottom of the staircase, tempted by the laughter from outside to join my family. I decide to grab a book and lie across the porch swing behind them, pretending to read while I listen to them.
I don’t want to miss out on them, but I don’t want to ruin it for them, either.
Idrag my pink suitcase through the hotel lobby toward the elevator, a weird sense of déjà vu washing over me.
The car ride up was uneventful enough. I sat in the front of Austin’s with Blake, and three of her other friends, Ashlyn, Lauren, and Sophie, sat in the back.
Sophie is going to be her maid of honor. That was supposed to be me.
At least I’m getting a room to myself.
“Okay, so we are on the seventeenth floor ” Sophie says, hitting the elevator button.
“Can you hit thirty for me?” I ask.
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.