Never Let Me Go

By Chloe Walsh

My life ended when I was fifteen years old.
Now, I'm just a ghost. A body. A lost soul.
He was supposed to be mine!
He was all I ever wanted.
The reason I kept breathing.
I deserved him.
But he's gone from me, too.
She took him away.
And now, I don’t want to be on the ground with him anymore.
And now, I don’t have to wait to see the stars.
I'm ready to float away...

Never Let Me Go is the final installment of the bestselling Blurred Lines duet.

Warning: This is a dark book and not for the faint-hearted. It contains scenes of an extremely upsetting nature. Strictly an 18+ read.

Author’s Note:
This fictional story focuses on the lives of high school students and contains graphic scenes of sexual violence, promiscuity, bullying, physical violence, excessive bad language, self-harm, rape, abduction, child abuse, and substance abuse. Some scenes in this book may be extremely upsetting for some readers and, due to its explicit content, Never Let Me Go is recommended for mature readers of eighteen years old and above.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Chloe Walsh
• Release date: Dec 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310390043

Chloe Walsh

Chloe Walsh is the USA Today bestselling author of the Boys of Tommen series. She has been writing and publishing new adult and adult contemporary romance for a decade. Her books have been translated into multiple languages. Animal lover, music addict, TV junkie, Chloe loves spending time with her family and is a passionate advocate for mental health awareness. Chloe lives in Cork, Ireland, with her family.

Book preview

Never Let Me Go

NEVER LET ME GO

BOOK TWO

CHLOE WALSH

The right of Chloe Walsh to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means – electronic, mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system – without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form or binding or cover than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Published by Chloe Walsh

Copyright 2014 by Chloe Walsh

All Rights Reserved. ©

Never Let me Go,

Blurring Lines #2,

First published, December 2015

Republished, January 2018

All rights reserved. ©

Cover designed by Sarah Paige.

Edited by Aleesha Davis.

Proofread by: Bianca Rushton.

DISCLAIMER

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

The author acknowledges all songs titles, song lyrics, film titles, film characters, trademarked statuses, brands, mentioned in this book are the property of, and belong to, their respective owners. The publication/ use of these trademarks is not authorized/ associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

Chloe Walsh is in no way affiliated with any of the brands, songs, musicians or artists mentioned in this book.

All rights reserved ©

AUTHOR’S NOTE

This fictional story focuses on the lives of high school students and contains graphic scenes of sexual violence, promiscuity, bullying, physical violence, excessive bad language, self-harm, rape, abduction, abuse, and substance abuse. Some scenes in this book may be extremely upsetting for some readers and, due to its explicit content, Blurring Lines is recommended for mature readers of eighteen years old and above.

Warning: This book is not for the faint-hearted and contains scenes of an upsetting nature.

Duet in order:

Blurring Lines

Never Let Me Go

Thank you all for taking the time to read this note.

And thanks to everyone who has read any of my work.

I truly appreciate each and every one of you.

Chloe

x

BACK TO THE BEGINNING OF THE END.

1

CADE

Ihad experienced many fucked up nights in my lifetime.

Nights when I’d been shitfaced and had woken up in a pool of my own vomit, feeling more fucking depressed than I’d been before I’d put the bottle to my lips. Nights when I hated every damn person breathing in the vicinity. Nights when I had wanted to die.

The night she was taken from me...

Well tonight was a lot like that night…

Except tonight was worse.

Because tonight felt like everything and its mother was trying to find a way to tear us apart. First Kenzie’s father almost strangled me to death, and then my mother dropped the killer blow. The annihilator.

I was dreaming. I had to be. Caught in the worst mother-fucking nightmare of all time, because I swear to god only my worst nightmares could have conjured up tonight’s events. Mackenzie going on a date with that creep Keller. Mitch beating the shit out of me. Mom announcing Emily was pregnant. Jesus, this was too damn much. I was a senior in high school for fuck's sake.

Emily’s pregnant. Now you know, Cade – be a man and deal with it.

Goddammit to hell…

You can't mean that, Mitch – tell me you're joking…

Our parents continued to yell at each other – at me – but I couldn’t hear a damn thing.

I couldn’t see out of my right eye.

I couldn’t fucking think straight.

I had a pain in my chest, but I knew it wasn’t from the blow Mitch had delivered to that area of my body. No, this pain was coming from the inside out. My heart was fucking breaking into pieces and on the outside all I could do was sit on my bedroom floor, frozen to the spot, with my hands hanging loosely around my knees, and drowning in my own regrets. My mind was consumed with the words that had come out of my mother’s mouth just a few short minutes ago.

Emily’s pregnant. It’s your baby, Cade. Now you know – be a man, and deal with it.

She's lying, I whispered to myself, chest heaving. I’d never been unsafe with her. Never. Dammit, the last time we’d had sex was months ago – before Kenzie came home. I had been religiously careful with Emily – the same couldn’t be said for my time with Kenzie. She has to be.

How was I supposed to do that when Mackenzie was my entire life? How did I explain that she gave me a reason to breathe – that when she was taken I’d lost my reason and her return had brought that back?

She was everything for me.

Everything.

I couldn’t give her up again.

Not for Emily or… or for the baby.

Now what the hell kind of man did that make me?

I don’t want you next to or near my daughter again, Sharon. Not after how you spoke to her.

I didn’t mean it – Mitch, you can’t be serious…

"Go play house with Emily and your grandbaby. My daughter is my priority."

My mind furiously tried to date a time in the past few months that I’d been with Emily, and I couldn’t fuck think. Jesus Christ I couldn’t think straight.

I could hear my heartbeat hammering in my ears.

My legs were shaking.

She couldn’t be pregnant. It was fucking impossible. Hell, I would’ve noticed… wouldn’t I?

I didn’t want it to be true.

Jesus, please don’t let this be true.

And then I thought about Emily’s reaction to Kenzie coming home and I guess it made sense. If she knew she was pregnant back then, it made sense for her to behave in such an irrationally jealous manner. But fuck…

My mother said in a little over five months… Shit, that made Emily what… sixteen weeks? More?

My heart sank.

I trusted you, Cade, I heard Mitch snarl, breaking me from my reverie, and I cast a glance in his direction.

He looked as broken as I felt.

I trusted you, he repeated, voice haggard. And you abused that trust – you abused her…

How? I demanded, suddenly furious at being told I somehow abused Mackenzie by loving her and giving into her every fucking need. Jerking to my feet, I wiped the blood that was trickling from my mouth away with the back of my hand and glared down at where my stepfather and my mother were sitting on the floor.

How the hell can you say that with a straight face, I roared. I LOVE her. I’ve been LOVING her my entire fucking life and you know that.

How the hell can I think any differently, Cade? Mitch replied in a furious tone of voice. His voice grew louder with every word he spoke. You took her to bed. My daughter, he spat. Mackenzie doesn’t understand a damn thing about a man's intentions – how could she, after what those bastards did to her – but she trusts you. And you took her trust and used it for your own selfish needs.

The blood drained from my face. Is that what you think? I spluttered, feeling physically wounded. You think I'm like those men?

No, I don’t think you're like those men, he snarled. I think you're worse.

'That's not fair, I choked out. I tried to stop. I fucking didn’t mean to…"

Oh shut up, Cade, my mother screamed, interrupting the both of us. This isn’t doing any good. We need to be discussing what you're going to do about Emily. You need to call her – make things right.

My mother climbed to her feet and I glared at her. "I'm not going to do anything about Emily, I roared into her face. I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t think straight and my mother putting pressure on me was something I couldn’t handle right now. So just stop fucking pushing it."

She's having your baby!

I don’t care. I was going to hell. I was a bad fucking man, but I couldn’t lie to myself a minute longer. How are we even sure it's mine? I was clutching at straws, but I was desperate – to get myself out of a life that I was being sucked into…tied down to. Shaking my head, at a loss, I threw my hands in the air in frustration. We haven’t been together for months – and I was safe every damn time.

That question earned me a slap in the face. For shame, Cade Mathews, my mother hissed. It's your baby, Cade. Emily is a good girl. She's not a slut like…

Like Mickey? Mitch offered in a deathly cold tone of voice.

My mother paled, having realized what she almost said. No, Mitch, I didn’t mean it like that.

Save it, Sharon. You've made your feelings toward my daughter pretty damn clear tonight. Mitch slowly climbed to his feet and sneered at me. You’ve already knocked up one of your girlfriends. Shaking his head in a move of obvious disgust, he spat, You sure as hell won’t be adding my daughter to that list.

The sound of the front door closing distracted me from Mitch and a cold tremor ran down my spine.

Kenzie…

Mackenzie, wait! I roared, voice torn with pain as I turned to go after her.

My mother grabbed my arm. Where are you going?

Where do you think I’m going? Shaking my head, I shrugged her off.

Reviews for Never Let Me Go

[rkaye · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I enjoy angsty stories but I need to feel that they are everything to each other. True soulmates. And while I felt Kenzie felt that way about Cade, I couldn’t really say the same for Cade about Kenzie. When she left that final time, he bordered on pathetic. I would have expected him to track her down or at the very least out everything in order for when she came back. But my biggest issue with this book was there was no tools out in place for Kenzie to heal. Cade loving her (if you can call it that) does not magically erase the years of abuse. Where were her years of counselling? Slowly building trust back up? It almost became a joke that whatever serious matters arose in the story, I just couldn’t take seriously because it was handled so badly. Like it wasn’t a big deal at all with everything she went through. Don’t even get me started on Emily and the big cop out of the century. SMH