Saving 6 (Boys of Tommen, #3)

by Chloe Walsh

I never knew demons until I stood beside him and watched him battle monsters more frightening than my imagination could ever concoct. I never knew heartbreak until he decimated my heart by decimating his body.

Hoping my thoughts could fuel my anger, and my anger could help me flip the switch and not care anymore. Because caring was killing me, and I honestly didn’t think I could hold on much longer.

“I know it’s not your fault. I know, okay, but you just remind me so much of him. More and more each day.” “In what way?” I demanded, chest heaving. “In looks? Because if it’s in looks, then that’s not my fault. I can’t help who I look like, but I am nothing like that man in any other way.” “You are,” she said before leaving the room. “In every way.” And with those words, my mother cut me deeper and more viciously than my father ever had. Ever could.

The switch I had been so desperate not to flip these past few years had finally tripped. And I felt nothing.

If you don’t care, then nothing he does can hurt you.

“I’m not afraid of loving a boy,” I told her honestly. “I’m afraid of losing myself in one.”

“I’m sorry, Joe, did I push a button? I was just looking for a way to mute you.”

From my perch on his lap, I could feel all of him straining against me, and I would be a liar if I said it didn’t make me ache.

For real. I had been blessed with the ability to make a conversation out of nothing, which was how I had somehow managed to keep this wildly unattainable boy’s interest piqued for most of the night.

There was a whole host of things wrong with me. Things I was too scared to invest time in trying to figure out. Truth be told, my brain was a scary place to be, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near me most of the time.

I understood what it felt like to be afraid. I’d spent most of my life drowning in terror until I just stopped caring. Caring meant feeling. If I didn’t care about what happened to me, then I had nothing to fear. I could survive feeling like that. I could survive this life.

I enjoyed the sensation of being inside of my own body, my own head, for once without needing to self-medicate first.

“But don’t ever think that I don’t have feelings,” he said, and then pressed a kiss to my mouth. “Because the only time that I allow myself to feel anything is when I’m with you.”

“Next time you beg me to fuck you, I won’t say no.”

“I don’t care,” I continued to say over and over, hoping that if I said it enough times it might come true.

I tried so hard to be good, but it never seemed to matter because nothing was going to change for me.

“Don’t hate me, Molloy,” Joey mumbled, falling into the passenger seat the moment I let him go to open the car door. “You’re all I have to wake up for in the morning.”

I believed her, and that scared me worse than the prospect of staying. Because I knew that she was willing to do anything to help me, and in the end it wouldn’t be enough, because I was too fucking gone in the mind.

“This is real life, Molloy.” I felt the mattress dip and he moved to settle between my legs. “And in real life, it’s going to hurt.” “Good.” I licked my lips and pulled up on my elbows to press a kiss to his neck. “I want the pain.”

I was so fucking dead inside that if you cut me open, my insides would spew black. That’s how dark I felt, how truly rotten I felt on the inside. How far I’d fallen.

“Are you mad at me?” I slurred, feeling weak and disoriented by her calmness. “Yes.” “Then why aren’t you shouting at me?” I shook my head in clouded confusion. “I’ve stopped trying, Molloy. I can’t try anymore. Why aren’t you kicking me out?” “Because you might not love yourself, but I do. I love you enough for the both of us,”

I had always considered myself to be a strong girl, but right now, as I tried to look at myself in the mirror with my head held high, I had never felt like such a fake.

“Pain,” he roared into my face, eyes alight with temper as his shadow danced with his demons. “On the outside. On the inside. All around me. Pain so fucking strong I’m drowning in it!” He ran his bloodstained hands through his hair, tingeing his blond hair a faint crimson color. “That’s what I feel. That’s all I feel. All the fucking time!”

She would never understand how it felt to transition from controlling your life with something you once enjoyed to becoming controlled by the very thing you now despised.