“I’m not fixable.” I knew I was broken in many different ways. Nothing this boy before me could do would fix me. It wouldn’t fix my desires. It wouldn’t fix my needs which were starting to be all-consuming.
“Then tell me so I can find a way to help.” The statement was a near plea.
“Fine.” I huffed, turning my gaze back to the blue-eyed boy. It was likely the last time he’d look at me like that. Look at me like I mattered. Because what I would say next would destroy him. “You want to know the deep dark secrets I keep back from you? You want to know what I truly desire more than my next breath?” He nodded slowly, but the uncertainty in his eyes almost made me cave. I stepped closer, keeping a bit of space between us. “I want to kneel, to beg, and do so many things in those books we’ve read. I want to be forced to be on my knees, begging for mercy while secretly inside, I want to be so turned on that my pleas for whoever stood above me would ignore it. Ignore me, yet cherish me like I was the last thing they ever wanted.
“I want to serve, to submit. I want to feel pain, to feel anything but this numbness that is starting to take me over because I’m too freaking much of a chicken to do shit about it. I want to be tied up, where I can’t run away. I want to be forced to submit to my own dark desires. But who the fuck would want that?” I slapped my hands down on the counter. “I’m a messed up man, Noah.” The heat left my body, leaving me weak in a way that I hated the most. “No one will want me. Not with what I’ve seen, what I’ve been through. I’m sick and twisted. And I just freaking want someone to see how much of a mess I am, and swoop in and fix it all even when I beg and plead and push them away. But I know I can’t be fixed.”
“You can. Be fixed.” Noah’s voice gave out, and I knew he was trying to hold back tears.
I laughed some sort of noise through my nose with a shake of my head. “I’m as sick as the men who used me, Noah. I’m fucked up from being raped as a child, used and passed around. I can’t be fixed.” That wasn’t how I wanted him to find out what I’d been through, but it was too late now.
“Ashie...” Noah went to step closer.
“No.” I stepped back, holding out my hands to stop him. I didn’t want his pity or understanding. “I don’t need comfort. I don’t deserve it. Not when I know how wrong it is. So go. Go to Beckett who will soothe you. I’m done. I can’t keep doing this to myself or you.”
“Asher...” His arms wrapped around his torso. “Please.”
“I can’t be what you need anymore, Noah,” I said gently, fighting off my tears. “I once told you I didn’t do friends. That is why. I’m not savable. I’m not a good person. And my secrets...well they aren’t so secret anymore. So just go. And don’t come back.”
Chapter 45
How did a conversation about my missed birthday turn into this?
Sobs wracked my small frame as I held my body against the back of the door, keeping it shut if Noah tried to enter. Not that he did. Maybe he left. I don’t know. I didn’t hear him, nor did I care.
Where my heart sat in my chest felt empty. A gaping hole was in the place of the beating organ once had been.
I was broken. There was nothing left.
I knew it was coming. I knew the end of the friendship of Noah and me would come to an end. One that would feel just like this.
I just hoped that my world wasn’t going to feel like this after my best friend knew the truth about my monsters. It didn’t matter that the small bit he knew didn’t touch the surface. He’d never see how damaged I was inside.
I was unfixable. Unmendable. Nothing to this world.
My stomach cramped, my head throbbing, as the sobs slowly calmed. The tears kept flowing, and there was no point in wiping away the wet drops.
For once, I didn’t care how pathetic I was. There was no more hiding from the desperation. It was all-consuming, flowing through my veins like the sweetest drug.
I couldn’t see myself ever finding the happiness so many people talked about.
All the therapists made becoming an adult something worth trying for. But if life was going to feel like this, so lonely and cold and hurting, then what was the point? Why hadn’t I pushed Noah away sooner, knowing it’d have been better for the both of us?
I push my blunt nails into the tops of my arms, letting the small sharp spike of pain pull me away from the edge. The edge of what, I’d never know. But whatever I was on the tip of, I was about to fall over the ledge, plunging myself into the darkness below.
I was just as bad as the monsters that hurt me. I was destined to suffer. Alone and miserable for the rest of my days.
I’d known it since that first time I was taken against my will. Possibly even before then.
I could remember the day way too clearly. Only ten years old while some drugged-out man who smelt like piss and smoke shoved me up against the back of the couch. All the while, my mother sat there, sticking herself with a needle without a care of what was happening to me.
My pleas then hadn’t been heard. They never were after that either.
I couldn’t help but question why I was even still alive. What was the point? Why hadn’t someone just killed me already?
It’d have been so much easier. I was too weak to try myself, or I’d have done that already.
Laying on the floor, back to the door, I let my wet eyes close. Maybe if I could keep them closed, the rest of the world would forever disappear, too. Maybe then the pain would fade.
