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.

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

voice hissed into my ear in pain as

from my daze, I realized that it was Ashton. He’d used his own body to shield me from

see that all the blood was drained from Jared’s face

my mouth to speak, but no words

ringing

as they moved around me. It was only then that my brain finally registered that my face hurt slightly, and I realized that the sulfuric acid must have burnt some parts of my skin

the cornea isn’t damaged, so you don’t have to worry about blindness,” a doctor told me as he bandaged up

a while. I now knew that my

didn’t I feel any pain at all in the beginning? Maybe it all happened too fast that my brain wasn’t able to register

a nurse came in to help with my IV injection. After pressing lightly all over my hand and not finding any

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

push the needle into

the nurse helpfully supplied

did I sigh in relief, all the muscles in my body relaxing. The spot on the back of my left hand where the IV needle had pierced hurt slightly,

“Did you accidentally pick the wrong

connected the IV needle to the drip bag was indeed starting to turn

When she tried to pull