“… I remember it like it was yesterday. I came home from school and my grandma was upset and sat in the front room. She told me that my daddy had been taken to heaven.” She laughed, but it wasn’t in amusement. I could feel her tense and knew it came from a place of real pain. “At the time I thought I was being punished for being a bad child. It soon became clear that he hadn’t died of an illness or because God was punishing me, but he got up as usual, saw me, his little girl, out of the door for school, got into the bath, and slit his wrists with a razorblade.”
Fuck. Me. I never expected that. What the hell do you say to a person whose father had killed himself in such a way?
“Shit, baby. I didn’t think… I’m so sorry.”
She went on to tell me how she struggled daily with his choice, why he did it. She told me about how she coped when her grandma died, and damn if I didn’t have to fight a lump in my throat at the thought of my girl alone, nursing her grandma on her own, then the only person she loved dying in her arms. I couldn’t help but picture the minutes that followed her grandma’s death—how she would’ve been feeling, the quiet, the slam of realization that she was on her own in the world.
Molly had been fourteen when she lost her last remaining relative—four-fucking-teen. I knew I was gripping onto her too tightly, but looking up at me with those golden browns, she just smiled and laid a kiss on my mouth. She was so damn strong.
As she talked of her stint in foster care, I momentarily felt pissed at her father. Yeah, it’s wrong to think ill of the dead, but for three years she’d been forced to endure loneliness in a stranger’s home and had to throw herself into the only thing she loved—studying—to survive. But, hell, I didn’t know him, didn’t know his deal, so I felt I shouldn’t judge. It was scary, though, how much her life in those years was like a reflection on mine—always alone, throwing ourselves into our passions as a distraction, and using it like a lifeline to get the hell out of the mess, even if it was temporarily.
“When I was seventeen, I passed my exams early, got into university a year young, and was offered an advanced place at Oxford.” I snapped out of my own thoughts and listened intently once again. “I got my degree and came here. I’ll move somewhere else for my doctorate.”
That stilled me… friggin’ scared the shit out of me too. She never stayed in one place too long.
“So you run?”
Breaking the calm we’d been sitting in, Molly grasped my arms, trying to pry my grip from around her waist. There wasn’t a f**king chance I was letting go.
“Don’t struggle. Answer the question,” I bit out more forcefully.
“You have no idea what my life has been like! You don’t get to judge!” she screamed.
“I’m not judging you. But you run from your problems, don’t you?”
“So what? I don’t have a real home, no family. Why not?”
“That may have been true before, but now you have people who care for you, truly care for you. I won’t let you run away from me.”
I needed her to believe in those words, believe in me. Now I had her, there was no way in hell I was letting go, and her running from me when times get rough was unacceptable.
I wasn’t naïve. I knew being with Molly was going to cause a bucket load of problems with my folks. Well, that’s if they ever found out, which I would avoid at all costs.
Still attempting to pull away, I put my mouth to her ear. “I won’t let you leave me.” All the fight drained from her small body. It was the first time I’d ever seen her heavy emotional guard crack.
Molly broke. The floodgates opened and she cried and cried, unable to stop for several minutes. I rocked her until her sobs died. It could’ve been minutes, hours, days, and when the only sounds were a few stuttered sighs or an odd sniffle, I asked, “Why did you run from Oxford to here?”
Her head pressed back into my chest, and I laid kiss after kiss on her forehead.
“Oliver wanted more from me. He stayed on to do his PhD and wanted to take things further. I didn’t—he knew nothing about me. I never told him.
“After we slept together, I knew I couldn’t do it anymore. I thought being intimate with him would help me get closer, that it would bring my walls crashing down. But all I felt was strangling disappointment. I thought I was unable to ever be close to another person again. In the end, I freaked. I ran. Simple. He woke up and I was gone. I haven’t spoken to him since.”
Knowing that some British punk bastard had my girl naked, pinned beneath him, him coming within her, made anger pulse in my veins. I couldn’t speak. It was like I was possessed, and for a moment, the severity of that possession scared me. The girl was friggin’ bewitching me.
By the fidgeting of Molly’s body, I knew she wanted me to say something, but I couldn’t, couldn’t cope with the thought of her with someone else. Eventually she settled down, accepting my inability to speak, and with a reassuring sigh, she confessed, “That was until you. I’m close to you. I let you in. Maybe I’m not as damaged as I thought.”
Jesus. Those words did something to me deep inside, like a bolt of electricity billowed through my body. She was close to me; she let me in. I was an undeserving motherfucker, completely worthless—I’d been told so all my life—but that only made what she said that much more special. To her, I was worthy.
Feeling on top of the world, I said gently, “You’re not the only one who feels like splitting when times get rough, baby, but from now on, I won’t let you run anywhere if I’m not right there running beside you.”
But then she asked about me, my family, and a jolt of panic ripped through me. How could I tell her my deal? It was beyond f**ked up, and I just couldn’t do it.
“We should go,” I ordered abruptly when I felt her grow cold and shiver with the evening breeze.
Stiffening, she protested. “I don’t want to leave yet. I want to know about you.”
But I didn’t want her to know, didn’t want her tarnished by that shit. Molly was now the one part of my life, besides football, my folks had no control over, and I’d be damned if I infected her with that poison.
I was done with any talk of my past, my folks. So pulling her up off the grass, I dodged her questions and led her in silence to the truck.