Save Me

Chapter Thirty

A.N. I just hit 6k followers, so I thought it would be as good a time as any to release the final chapter of Save Me, and the last instalment of the Fuck Me Trilogy (very appropriately named, I think). As always, I hope you enjoyed the journey and I'm glad you stuck with me this far. Vote and comment if you enjoyed the story! Let me know what you think of the conclusion to such a long and occasionally heartbreaking series! And of course, check out my other books if you so wish! (Brand new stuff coming soon too.) But for now, onto Isaac's final goodbye. Xoxo, Clay.

♔ Chapter Thirty ♔

For years, it was my dream to get out of my hometown. Penzance was a place in the past that was getting too small for me, and too tangled up in memories best left behind. Yet the path in front of me always seemed to lead back there, whether I wanted it to or not, like it was predestined.

As I drove away from Darby's house, I found myself not wanting to head out of town right away. I knew what awaited me at the end of Brunswick Boulevard, beyond all the high-collar houses and onto the motorway towards Land's End. I'd been drawn back here for a reason, I thought. I'd been captured by some higher purpose, maybe. The place where it all began, or where it all ended, just a few miles down the motorway. And it was too tempting not to.

When I pulled up to the place, I parked my car at the side of the road. It was late in the evening, nothing but an empty road ahead of me and behind me. The road ran alongside the coast all the way to the end of England, where grey cliffs stood tall like a shield from the sea, and sharp rocks poked up from the sea's surface. Land's End was half a dozen miles up the coast, and the cliffs there had always been more impressive than here, but way too touristy.

I'd been tethered to these cliffs, too. Since my mum drove her car over them, they'd been a dark place for me. The whole town became a dark place for me, over the years. But when I chose to end my life, I chose this place for a reason, and when Tom came running to save me, I threw him over the edge instead.

Cushioned underneath the cliffs, only when the tide was far out, there was a small beach of yellow sand. It was too dark to see anything on the beach, the only light coming from a straight line of lamp-posts that ran parallel to the road on both sides, and the white moon beaming through the black sky.

I found myself on the path down to the beach, my feet trampling through the sand. I was nearly blinded by the darkness that hung over the beach and carried over the seas, which swished and whooshed in the distance. There was a gentle wind breezing around me as I sat down in the sand and looked out at the still ocean. My eyes quickly adjusted to the lack of light, and I could make out where the sea lapped up onto the shore, all-black but for the swirling flickers of white reflected across the water by the moon, sitting high above.

I thought it would be too painful, being back here again. It always felt like a cursed place, but not this time.

It felt peaceful, sitting there, finally. The quiet of everything around me, how settled the world seemed, had me feeling lost even to myself. I felt comforted by the silence, and by being alone, by losing myself in those moments with absolute clarity.

A sense of closure washed over me, and I felt acceptance at leaving Darby behind, leaving him to get on with learning to get on. Without me, sure, and it hurt in the moment, but it didn't last.

I didn't know why I kept chasing what I could never have. I knew it would always end the same, and I suppose I'd prepared for that. So when the moment did come, it came and went so fast, and soon after I felt at ease with it. I'd known all along that Darby was never really the one for me. He came along, drugged up and disturbed, and I thought I could fill an empty space with him. But he wasn't what I really wanted, he was who I clung to so I didn't have to be alone, so I didn't have to keep all of my dark secrets to myself. Speaking with him was cathartic, and it once felt so easy to open up to him. Yet leaving him behind felt easier, in a way, if I kept reminding myself that he deserved to be happy without me.