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“You’re breaking my heart.” Her voice cracked. “You’re killing yourself.”
“You’re just like him. In every way.” What was the point in fighting my DNA?
This was who I was, and I had a horrible feeling that I couldn’t be fixed or put back together again. I couldn’t reset my life. I was paralyzed and trapped in a body that resembled the person I despised most of all.
“My boyfriend is a lying whore and my best friend’s an even bigger one!” “You shouldn’t call Casey a whore, Molloy.” “I was referring to you, asshole.”
“If it was anyone else, Molloy. If it was anyone else.” “But it’s me.” “It’s you,” he confirmed. “Pain in my hole.”
“Don’t hate me for trying to move on,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around my waist and burying her face in my chest. “I’m doing what I have to do to move past this.” A shaky breath escaped her. “Same as you.”
“We’re not a couple, Molloy. I’m not your boyfriend. We are not together. Do you hear me? We are nothing.”
I hated him. I wanted to hate him so much. I needed to hate him. You need to stop loving him first…
“Bella.” He dropped his head in his hands and groaned, “Bella Wilkinson.”
I could feel the tremors racking through his body. They terrified me.
He hit his head against the doorframe again, causing another pained laugh to escape him. And then he did it again and again. And again.
Besides, it wasn’t fear for myself that I was feeling. I wasn’t afraid of Joey. No, I was afraid for him.
“How are you feeling?” “Like I want us to get naked and fuck.” Jesus.
“This is the only time it’s ever stopped. Please don’t break it.” “This is the only time what’s ever stopped?” I croaked out, feeling my heart thunder wildly in my chest. “And don’t break what?” “My head,” he mumbled, before adding, “The quiet.”
“Nice moves.”
He stared at my hand for a long beat before slowly placing his hand on top of mine. “Nice everything.”
He was the first man whose touch I didn’t fear. He was the man who taught me how to ride a bike. He was the man who took me to the cinema for the first time.
“My grandfather’s dying, and you want me to give you money to take me to see him?” I shook my head in disgust. “I’d rather slit my wrists than feed your drinking habit, old man.” “Nah, because you’re too busy feeding your own habit, aren’t ya, boy?” Dad sneered. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You’d do well to remember that.”
Fuck… Sucking in a sharp breath, I forced myself to open the hospital-room door and walk inside. He didn’t look one bit like the formidable man from my childhood as he lay in the bed with tubes and wires all around him. He looked so small and frail.
“My favorite grandson,” he wheezed, and then gave me a tiny smile. “My Joseph.”
“Loyal, kind, forgiving, fearless, nurturer, protector.” He smiled up at me. “Joseph acted… He took on a role.… He was the father of the lost.”
“Your father wanted to name you Theodor after him,” he replied. “He said you were going to be just like him…” He paused to cough wheezily. “But you were no Teddy. You were Joseph.” He coughed again. “So I bribed him with a tenner for the pub and called you what I wanted you to be called.” He smiled up at me. “My Joseph. My brave, brave boy. Terrible burdens. A cursed cross to carry. But always rising from the ashes. Always getting back up. Always the…protector.”
“Promise me that you’ll…never…give in to them.”
“The demons your father put in your head.”
“She was only a baby herself at the time.” He flicked a glance to me and said, “She was a couple of years younger than you when she had a baby on her hip, Aoife.”
His body truly was a sight to behold, considering by the time this summer had ended he had racked up almost as many tattoos as he had scars from fighting.
seen. In this moment, Joey Lynch looked like the quintessential lost boy.
“He hurt you,” he croaked out. “You don’t hit girls.”
“No, he’s still here.” “He is?” “Yeah, he’s in her bed.”
I flipped the lid off and quickly set to work cutting and then snorting a line of coke, feeling some semblance of control return to my body when my head began to function again and my heart began to thud harder.
“Yeah, Shan,” I replied, hitching my bag up on my shoulder. “You’re going to have an epic happy ending.” “So are you, Joe,” she replied softly. “I just know it.”
I wasn’t convinced about happy endings, but when Molloy locked her eyes on me and smiled, I could believe in the possibility of a happy day.
Squealing with nervous excitement, I clenched my eyes shut and choked out a laugh when we took the corner of the local supermarket after burning the rubber of my tires doing half a dozen donuts around the empty car park.
Sitting in the passenger seat beside him, I felt like I was on a power trip. Like we could take on the whole world in this moment.
“Okay, so, it’s clear that you’re not sold on the last song, so how’s this for hitting the nail on the head?” Molloy asked, switching up CDs and pressing track three on her stereo. The Goo Goo Dolls blasted through the speakers.
“‘Iris’?” I cocked a brow. “Good song choice, Molloy, but I have to admit that I’m not feeling the festive vibe from it.” “No, asshole, not as a Christmas song,” she explained, cranking up the volume. “As our song.”
“You shouldn’t settle for comfortable, Molloy. You shouldn’t settle for anything less than being in love to the point of madness. The only person that you should be settling for is the person who unsettles you the most. The person who drives you to the brink of suicide because he or she makes you feel so fucking much that you can’t catch your breath or remotely function without them. “And what’s more is you won’t want to. You won’t want to breathe, or feel, or fucking function without them. That’s how you’ll know that it’s a real relationship, Molloy. Only when you’re feeling the most
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that’s when you’ll know you’re in love, which sounds to me like a hell of a lot nicer way to live than settling for someone you have nothing in common with because it’s comfortable.”
There was a whole host of things wrong with me. Things I was too scared to invest time in trying to figure out. Truth be told, my brain was a scary place to be, and I didn’t want to be anywhere near me most of the time.
“Nice hoodie.” “Nah, just the one,” I shot back, returning her nudge. “And nice legs.” “I’m wearing jeans tonight.” “Not in my head.”
“I don’t know, Molloy,” I taunted, unscrewing the cap and drinking straight from the bottle. “Any more debauchery and your wings won’t take you up to heaven.” “Then I’ll just have to stay in hell with you, won’t I?”
“Oh, one thing I will say before I go.” Swinging around to glare at me, he added, “Thanks for getting her drunk for me.” I narrowed my eyes and his smile darkened. “It’s always easier to get her knickers off when she’s off her face from drink.”
He was her boyfriend. I was her…nothing. I was her nothing. Fuck my life.
Sitting on the closed lid of the toilet, with her knees tucked into her chest and her eyes bloodshot from crying, my baby sister peeked up at me. “Hey, Joe.”
My heart cracked clean open in my chest at the sight of her. It didn’t matter to me that she was fourteen now. In my eyes, she was still the tiny girl in pigtails who had followed me around for most of our childhood.
“I w-want to d-die,” she continued to cry, choking hard on her tears. “I w-want to n-not be h-here anymore.”
“You can’t go dying on me,” I tried to coax, as terror filled my veins. “What would I do without you, huh?”
“That’s my job, Shan,” I said as I pried her ponytail from her small fist. “I’m your big brother. I will always stick up for
He wasn’t violent by nature. He was violent because he wasn’t nurtured at home.
“Are you afraid I’m going to hurt you?”
