Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
I keep checking my phonediscreetly since I told Blake I forgot mine and I don’t want her to see the second oneeven though I know Sebastian is the only one with the number and he won’t message me just to talk. I close one eye and send him another message anyway.
ME Someone sent me a bloody drink and a note saying I was their queen. I’m never coming back.
I set the phone down on the table and take another drink. I must be feeling lonely again because just like the last time Sebastian hurt my feelings, I hallucinate Declan across the room.
Or that’s what I think is happening. But even he ignores me, not bothering to offer me any shitty pearls of wisdom I didn’t ask for. He simply watches me over his shoulder for a few seconds before disappearing into the sea of people in front of me.
“Rude ass ghost,” I grumble.
But then I see him again across the dark room, leaning against the wall. We make eye contact and
My heart pounds in my rib cage. Something is wrong. This Declan is wearing a jacket with the hood pulled up. I never picture him like that. I only ever see him one of two wayswith bed head in a pair of sweatpants or, when I’m angry, in dark denim soaked in my blood and a white shirt that says, ‘Everybody Lies.’
I look away and squeeze my eyes shut, hoping to send him back to wherever he came from, but when I look up again, he’s still fucking there.
That should have worked. But it’s been days since I took my medication. Maybe Sebastian is wrongmaybe I do need it.
“Hey,” Blakely says, sliding back into the booth. “Are you having fun?”
“Yeah, I’m having fun. Are you?”
“You sure you don’t want to dance? God, I need water.”
She grabs a bottle from the middle of the table and drinks the entire thing.
“I’m sure.”
“I wish you were going to be my maid of honor,” she says. “I’m getting so fucking sick of Sophie. But you can’t. Because your tits are sliced up, and it would ruin the photos.”
“Yep, I got that.”
“I wish you would have come home with me,” she adds. “When I came to Denver. Everything would be different.”
I look over her shoulder. Fake Declan is still there.
“Yeah, I guess it would be, wouldn’t it?” God, would it ever. “To be fair, one tit still would have been sliced up.”
“Really?” she asks, crinkling her nose. “Which one?”
“The left one.”
“I hope we can be friends again like we were before someday,” she says. And I know she’s drunk, but maybe she even means it. Unfortunately, for us, that someday won’t ever come.
“Blake, I forgive you,” I tell her. “Even if you’re not sorry right now, I want you to know that I forgive you for the things you’ve said to me and the way you treated me. I forgive you for not knowing how much I was hurting when I was younger, and I forgive you for not being there for me at the very worst moment of my lifewhen my heart was ripped out of my chest and mom had me committed. I think you did the best you could; we were just different. We could never understand each other, but I do love you.”
“Teagan, I”
“Hey!” Sophie says, pulling on Blakely’s hand. “They’re playing your song next! Come onlet’s go!”
“Go ahead,” I tell her. “I’m going to go back to my room. I’m tired.”
“Are you sure?” she asks.
“Yeah, I’m sure.”
She lets Sophie pull her back through the crowd on the dance floor, looking back over her shoulder at me once before disappearing. I think she’ll remember it. And when I die in a car accident after the wedding, I hope it brings her some kind of peace.
My phone vibrates on the table, and I pick it up.
SHINY ASSHOLE Don’t fuck with me. I can be there in less than an hour.
I smile. Maybe I do want him here.
I stuff my phone back in my purse and leave the booth, but when I do, something odd happens. Fake Declan also starts moving, brushing shoulders with someone in the crowd. The person stumbles backward, spilling the drink down the front of their body.
“Hey, what the fuck?” the man yells. “Watch where you’re going!”
I can’t breathe. Either I’ve ascended to a new level of hallucinating and I’m seeing more fake people or Fake Declan is corporeal.
I try calling out to him, but no sound comes out, and so I stare, incredulous, watching the guy he ran into attempt to clean the front of his shirt with cocktail napkins while bitching to his friends.
I turn back to Declan, who heads for the back of the room.
Move, Teagan, I tell myself. You’re losing him.
Once I can get my legs to move, I follow, pushing my way through the crowd as best I can, trying not to lose him.
But I dolose him.
Just as I make it through the room, I watch the emergency exit door in the back of the room close behind him. But no alarm goes off.
I stand in front of it, hesitant to push it open. An alarm didn’t go off for him, but maybe it would for me. If he’s fake.
Fuck it.
I push the door open and step into an empty service hallway. In front of me, there’s a staircase. To my right, there’s a door leading to a fire escape. To my left, there’s a long, bright, empty hallway. I almost bolt out the door before I hear footsteps echoing through the stairwell.
“Hey!” I yell, running up the stairs after him. “Come back!”
I lean over the railing and see him turning the corner of the staircase about four floors ahead of me. I race up the stairs, but I’m drunk and out of fucking shape. I can’t remember the last time I ran anywhere.
Fuck, I guess it was from the cops.
After maybe about ten floors, I can’t feel my thighs, and I’ve already misstepped twice. Somewhere after twenty, I’m crawling, using my hands to help me climb. The sound of a heavy metal door opening and closing reverberates throughout the space, and I almost cry.
I want to puke.
It’s minutes later before I finally reach the top. I push open the door and step out onto the roof, the air still thick with heat even at this time of night. With my hands on my knees, I stop, catching my breath as I scan the rooftop.
But there’s no one here. And there’s nowhere to hide. It was all in my head. Just like with the concert, I let myself believe something I knew couldn’t be real.
I’m fucking losing it.
“Fuck!” I scream. “I’m so fucking stupid.”
I fall to my knees and scream, tearing at my hair with my fists before punching the ground until my knuckles are bloody. Then, I drop my forehead to the concrete, defeated.
My mind is going. And that’s pretty much all I have left. Declan ruined me. I don’t have Luca. River and Hazel are gone forever. I’m a fucking murderer, and I can’t exist in the real world anymore. In a couple of weeks, I won’t even have a name or a face.
And now, this.
I don’t know how long I stay there on the ground, but eventually, I do pull myself up and turn to the door leading back to the staircase.
But I don’t open itI can’t. It’s too heavy again, and I don’t mean the door in front of me. The hole in my chest where my heart used to be, that sinking feeling, the hopelessness crushing my rib cageit’s too heavy like it was the first few weeks after they abandoned me when I could barely move. So, instead of going back inside, I walk to the ledge and look over.
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.