Filed To Story: Pretty Poisoned Novel by Elle Mitchell
“Thank god. Do you have a hair tie?” I ask. “This hair is just I know it’s bad.”
“It’s gorgeous,” she says. “But I’m sure Layla has some in the bathroom. Check the top middle drawer.”
Sure enough, the drawer is filled with hair accessories. I grab a black scrunchie and pull my hair into a high ponytail.
“You look like a cheerleader,” River says.
“Is that an insult?” I ask.
“No,” she says. “I like cheerleaders.”
“Well, I definitely was not a cheerleader,” I tell her. “I already told youI was a loser who had no friends. For the most part, I operated completely under the radar until I got sent to an alternative school my junior year of high school. But that’s a story for another time maybe.” I move toward the bedroom door. “Are you coming?”
“Yeah,” she says, following me out of the room. “My wife was a cheerleader.”
“Wait, Hazel is your wife?”
She laughs. “Yeah. We’ve been married for over a year now.”
“Well, okay.”
“What? Is that weird?” she asks.
“No, I think it’s adorable,” I tell her as we walk into the kitchen.
I take notice of who’s there and who’s missingfamily members and another male and female I don’t recognize, no one from the band is present.
“Where’s the band?” I ask River quietly.
“They left for the studio early,” she says. “I think Declan likes to do it after a party night as a kind of hazing, to be honest.”
That’s kind of comforting, actually. I could use a break from themor at least a couple of hours without a De Rossi brother breathing down my neck. I grab a plate from the island and start piling on food, then sit at the table next to Brady.
“So, what do we do for the next two days?” I ask everyone.
“Nothing,” Brady says. “We relax. We stay in bed and watch movies, we soak in the hot tub. There’s a gym in the basementif that’s your thing. And there are a couple of trails behind the house. One of them leads to a waterfall.”
“Oh, really?” I ask. “That sounds cool.”
“Really?” he asks. “You don’t really strike me as an outdoor girl, Terror Teagan.”
“It’s Terror with Teagan.”
“I said what I said.”
“I don’t know, doesn’t everyone like waterfalls? How far is it? Does anyone have a coat I can wear?”
“You can take mine,” River says. “I’ll bring it down when I’m done. I’ll show you where the trail is, too. It’s about a two-mile walk. Just don’t wander off because you know no phones.”
“Thanks,” I tell her. “I’ll be careful.”
I finish my food and, when I’m sure everyone else is done, fill my plate again and eat that, too. River goes upstairs and finds a coat for me like she said she would and brings it down just as I finish.
“Thanks,” I tell her. “Have you seen Layla this morning? I think I upset her last night.”
“I did,” she says. “She said she wasn’t hungry, got a cup of coffee, and left. Why? What happened?”
I pull the jacket on over Layla’s hoodie, zip it, and then head out the back door behind River. “I don’t know. I was just trying to understand why she was so upset; I wanted to help her.”
“We all want to help Layla. I wouldn’t think too much about it. She’s very forgiving; she was probably just tired. Here it is,” she says when we get to the tree line. “Just like I said, stay on the trail. But if you do get lostif you follow the river downstream, it will eventually take you to the main road in town. It’ll take a couple of hours, but it’s better than freezing to death at night.”
“Thanks. It feels so weird going places without my phone.”
She smiles. “You’ll get used to it. Once you do, you’ll see the freedom in it.”
Freedom.
Isn’t that what I told Declan I wanted last night? That it was my drug of choice?
Why did I say that?
“You good?” River asks.
“Yeah, I’m good. Thanks. I’ll see you later,” I say, then turn and begin down the trail.
It’s forty-five degrees and sunnyprobably warm for a February day in this part of the country. Still, I stuff my hands into the jacket pockets, and my cheeks flush from the cold as I walk through the dense forest of mostly-dead things. It makes it a little more difficult to detect the beaten path, but I must stay on it because eventually, I can hear the waterfall in the near distance.
It’s smallmaybe five feet highbut the volume of water spilling over is more than I expected. Remnants of icicles drip from the river’s rocks, indicating it likely was much colder days ago. There’s a small clearing facing the afternoon sun, and I lie down in the brush, enjoying the feel of the sun on my face.
I don’t know how long I stay like that, and that in itself is a new experience.
Eventually, I hear footsteps shuffling through the twigs and dead leaves around me.
“Are you dead?” Luca asks.
I laugh. “No, I’m not dead.”
He lies beside me in the muddy clearing. “You’ve been gone a long time.”
“Have I?” I ask. “I honestly can’t tell. You look even weirder with a coat on, by the way.”
“That’s hurtful,” he says. “I actually felt like I looked really nice in this coat.”
I turn toward him and laugh again. “I’m sorry. It’s a super great coat. You do look really nice.”
“Nope. Too late for that. You already said it.”
I look at him and feel something vaguely familiar in my lower gut, and I realize something I do actually like him. And not just like I wanted to sleep with himI really like him. I like River, tooI like all of them, really, except maybe Declan. I wonder what they’d do if they found out I was here under false pretenses.
I wonder if I’d be able to produce a podcast that could potentially hurt them after knowing them.
I quickly put the thought out of my head. If they’re hurting peopleif they’re killing themthen, of course, I’ll do the right thing.
I’m not a bad person.
And if I’m wrong, then, well maybe that won’t be so bad.
I prop myself up on my elbow. “Let me ask you something.”
“Okay,” he says, slipping an arm around my waist.
“Why are you in timeout?”
“Timeout?” he repeats.
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.