He Saw My Ghost All Along, And Grew Tired Of My Clinging Chapter 16

He Saw My Ghost All Along, And Grew Tired Of My Clinging Chapter 16

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a lighter.

I’d already cut through the rope. The dagger I’d hidden in my pocket had done its job.

I launched myself off the floor and slammed into her.

She didn’t see it coming. She hit the concrete hard.

I went for the lighter. Gasoline was everywhere; one spark, and we were both dead.

I fought too hard to come back. I wasn’t dying here.

She recovered fast. And she laughed with that same fractured sound.

“So you’re afraid to die. Good. Then let me give you a choice: your life or Reid’s. Pick one.”

I tightened my grip on her wrist.

“What are you talking about?”

“You think I spent all those years in his house and didn’t put anything in his food too?”

“You think you’re the first one to try and take him from me? I’ve been making sure he stays mine

for a long time.”

She looked up at me. Calm. Almost bored. She wasn’t even fighting back.

“I always knew he’d never be mine. But watching him love someone else? I can’t do it. I won’t.”

“So I added a little something extra to every meal I made for him and every cup of tea. Slow. Steady.

And neither of you caught on.”

My hands found her throat before I could think.

“You’re out of your mind! You poisoned him, the man you claim to love!”

She laughed harder. Her whole body shook with it.

“Of course I know. If I can’t have him, nobody gets to be happy.”

“We can all go down together, wouldn’t that be poetic?”

Every instinct screamed at me to squeeze until she stopped breathing. I forced my hands to loosen.

“Last chance. Give me the antidote. I’ll get you a lawyer. I’ll make sure the sentence isn’t death. That’s the best deal you’re ever going to get.”

“Understand what I’m offering. This is mercy. You won’t get it again.”

She wasn’t interested in living. I could see it in her eyes before she even spoke.

“Spend the rest of my life locked up, never seeing him again? No. I’d rather burn.”

I had nothing left to bargain with.

You can’t negotiate with someone who’s already decided to die.

And I didn’t even know if she was telling the truth about Reid.

“I said I’d give you a choice. Die with me, and Reid lives.”

She leaned in.

“But if you choose yourself, I’ll take him with me when I go.”

My mind went blank. I couldn’t speak.

She flicked the lighter open and closed. Open and closed. Patient.

“Fine. I’ll die with you. But how do I know Reid walks away from this?”

Something in her cracked wide open. She started laughing, wild and uncontrolled.

“You picked him? You’d actually die for him? What gives you two the right to love each other like that? I’m the one who deserves him. Me! What makes you so special?”

Her grip on me tightened. My answer had broken something in her.

“You have to die! You’re the only thing standing between me and him!”

It was a trap. All of it. Every word she’d said was designed to make me choose myself, so she could call me selfish. So she could prove I didn’t love him enough.

She wanted me to flinch. To save my own skin. To give her ammunition.

But I chose Reid. And that made her worse.

She threw me down. My back slammed into the slick concrete. Before I could scramble away, her

weight dropped onto my chest.

Her hands locked around my throat like a vice. She squeezed. Harder. Harder.

“I have to kill you! Once you’re gone, he’ll finally be mine!”

My vision was going dark. My hand scraped across the concrete and found the dagger. I drove it into

her with everything I had left.

She went rigid. Shock flooded her face. She hadn’t expected me to still have fight in me.

She gritted her teeth through the pain and kept squeezing.

She was going to take me with her. No matter what.