Never Let Me Go (Inevitably You, #2)

by Lyla Dane

Then I wouldn’t have to see Beck every single fucking day. I wouldn’t have to touch him. Smell him. Listen to him laugh and joke with the other guys. I wouldn’t have to live in this torturous reality where he was always right fucking there.

Beck Bowman despised me with a scorching fury that ignited a firestorm of loathing in my soul—so intense it terrified me. But I was used to being afraid, wasn’t I?

No one wanted to be around an unstable piece of shit.

I fucking hated him. But not as much as I hated me. Hated my own cowardice. Hated that I would do anything my dad told me to. Hated that I was so afraid of him I was willing to destroy myself. There wasn’t much of me left now.

That was me. Just a useless waste of space, breathing precious oxygen better given to people who actually deserved it.

We looked out for each other in ways our parents never had, and if that reminded me of Gavin and everything he’d once meant to me, I didn’t acknowledge it. She filled in part of a missing piece, cemented over the gaping hole in my chest, and reminded me that there were reasons to keep going. I was lucky to have her in my life. I was lucky to have anyone at all. I was lucky. I was.

I didn’t want to fucking help him. I really didn’t. No one deserved help less than Gavin Forster.

Since we were fourteen years old, he’d made it his mission to let me know just how much he hated me. How much he despised what I was. How much he couldn’t stand to look at me, touch me, be around me. He was a mean motherfucker that didn’t know how to do anything but spew hate and dole out violence.

was filled with a junkyard of his hate, endless piles of it that always grew taller when he was around.

All I wanted to do was forget him.

But that was impossible. Innumerable memories tangled themselves around my soul, chaining me to him more effectively than anything physical ever could. They threatened to drown me in a sadness so deep and blue it was almost endless.

I hated him. I fucking hated him so much. Fuck Beck and his misplaced sense of honor. He could go fuck himself with all that integrity. Fuck him for making me say those things. Fuck me for saying them.

“You’re a monster,” I hissed at the stranger in the mirror. He smiled back at me.

No, nothing really stopped me from being a complete piece of shit to the people that got to be exactly who they were without consequence.

When I was done, I made the douchiest ahhh sound I could muster.

He was fucking brave, I’d give him that. Brave but stupid. Because I was not in control anymore. But I never had been, had I?

I wanted to stop myself, to reach deep inside me and pull out the person I used to be, to put him back at the helm, because my entire being was thrumming with a chaotic violence that I knew was about to implode.

Fuck Beck. Fuck all these people. And fuck me especially.

There must have been a moment when I could’ve turned this all around. There must have been a point where I could’ve stopped myself from falling off that ledge, dropping into that burning pit of hell and becoming the very devil I despised. But if there was, I’d missed it.

Sometimes, when I was lying in bed at night, I pretended the last eight years had never happened. I pretended that I was still fourteen, and I imagined a different life for myself. A life where I had the courage to stand up for what I knew was right, where I hadn’t lied to the police, where I’d told them everything, the whole truth, and let them help me.

Heard him say, “I’m the sky and you’re the stars, Gav. You’re stuck with me.”

I covered my face with my hands when the tears started to fall, wishing I’d died in the snow.

The cowardice that had seared itself into my soul had me sinking to my knees in despair. Humiliation rose, crushing me to the floor under its weight. I was a scared child in the body of a grown man, so spineless I couldn’t even stand up for myself. I should have done something a long time ago, because now it was too late for me.

But if I had known that was my last chance to try and help Gavin, I would have done everything in my power to save him instead of just sitting there with my head in my hands.

The day my mind began to clear of the perpetual fog that had stuck around for months was when true remorse began to sink into me. It was foreign, that feeling. I hadn’t experienced it in a long, long time, and I’d forgotten just how debilitating it could be. I welcomed it in and let it weigh me down, and when I cried for all the pain I’d caused, my cellmate told me to shut the fuck up with that pansy shit. I felt right at home.

“You’ve made me look like a fucking clown for the last time. Don’t fucking call here again,” my dad said. “But—but I’m your son,” I said, panic overtaking every part of me. My dad had scoffed at that. “I don’t have a fucking son.”

It was when I realized that I had a crush on my best friend. A huge one.

The police didn’t help us, and Gavin was never the same after that. Neither was I.

decided to just keep the memory of him—who he was before that day—preserved in a safe pocket of my mind where it would never be tarnished. I could visit that pristine memory from time to time, could brush my fingers over its perfection and know that, at least for a little while, I’d had him. I could forget how, one moment, I was the happiest I’d ever been, and in the very next breath, my entire world had been shattered.

It was ugly, that truth. And I wondered how something so beautiful could become so ugly.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I muttered, staring out my windshield and wondering if I was hallucinating. I had to be. Because why would Gavin Forster be buck-ass naked on the side of the road?

But I knew it was Gavin. That annoying fucking pull in my soul was tugging hard, like there was a thread connecting us. I’d cut that shit if I could, drop all that dead weight. Maybe then I could actually be happy.

“No,” he murmured. “No, no, no, no.” His voice was small. He sounded young. Weak. Afraid. It pissed me off because he was none of those things.

“Becky,” he whispered, the sound rough and broken. My heart felt like it had been pierced with a thousand flaming swords, and a rush of anguish crawled up my throat, burning like bile.

“Let’s go, princess. Up.”

Just wishful thinking that had no place near Gavin Forster.

It’s funny how alcohol can make you teleport. One second you’re in a bar, downing shots and laughing with someone, and the next—poof! You’re in someone’s house. Handcuffed to their bed.

He felt like all the strength I’d lost along the way, and I wanted to sink into him.

I could feel his hand on my back, heavy and broad. I wanted him to stroke my back, maybe run his fingers through my hair. “Get off me,” I croaked.

Because no matter what he did now, I would always love that boy. Always.

honestly hated myself for holding onto it so tightly. I was a fucking fool, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself. It was all I’d wanted since he stopped being my friend. I just wanted him back.

In those moments when he dropped that toxic armor, I wanted to grab it and throw it into the hottest fire I could find.

I wanted him to keep looking at me without any hint of anger, I wanted him to keep talking to me in softer ton...

Everything he’d said and done had shaken me to my core. He’d unearthed a maelstrom of raw, broken feelings that chafed against my soul, and I felt like my entire world had been upended.

It felt more right than anything had in a long, long time. Holding Gavin was a muscle memory, like magnets snapping together once they were close enough, and there was immense comfort in the easy way I locked into place around him.

was getting hard around him now. All the time. Whenever he touched me, whenever his hands lingered just a little too long, whenever his face came just a little too close, whenever he laughed at something, whenever he looked at me.

He was giving me all his attention, and I didn’t deserve it, but that didn’t stop me from letting him. It didn’t stop me from wanting it. From greedily taking it, soaking it up like I’d been starved of sunlight ever since he’d moved away.

“Say please, princess,” he said. Anya giggled. I was going to kill him. “Please,” I said through clenched teeth.

I was the world’s biggest piece of shit, and unfortunately, Beck had stepped in me.

The balance in my life had forever been skewed toward hate and anger. Without Beck’s love and friendship, I was left sinking deeper into a hostile darkness that poisoned my heart.