Toxic (Ruin, #2)(50)

“She found me…” Gabe said in a low voice. “After I tried to overdose.”
“It was my idea.” Lisa looked down at the ground. “To run away. To leave our lives behind and start fresh, especially when we found out Kimmy was going to make it. The world that used to be so fun and shiny had become our own personal hell.”
Melanie Faye had been mentioned in magazines only because she’d been Ashton’s best friend. People always said they were dating but no one had ever actually confirmed it as truth. They had grown up next door to one another. She was a model; he was a triple threat Hollywood heart-throb. A match made in heaven.
I used to want to be her.
Because at fourteen I’d been obsessed with all things Ashton Hyde.
Fantastic.
“I, um…” I pushed away from the floor. “I need to go.”
Without looking back, I ran out of the restaurant, my chest heaving with exertion as my feet pounded against the pavement.
“Wait!” Gabe yelled from behind me.
I lifted my left hand mid-air, waving him off, pushing him away as I reached for the car door with my right, my breathing ragged. I couldn’t look at him. I just… couldn’t. I felt betrayed. Lied to. All I’d asked for was truth, and he’d given me lies.
A part of me understood the need to protect himself.
But I wasn’t one of those friends. The ones that you gave a sliver to while you sucked them dry.
That wasn’t friendship.
“What?” My voice cracked. “What more could you possibly say?”
“You promised.”
“Excuse me?” I turned in a flash, ready to slap the crap out of him when he stalked toward me.
I backed up out of total self-preservation. I didn’t trust my emotions around him, not when it was like staring at three different people. Was he Ashton, the famous actor and pop star? Was he Gabe, the wounded bird that just needed someone to talk to? Or was he Parker, the broken fiancé?
Gabe’s eyes were wild. “I can’t lose you. I can’t.”
“Funny.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Because I’ve already lost you. I lost Gabe. I never knew Parker. And now I’m losing Ashton all over again. I wonder how much more I can lose — before I’m empty.”
“Saylor—”
“I asked for truth. You gave me lies.”
“When?” He pulled me against his chest. “When did I lie to you?”
My mind searched for situations where he’d out right lied… and I came up with nothing. Absolutely nothing, except for one thing. “Your name.”
“I told you,” he muttered, his lips nearly touching mine, “I told you there were things I kept hidden — is this it then? You’re rejecting me?”
“Me?” I tried to jerk free. “Reject you? No, Gabe. That’s like saying I’m setting a caged bird free without ever being given the bird in the first place. What we had wasn’t real. You can’t base what we had on truth when nothing was actually real. God…” I started shaking. “I was falling for you. Falling for you, Gabe! How do you think that makes me feel? Do you even know who you are?”
“No.” He sighed. “I guess that’s the problem when you spend four years trying to forget.”
We stood in silence. So many words rushed through my head, things I could say that wouldn’t actually make anything better because at the end of the day, our worlds should have never collided in the first place.
“Saylor,” he pleaded. “Let me make it up to you. Let me tell you the truth — can I have one chance, one chance to come clean?”
“Why would I give you this chance?” I slowly pried myself free. “When you haven’t even made up for the tears you caused the first time? Why in the hell would I give you the opportunity to cause more?”
Gabe stared at me for a few minutes, his shoulders slumped. He nodded slowly.
And then he walked away.
He walked away.
And a part of me hated him for it. Because for once in my life I understood what it meant to be at a crossroads where someone either chooses you or them.
He didn’t choose me.
I was alone.
Just how I started.
Only now, I realized how lonely I actually was.
I wiped away a few more stray tears and got into my car. Rain started pounding against the windshield as I drove toward campus.
My life wasn’t over.
So why did it feel like it?



Chapter Thirty-Six
Sometimes by holding onto what you love the most — you end up choking the very life from the thing you want to keep on living. It’s possible to try too hard, to love something so deeply that you lose yourself. The danger is never in loving someone — but losing your identity in the process. Because what happens when tragedy strikes? You’re left an empty shell. You’re left with nothing. It’s why I tried to end things. Why I didn’t want to go on living — because I’d been living through her, not with her, and I had forgotten how to be myself. How to be normal. The only problem was — I was okay with it. —Gabe H.
Saylor
I took I5 and kept driving.
When I pulled up to the small subdivision in Mill Creek. I turned off my car and stared at my mom’s apartment.
Once we’d lived in a nice neighborhood, but because rent always went up over the years we moved around a lot.
Luckily, she was a nurse, so she had a good job, but still… We’d never had a ton of money, so we didn’t have a large home, just a different apartment every few years.