Page 225 of Poison Aches

A site…

“What are you talking about?”

“With the history between us, Angel, you should know better than to act dumb. You know exactly what I’m talking about,” he says calmly.

With the history Emmett and I share…yes, I do know better than to lie to him.

“Okay, okay, I…” I’m literally panicking now. My mind is racing like hell.

My entire body is trembling, and I think this time, I’m about to have both an asthma attack and an anxiety attack. “Let’s talk properly, Emmett. For the sake of the history between us…”

“Wrong choice of words. Because of the history between us, you deserve to be six feet under!” he roars.

I gasp.

“Of all the people that have gotten in my way, attempted to fuck me up, derailed my shit, you and only you, are the one who has sinned the most and you’re still breathing!” Emmett snaps. “I kept you alive when they came for you. I eliminated assholes who dared to breathe in your direction wrong. I even told you I’m letting you go. I warned you…but what were you doing all this time? Attempting to really screw me over?”

“No, no… Emmett, that’s not it!”

“Then what is?” he calmly asks, but he’s anything but. It’s like we’re in a pressure cooker and one wrong move will end in ways I don’t even want to think about.

“It’s…” I stutter, trying to find the words but I’m lost. My only focus right now is… “Emmett, where is my brother? You at least have to tell me that. Is he alive?”

“That’s up to you.”

“What?”

“All of this was started by you. Your lies, your secrets, the way you easily fool people.”

“I don’t?—”

“Those eyes look at me with faux innocence, but when you sit alone in your room, you’re creating destruction, thinking up ways to slander my name… Tell me, is it because I won’t ever love you back?”

My world literally halts to a stop. Did I just hear that right?

“What?” I gasp.

“Did you do all this to get my attention on you? To make me pay for not sharing those pathetic, sickly emotions you have for me?”

Pain unlike anything I’ve ever felt pierces through me like I’ve just been shot by a thousand lightning arrows, ripping my organs apart.

He didn’t just say that.

In that moment, something in me snaps.

“How dare you?” I seethe.

I know I should be approaching this very dangerous, blade-balancing situation with extreme caution—after all, Emmett is a hidden villain. No one alive truly knows the depths of his cunning but him, but I just can’t stand what he just said.

“You’ve always been an asshole but how dare you hurl those words in my face like that? Do you think having feelings for youis what I wanted for myself?” I cry, my heart racing painfully in my chest.

In fact, there’s a tightness in my chest that I want to get rid of, so I start beating at my chest.

“I never chose you and by God you’re nothing to me now! I don’t need you to feel anything for me, let alone love me back, and guess what, Emmett Easton, you’re not worth the energy of thought, let alone action to conspire to do anything to you!”

Emmett sits there and just watches me. I think a faint smirk just crossed his face, but I can’t be sure as impassiveness is firmly back in place.

“And yet you were begging me to take you.”

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