To love you | Malum

Ch. 18 - Throw It All Away + Sadness

"I do mind, actually," Luke gritted his teeth, and I felt disgusted by the way he growled at the brunette, by the way Calum just took it and didn't do anything about it. This was toxic, and it made me hate myself even more than I already do. "I'm fucking tired of you demanding time with this idiot. Can't you see he just wants to get in your pants? God Calum, grow the fuck up and pay attention to me for once."

"I will, I will," Calum shook his head, "I just need a second alone with him, please. Then you can have me all you want." Luke seemed satisfied at that answer, and he just walked away with that same old grin on his face, and I didn't want to be apart of this anymore. I didn't even want to look at Calum. "Michael, look at me."

"You said you broke up with him."

"And I did," Calum frowned, mocha eyes melting into my green ones, but I wasn't going to let him get to me this time. Not when he was just continuously hurting me. "But some things are just beyond my control a-and I just. . I was stupid to think that I could just go back to him without there being any consequences."

"Then why did you?" I asked, and I hated that my voice cracked, I hated that I was being vulnerable, and I hated that Calum was being sympathetic. It was the opposite of what I wanted. "Why did you go back to somebody who's so. . so wrong for you?"

"Don't say that Michael, you don't know me. You don't know what's good for me," Calum scolded, and I just wanted to crawl into a hole and die. I didn't want to be here anymore. I've been holding onto this string in hopes that it'd save me, but it's only pushing me down further and further. There wasn't much to do about it at this point. "I'm fucked up, okay? I like putting myself in bad situations, I like being bad, not good. I've never been good, and I'm certainly not good for you."

"That's just you hiding under your shell," I broke down, letting his lies get between the layers of my skin. "That's just you pretending to be somebody you're not."

"It's not like we were meant to be anyway," Calum laughed with a forced smile on his face, and now I knew what it meant to love Calum Hood. I knew, I knew, I knew, and I just wanted to lose my memory at this point.

Maybe you're right, we're polar opposites," I gave in, because I knew there was no use in fighting. It'd just bring all of the good times back, to the time he held me up so I could paint, to the time he talked to me in music class, to the time he ran with me even though I was in a wheelchair and I could've gotten hurt. He taught me what it meant to live, and now all I feel is dead inside. Maybe that's what I'm meant to feel. Maybe I'm not meant to feel anything else but that.

"How?"

"We're polar opposites, Calum. You smoke cigarettes and vape, I drink coffee and play video games."

"Yet you're somehow my favorite person in the universe," Calum reiterated, and my heart started pounding again, but I needed to get it to stop. This was just him easing me in, this was just him making the situation not as bad as it seems, this was just him being Calum, and hurting me more and more by the second. "Don't - don't do that."

"Why not? I'm only stating the truth."

"Yeah, and the truth is that you prefer Luke over me. The truth is that you'd rather be with an abusive cunt who doesn't really give a shit about you over somebody who does. Over somebody who'd give you everything you ask for."