When There Is Nothing Left But Love

He picked up the bottle of sulfuric acid, slowly swivelling his head to face me. An eyebrow raised, he asked in an annoyed tone, “Want me to do it for you?”

My face scrunched up out of fear, instinctively taking a step back and increasing the distance between us. “Jared, listen. There’s still a way out for you if you stop now.”

His lips pulled back in an ugly sneer. “Scared, Scarlett?”

No sh*t, Sherlock. Anyone would be.

He took slow, lazy steps towards me, and I unconsciously kept backing away from him. “Jared, you can’t bring back people from the dead, but you can still treasure the living while they’re still alive,” I tried to convince him.

He merely jeered at me, refusing to listen to anything I said as he twisted open the bottle cap.

Waving the bottle in the air menacingly, he went on to say, “You look so much like Naomi right now. She was this scared and vulnerable when she died, too. I remember thinking: she must have wanted to continue living, but she couldn’t find a good reason to do so anymore. Why couldn’t I have been her reason? Why couldn’t she have continued living for me?”

I felt my back hit a wall. I’m cornered.

Delighted by my new predicament, a wide grin spread across his face as he splashed the contents of the bottle in my direction.

I reflexively reached up and tried to cover my face with my hands, but only managed to block some of the liquid.

embrace at the exact moment that I heard the blood-curdling sound of something dissolving, as well as caught a whiff

my ear in pain as a group

was Ashton. He’d used his own body to shield me from

corner of my eye, I could somewhat see that all the blood was drained from Jared’s face as he stared at Ashton, dumbfounded while

mouth to speak, but no

constant ringing in my brain as I stood there blankly, watching someone else carry

was only then that my brain finally registered that

damaged, so you don’t have to

words for a while. I now knew that my

all in the beginning? Maybe it all happened too fast that my

in to help with my IV injection. After pressing lightly all over my hand and not finding any prominent veins, she

carefully inspected the back of my hand and then picked up the needle, setting it upon a certain spot on my

needle into my flesh. My pain tolerance had always been

nurse helpfully supplied

sigh in relief, all the muscles in my body relaxing. The spot on the back of

“Did you accidentally pick the wrong vein? It looks like the wound is starting to

to the drip bag was indeed starting to turn from

a double take. When she tried to pull out