by A. M. Wilson
My feet carry me to the side of the bed. “Thought that was unsafe.”
“The hospital would be unwise. Too open. However, I’ve made a call to a trusted colleague. Dr. Sader is one of the top neurologists in the county. He’s agreed to meet us after hours at his specialty clinic. She’ll be safe there.”
Richard catches my eye and gives me a nod of approval.
I look back at Molly’s still, thin form lying in bed. God, she’s so damn broken.
“All right. Do it fast, though. I don’t want us out in public longer than we have to be.”
***
Molly still hasn’t woken up.
The CT was normal, but that was two days ago. Doc said she’s been through a trauma, and her body is in recovery mode. That she’ll wake up when she’s ready.
With each hour that ticks past, I become more worried she’s never going to wake. That would be the ultimate punishment for my fuckup, right? Cruel trick, universe, giving me back my sister only for her to be comatose for the rest of her life.
Couple that with the fact it’s been days since I’ve been high, and I’m a fucking mess. The withdrawals are hell; I knew they would be. Each hour that ticks past is worse than the last. It’s all for Molly, though. She needs me clean so I can help her become the same.
We’ve settled at Elias’s place. He has an extra room where we put Molly, and I’ve been crashing on his couch. More like the floor in the spare room, but he doesn’t need to know that. I just can’t leave her alone. If something else happens to her, I need to be there. It’s the least I can do.
That’s where I find myself two days after Molly came back to me, but this time, it’s with less anticipation and more confusion.
Her face has started to heal. The swelling has gone down significantly, and the cuts are starting to fade. Purple bruises still cover most of the surface, but those will take a little longer to disappear.
The problem isn’t the bruises.
The problem is that with each new change, her face looks less and less like the Molly I remember and more like a stranger. And I don’t know if it’s because I haven’t seen her in a while and she’s lost a lot of weight, or maybe…fuck, I don’t even want to think it.
Maybe this isn’t even Molly.
It burns, that thought.
I must be paranoid. It’s been days since I’ve had something to numb my existence—booze, drugs—so this must be a withdrawal effect.
A knock sounds at the door. “You need a break?”
“No.”
Elias appears deaf as he wanders farther into the room. “Her face is looking better.”
“Yep.”
“A little different too.”
My hands curl into fists so tight the tension solidifies my forearms. “Don’t.”
He holds his hands out, palms facing me in a placating gesture. “Not a bad thing. What she’s gone through…I’m not surprised she’s a little different.”
“She’s not different!”
Elias’s head snaps back at my fury. “You’ve got to prepare yourself if that’s what you think. She’s been to hell and back. If you think that’s left her untouched, you’re going to have a hell of a time being there for her when she’s not even remotely the same.”
“She’s still Molly.” The crack in my voice gives away my uncertainty.
“She is. She’s also not, and you know that’s the damn truth.”
All I can do is give him an icy glare. The fucker glares back.
Our tense silence is broken up by a piercing scream coming from the bed. Clumsiness and sleep deprivation make me trip over my own feet as I scramble from the floor. In my rush to get to her, I slam my foot against the frame of the bed and let out my own violent sounding, “Fuck!” The pain pulsates hot in my foot, but I ignore it.
Molly starts thrashing, my own shout seeming to agitate her more. She scoots backward up the bed until she’s smashed against the headboard. The blankets tremble in her hand, creating waves from where she has them gathered tightly beneath her chin.
Fearful.
“Molly. It’s okay. You’re home safe.” My voice grates out like rough sandpaper. I never thought I’d speak those words. Not to her living ears, that is. I always imagined I’d identify her in some morgue and have to tell her corpse how sorry I was and that she’s safe now. And by safe, I’d mean dead. Fucking glad that isn’t how this all played out.
Her eyes pop wide at the sound of my voice. They dart back and forth between Elias and me as if she’s assessing which one of us is the bigger threat. When she starts inching away from me, I realize she’s made her choice, and that knowledge hurts like a knife in my chest.
Then she speaks.
“P-p-please d-don’t hurt me. I’ll d-do whatever y-you want. You c-can f-f-fuck me for five hundred.”
A growl rips from my chest.
“No!” she screams, cowering beneath the blankets. “Free! You can f-f-fuck me f-for free. Just give me a hit, I need something. Anything! I won’t tell the boss. Please, just don’t hurt m-me.”
So many things slam into my mind at once, and I can’t focus on just one. Talking about the boss, offering herself for prostitution, exchanging money for drugs. Or how about the fucking fact she doesn’t even seem to know who we are?
“Molly.” I inject tenderness into my rough tone, but it doesn’t seem to help.
“I’m not, I mean, I don’t know Molly.”
I snap back as if I were punched. All the air is sucked out of my chest.
My face twists, and it must frighten the shit out of her because she starts backtracking. “I can be Molly if that’s what you w-want. Please, just give me a hit of something, and I’ll do it. I’ll be who you want. You can do me like you want—ˮ
“Enough!”
The wheeze of her quick breath sounds like a balloon deflating.
“You’re not Molly,” I state flatly.
“I can be…”
I lean my face toward her, and shout, “You’re. Not. Molly!”
“No,” she whispers, her body still shaking violently. I can’t tell if it’s from the fear or the withdrawal she must be going through, but it only fuels my rage.
Raking my fingers through my hair, I look for something to anchor myself with. Suddenly, I can’t look at her. I can’t even breathe the same air as her. This…this liar tricked me.
“You’re a liar.”
“Sin—ˮ Elias interjects.
“She’s a liar, man.” I wave my hand haphazardly in her direction.
“C’mon, walk it off.” He starts herding me toward the door, and I still can’t even look at that girl.
“You’re a goddamn liar!” My soul breaks, splinters, then crumbles into dust so fine it mixes with the motes floating through the air. I free myself from Elias and race around the side of the bed. “Why are you here?” I snarl, putting my face within inches of her own. The fear in those brown eyes satisfies me at the same time it tears me to pieces. “Where is she, and why are you fuckin’ here?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know Molly.” Her voice is too soft and airy. Like she doesn’t even have the force in her lungs to push the words out. Everything about her is airy as though she’d blow away with a strong breeze.
It doesn’t matter. I still heard the words, and the meaning behind them, even unintended, is enough to destroy whatever was left of me.
Still, I have to confirm. “You know Gutierrez? Mr. G?”
Her eyes go wide, holding mine for a second before she dives toward the edge of the bed and vomits on the floor.
That’s a yes.
She came from the same place. She knows the sex trafficker, the same man she called “the boss,” yet she doesn’t know Molly.
She doesn’t know Molly because Molly has been fucking dead since long before this girl came along.
Words are gone. My hope, my heart, my life are gone. I have nothing left to give. I push myself away from her by my hands fisted on the bed,
and without a backward glance, I leave. Elias calls after me, but there’s no reason for me to stop. His voice-of-reason bullshit will only further piss me off.
Time to go. No need to stick around here anymore.
I’m done.
Chapter Three
Sin
The bitch’s ass slaps loudly against my thighs as she rides my dick. Twenty-four hours have passed since the girl woke up. The girl who isn’t my sister. The girl who stole everything from me in an instant.
Goddamn.
I took off. Turned my phone off, hit the bike, and rode for what felt like hours. Found a run-down, hole-in-the-wall shit bar in the middle of fuckin’ nowhere, parked my ass on a stool, and drank myself nearly to death.
Wishful thinking. Fuck knows my size and the amount I’ve been drinking for as long as I’ve been drinking, it’ll take a lot more than a night in a bar to kill me.
My jaw clenches with the thought.
Closing time came too fast. I went to stumble out to my bike, but that’s when Jill, Julie, Jamie? Fuck if I know. Whatever her name is came along. It didn’t take much of her shaking her tits and rubbing her ass along my crotch to get me into her tiny two-doored princess car and back to her place. Good thing it was close, too, because she drove with my hand buried between her legs.
Talented. I liked that.
What I liked even better was that she had a roommate, who happened to be waiting up when we stumbled through the door.
And even better than that, she came right to me, hooked an arm around the back of my neck, pulled me down to thrust her tongue in my mouth. She took my hand without giving me her name, led me to the couch, pushed me down, and that’s where the real fun started.
And by fun, I mean a bag of coke and two naked chicks ready to service my every need.
We’ve been going for hours. I fucked the girl who took me home while her roommate watched, then she took her turn fucking me.
Now I have one riding my cock, the other sitting on my face, and I have to come like I’ve never come before in my life.
The furthest thing from my mind is Not-Molly-Whatever-Her-Name-Is.
Right.
The girl on my face seizes and fists my hair as I eat her climax out of her. My hands cup her ass, and I continue to lap at her as her cunt pulsates around my tongue. The noises of two girls fill the room as the one riding me picks up her speed in an attempt to chase her own orgasm.
The slap of my palm rings out on the girl’s ass who’s finished.
Using my hair, she tilts my head back until we can see each other. A Cheshire grin sits on her rosy, swollen lips.
“Hop off my face.”
She licks her lips, slides her fingers through my hair once more, and lifts her thigh over my shoulders. She acts as though she has all the time in the fucking world. Her slow pace gives me a nice extended visual of her wet swollen cunt. I can say with certainty I’m not finished with that yet.
Time to move before my balls fall off.
Wrapping an arm around the other’s waist, I hoist us both from the couch, and she lets out a small scream. With my cock still hard inside her, I turn us both around, plant her knees and elbows on the couch, and start pounding away with a renewed pace.
Until my cell rings.
“Son of a…” My fingers clench her bony hips, yanking her to me more forcefully. The ringing stops, and I go back to getting this over with. I’m starting to come down, so I either need another line or a ride back to the bar.
“Oh please, oh please,” she pants over and over again. I can tell she’s close by the way her pussy squeezes my dick and the ease of which I slide into her over and over again.
The phone starts ringing again.
My plan of spending the next few hours without thinking about the girl who isn’t Molly ends as abruptly as my ringing phone. Something has to be wrong.
“Girl, you’ve got five seconds before I have to get that,” I growl through clenched teeth.
After a few more forceful thrusts, she starts clenching around me and screaming at the same time my phone rings again.
I finally let my own climax explode, ripping through me and making me groan out loud, unleashing my demons and hours of pent-up sexual tension.
I collapse back onto the couch and snag my phone from the coffee table.
Elias, the screen says.
Fuck.
I don’t get a chance to call him back. He’s already trying me again, and the phone rings in my hand.
“Yeah,” I answer. I think. My voice is grit and grogginess after the night I’ve had.
“You about done with your tantrum and plan on getting back here anytime soon?”
“Nope. Got nothing to do with that. You’d be smart to dispose of her before I get back.”
A shocked pause follows. “Dispose of…? Are you fucking shitting me?”
I swipe my lips with my thumb. “Nope,” I answer, trying to sound like I don’t give a shit. Trying to ignore how tightly my body is locked up.
“You’re an asshole, you know that? You know damn well it isn’t safe to just drop her off at the hospital. And if she goes to a woman’s shelter, they’ll find her again by tomorrow. Guaranteed.”
“Not my problem.”
“No, it sure as shit is not your problem. It is, however, human decency to take care of someone who desperately needs it.”
“We all know I’m not a decent human.”
“Save it,” he replies shortly. “Save the woe is me act. How would you feel if Molly had ended up in some stranger’s care? Would you want them to dispose of her? This is someone’s family member.”
My anger reaches its boiling point. “Well, she didn’t. She’s gone, and this chick isn’t Molly even though she led us to believe that she was.”
“You led yourself to believe that. Fuck, man. I believed it, too. She isn’t Molly, but she needs our help.”
“So you help her.”
“I am, and I will. But she’s asking for you.”
As instantly as it sparked, my anger deflates. That frail, broken girl was asking for me? “Why in God’s name would she ask for me?”
Elias clears his throat, and silence follows. “Up until you figured out she wasn’t Molly, you hadn’t left her side. I think she feels connected to you because of it.”
“She wasn’t even fucking conscious.”
“She says she was. In and out, that is, but enough to feel connected to you.”
“I can’t,” I reply, my voice gruff and broken. “Not unless you want her to die.”
“Sin—”
“No. Keep her away from me. It’s what’s best for both of us. And leave me alone. I have enough pussy to keep me occupied for the rest of the weekend. Don’t call back.”
I hit the red button and toss the phone back onto the coffee table.
“Everything all right, baby?” one girl asks, her eyes hot with lust, but her voice implying false concern.
“We can make it better,” the friend chimes in.
Fuck yeah, they can take my mind off the broken girl. Off the memories that need to stay buried. “You girls want to help? Both of you get on your knees.”
My cell died later that afternoon.
I stayed away for another two days.
By the time I pull myself out of that bender and go back to the bar to get my bike, it’s late Monday night or early Tuesday morning.
Shoulders, arms, legs, neck—everything screams in pain as I load up and head home. I should have stopped yesterday. Instead of being a little bitch and avoiding Elias and that girl, I should have gone home, crawled into my own fucking bed, and recovered. Too late now. I have to get the bar back open and running and deal with my pop’s affairs.
What I do not have time for is nursing a homeless prostitute back to good health.
Elias is the good guy. He has all the resources he needs to take care of her. He’s the kind of guy a broken girl would fall in love with.
Me?
>
All I’m good for is a weekend fuck and a good time. I don’t do love. Romance is for pussies. I’m not the type of guy to take in an injured bird and help it. I’d rather snap its neck and put it out of its misery. We’re given one life to do with as we please, so I live for me. Simple as that.
I don’t remember much of the dark drive to Elias’s, or why I chose to go there instead of my own apartment, but I’m damn glad when I pull into the driveway and let myself into the two-story townhouse.
Without turning on any lights, I head toward Elias’s room to grab a change of clothes. I’m halfway down the hall when I hear it. A sharp, piercing scream. The terror contained in that one sound sends adrenaline rushing through my veins. As quickly as the scream erupts, it’s cut off by a soft, soothing, “Shh.”
“The bugs are back. Get them off me, get them off,” she cries.
His reply is too quiet. I can’t make out the words, just the low tone of his voice.
Then I hear another sound. This one a rhythmic twang of chords and the strumming of Elias’s guitar.
He’s singing to her.
I recognize the song as one of The Avett Brothers. “The Ballad of Love and Hate.”
With just his guitar and the softness of his voice, it nearly sounds like a different song, but I couldn’t miss those lyrics.
I lean against the wall outside the open door and just listen. I didn’t intend to stop here, but no matter how tired I feel, I can’t get myself to move. A pit opens up in my gut, and I want to storm in there and demand he stop. What the fuck is wrong with me?
I tug at my hair and shift closer to the door. As soon as they come into view, Elias’s head lifts, meeting my eyes, but he never stops playing. Never stops singing.
And there…her head resting on his thigh, one arm wrapped around his back, fingers tightly fisted into his tee. The other hand clenches the edge of the sweatshirt he has draped around her. Our girl.
The pronoun slips itself into my mind. However, once it’s there, I realize it fits. I can fight this shit all I want, but the fact is she’s here, and until she’s well again, she has to stay. She has nowhere else to go until we find her family. I may be heartless and cold, saying things I don’t mean, but I’m not cruel enough to toss her out onto the street.