Saving 6 (Boys of Tommen #3)

by Chloe Walsh

As weird as it sounded, and even though I was still plenty mad about the whole ordeal, Joey getting high and puking all over the walls of my bedroom had unintentionally brought us closer.

“You’re the biggest ride in school.” “No, you’re the biggest ride.” “No, no, I insist it’s you.” “Okay, then we’re both rides.” “Yay!”

I had no problem with Molloy’s extroverted nature, it was who she was. It was a huge part of why I had been drawn to her in the first place, but I had a very big problem with her male friends’ wandering hands.

don’t love you.” Sighing heavily, he covered my hands with his and whispered, “I don’t love you back.”

Resting against the velvet padding interior was a tiny silver locket with the date 30.08.99 on the front.

“The first day of first year,” he explained quietly. “The first time I laid eyes on you, and the first time I understood what it meant to have my heart beating for someone outside of my family.”

“It’s okay,” I croaked out, shifting closer until I was snuggled up to his chest. “We can handle the words the same way we handle sex.” Pressing a kiss to his chest, I whispered, “Except in this instance you set the pace, and I’ll fall in line.” “That sounds like a plan,” he agreed gruffly. “Yeah.” I closed my eyes and sighed in contentment. “It does.”

I didn’t flinch or shy away when I said, “Because I want to look that bastard in the eyes and show him that you have someone ready and willing to go to war both with you and for you.”

I wanted to hate her so bad for allowing Joey to suffer for as long as he had. Instead, all I felt in this moment was pity.

“I am his mother,” she agreed, weary. “And that’s how I know that he will break you.” A shiver racked through her slender frame. “He will chip away at your heart, gnawing and gouging at it, tearing away at it strip by strip, until there is nothing left. Until you are nothing. He will break you because that’s all he knows. It’s all he’s ever known.”

“Yeah.” Nodding, I squeezed his hand and smiled, letting his mother know that her words had fallen on deaf ears. I would only ever leave this boy if I was dragged from him kicking and screaming. “You were.”

“And you’ll never take anyone else’s,” I warned him. “That’s your lot, Lynch. Your first, last, and only virgin. You just signed your dick away in a blood oath, buddy.”

“Hey, Joe?” “Yeah?” “I’m glad that I waited,” she whispered, curling her arm around my neck. “It meant more with you.”

"You cheeky little whore," he snarled, hand tightening on the door. "Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?" "Oh, I know exactly who I’m talking to,”

When I didn’t feel well, I self-medicated. When my sister didn’t feel well, she starved herself half to death. Her reaction to stress was as real to her as mine was to me.

“Wow, Joe.” She waggled her brows. “It kind of sounds like you might be in looooove?” “I am.” “Oh my god.” Her eyes bulged. “I was half expecting you to deny it.” “There’s no point.” I shrugged. “I love the girl. It is what it is.”

“It’s like you know you’re about to get your ass handed to you by exposing yourself to this person, and you know that you’re fucking around on the edge of something that could potentially break and ruin you, but it’s just so damn thrilling, so consumingly addicting, that you’re willing to take the risk and do just about anything to be with that person.”

My heart cracked clean open when I felt the first tear land on my collarbone, followed by another and another. He was still moving inside me, still taking what he needed from me, but he was broken. And I was terrified that I couldn't fix him.

“O-ee poos!” Sean hollered from the utility room, and I had never been so relieved to clean shit up than I was in this moment. “Coming, Seany,” I called back before saying, “Ols, we can pick this conversation back up when you’re a teenager.”

Being in love with someone who was hell bent on self-destructing was such a lonely place to exist. I felt incredibly helpless, watching on as my boyfriend buried his secrets with lie upon countless lie. I wanted to save him.

“Help him, Aoife,” she cried, clutching at her throat. “He’s all alone in t-the world.” “No, he’s not,” I assured her in a shaky tone as I ran for door, with only one destination in mind. “He has me.”

I thought about feeding her the same bullshit I’d given to the Gards, but I had too much respect for this girl, and had too many feelings involved, to give her anything other than the truth.

“Bull,” she shouted, turning back towards the Garda station. “You’re being used as a scapegoat for your father’s crimes. Your mother just threw you to the wolves to save her abusive husband’s skin. She should have been down here with you last night, straightening all of this out and telling them that they arrested the wrong person. Instead, she was with him, plotting and scheming up a story to tell the world about how her son has anger management issues, when that couldn’t be further from the truth. You’re not the instigator in this, he is, and I’m not about to sit back and watch you take the blame.”

“You swore you wouldn’t,” I reminded her. It was why I opened up to her. “You fucking promised me!” “Well, I have to do something, Joey,” she strangled out. “I can’t watch this happen to you. I love you!“ “Well, don’t!” I roared back at her. “If loving me means betraying my trust, then don’t fucking bother! Don’t love me and don’t get involved. I can take care of my own shit.”

“Yeah, and of this song.” Pulling me close he pressed a kiss to the curve of my jaw and said, “When I was small, I used to ask him what the words of the song meant. He would always say that one day, when I found myself in love with a girl, I wouldn’t have to ask him what the words meant, because I would already know.” His arms tightened around me. “Turns out he was right.”

None of the boys in our year could fight like Joey, because, unlike the trivial fights they got into, when my boyfriend fought, it was a matter of life and death. Because when someone threatened Joe, it sent him right back to that house, where he had to fight for his life against a man who had caused so much post-traumatic stress inside of him that I doubted a lifetime of therapy could fix.

Alone in the dark, I couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and wasn’t. Shadows danced on my bedroom wall. I couldn’t feel a thing. I couldn’t hurt. No more pain. No fucking more...

Joey stared at my outstretched hand for a long moment before placing his on top of it and entwining our fingers. “I guess we’re both too stubborn for running, huh, Molloy?” “Or too in love.” “Yeah,” he agreed, tone gruff, as he pressed a kiss to the back of my hand. “Or that.”

Aoife Molloy had a heart of gold and was hellbent on handing it over to a piece of shit like me. She was my momentary escape from all of the fucking dark. She was the only bit of brightness I had in my life, and it scared me to think of how little else I had going for me. Without her, I had nothing. Without her, I was nothing.

“Then why aren’t you shouting at me?” I shook my head in clouded confusion. “I’ve stopped trying, Molloy. I can’t try anymore. Why aren’t you kicking me out?” “Because you might not love yourself, but I do. I love you enough for the both of us,” she whispered, fisting my cock in her hand. “And if keeping you here with me means that you’re off the streets and safe, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

Hell, I didn’t give a fuck about me. But I cared about those kids that spent most of their lives cowering in their beds. Yeah, I cared a lot for them.

It had happened. I had finally hit my limit. I had nothing left in the tank. Nothing left to give these people. I was done. Gone. Dead inside.

"No." Shaking my head, I stalked right over to him and grabbed his face in my hands, roughly, raw, sincerely refuting his deepest fear. "You are nothing like him." “Yes, I am,” he strangled out, breaking free from my hold as he staggered away from me. “And if you don’t get away from me soon, you’re going to end up just like my mother.”

“I…love…” I felt my body tense when he clumsily reached across the car and tried to pat my thigh. “You…Molloy….” Tell me when you’re sober,” I replied, giving his hand a gentle squeeze. “It won’t count tonight.” “Why won’t it count, Molloy?” “Because you won’t remember it,” I whispered sadly.

“You’re not good for me,” she whispered brokenly, clinging to the hand I had wrapped around her. “I get that now.” Her fingers dug into my forearm. “But it doesn’t stop my heart from loving you, or my head from wanting you.”

"You might be the addict in this relationship, but you’re also the habit that I need to kick,” she strangled out, chest heaving, as she turned in my arms to face me. “Because I feel like I’m dying when I’m with you, and I feel like I’m dead when I’m not.”

“And I can’t walk away, because I know that there's still a little bit of you left in there,” she choked out. Placing her hand over the part of my chest that bore her name, she sniffled another sob and whispered, “Which means that I'm going to keep on loving you, Joey Lynch. So, you might want to start thinking about stopping breaking my heart.”

The louder she cried, the tighter my lungs squeezed until she was full on screaming into my chest, and I was full-on dying on the inside.

It didn’t make sense how he could do that to me; make me feel like nothing could hurt me when I was in his arms, when the truth was very different.

"Listen, I want you to know something,” he said quietly, clenching my hip with his hand. “I want you to know that you’ve been the best part of my day every day since I was twelve years old."

“Jesus, don’t start this shit already.” Leaning in, I quickly blew out the candles before looking to my sister and saying, “You didn’t have to do this for me.” “I would do so much more if I could,” she replied, leaning in for a half-hug, while she batted several small hands away from the cake. “I love you, Joe.” “O-ee,” Seany crooned, clutching my leg. “O-ee.” “We all do,” Tadhg begrudgingly agreed. “Love you, that is.” “Uh-huh,” Ollie added. “So much.” “Yeah.” I blew out a pained breath and took stock of the small humans circling me. “Right back at ye.”

I’d given a year of my life to the girl, and there was a small part of me, a tiny spark of hope still flickering around in my chest. One that allowed me to believe that if I could get a handle on my shit, if I could just overcome this horrible fucking habit I’d fallen into, then maybe, in time, I could win her back. Maybe, I could become someone deserving of being with her, because the current version of me sure as hell wasn’t.

Because with all of the freedom that alcohol provided me, it stripped me of all logic and awareness. It rendered me reckless, before sending me plummeting headfirst down the path of no return.

week before. It was the driving force behind my decision to park my ass on this couch and stay out of trouble for the night. I couldn’t fuck up again. I couldn’t afford to. I knew in my heart that if I let myself slip back down that hole, there would be no coming back out.

With my heart hammering violently in my chest, I stepped outside and pulled the front door out behind me, knowing that whatever she had to say was going to hurt, but complying without protest because I deserved everything that she could throw at me and more.

“I’m the problem here, Molloy. I’m the one who’s never going to be enough, not you.” “You are enough!“ “I’m not,” he replied. “I’m really not, baby.”

“Why can’t you love me more?” she continued to cry, holding onto me with a vice-like grip. “Why am I not enough for you?” “I do love you more,” I choked out, feeling my soul crack in half, as I reeled in the unimaginable fucking horror of what I’d done to her. “You are enough for me.”

How was I supposed to make her understand that, for most of my life, I had been desperate to escape. That the only solace I’d ever been able to find had been in the soothing drag of a joint, or a mind-altering line of coke, in the numbing effect of benzos, or the thrilling buzz of uppers? How could I forget the euphoric fucking feeling of heroin? Because Molloy didn’t know what it felt like to wake up every morning with a strong inclination to attempt suicide.

And she had no idea how quickly the shift in balance had happened for that kid, how it had snuck up on him so unexpectedly. She could never understand the excruciating self-loathing that came with the realization that the one vice that had once helped that kid make it through the day had silently morphed into something he couldn’t make it through a day without. She would never understand how it felt to transition from controlling your life with something you once enjoyed to becoming controlled by the very thing you now despised. I didn’t tell her any of

“I love you,” I reiterated, eyes locked on hers, as I brushed away a tear from her cheek. “I love you more than I have ever loved another person in my life, and that’s not an exaggeration. That’s the god honest truth.”