The Little Dove #2 ✔️

70. Wherefore Art Thou, Edmund?

CHAPTER 70: Wherefore Art Thou, Edmund?

I look up at Thea slowly, "We've been friends for over three years. I have helped you in ways Lorraine didn't even need help, Thea. Exactly what gave you any immediate thought to discourage and tarnish our friendship like this?" I ask her, ignoring her previous demand to kiss a man that is not Edmund.

She keeps the gun aimed between my eyes, "I've known Charlize far longer than you, and she's been through so much worse. That girl gave the devil a run for his money and challenged death in ways people couldn't even imagine in the real world. The man below you wanted to play the 'rookie cop' before he started falling for you, which is pathetic if you think about it. You're a pretty face and chiming Jewel, Melanie, but I don't see anything between your embellished diamond-studded ears, sweetheart. Now, let's add some forbidden romance to your end and plant your lips on his. I want you to mean it too, even if you have to imagine your impulsive fiancé." She spits at me.

I close my eyes, "Do you think you're living in some sort of elite fantasy, Thea?" I ask her.

She cocks the gun and steps closer, "Kiss him, now."

Adrenaline and fear coursed tidily down and up my veins and arteries, like the pulsing speed of a two-hundred-mile-per-hour race car on a set-up racetrack that wouldn't stop churning when I turned my eyes to Forthright. He doesn't do anything but stare into my eyes. I stare into his, unfeeling, "How?" I whisper to him.

He swallows, "Lethal injection that stops the sound of the effect of the heart beating, but I wasn't clinically deceased before I was kept in the basement here, below the hidden hallway...for interrogation. They found my journals." He whispers closely, side-glancing Thea, who still keeps the gun aimed at me.

The gun taps the back of my head, "Kiss him." She whispers.

I ask her, "Why is that so important to you?" I ask her. I spit at her.

She raises an eyebrow, "It'll hurt you the most, and I'm done playing the 'help.' You've been afraid of Forthright for so long. Imagine kissing him after you're scared to death that he'd use you like the way he and almost everyone else made you think it was him. That he was the main culprit, fell into Johnson's hands so easily. The mere fact you were horrified of the man who, in the end-was only ever trying to protect you, and the longer he did, the harder he fell, Melanie, and he fell hard. Just look at him now." She gestures to the man behind me, I slowly turn my head towards him, he doesn't turn away, not even for a second, and even when he's covered and exposed to his blood...he can't remove the angst from his pleading eyes.

He wanted me far from here, and that unadulterated fear on his face-showed me more information than I think I was ever ready for. I didn't look at Forthright. I never saw his protection to be secure. I only ever felt his dread and desperation and insanity and fled from him.

Right now was different.

He was looking at me with every emotion spilled on the table, "Why didn't you stay far away from here?" He whispers to me, nudging his chin towards me, his fingers straining to hold me, and his eyes speak their mind unblinkingly.

A click resonates.

Before the clang of chains against the tiles echoes.

I watch in shock when she unlocks one of his chains that keeps his right hand on the chair's armrest. The second he's free of that one hand, the arm to that hand wraps around me securely as he takes a deep breath below me and stares up at me, only slightly.

The smallest slither of relief filters his eyes, "Why did you come here?" He murmurs to me. Thea seemed to allow such a question, which was rude in my books. She allowed him to speak, yet I was threatened every time I spoke.