Wretched (Never After, #3)

by Emily McIntire

“A heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.”

Grief is a weird thing. It’s the only emotion in the world people claim to understand yet treat as an inconvenience. “Time heals all wounds, Evie.” Spare me. Time heals nothing. Just gives things more space to grow and fester and rot.

That weird feeling surges up my throat again. Grief. Sometimes it’s fluid, like waves of the ocean, and sometimes it’s stagnant, like sculptures carved in stone. Right now, it’s rock solid and heavy in the center of my chest.

I’m not sure if the pained look is for the loss of Nessa herself or because of all the years he missed. Maybe it’s neither. Not that it matters, really. We made a life without him, and now he’s back, pretending as though he didn’t leave his family with nothing to their name when he made stupid mistakes.

“Nessa Westerly was a woman of family. Of faith. And who better to speak on her love of both than someone she loved more than anything…her sister.”

“I don’t want to stalk you, pretty girl.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I want to fuck you.”

But that’s perfectly fine with me. I don’t want to be anyone’s favorite. I just want to be left the hell alone.

See, what Dorothy doesn’t realize—what nobody else knows—is while our father may be the face of the family business, he’s not the brains. He needs me for that. So she may have his attention and get showered in his love, but she doesn’t truly have his favor. I do. And it starts right here, in my greenhouse full of poppies.

“There’s no one like family, Evie, and there’s no place like home. We have to stick together.”

She looks so innocent and sweet, it’s hard to believe she’s involved in any criminal activity. But I learned a long time ago to never judge a book by its cover. The best criminals are the ones who you’d never suspect. They’re the ones you make jokes with, the ones you learn to trust, the ones who become your best friend while they stab you in the back and steal everything out from under you.

I’ve never met anyone quite like her. She’s unnerving in a type of way that makes your skin crawl.

“Tell me to sit and eat like a good boy, and I swear to fucking god I’ll do it.”

“Oh, calm down. I was only kidding. It’s like you said, Liam. I’m only here to do Dad’s books. I’ll leave the ‘business’ up to you big, strong men.” Her eyes flick to my bandaged wrist. “You clearly handle it so well.” She grins again, that same thin smile with no teeth and blazing eyes that she always gives, and I realize then that Evelina Westerly is not one of the good guys. And she absolutely cannot be saved.

I can’t say my morals are upstanding, but I am loyal to a fault if you deserve it. It’s just that most people don’t.

Bricks are meant for paths, Yet somehow we’re always still. If there’s nothing for us in the now, Then I know there never will. You belong up here in the light, and me in poppies down below. Maybe one day we’ll meet again, On the other side of a rainbow.

“Words were my calm in a life filled with chaos.”

“Jesus, pretty girl. You could ruin lives with a smile like that.”

“What is this place?” I look around. She drops her gun but stays in my hold. “My escape.” “From?” She shrugs. “Life.” “You don’t like your life?” I’m not sure why I ask, but I’m suddenly desperate to know. Her tongue swipes across her bottom lip, and she tilts her head. “You don’t ever want to just…get away?” “Not particularly.” She sighs. “Well, I do. I’d leave forever if I could.”

My grip on her hands tightens, and I know—I know—that I should pull away. That after this is over, I’ll spend hours hating myself for falling for someone I’m supposed to stand against. But when it comes to Evelina Westerly, I’m a fucking fool.

But I wasn’t lying when I said I’m upset I lost control. After Nessa’s death, I’ve worked incredibly hard on maintaining my temper—on making sure my impulse issue is under lock and key. I never mastered it while she was alive, and doing so after her death is one of the ways I’ve tried to honor her memory. Lately, it’s been severely lacking, which makes me feel as though I’m disrespecting her. Disappointing her, the way I do everyone else.

“You don’t have to trust me, Evelina. But words are your safe space, the same way that they’re mine.” My fingers thread through his hair. “Let me be your calm in the chaos, pretty girl.”

I try to talk. I really do. I search every nook and cranny of my being to find the anger that I was hell-bent on holding on to when I first came here, but I come up empty. I pry my tongue from the roof of my mouth and search for more words to give. But they’ve all disappeared. And I’m tired of fighting, so I press my face into the palm of his hand and I nod, letting him be the calm to my chaos.

But like usual, any time it involves Evelina Westerly, I get lost in the moment. She’s fucking insane. But having her at my mercy does something to me, sparks a match to forgotten embers, creating a blazing inferno whenever she’s near. She makes me feel alive.

“When I was little, back when I was forced to go to Mass every Sunday, I used to listen to the priest wax poetic about God, and I’d go home and lie in bed wondering, if we were all made in His image, why my mother couldn’t love me the way I ached to be loved.”

“I think,” I say carefully, “the only love you can count on is the way you love yourself.”

“She wasn’t around much, and when she was, it wasn’t great. But there were moments.”

I know she can take care of herself, but it doesn’t mean she should have to.

This is what I needed. A reminder that while I feel like a fraud in a sea full of people, she’s here, waiting for me to come back home.

Evelina has years of wounds that haven’t been healed, just bandaged with sarcasm and sadness, forming mutilated scar tissue that still oozes when pricked.

And maybe my morals are dulled when it comes to her. Because as long as she’s taken care of, it’s hard for me to give a damn what happens to anyone else.

But if I’m her calm, then she is my chaos, and if I can’t live with her forever, then I don’t want to live at all.

Every word feels like a confession now instead of an escape. Sappy poems from a broken, lonely girl pretending to be something strong.

“My whole life I’ve lived for other people, and I’m done.”

Honestly, I don’t plan on staying after everything is destroyed, but in the meantime, I can’t stand to see the faces of people who never really cared.

“You’re right. I am. And it fuckin’ terrifies me. I lived my whole life lookin’ up to my dad. He was it, a god to me. And he’d be disgusted by who I’ve become… But I am who I am.” I don’t respond, not having it in me to fight. And while the betrayal is still there, I understand living in your father’s shadow and wanting to break free. I can’t begrudge him that, as much as I might wish to.

“You’re fucking crazy.” “Yeah.” I grin. “That’s what they say.”

My body grows limp, my mind growing hazy, and I give in, realizing this is it. My last moments spent are in a roomful of poppies at the hand of the man I was so desperate to have love me.