Page 141 of Irreversible

“Don’t do that.” Panic dances across my skin, burrowing inside me. I swallow, my pulse quickening with anxiety. “Something’s going on.”

My mother skips over to us, interjecting, “Let’s get you home, Everly. I want to show you the new addition I added onto the house. A little sunroom that?—”

I inch backward. “Please. Someone tell me what I’m missing here.” My teeth start chattering against my will. “Did someone die?”That can’t be right—everyone I cherish is in this room. “Was there a tragic world event? An apocalypse?”

It feels like there was.

My intuition is telling me something is wrong, thateverythingis wrong. There’s debris in my lungs, craters in my chest, bloodshed at my feet.

Jasper shakes his head and scrubs a hand over his face. “It’s nothing,” he breathes out.

Lies.

It’s something, and that something is going to kill me before I’ve had a chance to truly live.

I know it.

Ifeelit.

I peer over at Allison again. Her back is still facing me, but she’s no longer engrossed in her cell phone. It dangles at her side in a clenched fist, both of her arms trembling.

“Jasper,” I rasp out, my eyes lifting to his ashen face. “Why won’t you touch me? Hold me? Kiss me? Why aren’t you wearing your ring?”

“It’s just…so soon.” He shakes his head again, his Adam’s apple rolling in his throat. “I don’t know how to do this. What’s right, what’s wrong. It’s confusing… It’s…”

My gaze dances between my favorite people. The only people I’ve thought about for two years, waiting for me on the other side of my torture chamber. My lights at the end of a dark, suffocating tunnel. They’re hiding something from me.

They’re traitors.

Balling my hands at my sides, I heave in a breath, looking back up at Jasper and seeing him. Truly seeing him.

And I think I know. It hits me like a hurricane.

I know, I know, I know.

I don’t want to know.

Guilt stares back at me in pools of dark green.

Betrayal.

I feel sick. My stomach cramps, clenches, implodes. Bile burns my throat, my chest collapses.

“No.” It’s a whisper, a quiet scream, as everything suddenly becomes crystal clear. “No…”

Allison starts to cry.

My mother stands off to the side, clutching her chest as tears trickle down her face.

Confirmation.

Jasper grips me by the shoulders and bends down, staring right into my eyes. “I didn’t want you to find out like this.” His voice is tortured grit, gravel and brimstone. “God, Everly, I’m so sorry.”

I wrench myself from his grasp and plummet to the bed. I’m shaking, shivering from head to toe. Time warps, my vision clouds.

I hear a scream, and I think it’s mine, as nurses race into the room in streaks of black and gray, a colorless haze. Hands reach out, faces blur above me, and an oxygen mask is pressed to my nose and mouth. My wails are a distant whirring in my ears as someone takes my hand and squeezes. My mother. She’s sobbing, her grief mingling with mine, until it’s all I feel.

Grief.

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