Poison Vows (Westbrook Blues #7)

1. Emmett

Emmett

THE PAST

She’s back!

After four years of her strangely loud absence, leaving an unbearable void that I was barely able to deal with, Angel is back!

Greedily, I take in the evidence, seeing her for myself with my own eyes.

Sure, she’s sleeping and completely unaware that there’s a jerk whose heart is beating out of order gawking at her, but that’s beside the point.

The only point to note is this: she’s back…

She came back to me!

Heartbeat.

Heartbeat.

Heart… attack…

It’s the middle of the night but I couldn’t wait.

I broke into her room to confirm this one thing… and it feels like the thing in my chest is going to burst as I stare at her in the dark.

I don’t even need to switch the lights on.

I don’t need an instructional guide or a map… I’d find her anywhere.

She’s back!

I stand in the shadows, watching her suffer even in her sleep.

Almost as if on cue, she tosses over aggressively, giving me a chance to take a good look at her face.

I’m nowhere near prepared for what I find.

My heart screeches to a stop, my eyes greedily taking her in.

When the hell did she become… this?

I have surveillance images of her from these past four years, but none of them have ever done justice to the utter creation of beauty I’m looking at now.

Jesus Christ.

The blood in my veins starts to heat up.

The muscles in my body contract.

My breathing speeds up into stutters.

An entirely intense reaction takes over my body, my mind, my heart, and my soul as I stare.

Every atom that makes me a living, albeit dying, person reacts to the sleeping girl so much so that for a moment, I stop breathing.

Gone is the little girl I met during a snowstorm, angry at me that I don’t take life seriously.

She’s not that annoying girl from years ago that cried and bled, begging me to make her a promise I never should’ve made.

Gone are the chubby cheeks and the delicate figure of childhood.

Her face is now well defined and breathtaking, with long eyelashes resting against her cheeks.

The frown on her brow doesn’t do anything to diminish her stunningly gorgeous face.

There’s now a slight worldly maturity to her that I wasn’t expecting to be so potent, so devastatingly beautiful, I forget that I need to breathe.

Clutching my chest, I try to soothe the sudden wave of agony that grips my heart.

For as long as I can remember, this girl has affected my health in the worst possible ways… and yet I could barely stay away.

Life has an unamusing way of wrapping the most potent poisons in seemingly innocent-looking packages. Angel is like that.

From the moment I met her, it was over for me. But by the time I realized just how far gone I was and how much I had indulged her, it was too late.

I knew I had to cut her off, which was the only option, but I failed.

Like the worst kind of junkie, I vehemently denied my addiction but kept going back to her over and over again, even going so far as to ignore my near-death calamity that comes with keeping her as close to me as possible.

It didn’t help that she made it easy… sticking her nose in my business, bulldozing her way into my soon-to-end life whenever she wanted, just to wrap her arms around me and press her ear against my chest.

She’s always been the punishment for my existence.

Too much of a liability.

And mine.

Then she was gone for four years, leaving me with vague glimpses from a distance.

After what felt like an eternity of doing the crap I never wanted to do, being made into the young underboss the old man wanted me to be, I finally have her back.

Feeling settled with that blessed assurance, I step closer to her bed and crouch down.

“Hi, Angel,” I whisper to her sleeping form in the silence of the dark room. “Welcome home.”

Home.

Ever since my mother disappeared, I’ve been lost… only to find something inexplicably familiar within the glowing embers of this girl’s eyes.

When she smiled, the heartbeats seized.

When she cried, my blood raged.

It’s like my every mood, thought, and action is dictated by this girl’s whims… and I don’t mind. With her, I’m alive.

Without her…

It takes everything in me not to touch her, so instead, I pat my chest again to ease the tension within, but it doesn’t go away.

With all the things I have to do, I’ve kept so many things secret.

God only knows how much being with this girl, seeing her, listening to her nonsensical musings, watching the animated expressions she makes on her beautiful face when she’s pissed, makes me feel.

Then there’s talking to her, which somehow was the easiest thing for me… when she’s asleep.

I hate talking to people, but talking to Angel? I needed it sometimes.

With her, breathing, talking… being … is simple and excruciating.

A double-edged sword, aimed at my chest. There’s never been an in-between state with Angel. It’s always been seductive extremes that I craved.

What does that say about me? Addicted to the way time becomes meaningless when we’re together?

“Did you miss me?” I whisper.

I want so badly to get a response, but I’m also relieved that she can’t hear me.

Coward!

That’s what Noah calls me. I hate that the jerk is sometimes spot on.

But how can someone like me talk to someone like her?

Back then, my speech impairment was so horrible and embarrassing, I couldn’t stand speaking around our other friends… but when it was just me and Angel, she forced me to speak.

Actually, I responded to her nonsense more than I spoke to her, but that doesn’t matter.

Initiating conversation with a girl like her without sounding like a fool was next to impossible… but I wanted her around me regardless of the cost to me.

It’s stupid, really.

The girl already knows too much about me and could be a formidable enemy.

Of course, up until now, she hasn’t done any of that. I made sure of it, but that doesn’t mean I should relax. Angel is nothing if not trouble.

I mean, how many seven-year-olds in this world get suicidal thoughts as the only option to atone for something out of their control?

Sure, she made a mistake but to then believe that she caused her grandfather’s death from that one mistake and then wanting to toss herself over a cliff to atone? Totally messed up.

In the end, she hesitated.

She wanted to die, but even after I encouraged her to end it she couldn’t reconcile with death, especially after I told her life was meaningless.

She was livid with me for saying that. It was also that very moment that started our downward spiral.

After all these years she’s still complicated . A poison without an antidote.

My survival instincts tell me to get rid of her… but then my nature goes to war against that ridiculous thought.

Like that idiot Icarus, I’ll use up all my energy into getting as close to Angel as possible without care of perishing.

But if and when I perish, what happens to her?

Worried, I stare at her face, illuminated now by the moonlight filtering in through her window.

A sudden, all-consuming heat I wasn’t expecting starts simmering the blood in my veins the longer I stare at the familiar but oh-so unfamiliar face in front of me.

“You’ve grown,” I mutter.

Unable to control myself, my hand reaches toward her.

As gently as I can, I cup her face, then I run my thumb across her plump lips.

“I’ve been waiting for you. You’re finally back home to me,” I whisper softly, stroking her cheek until the frown dissolves and a look of peace appears on her face. I almost smile. “There was no way I’d let you stay away from me for long, Angel.”

It’s not a mere, empty statement.

I really was about to start a world war just to get her back… that’s how stubborn someone was in keeping her away.

I had to set some things in motion, starting with George’s thing which brought Astraea back to Westbrook Blues.

Astraea coming back was a big gamble, but that was the best card I could play to get Angel back without shedding blood.

I mean, Angel wouldn’t like it if I got rid of her brother…

“Everything’s going to be okay, now. I’ve got you,” I whisper to her, feeling a type of euphoria only she can cause.

A sudden moan escapes her lips and immediately, as if my own soul resonates with her, an acute hungered groan rises in me, but I quickly force it down.

I know I shouldn’t wake her right now, but my God, I want her to open her eyes and see me. I want to see the look in her captivating eyes.

After waiting for so long, it’s all that’s been keeping me alive.

Her eyes on me and only ever on me.

The thought excites me so bad that the blotched thing in my chest suddenly kicks into gear anew as if it’s just been given an entirely new vigor for life that hasn’t been there in these past four years.

Angel is finally back!

But mixed in with the excitement is the anger I’ve barely managed to keep hidden and it flares up with a vengeance.

Pulling away, I clench my fists to calm down, but for some insane reason, the more I look at her, the more anger washes over me.

She left!

She fucking left me when I was at my weakest and disappeared into the stormy night, leaving behind a chaotic mess that took over a year to clean up.

As if sensing imminent danger, she frowns in her sleep once again.

Her breathing changes weirdly, like there are broken bellows in her chest.

Feeling extremely unsettled by this, I grab my phone and send a message to get Angel’s latest medical report.

She can’t still be breathing like this. She was being treated, right?

She’s struggling in her sleep, and I’m struggling wide awake. What a pair we make.

Angel tosses again in an agitated manner, throwing the duvet to the floor, revealing a sinfully curvy body adorned in only some sleep shorts and a flimsy top that gives a peek at her voluptuous chest.

She’s holding a large pillow in her arms tightly as if it’s her lifeline.

Overwhelmed by some foreign need in me, I lean down and gently caress her soft cheek, trying my best to soothe her back to peaceful rest.

I reach for the silk bonnet that got undone at some point, likely due to all this sudden and constant tossing and turning.

Sitting down at the edge of the bed, I tuck my hand under her head and lift gently, helping her put the bonnet over her braids, being careful not to mess up her baby hairs.

She was always particular about that back then. Clearly some things haven’t changed.

Successfully completing my task without waking Angel up, I selfishly stay seated, gently laying her head back on another pillow so she can be comfortable.

I won’t dare take away the pillow she’s hugging though, but a crazy thought runs through my head as a feeling of jealousy takes root in me.

Feeling like I’m losing my mind, I pick up the duvet and spread it atop her body to cover her again.

This time, I don’t bother with self-control.

Leaning down, I place a kiss on the crown of her head, something I’ve selfishly done numerous times when she’s asleep.

I breathe her in, lingering like an addict inhaling a fix.

It’s potentially disruptive for me physically and mentally, but I haven’t been this close to her, skin to skin, heartbeat to blotched heartbeat, in four years.

Now that she’s back, we have a small piece of forever together. The possibilities are endless.

I just need to handle something to ensure that happens.

I press another kiss to her forehead, two to her lips, then I stand up.

If she knew I steal kisses like this, she’ll likely kill me.

The thought makes me smirk, imagining her petulant frown as she kicks up a tantrum that she never ever shows to others but me.

“So much for that saint image, baby.”

With one last look at her, I glance at the clock on her desk. It’s 02:45 in the morning.

I’ve been in here for a good fifteen minutes, but the darkest hour of the night is fast approaching, so I make my way out of her room and silently go downstairs.