4. Emmett
CHAPTER 4
Emmett
N ot even a minute after they’re gone, the main doors to my room creak open.
“Oh good, you’re up!”
That voice…
I whip my head around so fast, I think I almost snap my own neck.
I spot the curly hair first. Unlike that night, today it’s tied up into a big Afro bun by a glaring neon green hair tie, string thingy.
This is her… the angel of death.
Personally, I had imagined the angel of death to wield some sort of scythe, or a fucking pitchfork or a damn halberd, a soul-sucking tool of some sort that she’d use to harvest the many lives she took, laughing with mirth as she wreaked all sorts of havoc and chaos in unsuspecting people’s lives.
But that wasn’t the case at all.
She’s much worse than that… she smiles and has a chirper voice.
The real angel of death came in the form of a little, silly, ridiculous girl whose presence made my blood boil.
“Get out,” I mutter through gritted teeth.
The pathetic girl just stands there, her large eyes blinking slowly like a freaking caricature.
She doesn’t understand my anger toward her… how can she when she doesn’t even have a clue as to what I sacrificed that night?
“Are you deaf or are you just fucking dumb?” I snap.
She gasps. “You used a bad word!”
Oh, for fuck’s sake!
If only she knew my thoughts toward her and what I plan to do to her.
Keeping the silly girl alive wasn’t something I thought I’d be doing more than two times already, but my mother was more important.
Ivy’s life, though pathetic, had to be kept, so I could only nod in agreement.
“Go away,” I say each word slowly.
She watches me, almost with that same judging look from before.
That look messes with my head more than I’ll ever admit.
“I won’t repeat myself.”
“But you did,” she counters, earning a glare from me.
Fuck! If I just… throttle her little neck, what would happen?
Besides the fact that eliminating her now would be an act that goes against my fucking hard efforts of keeping her alive, would there be any other consequence of ridding myself of this girl who I’m pretty sure will become a major problem for me in the future?
Because for some reason, I’m not settled when I look at her.
When I think of her…a distress signal goes through my body.
Control is everything to me.
I’m the heir, the next Don of the Easton Family…I don’t have time to entertain variables, and this girl, seemingly harmless now, poses a huge threat in the future.
But… control needs intelligence.
I stare at the girl, thinking.
For some reason, when I talk to this girl, my stutter is nowhere to be found.
This is the part I don’t get.
Much to my mother’s anxiety and my father’s disappointment, I’ve had a terrible speech impairment issue since I first started to talk.
It’s usually so bad that I never utter a word to anyone most times.
A rumor about me being mute floated in Westbrook Blues for some time before. The potential of that disaster caused Mom and Syrus to act swiftly, silencing all that nonsense.
After all, how can power have such a shameful weakness as a stutter?
However, I don’t bother with conversation or small talk.
Everyone in the Family thinks because of my deadly silence, and my cold personality, I’m a monster that moves in dark, cold, eerie places.
And that’s what I want to be to this girl.
I want her to know that from now on, her life is in my hands.
She doesn’t seem to care nor is she aware of the danger she’s in now.
I want to be her monster, to terrorize her, make her feel the same way I do.
Branded.
Stuck.
Confused.
“Why are you here?” I growl, watching her closely.
My heart might be a shitty thing, but the rest of my senses are sharper than anything else.
I can feel her hesitation…and her fear.
“Uh, my grandmother said you haven’t said a word in a while. I guess she was wrong,” she mutters as if she’s shy.
Nurse Marie, a poor woman who found herself in the crossfire because her granddaughter is pathetic.
The initial solution Syrus had was to permanently silence the girl and her family but when Syrus found out that Marie was an exceptional medical professional with incredible discretion, he changed tactics by promising to make the girl pay for “pushing” me over.
So now, thanks to my father, Marie comes to the estates every day to take care of me.
Syrus will do anything to keep me breathing and protect his power so only specific individuals that are tightly bound to keep the matter of my sick, blotched heart a secret are allowed into this mansion.
But why the hell is she here?
“So what?”
What’s it to this girl if I don’t say a word?
No one ever dares to defy me and ask me irrelevant, mundane questions.
“So... I was wondering if you want to talk… to me?” she whispers.
I stare at her, watching as she shuffles her feet nervously.
“Why would I want to do that?” I demand.
“Maybe you’ll feel better?”
At that, I can’t help but chuckle humorlessly, to which she frowns in obvious confusion.
“What’s so funny?” she demands, semi-glaring at me with her large, doe brown eyes.
“You’re fucking pathetic,” I mutter, looking away.
“You’re being mean!” she huffs.
“So what? Do you want to cry because of that?” I snap.
“No!” she snaps back, but then she frowns. “Well, yes!” I roll my eyes and she narrows hers at me. “Actually, I came to see if…maybe…I can help you feel better.”
“And how will you do that?”
“By spending time with you so you’re not lonely anymore,” she whispers softly.
The thing in my chest groans to a stop, but this time with an excruciating pain that takes my breath away.
I stare at her.
I know what it’s like being looked at with pity and sympathy.
I know how it feels being scrutinized.
Being the heir of the Easton family, I know how fucking exhausting it feels to always have all eyes on me and every action I take.
But I don’t know what this is.
Why is she looking at me so…brazenly?
“I’m being sincere!” she declares, then her voice drops to just above a broken whisper. “I don’t want you to be alone anymore.”
Jesus.
That right there stops everything in my world.
“Don’t do that,” I croak, as an intense feeling takes root in the pit of my stomach, like someone took sharp iron claws and is gnawing at my insides.
“Do what?” she whispers innocently when I know she’s nothing but.
“Don’t use that voice and don’t say things you don’t mean.”
“My voice?”
“Yes.”
“But I…”
Fuck, what the hell am I even saying?
“What makes you think I’m lonely?” I demand, scrambling to change the topic away from her voice. “And who said I need your help?”
“I think you and I have a lot in common, so we can help each other,” she says confidently.
“We have nothing in common.”
“Well, you and I had a mutually traumatic experience. We’ve both been in and out of hospital these past few months because of that experience. It also means we both don’t go to school on a constant basis like other kids and so we should be close,” she continues, an excited flash gleaming in her eyes.
“That’s your conclusion?” I mutter in disbelief.
“Well, yes!” she says as if it’s obvious. “Isn’t familiarity and common traits the evidence of friendship?”
Is this girl shitting me right now?
“Where did you learn this?” I demand. “And all that crap is just an ill fate between a broken girl with a dead boy.”
“Is there a difference between being broken and being dead?”
Dazed by those words, I can only stare at the girl, not knowing what to say.
“There isn’t a difference which means you and I are not just similar but we are also familiar,” she says without pause. “You don’t have a mother… neither do I.”
The girl says those words with a simplicity that stuns me into another silence.
You don’t have a mother…
“Not only that but you’re not close to your father…I’ve never met mine,” the girl continues in that matter-of-fact tone. “Samuel, my brother, told me he doesn’t exist.”
What the fuck is going on here?
Where does this girl get the audacity?
“I’ve also heard rumors that you are antisocial, you don’t get along with others. You act like the whole world owes you a great debt.” She says that while watching, curiosity overflowing in her eyes. “Although I can’t relate to that last one, I can tell you that we’re almost identical on everything else. I don’t have any friends. I find people to be overwhelming. I think you are the same.”
People are a nuisance.
People are greedy, selfish, idiots that only ever think of their own profit…but are they overwhelming? No. Nothing is overwhelming to someone who knows how to get rid of problems indefinitely , how can this girl liken her social anxiety and mental nonsense to me?
Yes, I’ve read her file. Including the one before the day we met.
“I also heard that you don’t talk…I also don’t like talking,” she continues.
“And yet you’re doing it now, without an end in sight,” I murmur.
“What?”
“I said you and I are not the same,” I state, my voice low but serious. “You are just a little girl without a grip on reality.”
After all, why would she think I can get better?
“Is it because of the rumors?” the girl whispers.
I look at her. “What rumors?”
“You know… that you are a vicious, heartless monster!”
The girl stares at me expectantly as if she expects me to mutate or transform into whatever fantasy she’s obviously conjured up in her head because of the rumors.
“I’m a monster?”
This time an unfamiliar feeling blooms in my chest as I watch her.
The girl pauses, then she looks to the left, then to the right, before she moves back to the door she left slightly open and closes it softly.
She rushes over to the side of my bed quickly, her eyes wide with what I immediately identify as excitement.
This girl is odd.
“My brother told me there are ruthless gods that live in the estates, but the one to stay away from is the hidden monster in the shadows,” she whispers again.
“The hidden monster in the shadows?” I echo, watching her carefully.
I stare at the girl. Her eyes are lit up with life and excitement.
Gone is the confusion and sadness from just moments ago.
This girl… she’s not at all what her grandmother said about her. She’s not shy or as quiet as a mouse.
She’s mischief personified, with a dangerous, sharp gaze that’s not humble at all.
“Yes! He told me that nothing is as it seems here, and that you’re the one I need to stay away from the most. I’m actually not supposed to be here.”
Suddenly everything makes sense.
“So you coming to help with my supposed loneliness was just an excuse to take a look at the monster, huh?” I ask but already know the answer.
She looks up at me, stunned but then she nods slowly.
“And you want to be friends with the monster?”
She nods again.
Does this girl think she’s living in a fantasy? Is she that much of an idiot?
“Samuel said the monster is like a ghost. That no one can see him clearly or hear him, but he’s vicious.”
I almost scoff, but luckily, I just hold her stare, wondering if she took that as a fun fictional story or not.
“And you… do you believe this?” I ask quietly.
If I wasn’t looking at her so closely, I would’ve missed the slight tremble that racks through her small frame.
But to her credit, she doesn’t look away.
“I know it sounds silly but… I do.”
Well, would you look at that. A wondering, curious little thing believes in ghost stories about monsters in the shadows.
“ Pandora.”
“What?” she squeaks.
“Have you ever heard about Pandora’s box?”
“Well…not right now but if it’s a story in a book, I’ll find out soon.”
A bookworm.
A curious thing.
She’s trouble, this girl. I have to be careful with how I handle this.
Let the games begin then.
“You obviously think I’m the monster your brother told you about, right?” She nods. “So why aren’t you afraid? Shouldn’t you be running for the hills?”
The girl peeps at me as if she’s shy, then she whispers ever so gently, “I don’t think it’s possible to outrun a monster.”
I stare at her, stunned by her words, but she’s not done.
“I know that if I can’t outrun the monster, I have to hurt him at the very least.”
The thing in my chest thunders hard against the battered wall of my chest for the first time in a long time.
From the corner of my eye, I look at the screen of the heart monitor machine. The line is heightened like it’s never been before. I track my eyes back to the girl.
“Why?” I snarl.
“Because that way, if I go down, I’ll go down knowing that the monster also felt the same pain of being in danger.”
Suddenly, it doesn’t feel like we’re talking fictional, made-up folklore that’s been passed around Westbrook Blues to keep interested parties away.
It doesn’t feel like I’m talking to a kid three years younger than me.
It feels like… I don’t know what it feels like.
“You’d rather cause the monster pain than run or mind your fucking business,” I grit out, each word feeling like it’s being extracted out of me by a rusty old knife. “Is that what you thought was the best plan?”
She nods eagerly, her eyes bright as if that was the best answer, but I just glare at her, realizing my hate for her is just growing by the second.
A na?ve girl that doesn’t understand the weight of the words she just uttered.
She couldn’t outrun me, huh? I’m going to make sure she comes to know the full extent of what those words mean.
“But I don’t think you’re a monster!” she blurts out suddenly. “You’re a person… just like me, so there’s no way you’re a monster.”
“Do you think so?” I press, a fire igniting in my veins.
“Yes!” she says cheerfully.
Well, let me prove that point wrong and show you how fucking ridiculous you are, little girl.
“Come here.”
“What?” she gasps.
“Climb up and come closer.”
“You mean, I should climb into your bed?” she squeaks.
I roll my eyes.
Growing impatient, I grab her tiny hand, pull her closer, then I help her climb up into my bed.
“Hey, be careful! You’re still not well enough to?—”
I don’t give her a chance to finish her words because as soon as she climbs next to me, I grab the back of her neck, then I cup her jaw with my other hand and pull her in, until her head is pressed against my chest.
With her ear right over my blotched heart.
“What are you?—”
“Just listen,” I snap, and then wait.
I look up at the ceiling, remembering the look on my mother’s face seven years ago when we found out…
Almost immediately, the clueless girl pulls back so fast. If I wasn’t holding her she’d fall over the side of the bed.
With wide eyes, she stares at me. First with confusion, then uncertainty, and lastly… shock. It’s like a play of all the emotions that bother me.
But behind the shock is something I’ve seen in her eyes before… the night we met… fear.
Beautiful, glorious fear. Just as I intended.
“What… w-what was that?” the girl finally asks after a long, stilted silence.
I study her, feeling a swell of satisfaction in my chest.
“Oh God, what was that sound? It sounds like?—”
“That’s the heart of a monster,” I say, cutting her off, watching her intently.
A tremble moves through the girl, so powerful it moves through me too.
“That… that was your heart?” she gasps in obvious disbelief. “That can’t be! Why does it sound so… strange?”
I stare into her large doe-like brown eyes, feeling funny inside.
She stares right back, without the usual hesitation I’m used to seeing from everyone, including my so-called friends and neighbors.
The girl gawks at me boldly, and then her eyes flash with something else that makes me look away.
I expect her to go screaming and never return—after all, she does look like a coward—but she does the one thing no one has ever done, except for medical reasons, that is.
She goes right back to pressing her ear over my heart, listening intently.
But instead of my heart, all I feel is the warmth of her cheek pressed up on my cold chest.
Her hair also smells divine, like coconuts, mint or rosemary and something else that makes me breathe a little faster than I probably should.
I’ve been sick for a long time and in that time, the differences between me and other kids like Noah, Alex, and George have become like background noise.
I’ve since ignored the fact that my body temp sometimes runs colder than theirs or that I can’t afford to join track and field teams because of the faulty thing in my chest. But the longer the girl’s cheek and ear are pressed against the left side of my chest, the more I wonder why I always keep to myself.
Why do I never participate in sports even though I desperately want to?
Why do I never talk when I know I have plenty to say?
Why have I always cared about the thing in my chest when it’s done nothing but hinder me from doing what I want to fucking do?
For some reason, I’m intensely aware of this girl’s cheek pressed against my body.
And as the seconds tick by, the tightness in my chest becomes more painful than before.
Only a handful of people know about my condition. But most of them are adults.
The only one around my age who now truly knows… is this girl.
This girl, whose life is now in even greater danger simply because of the very thing she’s doing right this moment.
Just knowing about my condition is reason enough for my father to get rid of her for real, but in this moment, she not only knows but she’s actively listening to the abnormal, torturous beat of my heart…confirming the existence of a lethal weapon that if hidden enemies know about, it will definitely be used against me.
No one can know.
Anyone who does is already a dead man walking, and that includes the girl’s grandmother.
And I just dragged her down the same path, guaranteeing her death.
I might be fascinating to her now but the day she realizes what I’ve just done, she will wish she had never met me.
“Your heart,” she whispers so low, so gentle and soft, as if something might shatter if she speaks any louder. “It sounds like…”
“Like a monster’s,” I say simply and clearly.
She blinks at me, but I press on, feeling like this is the defining moment.
“No,” she whispers.
“No?”
“It feels like…it’s straining, fighting not to break.”
Jesus Christ.
Who is this girl?
She goes to move but then she does the most insane thing. She hovers her lips close to my chest and then she starts whispering, “Don’t break, Emmett’s heart, you now have a friend. Don’t break anymore.”
Don’t break…
“Don’t break,” she whispers softly. “I’m here.”
It’s as if my entire life just collapsed on this moment right here.
I have no idea what to do or say to this.
Is she being for real right now, and why the hell is the thing in my chest actually beating a little more eagerly than it’s ever done before, as if it’s obeying her?
I need to change the topic.
“You’re wrong,” I groan. “That sound, Angel, remember it.”
There’s a solemnity to this moment, a weight that I wasn’t expecting, but I can’t let this go. I need her to understand even if no one else ever will.
“That malfunction, that stagger, that rough engine in my chest is as you’ve heard… that’s a monster’s heart and, Angel, I’m the monster that will one day come for you.”
Fear flashes in her eyes. A small smirk creeps up on my face.
I’m warning her in advance.
I’m not going to sneak attack her like a coward.
I want her to know that she’s on my shit list and one day, she’s going to rue the day she wandered around and messed up my entire life.
The girl pulls back and stares at me… but this time, there are large teardrops hanging at the edges of her eyelids, as if debating whether to let them fall or keep them reined in like the crucial memories she’s locked away.
Is she feeling sorry? For me?
“You’re still not a monster,” she whispers again.
I frown.
“You’re really not that smart, after all,” I grit out, tilting my head to the left, trying to figure this girl out.
“You won’t be sick forever,” she croaks, making me smirk. Yup, she’s pathetic.
“But I won’t live forever either.”
We stare at each other.
The longer I stare at her tears and the pity in her eyes, the more I feel uncomfortable, so I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind.
“I count,” I blurt out.
“What?” she whispers.
I clear my throat and try again. “I count them.”
“Your heartbeats?” she guesses.
“Yes.” I don’t want her to start crying, so I blurt out a fact that I’ve known since I was four years old. “On average, a human heart beats sixty-five times per minute depending on motion or rest. Mine never makes it to that average.”
She stares at me, her little nose scrunched up in a little frown.
“What?” I demand.
“Two things,” she starts. “One, if you spend all your time counting your heartbeats, then how lonely are you?”
The question is asked in a soft, low voice but it feels like it came from the other side of the sky…loud and crashing against my ears.
My mind goes blank for a second.
And then, the anger makes a full-fledged return because she just hit the nail square on the head.
How lonely am I?
The loneliness that I’ve been subject to all my life, she’d never understand… but then again, in this moment, only one thought runs through my head.
She’s the first one to ask me that.
I’ve been friends with Noah, King, George, and Astraea for about a couple of years now, but none of them know nor do they ever ask.
They do notice that I’m strange and that I have a stutter and that I’m generally a quiet kid, but my loneliness… without my mother, it’s more pronounced now than it’s ever been.
And the good, comfortable thing about them is that unlike this girl, they don’t ask. They just… take me as I am and keep it moving like that.
But this girl… she dares to do the things no one in their right mind would ever do.
Before I can respond, the girl goes back to pressing her ear against my chest.
“What are you doing?” I demand, feeling panicked.
“3 minutes,” the small voice sounds in the room.
“What?”
“Please give me 3 minutes. One minute to soak in the heartbeats, the warmth and the flow.”
Stunned, I look down only to see her curly black hair, the blood in my veins heating up to a feverish point.
I should push her away but…I don’t.
“And the second minute?”
“To thank the heartbeats, the warmth and the life.”
Jesus Christ.
“And the third?” I groan, feeling like I’ve been sucker punched.
“To give my heart time to match yours.”
“Why the hell would you–”
“Because I almost had a heart attack from the terror… so I need my heart to match yours because so long as it does, we’ll be more than all right.”
Everything in me freezes at those words.
I don’t know what to say or think. In fact, I’m not even breathing so when she pulls back and looks up at me with her doe eyes shining like pearls in the deep dark sea, I fold.
“You’re still here, still breathing, still alive… doesn’t that count for something?” she murmurs in a low voice. So low that for a second I think I imagined it all. “But if counting helps, I’ll count with you but in my way.”
A fresh burst of anger washes over me with that question.
“Ouch,” she gasps.
I realize then that I was still holding her tiny hand in mine and just now, I squeezed it a little too hard.
I should let go, but for some reason the look of slight discomfort on her face is acceptable to me.
A penance for her ignorance.
She looks down at our joined hands, then she peeks up at me through her long eyelashes, and she smiles.
“What’s the second thing?” I demand.
“I’m sorry,” she suddenly whispers, looking at me through her long eyelashes.
“What?”
“I…. I’m sorry for not remembering what you need me to remember.”
The thing in my chest groans again, but this time with an excruciating pain that takes my breath away.
Don’t break.
Don’t fucking break.
Don’t break… not yet.
I find myself repeating what the girl just whispered to my heart, as if it has some actual effect.
She looks directly at me now. “I promise, from now until forever, I’ll do my best to help you in any way I can.”
Don’t promise me anything.
That’s what I want to tell her, but for some weird reason, I find myself almost clinging to her words, made so much more important by the dripping sincerity in her eyes.
“How do I know you won’t change your mind?”
She pauses, as if really pondering it.
“When you get better, better enough to go outside, we’ll seal it with a vow.”
“A vow?”
“An unbreakable one!” she says with a bit of excitement. “We’ll figure out how to make it unbreakable.”
I stare at her.
This is what happens when trust has never been broken. You act naively as she is now.
“Your name is Emmett, right?”
The sound of my name sounds strange when she says it.
Before making friends in the estates, only my mother and father called me by my name.
Because of the sickness and being bedridden, I didn’t have any friends growing up, and the staff always addressed me as Master Easton.
Grandfather just referred to me as the next heir.
This girl… she’s the third person to call me by my name in this very mansion and something about that makes me feel that strange sensation in my chest.
A sensation I’m coming to loathe more than the thing that has a weird rhythm in my chest.
“Say it again,” I demand, grabbing her hand again.
“What?”
“My name. Say it again.”
“Emmett?”
She rolls my name off her tongue effortlessly, softly… with a gentleness that reminds me of my mother.
I stare at her for several beats, but this time I’m too confused to count how many.
“What’s your name?” I ask to mask the weird feeling in my chest.
I already know her name. I just want to hear it from her lips. Will it sound as weird to me as my own name?
“Ivy,” she says sweetly, almost like a fresh breeze after the worst winter, breathing fresh life into my lungs. “My name is Ivy Marie Irving.”
Ivy.
“I’ll call you Angel.” From now on.
“Why?”
“Because I know you still have another unanswered question.”
“What? There’s no way…”
“Yes… you still want to know what dying feels like, don’t you, Angel?”
She blinks so fast that I know I hit the nail on the head.
“I haven’t forgotten that night, and neither have you,” I say, seeing the darkness still in her eyes.
She’s obviously still battling guilt, grief, and pain… as well as an ideation of something she hasn’t let go of even after we survived that jump by a miracle.
“I…”
“I know you do,” I whisper.
“How?” she whispers back.
“You don’t have to worry about that. I have a feeling that one day in the future—in the nearest future, Angel—you’ll know. And when you know, we’ll be even .”
I see her tiny body tremble… and for the first time in months, I smile.
You’re going to pay, Angel.
We’re going to be even…
A dead heart for a dead heart.
You want to know how it feels to be dead inside but still be able to open your eyes and see the sun rising and sinking back into the horizon, giving you false hope and regrets over and over again?
If she wants to know how it feels to be painfully aware that one day it’ll all be darkness, then I’ll gladly show her.
She’s going to wish she had gone through with her initial decision that night.