𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐜𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐄𝐯𝐢𝐥 ✔️

~ Azalea POV ~ 

With it being New Year's in just a few days, I've already started having my daily freak out of, is this year real? Am I real? Is anything real?

"All I'm saying, Reese," I bother him while he cooks us dinner, like always. "How do I know that you're here? How do I know that you're not all in my head and I'm, like, crazy or something?"

He flips the food in the sizzling pan. It smells so good that it makes my mouth water. 

"I'm in your head," he widens his eyes at me. "I'm in your walls, too."

"Shut up!" I laugh while tossing the scrunchie around my wrist at him. "I'm serious!"

He turns the stove off and walks over to me. He bends down and puts his lips against mine, and I melt at the familiar soft lips and minty taste. Whenever he starts kissing me, I never want it to end, and when it does, it feels like torture.

I frown as he pulls away from the kiss.

He grabs a piece of the food and orders me, "Open."

I open my mouth and he puts the piece of food into my mouth. His finger stays in my mouth for a moment as I shut it, and a 'popping' noise happens when he pulls his finger out. He tilts his head down at me and asks, "Like it?"

I swallow the food and instantly nod.

"Good," he smiles.

I love his smile. That's why I drew him smiling in the picture that I gave to him on Christmas.

He framed the drawing, and has it on the wall about the TV. He says it's gonna stay there until we can replace it with a picture of it being real. 

We sit beside each other on the couch as a movie plays in front of us. Bubbles takes a nap on his bed because he's tired from working so hard. 

I had been expecting to have a call from the police, asking to question me about the whole poisoning incident. But they never called. I assumed that my dad paid them off, because even if they were able to somehow able to prove it was me, it would still be bad press for him. 

'Breaking News on Channel 6' a pop-up at the bottom of the screen says. 

I lower my eyebrows while chewing and switch the channel. 

A news reporter sits there, holding papers. 

"The park downtown has caught on fire," the reporter says while looking into the camera. "A match was thrown onto gasoline that was poured onto the fountain. The entire park quickly went up in flames, and dozens of firefighters are on scene trying to put it out."

My jaw dropped seeing that it was my favorite park that I would go to and sit at the fountain. 

And I instantly knew who was behind this.

My dad wants to kill Reese, and he wants to hurt me. But since he doesn't know where we live, and he can't find us because Reese used a fake name when buying this apartment and tells everybody in the building that his name is Paul, he's trying to hurt me in other ways. 

By lighting one of my favorite places to go on fire.

The light from the TV hits my face as I stand and watch. I watch the flames, the orange, the black smoke in the sky. I guess this was his payback since I lit his house on fire.

But as I stare at the screen, I start thinking. 

And I've come to a conclusion. 

My dad needs to die. 

"I'll build you an entire new park," Reese says while putting his hand on my shoulder. "You can pick what fountain, hell, you can even pick what kind of trees it'll have."

He manages to make a smile form on my face. I turn around and look up at him while asking, "Really?"

"I'd do anything for you," he says like he means it. "Anything."

Anything.

The word anything is so endless. Would you live for me? Would you die for me? Is there an end, to your version of anything?

In my version of anything, there is no end. When I truly love a person, I'd do anything for them. And there's no limit on anything to me. 

But right now, in this unclear word of anything, I knew there was one thing I wanted. 

"I want you to kill my dad," I tell him. 

It's obvious my words take him by surprise. Especially since I had been advocating so hard for him not to get killed. 

"But...I don't understand," his brown eyebrows crease. "Are you sure?"

After having him tell the public that I was responsible for the poison?

After him locking me in the cell and whipping me?

After watching him light my favorite place on fire?

I nod, "Yes. I'm positive."

His brown eyes dart around my face for a while. It's like he's trying to see if I have any doubts about the words that I'm saying, but he can't find any. Because there are none. 

"Okay," he nods. "Okay. But it's going to be hard, and it might take a while. Joesph might be a piece of shit but he's smart as fuck. It's going to be hard to find him. It could take days, weeks, or maybe even months."

I don't care how long it takes. As long as he dies. 

I'm not letting him win this war. 

Reese places his hands on the sides of my neck, and looks down at me with a gentle expression.

"Let me take you on a date," he suggests. "A real date, as if we are a normal couple. One night where our only focus is each other."

My heart flips in my chest and my stomach fills with butterflies.

But it also gets so nervous. 

Reese is my boyfriend. I'd do anything for him, and I know he'd do anything for me. 

And I'm falling in love with him.

But I had never been on a true, real date before. I've only been pushed upstairs by Max while telling him about my day that he didn't care about because all he wanted to do was fuck.

This would be my first date.

"Have I made you nervous, Azalea?" he tilts his head and smirks. 

"No," I lie. 

And his smirk that grows even bigger tells me that he knows he made me nervous.

"We'll go tomorrow," I agree. "But it better be amazing."

I was just speaking in a teasing tone, but he says quietly to himself, "It will be."

I didn't want to think about my dad anymore. So I picked up an oven mitt, slapped his butt with it, and cheered, "Lets make some cookies!"

We spent the day baking cookies, watching movies, and finding out that Reese never watches movies. So we watched all the classics.

I also tricked him. I went out onto the balcony and screamed, and when he came running, I threw a snowball at him. It was really funny until he threw 10 back at me. 

And now, we lay in bed. I faked falling asleep so that Reese would sleep. For the past hour, he has been sleeping, and I've been laying with my eyes open.

I want to go and do what I need to do. 

The second I move even an inch, Reese takes a breath and mumbles in a tired voice, "Where is your ass trying to go?"

Even though he's barely awake, he still pulls me closer to him and kisses the side of my face multiple times. 

I smile while he does.

"I'm just going pee," I tell him. He groans, but releases his hold on me. 

I slip out of bed and instantly notice how cold it is when I'm not laying with him. Even though the heat is on, I still shiver. 

I enter the bathroom, pee, and wash my hands. Once I'm done, I slowly open the bathroom door, and poke my head out.

Reese lays there on his back, asleep. His black hair is messy and his chest rises and falls softly.

Silently, I step out of the bathroom and tip-toe out of the room.

I grab my shoes and slip them on, and throw my favorite jacket of Reese's over my arms.

I look through the crack in the door one last time, and see him still laying there. I give Bubbles a quick glance, and he's asleep, too.

I take a deep breath, and feel my pocket to make sure I have what I need before leaving the room. 

«────── « ⋅ʚ♡ɞ⋅ » ──────»

I sit in the darkness. I think I've been sitting here for at least an hour, but honestly, I've lost track of time.

I tap my nails against the armrests as I wait.

And finally, the door opens.

The light flicks on. He doesn't notice me at first. I watch him with my legs crossed and my arms resting on the armrests.

He kicks his shoes off and drops his bag to the floor.

He jumps out of his skin once he notices me, holding his hand over his heart and gasping while his back hit the wall behind him.

"Hello Simon," I say in a neutral tone.

His eyebrows lower as he looks me up and down. While keeping his back pressed against the wall, he questions, "How'd you get in?"

"Back door was unlocked," I tell him while bouncing my foot up and down.

"Oh," is all he says.

I read the fear on his face easily. He tries his best to keep it off his face but I can still see it seeping through.

"So," he swallows and tries to act casual. "What are you doing here? It's pretty late."

I rise to my feet. He doesn't take his eyes off of me, and his body language tenses as I stand from the chair. 

"Do you remember last winter, when we had that snowball fight in the park?" I ask him while taking slow steps toward him.

He tries to move back even further as I walk over to him, but his back can't go anywhere besides against the wall. I stop directly in front of him, looking up at him as he stared down at me with a mix of worry and fear written on his face.

"Yes," he replies slowly. "Why?"

I think about the memory for a moment, and I smile as I do.

I was having a bad day. Woke up feeling like shit and it only got worse throughout the day. Nobody noticed besides Simon.

He asked me to go for a walk with him after work, and since I had nothing else to do, I agreed. 

I thought that it was just a walk. Meant for him to kill time before doing something later in the day. 

But it wasn't. He turned it into a snowball fight. It was intense. We built shields in the snow and made as many snowballs as we could, and threw them at each other as if we were in a freaking war. By the end of the night I was laughing so hard that my stomach hurt. Especially when Simon threw one at me but a little kid ran in the way and it hit his face.

He changed my mood from the absolute worse, to the absolute best. 

It became my favorite memory. It went from one of my worst days, to one of my best. All because of Simon.

He is the only friend I've ever had that has remembered my birthday every year. He would always bake me a cake, too.

And then he betrayed me.

He was my best friend. I would've done anything for him.

And he sold me out to my parents, and didn't care in the slightest that I was getting whipped until my back felt numb.

"You were my best friend," I choke out through the lump in my throat.

The concern on his face grows hearing my tone of voice.

"Why are you here, Azalea?" he whispers. But I can see that deep down, he knows why.

As much as I don't want it to, my eyebrows crease out of sadness. My bottom lip trembles for a split second. I whisper back bluntly, "I'm here to kill you."

I'm not going to lie. I'm not going to trick him. I'll be honest about my intentions.

The worry that had been brewing inside of him erupts. But with his back pressed against the wall, he can't go anywhere.

I pull out my gun and aim it at his head. I'm not close enough to him to have it touch, but it's close. I don't look at the gun, though. I look at him. 

"You were supposed to be my friend," my voice cracks as I speak. "You were supposed to be my best friend!"

A few months ago, we were best friends. And now, I hold a gun to his head.

"Azalea," he takes a pause after saying my name. "You aren't going to kill me."

"Oh, I'm not?" I almost scoff. "And why's that?"

"Because you aren't evil," he says calmly. "You aren't going to kill me."

But that's the thing. I feel like now, I am. 

I don't have to kill him. I gain nothing by doing it, besides getting revenge. Getting back at him for betraying me.

But that's why it hurt so much. Because I loved him. He was my best friend. There wasn't a single thing in the world that I wouldn't have done for him. And he betrayed me.

And like Reese said, If you let somebody that wronged you go, you are considered weak. And nobody wants to be weak. 

I can't let somebody that wronged me go.

"I loved you so much, Simon," my voice is weak as I talk. "Same with my dad. I loved both of you so much. Why does everybody I love turn on me?"

As my sentence goes on and on, I watch his face, as he realizes his fate.

"Azalea, you don't have to do this," he says calmly.

I know I don't have to.

"I'm still your friend, and I still love you," he holds his hand over his heart.

My grip on the gun tightens.

"This will haunt you. If you let me go, I won't do it again," he lies to me. I know he's lying because of how he bites his bottom lip after like he always does when he lies.

The sadness is written on my face, "I really wish things could've been different. I really wish I could believe you. I really wish I didn't have to do this."

My finger rests against the trigger.

"Don't, Azalea," he pleads. "Please! I'm so young, please don't do this."

I start to shake a little.

"I want to grow up and have kids!"

Goosebumps form on my skin.

"You'll regret doing this!"

I yell, "Oh my God, shut up!"

I step forward and press the gun against his forehead. He raises his hands in surrender as his brown eyes fill with fear.

"Please, Azalea," he pleads. "Please-"

I fire the gun. The bullet goes straight through his head and even hits the wall behind him. His eyes remain wide as he lifelessly falls to the floor beside me. His eyes remain open as a pool of blood starts to form underneath his head.

I slowly lower the gun, and continue to stare down at his body.

I feel like I've gone completely unhinged. 

I didn't have to kill him. I could've let him go.

But I did.

And I liked it.

Word count: 2560