Save Me

Chapter Ten

A.N. Another update! This one is short but pretty damn important. I think you'll all like this chapter very much, especially if you've read the whole series. Thank me later. Xoxo, Clay.

♔ Chapter Ten ♔

"You okay?" he asked, his voice gently drawing me back. His voice sounded so familiar, I thought to myself. I knew that voice. From my darkest dreams, I thought. My darkest secret.

"Tom?" I asked, trying to reach out.

It was so dark, too dark to see anything. I tried to sit up, but the pain hit me all at once, all up my right side, along my ribs. I tried to look ahead, but everything was blurry, shapes distorting, lights all around me shining bright and fuzzy.

"You..." he said, fumbling on his words, "Are you alright?"

"I'm sorry," I said. I thought I'd outgrown seeing Tom, hiding in the dark corners everywhere I went. I'd managed to keep it all locked away, but it never worked, he always came back for me. "I didn't... I didn't think. I didn't know how to make it to go away, what I felt inside. I had to do it. I'm sorry. For hurting you, Tom. For pushing you over the edge

"Are you okay?" I focused in on his voice, my blurry vision fuzzing back in. The distorted light of the lamp-posts all around lit up the campus, bright in an eerie orange glow, casting shadows over the old red brick buildings, and over his face.

His skin was aglow, not as pale and sallow as my nightmares. His hair, a harsh black. He had never looked so beautiful, I thought to myself. Not even in my darkest dreams, where he stood atop a thousand white cliffs, where he flew down into the shadowy beyond - where I pushed him, over and over and over, forever in the back of my mind. The one memory that haunted me more than anything else - When I pushed him over the edge, and watched him reach out to me, watched him fall down onto the rocks, and smiling the entire time, watched him die.

His soft blue eyes, I saw them right in front of me, staring at me like the day he died. I saw a smile on his lips, but that faded quickly. Tom's smiles never lasted too long, I'd always noticed. There was always a dark cloud over him, even before I met him.

I rubbed at my eyes, unsure of what I was seeing, and when I looked back up, he was gone. I looked all around, and the entire campus was empty and silent, the whole city sleeping.

I passed out again, after that. When I woke up, I was somewhere else.

I dove up quickly, looking around. "Tom?" I called out, my eyes searching for him. Then I remembered. He was dead.

And then I remembered the fight. The pain, suddenly shooting up my chest. "Fuck!" I screamed, lifting up my shirt. All along my ribs were bruised and battered blue, down and out turning pink or yellow. I sighed to myself, lying back down in the bed. I looked to be in a guest room, beige walls and hardly any furniture.

"You were beaten up pretty badly when my boy brought you home," she said. I turned up quickly again, the pain seeping in, and saw a woman standing by the door. Fluffy ginger hair, and plump. Middle-aged, with a fat smile.

"Who're you?"

"My son found you, said you'd been beaten pretty badly. Asked me to take a look at you, and nothing seems broken, just bruised. We were waiting for you to wake up."