Blue 2

Prologue

I can hardly feel Finn's fist connecting with my jaw. All I can focus on is the sight of Lily walking away with her dad and aunt by her side. I am hopeless and heartbroken as I wait for her to look back at me. Just once, to heal the gaping hole in my chest, but she doesn't. Not once does she look over her shoulder, showing me an ounce of hesitance in leaving me behind.

Finn's fist colliding with my bleeding nose sets my senses back into motion. All at once I smell the stack of garbage on the corner at the end of the street, see the lamppost glaring down at me, taste the metal in the blood filling in my mouth, feel the numb buzz behind my blurry eyes, and hear my family screaming for Finn to get off of me.

I know I should be fighting back, but I deserve this. I have the moment I laid eyes on Lily. I hurt her, hurt her so badly, I hate myself. I welcome every swing of Finn's unmerciful fist without any complaint.

Before he can hit me in the eye, Elliot comes into view and yanks Finn off of me, muttering, "Okay, okay—calm down. What the hell is going on?"

I breathe in a breath of fresh air and gag on blood. I'm going to choke on my own damn blood unless I turn over, but I don't have the energy to. Thankfully Catherine scurries over to me and helps me onto my side. I cough and spit out a chunk of blood onto the concrete.

"Oh, my goodness, Blue" she gasps, rubbing her palm over my back as I pant for breath. "What is going on?"

Before I can tell her to fuck off, my father squats on the other side of me. He pats my shoulder and tries to catch my blurry gaze with his wide, worried eyes. "What the hell is going on, son? Finn is a nice boy, what did you do to make him this upset? And where is, Lily? I thought we were going out to eat to celebrate."

Ignoring him and his whore of a wife, I sit up and push myself onto my feet. I wobble and almost fall back down again, but my father shoots up to his feet and stabilizes me with his hands. Catherine sobs into her hands, standing to her feet. She reaches out to touch my bloody face, but I duck my head and take off down the dark street before she can put her filthy hand on me.

I need to catch up with them. I need to explain myself to Lily. I just fucking need her to understand.

I turn the corner, out of breath and desperate to explain this shitty thing I did, but she isn't here. I squint through the darkness, searching past the people walking down the avenue. But I don't see her golden waves flowing down her back. But I do see her dad getting into a taxi cab.

My eyes go wide, and I walk through the crowded sidewalk, making a beeline for the cab. It starts to move, so I pick up my pace. The cab is picking up speed. My fast walk turns into a sprint, and soon enough I jump onto the road and run as fast as I can after the cab, but it's too far down the street. And I can't breathe anymore. I fall to my knees and watch the taxi cab drive down the long avenue with Lily in the backseat, paralyzed.

I stay here, kneeling on the freezing road, for minutes that may turn into hours, thinking about everything that has come down to this very moment. None of this was supposed to happen. Not me falling in love with her. Not her falling for me. None of it. I was just supposed to fuck her, get my guitar, and move onto the next girl begging to sleep with me. Bonus points if I got her to confess her love for me. Ironic how I was the one to admit I loved her first. But the supposedly easy game didn't go as planned, because I actually fell in love with her. Madly so. The stuck-up, prudish ballerina who wore ribbons in her hair and pastel skirts and fantastically ran every single morning got under my skin and showed me a side of her she'd never showed anyone before and charmed me until I fell completely in love with her. So much it scared me then and absolutely terrifies me now. Not only because she was not what I expected, but because I'd never loved anything or anyone before her, and when I fell for her, my love for her consumed every inch of me and crept into my bones.

It was only after I was bawling on my way back to the school after I showed Hunter and the rest of my fucking disgusting friends the picture of her in bed the morning after she gave me her virginity that it hit me just how much I loved her.

And just how much I hated myself for going through with the fucking stupid bet. I only did it because Hunter was so adamant on telling her to keep the game of lies and secrets going. He didn't stop after the amount of times I fucked his face up, or promised I'd pawn the guitar and give him the money or resorted to begging him to just shut the fuck up. I thought if I got her to see how much I truly love her and suggested we live together she would write Hunter telling her the truth as bullshit. But even she saw the sick darkness in me, witnessed the disgusting thing in me bleed through all of my lies and bullshit.

Remembering seeing the life leave her bright eyes and the look of disgust flashing across them makes me sob into my hands.

Is this what it feels like to love someone, then lose them? Does the pain usually coincide with the it? Love? If so, I want nothing to do with it. I want to re-construct the idea of loving someone; break it down until there's just the elements and throw away the pain that comes with it. Just leave the feeling of completion and bliss that's better than all of the drugs and alcohol in the world. That feeling I've been blessed with when it came to Lily is the best I have ever felt in my life. I've had enough pain and sorrow for ten lifetimes. I don't need it; what I do need is her, because she is all I've ever wanted but never knew I needed.

Loving Lily is like nothing I've never experienced before. Drugs make me feel high, and alcohol dulls the pain of life in general. But loving her... it silenced the demons constantly whispering in my head and made me see a new light through hopeful eyes. I saw a future of happiness with her. I thought we were going to move in to a place together and we'd go on about our lives like I didn't set the bar of her love and virginity to the price of a goddamn guitar. I was a goddamn fool to create The Game with Hunter, but I'm a fucking dumbass for thinking the truth would never come to light.

I lost the only good thing to be in my life. And with losing her comes this pit of nothingness in my stomach. I have never felt raw pain like this before. I've gotten into a lot of brutal fights in the last few years but getting kicked in the stomach or being elbowed doesn't even compare to this pain in my chest. I wasn't supposed to feel this panic of watching her leave after everything was done. I wasn't supposed to care, but I do and there's nothing that I can do to make her see the good she once saw in me. I wish I'd never run into her the first day of school. I wish she'd never fallen for my treacherous kindness after the biker bar gig. Ultimately, I wish I wasn't so fucked up.

But this isn't a cartoon. A magic genie isn't going to pop up and grant my wishes and turn back the clock to when I didn't hurt her.

I have to live with this stabbing sensation of regret. This is my fault. All of it.

But that doesn't mean I won't try to fix everything that I broke.