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“Yeah,” I replied in a gruff tone. “I see you too, Molloy.”
“You matter to me, Joey Lynch.”
“The quintessential lost boy.” Her lips grazed mine as she spoke. “Don’t worry, Peter Pan, I’ll be your Wendy.”
“You should want me to leave, Molloy,” he argued. “You shouldn’t be blocking the door, baby. You should be holding it goddamn open.”
“You don’t get it, Molloy,” he growled as his lips claimed mine, hands moving straight to my hips as he dragged them roughly against his. “I’m broken in the head. I don’t work right. I get hooked. I get so fucking addicted, and if we keep this up I won’t let go. I won’t be able to.”
“I was only being friendly,” the blond lad argued as his friend led him away. “It’s nice to be nice, Johnny.” “Yeah, I know you were, Gibs, but those people are strangers, and what did we say about you talking to strangers?” “Don’t do it?” “Exactly.”
“But don’t ever think that I don’t have feelings,” he said, and then pressed a kiss to my mouth. “Because the only time that I allow myself to feel anything is when I’m with you.”
“It’s not a matter of pride here. It’s a matter of laying your cards on the table and proving that I matter to you just as much as you matter to me.”
Talking while I was wrestling with my temper like this wouldn’t do either of us an ounce of good. I would lose my head and spit my poison all over her feelings. It wouldn’t matter if I meant the words coming out of my mouth or not; they would explode from my lips like bullets intended to decimate my intended target. A self-preservation tactic that had been programmed into me since birth.
“Love you.” “See you at five.” “Say it.” “Jesus Christ, just go the fuck back to work.” “Say it and I will.” “No.” I blew out a frustrated growl. “Stop pushing.” “You love it when I push you,” she teased, and then her voice took on a flirty purr when she added, “But you love it even more when I pull you.” “What have I gotten myself into?” “The best relationship of your life.” She wasn’t wrong there. “See you at five.”
Unfortunately for me, God didn’t let children pick their parents. If he did, then maybe there would be fewer miserable children in the world. If he did, then I sure as hell wouldn’t be anywhere near these people.
“Yeah, I am,” he replied, yawning. “If you’re in my heart, then I’m in your ass.”
“Second,” he said slowly. “Do you see a future with her?” “No,” I replied, hating my admission but needing to give him the truth, because if anyone deserved my honesty it was this man. “I don’t see a future for us, but that’s not because I don’t want one with her. It’s because I don’t see a future for myself, period.”
“No.” I shook my head, brow furrowed in confusion. “I’m really not, Tony.” “You forget that I’ve known you since you were a small boy of twelve,” he reminded me as he steered us toward the back door. “I remember looking at this small scrap of a lad standing in the garage, down on his luck and with the weight of the world on his shoulders. That small boy asked me for a chance that day,” he added, voice thick with emotion. “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.”
“Me,” Shannon whispered, trembling behind me. “It’s me.” “If by her you’re referring to my fella’s sister, then I’ll give you a five-second head start to get the fuck out of her face before I cut your ponytail off and strangle you with it.”
“You want to be my friend?” “Is that okay with you?” “Yes.” She nodded uncertainly. “Please.” My heart cracked in my chest. She was so small. So vulnerable. So broken.
I couldn’t fucking do this anymore. I couldn’t. I tried. I did.
I tried so hard to be good, but it never seemed to matter because nothing was going to change for me.
“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.”
Because I knew that beneath all of the pain and bullshit, there was someone worth saving in there.
And as I lay on my side, running my hand through his hair and watching him sleep, 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.
Resting against the velvet padding interior was a tiny silver locket with the date 30.08.99 on the front. “That date…” I blew out a shaky breath. “It’s—” “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.”
“I just don’t know how to not do it.” “Not do what, Joe?” “Reject human affection.” My heart. My poor, poor heart.
“He doesn’t do much of that, you know,”
“Smile,” she clarified. “He doesn’t smile often.” “He’s smiling a lot more lately,” I told her. “More than he used to, at least.”
“That’s your lot, Lynch. Your first, last, and only virgin. You just signed your dick away in a blood oath, buddy.”
“It never meant anything before you.” “Aw,” she teased. “You’re a sweet slut.” I grinned. “Thanks.”
By some small grace of God, the old man had walked out on our mother three nights ago. He declared that we could all burn to death for all he cared because he’d found himself a real woman.
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.
“Because you might not love yourself, but I do. I love you enough for the both of us,”
I felt like I was the other woman in a twisted love triangle between him, my heart, and his latest drug of choice.
“Pain,” he roared into my face, eyes alight with temper as his shadow danced with his demons. “On the outside. On the inside. All around me. Pain so fucking strong I’m drowning in it!” He ran his bloodstained hands through his hair, tingeing his blond hair a faint crimson color. “That’s what I feel. That’s all I feel. All the fucking time!”
“You might be the addict in this relationship, but you’re also the habit that I need to kick,” she choked 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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
Whether it was love or duty that kept me shackled here, the lines were too blurred to differentiate, but one thing I was sure of was that I would never become to them what Darren had become to me. I would never abandon them. If I could do nothing else, I would spare them that pain.
You will not fall apart. I held my breath to steady the sobbing. You will not crumble.
One more hour, I mentally challenged myself. Give it all you’ve got for one more hour, and if it still hurts as bad, you can call him.
The thought of having to feel this way forever was too huge a concept and too fucking demoralizing, so I concentrated on a period of time that I could tolerate. One hour at a time. I could do that.
“Don’t eat it like that, you weirdo!” Gaping in horror at the way my sister brutally savaged a KitKat bar, I grabbed the cushion behind my back and tossed it at her. “The fuck kind of serial killer are you?”
“You’re a little psycho at heart, aren’t ya?”
“I’m proud of you, Joe.” “For what exactly?” “For getting better.” Cheeks blushing, she squirmed in discomfort. “For staying home tonight when being here is the last place you want to be.”
Because when I got drunk, I got sloppy, and when I got sloppy, I got high.
am,” she hurried to assure me. “I am glad, Joe—and grateful. Darren might have been the academic son, but you’re the survivor.”
“Yeah, well, maybe this time when I fucked up, it cost me more than I was willing to lose.”
His green eyes blazed with heat when he came right out and said, “It cost me you.”
“But it’s never going to be enough for you!” Losing the battle with my emotions, I clutched my head in my hands and released an agonized scream. “I’m never going to be enough for you because my love doesn’t come in the form of a powder that you can snort up your nose or inject in your veins—”
Because Molloy didn’t know what it felt like to wake up every morning with a strong inclination to attempt suicide. She didn’t know how it felt to be a helpless child, half-starved from hunger, and even more starved for a way out of a home he wasn’t wanted in. She didn’t know what it felt like to be that hopeless kid who finally found something that helped him through the pain and sheer fucking misery that was his life. 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.
“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.”
