Save Me

Chapter Three

A.N. I've cast River Viiperi as Hedley Haynes, the latest of Isaac's many many many homosexual encounters.

I'm mostly still setting the scene of this book - I want to introduce Isaac as well as I can, to show how his mind works, with all that manipulation and mind game bullshit that he likes. I also didn't realise that the first chapters of this book are just sex scenes with different people. My characters are all sluts lmao. Anyway, here we go...

"I take risks because I get bored. And I get bored very easily."

-Rihanna

♔ Chapter Three ♔

If there was one thing I'd gathered about Hedley Haynes, it was his remarkable ability to bullshit his way through life. I mean, the kid was better at it than me, and that's fucking saying something.

Not only that, but he was also extremely calculated. Someone that I couldn't figure out. And to me, nothing was more intriguing than trying to figure someone out. Fucking him was like trying to crack the code, trying to get into his head to take a look at the clockwork inside. All of the nuts and bolts, the turning cogs and spinning wheels. But I never really could, and not just because he was so calculated, but also because he played the same game with me that I played with everyone else.

I should have known from the first time that I fucked him, from our very first conversation, how calculated he was. Every move he made was thought out and preconceived, everything he did was planned and perfect. Everything he said had a purpose, or a hidden agenda, and most of the time, I had no idea what it was. I suppose I could only be sure of one of his motives: to play with me, to get me thinking about him, to get himself stuck in my head.

He'd succeeded.

In some ways, I guess he was like looking in the mirror. He was a reflection of me. He was a clever and gorgeous kid who knew how to work things to his advantage, and more than any of that, he knew how to work people. He knew how to flatter and to woo, and he knew how to win people over. He liked to control them, play with them, toy with them. He was exactly like me. The spitting image.

Maybe that should have stopped me from fucking around with him, but I couldn't help it. He was a breath of fresh air to me, like finding someone who might be able to understand me. Someone who doesn't blur in with everyone else. Someone who managed to stand out, like a splurge of colour in nothing but shades of grey. I suppose that he mesmerised me, in a way that no one else had managed, because he was so much like me.

I got up, stark naked, at that moment, and decided to stop thinking about him. This was always how crushes started, and I couldn't be bothered to deal with having a crush on someone like Hedley.

Crushes always end badly for me. I'd only had two crushes in my entire life, and both of those went to shit within a year. First, I'd start thinking about him at random times of the day, and then I'd start imagining him in my bed, I'd start texting him more and more, or calling him, or asking to hang out. Then I'd want it to become more, and more, and then even more.

I'd show them parts of myself that I'd never show anyone, I'd become infatuated and possessive, I'd try and control them, I'd make things worse, and by the end of it all, they'd leave me. They'd find someone better, someone who could treat them right, someone who wouldn't attack them, beat on them, treat them like that. I couldn't blame them for moving on, for wanting better. I was a last resort, I was somebody's worst experience, somebody's nightmare, a story they'd tell their newest lover to explain how fucked up they were.

I was good at fucking people up.

So I stopped myself from thinking about Hedley, from developing a crush, and got out of bed to throw away the bed sheets and place new ones down. Bobby had only left moments ago, but there was nothing worse for me than the stench of sex being left behind, dangling in the air like flies. I'd rid the room of it, of the scruffy bed sheets, and then I'd shower. I'd scour my skin red raw, to rid myself of their touch, of their kiss, until all that remained was my cold, hard, battered outer shell.