FicWad

“Took you long enough…what was there? Traffic?” Shannon smirked a little when Emma shot him a glare before he closed the door and they both turned to face Jared.
Emma’s face washed through with worry when she saw the recovering look of pain on his face. He was holding himself up against the wall and he was just staring at them both trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
“You said you wouldn’t hurt him.” She nearly yelled out at Shannon before she rushed to Jared’s side. “Are you alright?”
He waved her off and managed to stand up straight, the pain falling away a little. “What the hell is going on?” His head was swimming with the possibility that Emma was involved in all of this but nothing he did could make him believe that. It just didn’t make any sense. Why would she do something like that?
Emma let out a small and shaky sigh. She backed away from him and stood beside Shannon. “Have you learned your lesson?” She questioned, her brows knitting together sadly and her lips drawing downward.
“My…My lesson?” He demanded, overwhelmed by a need to just let out the sudden anger that flushed through him. Everything before him didn’t seem real, none of it did and the betrayal that his heart was experiencing felt out of body. This wasn’t happening to him.
“You thought nobody saw anything that you were doing this whole time? That you would get off unscathed? Jared everyone has a price to pay. Even you.” Shannon smiled afterwards. His expression wasn’t full of a reluctant sadness the way that Emma’s was.
“And what exactly was my lesson?”
Shannon let out a small laugh as if he couldn’t believe Jared hadn’t pieced it all together yet. “You’ve hurt people. You’ve played the good guy this whole time, making people love you all while you’re doing all kinds of crap behind their back. Cheating on your girlfriends, dumping girls after sex, milking the damned clock, and then going home and playing favorite son to our mom. Must have felt real good, didn’t it? Well it’s over Jared, you aren’t going to ruin my life anymore!” Shannon seemed stunned himself by the amount of anger that flooded out of his words. He withdrew from the moment and wiped harshly at his face trying to calm himself.
Jared swallowed harshly. He had seen Shannon in this state before, seen him leave with Alicia and then never speak of her again. Had seen days go by without hearing from the girl as if she had never been there at all. He had seen him this way when he had Jared by the throat about ready to kill him if given the chance.
He blinked away his fear and turned to Emma, a plea of sorts in his blue eyes. They had had something didn’t they? It had meant everything. Did it matter now if he had screwed up in the beginning?
“Emma?” He called out her name softly, turning her eyes to him. “You did all this too?”
“Wanted to scare you a bit Jared…wanted you to know that you can’t just mess with people. No one’s a toy Jared. The world doesn’t belong to you.” Her tears were beginning to come to the surface and she looked away.
“What about Alessandra?” Jared asked, the thought coming to him then that perhaps this had been connected the whole time.
Shannon shot his eyes to him and Emma’s face spread into confusion. “Alessandra?”
“Whose was the separate print?” He couldn’t bring himself to believe that Emma had been there, that she had been apart of everything that had happened. Perhaps she had intended to scare him a bit but murder?
“What are you talking about?” Emma demanded, her eyes going from Shannon to Jared worriedly.
“Alessandra was murdered, found dead in her house…there was a note on the wall for me. “No one can have you Jared.” And the detective said that there was another print that didn’t match anyone’s…not even Shannon’s.” Jared held his gaze on Emma unmoving and accusing.
“Well don’t look at me!” Emma shouted. She turned to Shannon, her eyes wide and teary. “What is he talking about?”
Shannon stood there, a sweat breaking out on his forehead, uncomfortable and nervous. “This has nothing to do with what you planned!”
“No one was supposed to get hurt!” She declared but Shannon didn’t answer, he just turned away. “I swear to you no one was supposed to get hurt!” She said to Jared, her turn to plead now.
“Just me.” He replied, his eyes watching Shannon worriedly.
“You’ve hurt so many people, it was your turn to know what it felt like!”
He shook his head, dismissing her. He was still somewhat in disbelief that her fear over his apparent stalker had been fake, that all those times she had told him she loved him hadn’t been real. He couldn’t understand why she would have allowed something so horrible to continue on, watching his life collapse into a sort of downward spiral.
“Shannon? What happened to Alessandra?” He questioned, walking towards him almost nervously. “What did you do to her?”
Shannon turned to him fiercely, his eyes alive with his overwhelming emotion. “You used her, you used all of them! And all the while I would have loved them, would have taken care of them and yet you stole everything from me! You aren’t the only one deserving of love! You’ve always stolen everything from me! You stole Alicia from me!”
Jared stood there, all of Shannon’s words more than revelations. They fell on him with a heaviness he couldn’t fend off. It bled within him, the look of hatred on his brother’s face. “Alicia?”
“You wanted her the whole time, didn’t you? She was the one woman you never had and you couldn’t have just let it be! You wanted her to go to you but I couldn’t allow that.”
Jared thought of that night when he had told her that Shannon had slept with her sister. He thought of his ulterior motives, of how he had betrayed his brother’s confidence so easily. He thought of all those times he had seen them together, her smitten by Shannon and Jared knowing he could never have something so purely beautiful as that. It had pissed him off when Shannon had cheated on her and the thought had crossed his mind that Alicia would have gone to him. The guilt was there.
“You killed her didn’t you?” Jared pushed out, the memory of how he had felt for Alicia coming back.
“Technically she killed herself.” He replied, his eyes wide and angry and full of tears.
Jared wasn’t expecting it when Shannon threw himself at him. His closed fist went to his face the moment Jared had hit the ground. Emma cried out and the light from outside the apartment flooded in when she threw the door open and ran out. Jared tried to fight against him, but his initial surprise and Shannon’s superior strength made it hard. He felt Shannon’s hands wrap around his throat, saw his eyes narrow, and knew that perhaps his life was a lost cause. Lesson well learned.