Save Me

Chapter Four

♔ Chapter Four ♔

The next time I saw Hedley, it was at university the next day. He smiled when I spotted him, and our eyes met instantaneously. I smiled back for second, stopping by the doors of the university lecture, and looked away.

Searching for a seat, I noticed his eyes still on me, just in the corner of my vision. When he saw that I'd caught him, he winked and started laughing, sitting in the front row of the lecture theatre.

He was playing with me, I realised.

The thing that I had with Hedley was different to the things I had with other boys, that's for sure. Now, it wasn't only because he was just as good in bed as me, or because he was into everything that I was, or even because he liked it so casual. With others, I loved how easy I could make them fall for me, how easy it was to control them.

It was so easy for me to turn someone against themselves, to make them inwardly implode to a point where all they thought about was me, making me feel good, making sure I was okay. With Hedley, though, it was harder to make him fall for me. It was harder for me to know what he was thinking, harder for me to play with him like I did with all of the others.

Hedley knew the games, and that was the problem. He knew how to play with boys just as well as I did, maybe even better. I had a feeling about him, something somewhere inside that told me he'd done things even worse than I had. It was in his eyes, a pain I recognised, because it looked so much like my own. The glare of grief and regret, of ripping someone apart inside and then wishing you hadn't. The look of someone who'd played with fire, and got burnt.

It was his eyes, a glimmering light grey, that made it obvious to see. The way they held your glance, like he was trying to keep you at arm's length, told me that he was even more like me than I'd originally thought. That he was more fucked up than he looks - but then again, it's usually the beautiful ones that are the most twisted.

It was because of all this that I was even more determined to get Hedley, despite how well he knew the games, how fucked up he had to be inside. I didn't really care, it was the challenge more than anything. So for the first time since I met him, I turned and walked right up to him in public. He looked momentarily flustered, when I sat in the seat beside him and sent him a cheeky wink right back.

"Hey," was all I said to him.

"Yeah," he said, still shocked that I approached him outside of sex. I was being daring, testing his limits, and he knew it. "Hi."

"What's up?" I asked as casually as possible, pulling my notebook out of my bag. The lecture would start in a few minutes. Some part of me was surprised that he was even here on time that day, or showing up at all, which he rarely ever did. He was one of those students that rarely ever showed up, who came to the first few lectures and the last few. Yet, he still managed to pull out top marks in every test.

"Really?" he asked, his voice hushed and lowered, his face held in disbelief.

"Yeah, what's up?" I repeated, trying to hold back a smile.

"What are you doing?" He looked around, checking that no one had noticed anything, like it was somehow suspicious for me to sit beside him outside of the four enclosed walls of his bedroom. It got me thinking for a second, but I could have been wrong.

"Just sitting," I replied.

When I turned to see him again, he was glaring at me, his eyes squinting. My eyes flew to the bruises around his neck, a slight dark pink with patches of yellow. They reminded me of yesterday's little antics, and I felt kind of proud, like I'd marked him as mine. "Okay."