The Beast Is Me (The Beast And Me Book 4)

by D. S. Wrights

  Jay was alive.

  My Jay.

  He was alive.

  He is alive.

  I think I just sat there and stared into nothingness even as Austin stopped the car hours later. I can’t recall moving my legs or any other part of my body. I just couldn’t. I didn’t feel my body. I didn’t even feel my beast, which was usually firing up my core with the need to let off steam.

  “Meg,” I knew I heard Dan, but I wasn’t able to respond.

  I looked at him, my face blank and cold – that much I realized – but there was no expression, and I knew from his reaction that it killed him. I watched him guide me towards my room and myself following him. I probably wouldn’t have if he hadn’t taken me by the hand. I knew that he was looking at me, searching my face for any reaction, but there was none. That much I knew, that much I could process. I knew that what I saw in his features were concern, worry, and hurt, and beyond that there was something else, something that looked like guilt.

  I should have known, right then and there, I should have made something from what I read in his face, but I didn’t. I was just too overwhelmed by the fact that the person I thought I watched die, watched being blown to pieces, was actually still alive. In my head, all the scenarios were happening one after another, questioning me, asking why I hadn’t actually seen a possibility that he wasn’t dead, and how I could have sex with Dan, cuddle up with him while Jay was still alive. How I could I have allowed myself to feel something for Four when Jay wasn’t dead. And yet, yet it made everything so much worse., because it didn’t change the fact that he had made a decision without giving me a chance to change his mind. Now, now I had the chance to face him and ask him why, and yet something told me that this wasn’t the case. There had been something in his expression, something that told me I wouldn’t get an answer to the question that had continued to slowly kill me he last three months.

  “Meg,” I heard Daniel talk to me, but I was incapable of reacting.

  “Kitten,” he whispered, but I couldn’t bring myself to move a limb.

  “Sweetness, please.”

  Nothing. I was cold. I was done.

  It was in the middle of the night, I think, because it was darker inside and no light was coming through the windows. I heard Daniel speak to me, just as he had done the entire time, patiently. I felt him, caressing my skin, brushing strands of hair out of my face, holding my hand in his, brushing his thumb across the back of it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and I think I could feel him grabbing my shoulders, preventing himself from pulling me into an embrace. “I know you probably won’t forgive me. I’m so sorry, Meg. I just wanted to spare you the pain, but now. Meg. Please, don’t hate me. Just… try to understand.”

  I felt something in my hands, something Daniel placed my fingers around. It was a book, a small one, somewhat thinner than a novel. It was a notebook, like the one he had taken from the office of the man I killed mercifully. I instantly knew it was a diary, and it tore a whole, new, fresh hole inside of me. Another gaping wound added to those that this night had torn open once again.

  Still, it didn’t break me free from my frozen state. I hadn’t found a plausible explanation for all of this yet, although it was so damn obvious. I just couldn’t process it, couldn’t stomach it.

  Jay was still alive.

  I was so incredibly happy, and yet I was so furiously mad at him for making his decisions without asking me. And then there was still Daniel, crawling in front of me, begging me, pleading with me not to hate him. Hate him for what? Keeping Jay’s second diary from me?

  The first thing my eyes focused on, the first thing I saw clearly, was the notebook in my hands. I was aware that I was sitting on my bed, back home, or at least the place I had started to call home. I tried to remember absolutely everything, or at least something Dan had told me, but I couldn’t really remember. Only his pleading. Only his hands enfolding mine, his eyes urging mine to see him.

  I remember flipping it open, I remember recognizing Jay’s handwriting, and that was when I tossed it aside, gently, but I still tossed it. I wouldn’t have been able to read it anyway because my sight was blurred by my tears. I just couldn’t stop it, I couldn’t stop sobbing, I couldn’t stop crying.

  Sometime, Dan was there again. This time wrapping his arms around me tightly, allowing me to drench his shirt with my tears. He held me close, while I was crying it all out, all the pain, all the abandonment, all the despair, all the fear and helplessness. Daniel didn’t say a word, but I could feel his defeat while he was holding me, allowing me to seep out all my pain. He could have tried to console me or kiss me, but he didn’t. All he did was be a friend, and hold me, giving me a safe haven in this tempest of emotions.

  “I… I can’t read it.” My voice sounded hoarse and weak. “How long did you have it?” My voice vanished into nothingness.

  I knew the answer, but I didn’t want to believe it. It all was just too much.

  “Just a few days,” Daniel answered honestly. “I didn’t want to get your hopes up. I’m sorry. I should have given it to you right away, I just… I just couldn’t bear the idea of you suffering even more.”

  I wanted to snort, to laugh at him sarcastically, but I couldn’t. He wanted to spare me the pain, to prevent me from getting my hopes up. Or from realizing that he wasn’t the only one left for me. I was so very angry at him right then, but I was utterly angry at Jay as well.

  I was angry at the world for dealing me this kind of fate. Just when I was willing to accept Dan and let Jay go. I would have taken on the fates, or God himself, if I would have been able to challenge either of them.

  Right then and there, all I wanted was to forget. I wanted to forget that I had seen him, I wanted to forget that it was Dan who held me, I wanted to forget that all of this had happened. I wanted to wake up in my bed in the student’s dorm, with my grumpy roommate for whom I wasn’t cool enough. Yet, I knew that it wouldn’t happen. I knew where I was stuck. I just had to figure out why Austin and Dan had forced me to flee the scene, when there was Jay, JAY charging us. It didn’t make sense. No, it did make total sense, but I didn’t want to accept the obvious explanation.

  Had I really seen him? Or had my senses tricked me? Had this been some random beast looking somewhat familiar? Getting myself stuck with this question was easier and more acceptable than facing the truth the rational part of my mind already had figured out.

  I know, I shouldn’t have, but I fell asleep in Dan’s arms, taking consolation in his warmth, his closeness, and affection. I tried to push aside that haunting question of why things couldn’t be just easy and simple.

  He had been lost while living in the compound. He didn’t have anyone to care for him, or be his friend, all he had known was that being a rabid, vile beast would spare him at least some sort of torture. I’m not sure if I will ever be able to forgive him his actions toward me, but then, I forgave Jay leaving scars on me.

  X X X

  I am relieved, yes. I’m incredulous, yes. I struggle with reality, most certainly. I have a hard time believing what I saw with my own eyes, but the diary in my hands proves it. I just read a few lines, but this is Jay’s writing about while I was still trying to come to my senses after my coma. But that, that’s not what is killing me. It’s the fact that Dan and Austin know more than I do. They have read it all. They had it in their possession while I was still struggling with my new reality. They knew that Jay might have been alive while I was still trying to process his death.

  So, that was the reason why he didn’t make any of his comments, why he stopped making advances on me, why he was so silent…

  A part of me understands why they have kept it from me, and that they would have kept it a secret from me if I hadn’t seen Jay with my own eyes. I haven’t read it all, but from what I gathered, it says that the ones that survived and lived to see the day aren’t the ones that we have met today.

  In the end, if he hadn’t made his decision,
if he hadn’t strayed from what he had agreed on, he wouldn’t be brainwashed right now. It doesn’t really change a thing, does it? Because right now – Jay, my Jay – is still gone.

  Day 63

  Jay is alive. Jay is alive. Jay is alive.

  Even after a full night of sleep, it’s all that I can hear in my head. I’m surprised that I was able to sleep at all, but that might be just a perk of my pregnancy.

  I tried to be rational about this, but how can I? We drove away from him, we abandoned him, but yet, yet my feelings of dread seem to have come true. When I recall that memory, the memory of me staring at him charging at us… now that I have slept on it… he didn’t recognize me. It didn’t seem like it, didn’t feel like it. And it was that fact Austin and Dan tried to protect me from. I wish I could deny it, but now after breakfast, meeting up in Austin’s office, it’s the undeniable truth, because they have told me about Jay’s second diary. It’s telling us just that, that they have been brainwashed.

  How am I supposed to handle this?

  How? How? How?

  Jay is still alive, but what? He doesn’t remember? He doesn’t remember anything? He doesn’t remember me? Or what I went through to bring him back to humanity? How am I supposed to live with that? With being erased from his mind? Why couldn’t they just have told me? Why did I have to run into this trap just to see him?

  To see Jay alive and breathing. Just to realize, to learn that he doesn’t remember me, or us, at all? How am I supposed to live with that?

  How?

  I found myself there, in Austin’s office, with Daniel standing there next to me but not too close. And I knew it. I just didn’t want to accept it. Yet, their glances at me said it all. They told me what I already knew. My dreams had been haunted with it the past night.

  The scene… it kept repeating in my head, over and over again: me in the van with the side door open, staring at him as he ran after the car. What I felt was still the same, being completely paralyzed, with my heart pumping wildly, loudly, but my breath stuck in my throat.

  Sometimes he shouted my name, trying to reach for me desperately; sometimes he growled furiously, trying to dig his claws into my flesh in order to pull me from the vehicle, sometimes he lost his breath, shouting for me, while Daniel held me back while I was struggling, kicking, and trying to break myself free, sometimes it was him, Dan, fighting off a rabid version of Jay, who was trying to kill me. And the last version, that was the one that ripped me from my sleep, gasping for air desperately and pressing my hands against my belly. The last one was the most terrifying one and I can’t get it out of my head. I am leaning out of the car, reaching for Jay, realizing too late the strange detached expression on his face. He lunges for me, and strikes out, gashing open my stomach, tearing my unborn child from me.

  I almost screamed. Almost. But I caught my breath.

  The look on my face had Dan terrified. Somehow, maybe just because he was there, sitting on a chair, maybe because I realized that he had watched over me the whole night, I didn’t burst into tears. Probably, I’m just still in shock. I don’t know.

  He was ready to jump, to come to me and hold me. Daniel can pretend to be a prick all he wants, but when he acts like that, when he looks at me like that, I know he cares. His decisions might be cold and calculated, but his motivation is to make me feel safe.

  I have to admit that it stung a little when he sat back in the chair again, allowing his face to freeze over with that usual mischievous smirk almost being invisible. But I realized that I can see behind that mask now. It hurt him that I wasn’t reaching out for him, that I didn’t show him I needed him. But most of all, his human blue eyes – and I guess that pained me most – they spoke of defeat. It was that loss of hope when you know that something will happen and yet there is this tiny spark that begs for the inevitable not crashing down on you. But it happens and you just can’t stand up and faced it.

  I’m not sure if that was what cut out another piece of my heart, or if I had secretly hoped for him to fight for me. Which was absolutely ridiculous. I was with Jay, he was the father of my child, and although I still hadn’t forgiven him, he was the love of my life. Or so I thought. Because… why didn’t I write: “he IS the love of my life”?

  “I’m going to give you some space,” Daniel eventually got up. “And get us some breakfast.” With that he looked away and walked out of my room, closing the door.

  And with that I am sitting here, writing down this crap. I almost wish myself back to the compound, where things were simpler, but that is outright insane.

  I don’t want this, any of this, but if my life as White’s captive taught me anything, it is that life won’t change because you don’t want it to be as it is. Things don’t change through wishful thinking, they do because you force them to, and you have to use the cards you’re dealt with, unless you manage to forge one. It would be great if life was as simple as a card game, then at least I would know what would come next by the cards on the table, but it’s not.

  I want Jay back. That’s a fact. I want him to remember me. I want to tell him that he is becoming a father. I want to be happy. I want us to be normal. As normal as we can be as beasts. I want him to apologize for making that decision and betraying me. I want him to accept that I chose to stay a beast and that I will stay a beast after our child is born. I want him to not beat himself up about something I have decided for myself. And I don’t know if he will. I don’t know if he can forgive himself for something he caused but was out of his hands. I want him to be happy to become a father, despite it being a beast. – Who knows, maybe it’s human? – But from what I have learned about him, he might not be able to do that. And even if he does… I don’t want to lose Daniel. I don’t want him to return to the prick, the asshole that he pretends to be. I don’t want him to hurt. I don’t want to be the reason for that. I don’t want to lose his closeness. Damn. I can’t have both, can I?

  X X X

  “I’m sorry,” Austin said and it echoed a thousand times in my head, confirming everything that happened like the gavel hitting a judge’s desk. “We… or rather I, hadn’t expected for him to be there.” Austin continued. “But we couldn’t actually anticipate it. From what we learned from the diary, he survived the explosion just as Daniel had. And after that they started to brainwash the survivors and alongside them, him.”

  I sat there in Austin’s office and listened to him, but for me looking at nothing was easier to stare at than their faces. It already had been hard enough for me to swallow down my food, yet alone for my numb body to try and stomach it.

  Right then, I couldn’t look at either of them. Not because I knew how they would make me feel and therefore act, but because I had no clue. After finally becoming one with my beast, it was gone again. Or maybe I was just so numb that I couldn’t feel or sense anything, let alone my beast.

  “He doesn’t remember you,” Dan said softly, gently. “But I know you saw that in his eyes.” Apparently he had learned to read me just as I did him, it made me look up and meet his eyes which he quickly averted. “He’s not the Jay we both know anymore.”

  Hearing it actually hurt more than I had expected. I had tried to brace myself for having to go through all the facts in order to figure out how we should go on from here. It felt even worse. As if both of these black holes inside of me started to consume even more of me. Yes, I wanted honesty, I wanted to be involved. Now, I had to accept the side effects and beast up. My glance had fallen to the ground again and I felt myself nod slightly at Dan’s last sentence. I had the strange urge to reach out to him, and just touch him. But should it be me who needed to be consoled? I had the chance and I didn’t take it. So, what was it? I had the answer. I just couldn’t spell it out.

  Jay and I were back to square one, of some sorts, yet worse. If he had just been frozen in his beast state, like when I met him, it wouldn’t be that bad, but him not being able to remember us, remember me, no one and maybe even nothing at all…
it was an indescribable feeling.

  For him, we didn’t exist. For us, he was a memory. For me, it was breaking my heart all over again, after I barely managed to bring all the pieces back together.

  I honestly don’t know if I can mend it ever again, maybe I should just sweep all those fragments in one pile and forget about them.

  I know I can’t change anything about this, about the alleged fact that he has no idea who I am and what we had. Still, I can’t accept it. I know what I saw and I can’t deny it, but maybe it’s just an act? Maybe, he wanted us to leave and acted as if he was unaware? As if their brainwashing worked?

  God, I hate to hope. And I hate not to just as much. Now I’m beating myself up with asking myself why I didn’t search longer.

  What if he made it out and we were gone?

  No, there were cars there, and he knew where we would go. And there was just no more time.

  We were back to where we started, with the only difference that he was in control of his beast – obviously – and that he didn’t need anyone to find himself. So, there was no point where I could get him, reach him, or appeal to him. It was even worse. Jay has known me from when we both were kids. That all was gone, too.

  I can’t beat myself up about things that have already happened. Things are as they are. His decision brought us to where we are now. Me being free, having Daniel and Austin with me and Jay still being a slave of the board, with the only difference that he now either has to pretend or is actually brainwashed. There is no way for me to know the truth, so I have to make a choice.

  I think I might actually already have.

  Jay is gone.

  I stare at these three words and try to feel something. Was there any pain, as I wrote them down? I can’t remember. I don’t know if I could, even if I tried.