Sequel to T H E M. Cannot be read as a stand-alone
THEM IS NO LONGER ON WATTPAD OR ANYWHERE ELSE. THIS BOOK IS NOT 'THEM' SEQUEL.
|Them and Her. For now and Forever|
One brilliant artist. Three dangerous men.
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I'd be lying if I said that telling them didn't feel better.
They let me cry the whole day. I needed that, God, I had needed that for so long. They made me eat, didn't leave me for a second throughout the day, and rubbed my back when I choked on tears.
Carrie was...like a mother to me. An actual mother, not like mine was. She was there, always there, when I cried about the Creeds suddenly out of nowhere. She never asked why I was crying, she just was always there to hold my hand. She was always there.
She was always there.
Not anymore.
That night...that night was engraved in my heart. Engraved with the sharpest knives, forming wounds that continuously bled.
It hurt. It hurt so much.
She had taken me under her wing as if she knew I was hurting. There was just something about her smile that made me calm, it calmed the storm in my head.
I picked Ashton's hand and held it between mine. He smiled at me, pressing a kiss to my cheek. We were in his office, they had pretty much identical offices, and I was sitting on his lap doodling on my Ipad while he worked on the laptop.
"Baby," he murmured, closing his laptop. I hummed, not looking up at him, inspecting his hand. There were some scars on his skin, thin silver rings around his fingers.
"Let me show you something," he said.
I nodded. He stood up and let me down on the floor. He intertwined our fingers and we walked out of his office.
We walked through the numerous corridors till we were at the east wing of the mansion, somewhere I had never been. He stopped in front of a blue door that looked to be years old.
"This is the only room which we did not change when we took control of New York," he told me, putting his hand on the brown knob of the door and twisting it. The door opened with a creak and he let go of my hand.
"Go in," he said to me.
I did.
It was a beautiful room. Small with a four-poster bed, a dressing table, the walls were painted blue while the furniture was white. A large bay window was beside the bed, showcasing the woods. The room looked to be unoccupied. And old. It smelled faintly of Jasmine.
"Annalisa Creed," Ashton said, walking inside the room. "Lived here.'
"Your mom."
He nodded, wrapping an arm around his waist. "I haven't been here in years," he said, looking around. "This used to be my favorite place." He sighed. "She'd read to me," he said, sitting down on the bed, pulling me between his thighs by many hands and pressing a kiss to my right palm. "My father wanted me to study about business and shit but mom...she read to me about Astronomy, about the constellations and the mythical stories behind them. She told me that my brain-" He pointed at his head. "-was worth a lot more than my cruelty."
I cupped his face as tears filled his eyes. He blinked them away.
"The thing is, Olivia, that she's gone but what she taught me, every sentence, every word, is here." He put his hand on his heart. "What Miss Arnaud has taught you is still here." He put his hand on my heart, I could feel it beating wildly.
I blinked away tears. "You are going to make me cry again!"
He smiled and pulled me till I was sitting on his right thigh. "No more crying." He pressed kisses to my eyelids.
"Your father...he hurt your mother a lot?"
He hummed, nodding. "He liked hurting people. Xerxes has scars on his body because of him. He rarely hurt me and Zavier because we were never the heir. He wanted to make Xerxes strong."
My heart broke for the three Creeds again. Seeing your brother hurt. Getting hurt by your father. But their misery didn't end. Their mother died, they were in captivation for five years under a cruel man who made them torture each other and hurt them in so many ways.
They were...utterly fucked up. My misery was nothing in front of theirs yet they held me as if it was the worst thing in the world.
Because they understood the pain of having your mother taken away from you. They understood that Carrie was like a mother to me. They knew the pain.
I set my head against his chest. "Will it stop hurting, Ashton?"
