Never Let Me Go (Inevitably You, #2)

by Lyla Dane

I fucking hated him. But not as much as I hated me.

I was a monster on steroids. Absolute human garbage. They should just put me down like the animal I was. The rage that simmered inside me, a living thing that fed off pain, was growing and growing and growing, like a cancer. I was a cancer.

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.

Gone was all the hate from earlier; in its place was a steel wall so thick and high it would take eons to break through. I wondered briefly if the boy I’d known was somewhere behind that wall, banging his fists against it, wishing he could find a way out.

I was fucking delusional for thinking any good part of him from our childhood was left. He wasn’t in there, and the person who’d replaced him was disgusting and foul and unworthy.

I wondered at what point I’d call it quits. I wasn’t sure I was capable. Sometimes the thought that I would rather die than face the consequences wormed its way into my mind, and sometimes I let it writhe around in there.

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.

It felt like maybe I was already dead. I wasn’t even afraid of how much I liked that feeling.

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

That steel wall had disappeared completely, and for the first time in eight years, I was seeing him.

My loathing for the person he’d become came nowhere close to overshadowing the sorrow in my heart for the boy he’d been. For the life he could’ve chosen for himself, but hadn’t.

It brought up too much grief, like he’d died instead of just…changed. I supposed in a way, the person I’d known had died.

“You promise you’ll always be my best friend?” “Yeah, I promise. Of course I promise.”

“How many times do I gotta say it? I promise I’ll always be your best friend. Nothing will ever change that. I can’t think of a single thing that would ever make me stop loving you. You’re the sky and I’m the stars, Becky. We’re stuck together. Okay?”

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.

I’d never felt less…substantial. Like I’d disappear at any moment, and nothing in the whole entire world would change. Not a single person would notice. Not even Beck.

I was glad I had no one. No one to notice that I was going through withdrawal. No one to care that I wasn’t okay.

If I was breaking apart, I wanted to do it so thoroughly no one could ever put me back together again.

I wanted him to hurt me. To make me bleed. I wanted him to kill me.

I was fully burning in that pit of hell, and I’d be there for eternity. I deserved nothing less. And still, all I wanted was for Beck to hold me again. Just one more time.

I clung to his contempt like it was the deepest kind of love, because in my life, to me, it might as well have been.

It was over. I was alone now.

But the soul-crushing panic that came with being abandoned was far worse than living with a monster. It was why I’d never left him in the first place.

I was always meant to end up alone. It made me sick, thinking about what I’d become trying to avoid that. It made me sick, knowing it was all for nothing. All for nothing.

Gavin got everything he needed from me, just like I got everything I needed from him.

he’d told me nothing would ever make him not love me. Told me everything about me was just right, and to keep being exactly who I was, no matter what his dad said sometimes.

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

I hated the way it hurt, to have to see him every day and try to convince myself that no matter how much he looked like my Gavin, he wasn’t mine anymore.

Wasn’t hard to accept free things when you didn’t have the means to pay for them—especially if it was alcohol. I’d do anything to get away from myself.

“Becky,” he whispered, the sound rough and broken.

Beck was as perfect as perfect could get. As good as they came. A blond-haired, blue-eyed angel on Earth. And I was the fucking devil.

Bitchy Gavin I could handle. Was used to. Scared Gavin…fuck.

The thought made me want to curl up and die. Most thoughts did. Fine. All of them.

I don’t give a shit at this point. Just make it stop. I don’t want to be here anymore.” My last words ended on a broken whisper, and I put my arm over my face.

“Beck, I swear to god,” I said, voice thick and rough, “If you still care about me at all, you’ll do this for me. Please. Please. Just do this for me. Just get rid of me.”

I pretended he was holding me because he wanted to.

“It’s the most selfless thing I could do.” And I believed that. I could never hurt another person again, not if I didn’t exist.

I still remembered what that rope sounded like as his body swayed slowly from the ceiling fan.

I wasn’t taking a single chance that he didn’t mean what he was saying. He needed help. No matter what he’d done, I couldn’t lose another person who had—at one point—meant the world to me.

I wanted to hate him, to forget about him, but he hated himself so much already that he was full up on it and there was no more room for mine.

There was the part of me that harbored all the good memories I had of him, and then there was its counterpart, a charred reflection depicting my utter contempt for the person he’d become.

I was sorry I hadn’t found him sooner. I was sorry I didn’t fight his dad harder that day. I was sorry he felt like dying was the only way forward for him.

That’s you, trying to be good enough. But you won’t ever be. You weren’t even enough of a reason for your dad to keep living.”

Oh...

“Beck! Beck! Get back here, you son of a bitch!” Gavin screamed at the top of his lungs. “Beck! Don’t just fucking leave me here! Don’t leave me here!”

“Beck, you bastard! Beck! Don’t fucking leave me!”

“Why are you doing this? Why can’t you just leave me somewhere and fuck off? Just take me back to the fucking homeless shelter and let me rot there in peace, you fuck!” “You fucking know why,” I shot back. And I wasn’t doing this for the man he was now, but the boy he used to be. Because no matter what he did now, I would always love that boy. Always.

I would never be deserving of Beck, and I needed him to see that. Needed him to understand that he couldn’t save me. No one could.

I know your dad did something to you to make you like this. But every time you open your mouth and say shit like that, those are choices you are making. You are choosing to be an asshole. Your dad is nowhere in sight, and you still say ignorant shit that you never would have said before.