12. Emmett
CHAPTER 12
Emmett
“ J erk,” King murmurs silently from where he stands behind me. “Was that really necessary?”
I ignore him and stare at the hallway the girl just escaped to.
That was a very dramatic exit stage left Angel just did.
No one will agree with me but that was unnecessary.
But fuck me, I have to admit that watching her flee like that, with tears barely hanging on to her eyelids, after she just spewed all that nonsense… now, that was worth it.
I can’t say that sight didn’t make me feel like an asshole because let’s face it, I don’t particularly care and caring would make me a liar.
But as far as assholery goes, I might be slightly better since as a principle, I don’t lie.
Actually, I don’t have time to lie.
Just as I don’t have time for delusions and feeding the foolish fantasies a silly little girl harbors in her fractured mind.
So, “Yes,” I mutter. “That was very necessary.”
“Color me shocked,” Noah snorts sarcastically. “He never wastes words but when it comes to Ivy, he seems to have plenty of words to say. Even the unnecessary ones.”
I can feel the displeasure aimed at me. After all, Ivy is the sheltered egg to these asshats. They take protecting her seriously. If only they knew…
“Like you said,” I start quietly. “I don’t have time to waste words, so that was necessary.” The room falls silent.
While I don’t have much time left, I do have a few more heartbeats and the patience to allow her to see the error of her pitiful ‘feelings’.
If I can help one silly little girl get a hard reality check then consider my sainthood please and fucking thank you.
Besides, I didn’t say anything that wasn’t true. I just kindly reminded her of something.
That poem she’s been trying to engrave on her brain—it’s fucking telling.
She’s not all the way clueless, Ivy Marie Irving.
Sometimes I think she understands her reality but then sometimes she needs a push.
Like just now when she finally noticed me in the room, that look she gave me didn’t feel right to me.
It felt like she was begging me for something… something I’d never give her even if she were on her knees.
Though the thought of Ivy on her knees, looking up at me with those large doe brown eyes…
“Not this time,” I suddenly hear behind me. “You have a crap heart, we all know, but that doesn’t mean you get a free pass to be mean,” Astraea says, obviously annoyed with me in defense of Angel.
“Mean?” I scoff. “I didn’t know telling the truth nowadays is considered as being mean.”
Why do people want what doesn’t want them?
Why do humans fight and struggle for things that would inevitably bring them nothing but suffering in the end?
Take time, for example. If we all know the result is death and no one can escape it, why then do some idiots want to prolong the inevitable?
Why fight it? I’m not.
After all, what one has to face cannot be avoided.
Angel needs to face the truth. As for me, the shit organ slowly straining in my chest is my reminder that no stone should be left unturned.
“What did you even say to her?” Kimberly suddenly demands, her tone harsh and intolerant.
I turn around to face the room, only to realize they’re all staring daggers at me.
Looks like Angel's militia wants to kill me for hurting her little feelings. I sigh.
Kimberly and Astraea glare at me with murderous expressions. Noah has a huge smile on his fucking mug, while King retains his resting asshole persona all season with no bench time.
“Why are you mad at me when you didn’t even hear what I said, Kimberly?” I ask politely.
“For Christ’s sake, she just fled like her ass was on fire!” Kim huffs.
I don’t want to think about Ivy’s ass right now, so I quickly mutter the first thing that comes to mind.
“For the bathroom,” I mutter, feeling weird.
“What?”
“She ran for the bathroom! Who knows, maybe she needed to go that bad.” I shrug at that, and Noah hoots with laughter. I ignore him. “Besides, I didn’t say anything false.”
“Yeah but no one asked you to say anything at all, asshat,” Kimberly snarls. “If you have nothing good to say, you can just shut the hell up.”
“He usually does,” Noah chortles. “Just not after hearing that kind of rejection.”
I shoot Noah a look, but an echo of Angel's stupid speech comes back to me like she shouted the words from the top of a mountain.
If Emmett was the last man on earth, I’d never feel a damn thing for him, let alone be anything to him…
Well, I support what she said, but why the fuck is there tension in my fucking body?
Why did I feel like tearing the room apart when she said all that crap?
Noah returns my glare with a knowing smirk but he doesn’t know anything.
I ignore him and stare at the person that insisted I come tonight when I warned her that it would be a bad idea on so many levels.
In fact, for the past two years, Angel has been staying away from me like the plague and I’ve made it easy for her. I’ve been busy lately and have no time to feed her delusions.
“Well… do you still think it was a good idea to invite me tonight?” I ask softly.
Counting out the occasions where I have no choice, Ivy and I subconsciously avoid being in the same room now. It’s been like that since about two Christmases ago, or whenever. I’m not counting.
I think she finally got the message.
Her speech tonight was just an acknowledgement of that…right?
“I didn’t invite a jerk.” Astraea stares me down, with disappointment flashing in her eyes. “You really could’ve just been a decent human being.”
King snorts. “That’s like thinking you can domesticate a monster, baby.” The fucker turns to look at me. “Just because they’ve managed to act like they’re harmless and likable for so many years doesn’t mean they’re actually good.”
I hold his gaze, letting him see everything.
If there’s anyone who can guess and maybe face the side of me that the world is blind to, it’s this bastard.
“That’s why it’s important not to be curious,” I say simply.
And Ivy is one curious firecracker.
Someone has to put out those sparks before they burn not just her, but everyone else.
“So that was a warning?” Noah snorts. “How benevolent of you.”
I glance at him.
In the past few years, the little shit has faced so many life-altering shit and the result is this sharper, more perceptive mature man.
Before, Noah was just playful, could joke for several hours, and make others feel his infectious energy. Now, he’s exactly what he never wanted to be… a dangerous man.
“I’ve been known to be kind once in a red moon,” I shrug then look down at the little being in my arms.
For a moment there, I’d forgotten that Angel handed me the latest addition to the King clan as if she was passing on a hand grenade.
Knight gives me a hard glare. I give him one right back, but the little human doesn’t back down. He’s definitely King’s son, all right. Copy and paste.
“Why does your offspring look like he wants me to stop breathing right this instant?” I demand, scowling at Knight.
“Probably because he does,” King snorts.
“Why?” I ask the mini-King. “Do you also want to defend your favorite aunt’s feelings?”
Knight only glares harder, as if he understands what I’m saying. I notice the words on his little onesie, though. He probably does.
“Listen, dude, your aunt has a tendency of hurting herself for no reason. I’m just trying to help her avoid a… well, a calamity.”
And that’s the golden truth.
Let’s be clear about some things.
I’m not a good guy and I will never be.
Angel might’ve been safe if I hadn’t met her.
If the girl had stayed far away from that church cemetery, away from the estates, far from my town, from my world, then maybe, just maybe, that night wouldn’t have happened.
But that is still moot, because she entered my life the day she saw my mother.
“Avoiding a calamity?” Astraea folds her arms, ready to cuss me out. “Really?”
“More like he’s just being an ass,” Kimberly snorts coldly, while she glares at me.
I’m not particularly offended by Kimberly's or Astraea’s words, in fact, I think they’re right to be annoyed with me, but they need to be fucking real.
“And what would either of you have me do then?” I ask ever so politely, but I’m fucking livid at this point. One point due to the incessant questions and a hundred points all pointing to Angel. “Do you want me to lead her on, play her, make her think I’m into her, only to later abandon her when I will inevitably drop dead, which is likely to happen at any second now?”
The room falls into a stilted kind of silence that reeks of pity.
I almost gag.
It’s been a few years since everyone in this room found out about my condition.
Years of awkward silence and sorrow in their fucking eyes.
Worry and unwanted sympathy… all reminders of why I kept my fucking mouth shut in the first place.
People are fucking complicated and the group of friends I have are all more complex than the average next-door neighbor, but they’re also intelligent beings.
So why then do they act so fucking dumb at times?
For clarity’s sake, let’s make clear some fucking hardcore but simple facts that I’ve since accepted partly because I have no choice in the matter and partly because, well, why delay the inevitable?
I’m dying.
I have been since I was in my mother's womb, if we’re being technical, because congenital heart defects are a curse you’re born with.
I accepted that simply because that’s the easiest part of my life.
I’m aware of my fucked-up, blotched, torn-up heart that leaks blood like a faulty tap in the back of a haunted house.
My heartbeats are simply not guaranteed.
I’m aware that if I close my eyes to go to sleep one night, the thing might stop working altogether.
I’ve come close enough times to have firsthand experience.
The fucking hard part of all this is… waiting.
I have no idea when the damn thing will give up and retire as it’s supposed to.
Hell, I’m stunned whenever I open my eyes in the morning and go through each day. Like really fucking shocked.
Living with that knowledge has been like having a double-edged sword pointed right at my balls.
On one hand, I don’t have to wonder about much in life.
Most people care about achieving their dreams or career goals, traveling across this accursed globe or any of that bucket-list bullshit.
I’m not like that.
I don’t care about setting goals or achieving stuff that I’ll probably never live long enough to see flourish.
I’m just barely here.
If I could describe my life in a way that would make this debacle easier to digest, it’s like attempting to breathe and crawl in a barely lit hole, while holding a grenade that might go off at any second.
It’s not like I went hunting for the grenade. The damn thing was just given to me right from the start and it never came with a damn safety pin in the first place.
So what would you do if you were me?
Isn’t accepting fate the smartest shit you’ll ever do when you know there isn’t a magic wand to fix things?
But there’s some good news though—to make you feel a bit better about your unwanted sympathy—we know how it’s going to happen.
For most people, death is like the great unknown.
You don’t know if you’ll die from an accident, from cancer or food poisoning. Hell, one moment you’re happily munching on deep-dish Chi-Town pizza and the next thing you’re choking to death.
A sudden death you don’t see coming is mercy.
A death you can see coming but have to wait for… now, that’s hell and I live in the deepest pit of it.
Ignorance is bliss that I can’t afford.
With each day, I listen to my heartbeats.
They sound irregular.
Wrong.
Cursed.
So simply put, it all comes to this.
“You can hate me for hurting your friend but she’s more aware of the situation than anyone else in this damn room, so get over yourselves,” I grit out, slicing the tense silence with a sharp knife.
And I’m not wrong either.
No one’s more aware of my heart condition than the curious, nosy girl who just couldn’t mind her damn business.
Ivy Marie Irving.
The Angel of Death.
She grew up to be nothing more than a wallflower.
A people pleaser.
Pathetic, and she always seems so sad, like a starved, abandoned dog that doesn’t receive enough pats on the head.
It’s not that she actually wants to be like that. In fact, to everyone else, she’s a cheerleader.
But I know, she’s nothing more than a liar.
Just now, she gave a speech to encourage everyone in the room, supporting other people, making them feel good about their lives and their accomplishments, but I heard the perfectly hidden sadness in that cheerful tone.
I saw the envy in her eyes.
I know that deep down, she’s lonelier than anyone would ever know—and in that regard, she serves as a reminder to my own mess.
She lives in her head the most, probably because she hates her reality.
But I will bring her back to it, even if I have to break that cocoon of hers.
They say the past is gone and we should focus on the present, but while I can’t change the past, I will move Heaven and earth to remind Angel of the past.
To be fair, I haven’t had a chance to make her pay all these years. I’d since decided to do one thing when it comes to Ivy—ignore her like she doesn’t exist.
But she does.
She seems to be everywhere I go.
She’s around my friends.
She’s always at the estates.
And her all-knowing gaze is always on me.
Before my friends found out I was born sick, she had known and kept my secret for years.
I hated that she knew my greatest weakness.
I hated that I couldn’t really control what she could do or say.
And when she pressed her ear to listen to my heartbeat, taking 3 minutes from me, I hated her…
“Well, since Emmett has made his side clear then I’ll just go right ahead and order that cake Ivy wants,” Noah says gleefully. “What type of cake do you give a dear friend to celebrate them losing their virginity?”
Hot, blinding anger unlike anything I’ve ever felt suddenly surges up in my chest.
“How about a red velvet cake?” Kim suggests cheekily.
“She doesn’t like the taste of that one,” Astraea chimes in, watching me from the corner of her eye. “Try a strawberry cheesecake.”
They discuss all the fucking cake options and the pros of losing one’s virginity in calm, happy, and fucking clear tones as if it’s a simple matter while I’m about to fucking burst!
There’s no fucking way…
She thinks she’ll lose her virginity to some asshole… let alone one she just fucking met?
Yeah, we’ll see about that.
All these years, I’ve never shown my anger to anyone. I never engage in petty fights or disputes. I just ignored it all, but for some reason it’s taking a hell of an effort to stay calm and sane tonight.
King walks up to me and picks up his son, but his eyes are on me.
“Careful there,” he mutters sarcastically. “The invincible, almost indestructible dam looks like it might collapse.”
“Is it?” I mutter, holding his gaze.
“It sure looks that way… and when that happens, the world will finally see who you really are.”
That should shake me, but I hold his cold stare unflinchingly.
“Your recent affairs, how have they been going, Emmett?” The question seems innocent, casual, as if he’s asking about the weather.
I stare at him. He stares right back.
“Very insightful.”
“And George?” King questions. “Where is he?”
“Why are you asking me? He is, after all, your wife’s twin brother.”
“But he’s your partner in war,” King states simply, pointing out what I already knew he’s aware of. “Isn’t it?”
“You should know more about that than I should,” I answer just as simply. “Isn’t it?”
I smirk, seeing the anger in King’s eyes. But I can’t help it.
“The beauty of the inevitable, King,” I mutter mostly to myself than to him. “Is that no one can escape.”
It’s time to wrap up this mess.