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“I would never hurt you, Molloy,” he slurred, his words a lot like his life, a broken mess. “I’d rather die than hurt you.”
“Only thing I’ve ever done right in my life is leave you alone.”
The rain was pouring down on both of us, but I wasn’t walking away. Not now that I knew. Not ever again.
He wasn’t violent by nature. He was violent because he wasn’t nurtured at home.
This was our first kiss, and it wasn’t the comet-hitting-earth moment I had anticipated from years of binge-watching unhealthy teen sitcoms. It wasn’t anything like what happened in the movies. It was so much more. This kiss was real, and raw, and gritty, and so full of unspoken emotion that I felt my legs shake from the pressure.
Nothing else mattered to me. All I could see, feel, taste, touch was him. He was everywhere. Consuming me entirely.
“I want time with you, Molloy. I do. I want to be all kinds of right for you. But I have walls and limits and boundaries, and the only way I can be with you, get close to you, is if you stay the fuck behind them!”
“There are going to be times when I look like this, and I’m not going to be able to give you an explanation. I can’t give you the words, Molloy, because those words will cost other people too much.”
He acted like nothing bothered him, when in truth he was eaten alive by the pain and insecurity of his home life.
Laughter erupted from the rugby table, and I couldn’t stop the surge of heat that spread in my chest when she looked across the room at me and beamed.
She was something else, that girl. Her smile caused a dull ache to settle in my chest.
My body was aching in ways that I never knew it could, and there was only one thing I knew that could help me. And I hated myself for being weak enough to need it.
“Because that’s all you’ll ever be to him. Paul will never care about what’s inside your head or put your feelings before his. He’ll come first in every way and everything, and if that’s enough for you, then I’m happy for you, I sincerely am, but it was never enough for me.”
“You’re a grand lad, Joey,” Tony added, giving my shoulder a squeeze. “A lad I would be happy to see look after my Aoife.”
“I took a chance on that boy, and I’m glad that I did because the man that small boy turned into is a man who I am damn proud of.”
“Don’t hate me, Molloy,” Joey mumbled, falling into the passenger seat the moment I let him go to open the car door. “You’re all I have to wake up for in the morning.”
I believed her, and that scared me worse than the prospect of staying. Because I knew that she was willing to do anything to help me, and in the end it wouldn’t be enough, because I was too fucking gone in the mind.
She was too good for me, too fucking good for the world. I knew deep down inside that I needed to let her go in order to give her some chance of a future.
There were no words to describe the level of helplessness I had felt when I watched Joey soar and then roughly crash and burn. I wasn’t stupid. I could see the red flags shooting up in every direction. Problem was, I was too in love to take heed. Because I knew that beneath all of the pain and bullshit, there was someone worth saving in there. He was a good person who made terrible decisions.
He was going to break my heart, I knew it. I could see it coming from a mile away, and I still couldn’t seem to get my self-preservation instincts to kick in and protect me from the inevitable.
couldn’t walk away if I wanted to.
“You’re all I have to wake up for in the morning.”
I made a mental vow that I wouldn’t allow him to lose himself to the world he teetered on the edge of. No matter what, I would be right beside him, ready to pull him back to safety. Even if it meant that I lost myself in the process.
“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 want you to know that you’ve been the best part of my day every day since I was twelve years old.”
“My life has been a shitstorm from day dot, Molloy, and the whole goddamn town knows it. I’ve never had calm. But you?” His tear-filled eyes implored me to hear him. “You were like an island. Somewhere for me to go and escape. Somewhere safe. Someone to anchor me, if that even makes sense. And I took advantage of that when I had no right to. I was selfish when I dragged you into my world. Now, I need to put you first.”
“Then put me first by not doing this, because I don’t want this, Joey. I don’t want your goodbyes.”
