Page 45 of Beautiful Prey

I did so albeit reluctantly. Before I could demand to do it, Ethan turned around and slipped Emery’s mask back over his mouth. Another guard entered the room with a wheelchair, planting it next to Emery.

“He’s not handicapped,” I commented.

“Just a precaution in case he gets dizzy. I mean, the man practically threw up his insides. What did you give him, seriously?” Ethan asked.

I looked at Emery sadly. “Just his medicine,” I whispered.

Emery met my gaze. And I could tell he felt sorry too.

As the janitor cleaned up the mess, Ethan and the others moved Emery to the wheelchair. Emery didn’t fight them. He looked tired, as if the anxiety of the pill drained him completely. Even though I knew getting him to take it was for the best, I still felt awful.

As they started to wheel him out, I lurched forward, taking his shoulder. “Thank you for trying,” I whispered to him.

He took a shaky breath. “Tomorrow…”

I squeezed his shoulder before letting him go.

The next day, he did try again. This time, I made sure to have a bucket ready. He got sick again and this time he broke into an awful sweat that turned into intense body shakes.

“You're doing it, Emery,” I said, rubbing his back. “I know it’s hard but you're doing so well.”

Ethan watched us from the doorway, criticizing every move I made. Shaking his head like he couldn’t believe what he was witnessing. I wished he wasn’t there. I asked about John, but was told he had a family emergency out of state and would be gone for the week, maybe longer. Ethan was the one who volunteered to pick up his shifts.

Every time he was there, I felt the tension rising, afraid he would make some offhand remark about me to Emery or mention something to Dr. Langley. But for whatever reason, he kept silent, though I wondered for how long. When I was forced to interact with him, he just smiled at me like the secret between us now made us friends. He talked to me like we were and I tried to be civil but short.

“This is a little crazy, don’t you think?” he said after the guards returned Emery to his room and I made my report.

“What exactly? Helping someone who is deeply troubled?” I said.

“Your family’s killer.”

I wanted to knock him hard in the face every time he mentioned it. “What does it matter to you?”

“Because he doesn’t deserve your help. No one in their right mind would do something like this…” he eyed me thoughtfully. “You're doing it for a reason, aren’t you? Some kind of weird-ass revenge, maybe?”

My stomach twisted. How much I hated he was right. Or at least had been at one point.

Maybe I still was. Maybe in some fucked up way, healing Emery was some kind of revenge. So that when he could no longer use his demons to hide him from what he had done, he might look clearly and see how much he had hurt me. It hadn’t been something I was focused on in that moment though, not at all.

“You don’t know anything,” I told Ethan as I slipped down the hall while he followed.

“Make me understand then,” he said. “How about you talk to me about it over a drink?”

I halted and turned to him. “Are you seriously asking me out to a bar?”

“Or cafe. Come on. We can catch up a little. So much has happened since then. Everyone wondered what happened to you.”

I turned from him and kept walking.

“You know there was a rumor you died too? Or that you ended up in a place like this ’cause it broke you so bad?”

I slowed. “I did seek help…but not at a place like this. I just wanted to be left alone. And if I want to talk to someone about it, I have friends.”

“So…there are others who know you’re doing this?”

Fuck me and my mouth. “Yes. So there’s no reason for you to say anything to anyone.”

“Friends are different. Are you going to tell me Dr. Langley would have let you near him with so much past between you? And the likelihood you might hurt him.” I heard him hiss softly in a gasp. “You're going to poison him, aren’t you?” he whispered. “The pills are laced.”

---