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.

someone’s embrace at the exact moment that I heard the

pain as a group of people suddenly barged

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

drained from Jared’s face as he stared at

open my mouth to

instantly fell to his knees in front of me. There was a constant ringing in my brain as I stood there

they moved around me. It was only then that my brain finally registered that my face hurt slightly, and I

area isn’t large. Your right eye is hurt, but the cornea isn’t damaged, so you don’t have to worry about blindness,”

for a while. I now knew that my face and right

beginning? Maybe

over my hand and not finding any prominent veins, she glanced up at me. “Please hold your hand in a

of my hand and then picked up the needle, setting it

refusing to watch her actually push the needle into

the nurse helpfully supplied

all the muscles in my body relaxing. The spot on the back of my left hand where the

the wrong vein? It looks like the wound is starting

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

her shoulder at me and did a double take. When she tried to pull out the IV needle, tiny drops of

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