Never Let Me Go (Inevitably You, #2)

by Lyla Dane

He was the only person I’d ever felt anything for. Anything at all. And I was so mad that other people didn’t have to hide who they were. Any time I saw a queer person just being themselves, it incited a rage so profound I couldn’t control it.

And my bitterness only grew. I fed it every day with every time I looked at him and didn’t get to touch him or talk to him or hold him. It grew until it was all I was. I wasn’t even a real person anymore, I was just anger and resentment and jealousy. Because all I wanted was to have him back, and I couldn’t.

I wanted to place my hand over his and force him to keep it there forever. I wanted to open my door and throw myself from the car.

I’m sorry you even met me, because all I’ve ever done is cause you pain, and I don’t know how to stop! I’m sorry for everything! So don’t you apologize to me ever again, Beck, because you haven’t done a goddamn thing wrong!”

His eyes were like the final color that glowed on the horizon just before the sun fully set and it all turned to black. The last vestiges of twilight.

He pressed his forehead against mine and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes. “I forgive you,” he whispered. “For all of it. I just hope you can forgive me one day.” There was nothing to forgive.

It was like that honest moment in the car had never happened, and I was getting tired of chasing him every time he decided to run backwards.

“You need to either tell me what the fuck is wrong or just stop acting like a fucking child,” I said, pressing myself into him to keep him against the door.

I reached up and grabbed a fistful of his hair above his left ear and yanked. Gavin’s eyes rolled back and he moaned so loudly that I let go of his hair and slapped my hand over his mouth.

He shoved his hands into my hair, gripping my head with both hands, hissed, “I fucking hate you,” and crushed his lips to mine.

Exhilaration rushed through me, and I felt like the room was spinning, the floor was opening up underneath me, and I was falling and flying all at once. If he thought I’d ever let him go now, he was fucking crazy.

Gavin’s movements became urgent, almost frantic as he rolled his hips over and over and over again, and I palmed his lower back, feeling him move with every thrust. He whispered against my lips, “Beck. Beck. I’m gonna come, I’m gonna fucking come.”

There were no words for the ecstasy that was bursting through me like a supernova, wave after wave of incomparable pleasure holding me hostage as Gavin whimpered into my skin.

I was selfish, though. Just like he’d said all those weeks ago. Because now that I’d had him like that, now that I knew what he tasted like, how he felt, the sounds he made…I never wanted to give him up. I never wanted him to give me up.

It scared me when the anger fell away and I was left sitting in the cloying muck of what I was actually feeling. When the cover of anger was gone, the pitiful husk it left behind was fragile enough that one touch would crumble it into nothing.

I just wanted to not hate myself while I was alive.

Beck looked up at me through those pretty, curled lashes, a small smile on his perfect lips. “Are you sulking because I got you a phone, princess?” “No,” I rasped, not able to really grasp what he was saying. “You’re sulking.”

I was barely holding myself together. Beck was the only thing keeping me from completely falling apart, and when he tilted my head and pressed his lips to my neck, a raw, anguished sound broke from my throat. The kiss he placed there was gentle. Soft. The sweetest thing I’d ever been given.

“I missed you so much,” he whispered raggedly. His words shattered me, and all I could do was hold onto him and think I missed you too.

“Do you want to find out what else you like, princess?” I was pressing myself against him now, shamelessly, my throbbing cock pulsing with every word he spoke. “Yes,” I choked out, unable to say anything but that. Unable to feel anything but that. Yes. Yes. Yes.

“I think I like…” he said breathlessly, drawing my eyes back to his. He licked his lips and continued speaking. “I think I like anything, as long as it’s you, Beck.”

There was no going back. I was falling head first into the most uncertain future, but the present was the kind of solace I’d been needing for years. It felt like a chance for absolution, a chance to burn away all the bad and let the good breathe again.

“Are you okay?” he asked, stepping into the room. “You already asked me that,” I said. “And I’ll keep asking that forever,” he said wryly. My heart skipped a beat, and then another. Forever?

When he wrapped me in his arms as tight as he could, I had one last thought before falling asleep—that my depression stemmed more from losing Beck and living without him than anything my dad had done. It was as if half my heart had been cut from my chest, and the other half did what it could for as long as it was able, but at some point, it began to fail. Because it knew a life without Beck wasn’t much of a life at all.

“You,” I rasped. “It was always you.” Always.

The smile on his face as he looked at me was stunning, and it lit his eyes with so much joy that it stopped my heart for a brief moment. It felt like vital parts of me were shifting, making room for those missing pieces that had finally been found and then locking tightly into place around them.

“What about…baby hippo?” His brows scrunched together in confusion, his lip curling in disgust. “If I’m an elephant, then you’re a baby hippo.” The look of outraged horror on his face was almost comical. “Are you serious right now? Hippos are ugly as shit.”

If I let myself look back on those miserable eight years before he got arrested, I would probably be able to point at certain memories and say, “There. That right there wasn’t hate. It was fear and a longing so deep it was oppressive.” The real Gavin had been buried miles beneath the surface, screaming into a void that no sound could ever escape from. And I’d just left him down there.

“Promise me that you’ll keep on trying. Because you are so fucking beautiful when you let yourself try. You deserve the world, Gavin. I’m gonna kill that vicious inner voice that’s been hissing nothing but lies at you. I’m gonna talk to you until all you hear is my voice inside your head. Mine and yours. The way it always should have been. Just me and you.”

If anyone were to ask me when I fell in love with him, I’d tell them I was thirteen years old and one day, when we were just lying in his backyard watching fat, lazy clouds roll across the blue, blue sky, I realized my regular old love had shifted into something more powerful than I’d ever felt before, something that made my chest ache any time I looked at him. I never looked away if I could help it. I grew addicted to that feeling.

“I’m the sky and you’re the stars, remember? It’s my job to hold you up and let you shine. So let me do my job, baby.” I would let him do whatever he wanted, as long as he kept me.

And then his next words devastated me. They were words we’d said often to each other, when we were kids. Words that never lost their meaning no matter how many times we said them. Words we meant with every fiber of our little beings. Words I hadn’t heard from him in ten years. “I love you, Gavin,” he said softly.

“I love you, Gavin.” He tensed in my arms, then relaxed, so I continued. “I’ve always loved you. And when I lost you…I lost the best part of myself.”

“Becky?” Gavin mumbled against my lips. His fingertips were soft against my cheeks, gentle as he pushed my head back. His eyes moved back and forth between mine, searching, and then he seemed to find what he was looking for. His expression eased into something affectionate. Tender. As if he could feel that pulsing, glowing light too. “I’m glad you found me,” he whispered. I kissed his nose, then cradled the back of his head and drew him into me, resting my cheek in his hair. “Me too, princess.” Me fucking too.

Being here now, after spending months in a cocoon of safety and hope, was like having my beating heart ripped from my chest while someone laughed and laughed and laughed above me. I was shoved back into a past I hated, and the feelings from the first time I’d been here had draped themselves over me like they’d been eagerly awaiting my return, heavy and thick and smothering.

I love you, Gavin. Do you know what that means? That I love every single part of you, good and bad. Flaws and all. When I look at you, I see only you, baby. The you you’ve always been. And yeah, you’re a dick sometimes, but you’re my fucking dick, okay? You’re my dick and my asshole.”

“Do you still love me?” I asked. His hands stopped moving and he answered me immediately. “I will never stop loving you, Gavin.”