blue

XXIV

A/N: I highly recommend playing the song that I have attached (simply by pressing play and then continue reading as normal, make sure your ringer is on) because I wrote the chapter by listening to it and it makes it far more dramatic 😂
okay i'm sorry now here's the chapter you've all been waiting for:
***

Ashton's POV
***
"Bring her to us by sunrise or else you and the girl won't ever see the light of day again."

His cold but familiar voice rang through the speaker of my cell phone. It was John. I had spent my day with Melia as I wanted but it was now time to say goodbye. I didn't say anything to John on the phone, I only nodded to myself. I knew what I had to do. This entire relationship was supposed to be fake. I was only supposed to deliver her to my gang and that was it. I wasn't supposed to fall in love with her and I wasn't supposed to get myself into this mess, but here we are anyways and it's all my fault. I let myself get too close to her and now I'm going to have to fix the problem. I have to figuratively shut off my emotions; be the person who I was before I met Melia: closed off, rude.

We ended up crashing at my place. I had been sound asleep with her in my arms for what would be the last time, until John called and woke me up and I had no choice but to answer.

"Melia, babe." I whispered in her ear gently. "Wake up." I placed a kiss on her forehead before untangling myself from the white sheets. I knew she would take awhile to actually get out of bed, so I sat on the chair in front of my easel, pondering what crazy scheme I will have to come up with to get her out of the house and delivered to John while feeling no sadness and no feeling of loss or regret all at the same time. It was going to be quite difficult.

She finally pulled herself out of bed. "What time is it?" she mumbled groggily.

I looked down and read my watch. "Ten in the morning."

She nodded, obviously taken aback by how long she slept.

"And where are we going today, Mister Adventure?" she asked.

What I thought was, I'm going to take you to a scary place filled with the gang that I am sadly apart of and you may die, and then I'm going to go home and enjoy the rest of my life before it ends tragically because of a stupid cancer cell. But I didn't say that.

Instead, I said, "To the park bench. I want you to re-visit the memories that you and I made before there's no more left.

She didn't fight it, she allowed me to take her hand despite the countless times I betrayed her trust. And this was going to be another time, and hopefully the last. The trust that she placed in me was evidence that she just wanted to be happy. She put her trust in me because she had faith that I would show her happiness. And believe me, I want to show her happiness. I want to show her a garden bursting into life. I want to show her sunsets because they obviously last longer than people do. But instead of doing that, I'm showing her reasons why not to trust people so quickly, because they will only hurt you.

We left to the park bench. It hurt to be replacing our first amazing memories here with such terrible ones. I was slowly allowing my emotions to be shut off, I couldn't allow them to seep in and ruin what I had to do.

I sat on the very bench where I kissed her for the first time and pulled her in as an invitation to kiss her for the last time. How ironic.

I made the most of it. I connected our lips and let the kisses linger as if to tell her that I will come back to her, that this isn't the end.The kiss was filled with passion mixed with anger, and I was thankful to feel her kiss back. She had no idea what I was about to do.

I pulled away. It took all my strength but I had to. As hard as I tried to shut off my emotions completely, they kept breaking through.

I looked down at my watch. It was ten fifty a.m. They told me they would be here to take her away from me no later than eleven.

I shut my eyes and pictured her happy. I didn't want to see the tears fall from her face when they came and took her away from me. It would be too much.

And all of a sudden, it happened. My eyes were opened automatically as I heard heavy breaths and footsteps running towards  us. This was it. She was going to be taken away from me, forever.

"This isn't what I wanted," I whispered into her ear as I squeezed her hand reassuringly. "Goodbye, Melia."

They unattached our intertwined hands and basically ripped us apart. I could already see red marks forming on her arm. One man viciously took her and kept his arm around her neck as they walked, obviously choking her.

"This wasn't apart of the deal!" I screamed after them. "You promised you wouldn't hurt her!"

"Oh, we don't have to hurt her much more," they spat back, "you already did enough of that for us."

That's when my emotions turned back on and the guilt poured over me, soaking me and weighing me down like a weight. I ruin everything. I always do. It's my nature.

I should just give up. Melia did it to me. She left me without a second thought, so why shouldn't I just do the same and end it all?

I knew the answer deep down. It's because I care too much. I know I act like I don't fucking care, but it's because I'm so fucking scared. Scared of losing her when in the end the only way I lost her was because I was too afraid to love her.

It's all my fault.

My legs collapsed from under me and I fell to the ground, weeping. My hands covered my face as I screamed out in rage.

"I have nothing left anymore!" I yelled, my voice shaking.

But no one was there to hear my cry for help.