by Chloe Walsh
"Remember how I didn’t push you to confide in me, even though I was desperate to know the secret you were keeping from me?" she strangled out with a hiccupped sob. "Well, now I need you to do that for me."
"I just…" I stood there, not having a damn thing to say to fix this. "Dolly, I love you."
Sniffling, she nodded. "I love you, too."
"What do you want me to say, Molls?" She looked so lost. So broken. "Tell me what to do to fix this."
"I can't," she sobbed, shaking her head. "Because I don’t see a way to fix this."
"I'm holding on, okay?" My voice cracked. "No matter what. So, you can take all the time you need, but I'm still gonna be here, chasing your heels like I've always done."
"Goodbye, D."
And then she closed the door on me.
On us.
With my back against the wall and nowhere else to turn, I rang his doorbell, knowing that it was way too fucking late for visitors, but I was all out of options.
And all out of hope.
When the door swung inwards a few minutes later, all of the lines I'd rehearsed on the drive over here floated out of my head.
Razor sharp blue eyes studied my face. "Daryl."
"I, ah –" Wiping my eyes with my forearm, I sniffed deeply, trying to get a fucking handle on myself. "I fucked everything up, man." Exhaling a ragged breath, I added, "And I've got no place else to go."
Without speaking a word, Rourke stepped forward and grabbed my duffel bag off my shoulder before tossing it inside his foyer.
"I've got your back, D." Pulling me into a fierce hug, he touched his forehead against mine and slapped my back. "Always, man."
Molly
Frozen inside, I walked away from Daryl, knowing that I could never repair the shattered threads of my heart.
The minute I closed the door on him, my emotions came flooding back and I completely fell apart.
Sinking to the tiled floor of my foyer, I buried my head in my hands and sobbed uncontrollably.
I didn’t want to know any of this, but did.
I didn’t want to be mad at Daryl, but was.
I never knew physical pain so potent and soul destroying could be evoked by sheer emotion. I guess that was the make-up of the human heart and the feelings it encased.
My entire world felt like it was collapsing down around me, and even my own body didn’t feel like mine anymore.
Not since it was housing a future I wasn't sure I was ready for.
How was I supposed to move on from this?
How was I supposed to walk into school on Monday morning knowing the truth?
Knowing that my own mother wanted me dead.
Wren knew.
So did Trish and Sophie.
Dad.
And Daryl…
"Oh god," I squeezed out, feeling like I was suffocating under the weight of the feeling of betrayal.
I didn’t have anyone else to blame for my reckless actions. My father was right. I had rose-tinted glasses on when it came to Daryl. I went into this blindly and look where I was now.
"Molly." My father was suddenly beside me, pulling me into his arms. "It's okay, sweetheart. You're going to be okay."
"I need to get out of here," I cried, clawing at my throat. "Ocean Bay. This town. I need to not be here right now…"
I need to leave him.
I need…
I need…
"I feel like I'm suffocating, Dad. It's too much. And I can't –" another harsh sob overtook me, "oh god, it's too much, Dad. I need to get away for a while..."
"Shh, that's okay," Dad coaxed, tightening his hold on me. "We can leave right now, sweetheart. We can go anywhere you want."
53 Rourke
Well, shit.
That's pretty much all I could think as I watched my best friend lose what little was left of his sanity.
Fully kitted out in his pads and jersey, cleats and all, Daryl ran around the Petersons house, shouting and hollering his girlfriend's name at the top of his lungs.
"No one's home, D," I called out from the driver's seat of my Range Rover. "She told Six they'll be back in a few weeks."
"Molly!" Daryl continued to roar, ignoring me entirely, as he continued to hammer his fists, his much-needed fists, against the panel of the front door. "Molly!"
"We've gotta go, man," I called out the window. "If we don’t leave now, we're gonna be late, D."
That was the understatement of the century.
Today was the most important day of our high school football careers.
It was the day we would play against the top team in our division for the state championship, and instead of being in the locker room where the rest of our team was right now, we were chasing after a girl who didn’t have the decency to tell her boyfriend that she was skipping town.
"Maybe you should go out there and get him before he breaks his hands," Six said from the passenger seat, worrying her lip. "He really looks like he's about to lose it, Rourke."
"Yeah?" I huffed, unfastening my seatbelt and shoving the door open. Daryl had shown up on my doorstep in the middle of the night, looking like hell, and needing a couch. "And whose fault is that, I wonder?"
"Hey – don’t even think about blaming Molly for this," Six was quick to defend, narrowing her grey eyes at me. "She's the victim in all of this. If your boy over there had been honest with her from the beginning, then she wouldn’t have had to skip town in the middle of the night."
"Well, fair warning, babe, when your friend gets back from wherever the fuck she is, I'm gonna be having words with her."
"You say one word to Molly when she comes back, and I'll cut your dick off."
"Daryl is my best friend," I spat, furious for him. "It's bad enough that his family treats him like he's the goddamn spawn of Satan, and turn their backs on him. But then his so-called girlfriend pulls this shit on the most important day of his life."
"And Molly is my best friend," Six shot back, equally as fiery. "What you're worrying about is just a stupid football game. Molly's entire life has been thrown upside down, Rourke! Put yourself in her shoes for a minute and think how she must be feeling right now."
"Six. You don’t even know the whole story."
"And neither do you," she growled. "But I'm telling you now if I was Molly, and I had found out everything that she did about her life last night, then the very last place I would want to be is Ocean Bay."
"Goddamn," I groaned, when my attention flicked to Daryl, who had upped the ante and was trying kick the damn door in. "What the hell, D!"
Jumping out of my car, I ran straight for him, getting there just in time to stop him from smashing his fist through the glass panel in the door.
"She can't be gone," he roared, shaking violently. "She can't fucking be gone, Rourke!"
"I get it, man, okay? I know it's never easier to walk away, but sometimes you just have to."
"I can't!"
"Listen to me," catching ahold of his shoulders, I forced him to look at me, "we've gotta go, buddy. We can't miss this game."
"Fuck the game!" he roared back, eyes bloodshot. "And fuck you if you think that a game is more important than my relationship."
"She's gone, Daryl!" I snapped, shaking him. "Molly? She ain't fucking here, dude, and you need to pull yourself together!"
"What's the point?" he choked out, dropping his head in utter defeat. "I don’t even care anymore."
"Well, I care," I shot back. "I care a helluva lot about what happens to your stupid ass, and I'm not gonna let you fall back into the same depression you fell into the last time she went away."
"I can't…" Shoulders slumped, he shook his head. "I just fucking can't go through that again, man."
"I know," I agreed, voice thick with emotion. "And I promise I won't let that happen to you, but you've gotta play this game, D. Doesn’t matter if we win or lose. All that matters is that you play. If you don’t, you're gonna regret it for the rest of your life,
man."
54 Mercy
"Molls, when are you coming home?" I whispered down the line, as I walked aimlessly around the pool in our back yard. "Daryl's a total freaking mess without you." Understatement of the century. "He moved out of his home, he's crashing at our house, he's avoiding his mother's phone calls –" I blew out a breath. "They won state last week, but you'd never think it by the way he's been moping around the place. I'm really worried about him."
I had always thought of Daryl King as an easy-going and carefree kind of guy.
Not lately.
Not since Molly left town.
"I'll be back soon, I promise," I heard her say in that soft southern drawl of hers. "I just need some time first, you know? It's a lot to deal with, finding out about my mom and Bobby. There's been a lot of lies and hurt and betrayal and I need space to work that all out in my head, Merc."
"Yeah, Rourke sort of told me about it," I replied, swallowing deeply. "But I promise neither one of us knew a thing about it until the night you left and Daryl showed up on our doorstep."
"I believe you," she replied, voice soft and a little forlorn. "I know you would never keep something that huge from me."
"And the baby?" I pressed, thinking about how she was keeping something huge from Daryl. "Have you decided what you're going to do yet?"
Yeah, my best friend, the same one that had skipped town, was pregnant, and the father of her baby, who also happened to be Rourke's best friend, was currently crashing in our spare room.
Worse than Daryl not knowing about the baby was the fact that I did and couldn't tell a soul. Not even Rourke.
"Of course I'm going to tell him," she replied softly. "I was on my way to tell him that night…before it all blew up."
"Yeah," I said sadly, thinking about all of the hurt and pain she'd been going through. "Well, you know I love you and I can't wait for you to get your skinny butt back here."
"I love you, too, Merc."
"Can you do me a favor?"
"Anything."
"Can you think about calling him?"
She sucked in a sharp breath. "I wouldn’t know what to say."
"How about you start with hello and let it roll from there?" I offered, kneeling down to fix my shoelace. "He needs to hear your voice, Molls. I think it'll really help."
"I'll think about it, okay?" she finally offered.
"Thank you." I sighed heavily. "That's all I'm asking."
55 One month later
Daryl
Today was the first day back at school since classes were dismissed for winter break and it had taken everything inside of me to scrape up the energy required to get dressed and drag my ass to class.
I should have been ecstatic to return to school, considering we'd won state last month and had been hailed as heroes, but instead I just felt empty.
I'd lost the only thing that mattered to me, and nothing could soothe the ache that she'd left in my heart. I felt her absence all around me, so much so that it made it hard to function.
Molly didn't come back before school broke up for winter break, and even though she'd texted on Christmas morning, and again a week later to wish me a happy new year, all of my other calls and texts had gone unanswered.
I followed her Instagram account, stalking her page countless times each day, but she never posted any updates.
She had disappeared from my life just as quickly as she had entered and I couldn't get past it.
I knew she was out there somewhere, licking her wounds and trying to heal the holes my family had put in her heart – that I had put in her heart – but being without her was crippling.
I ended up spending the holidays with Rourke and his dysfunctional family, who had graciously taken me in when I had no place else to go.
No matter how messed up his family was, at least there was love in their home, unlike the home I came from.
Mom had tried to contact me daily since I moved out, right along with the numerous texts Sophie had sent, but I had yet to return a single one of their phone calls and messages.
When I told Mom that I was done that night, I'd meant it.
I still meant it.
The one upside to the shit-turn my life had taken was that I'd managed to scope out a part-time job that Wren didn’t have the power to take away from me. Mercy had called in a favor and snagged me four evening shifts per week at the same café she worked at.
"Yo, King!" Mason swaggered down the school hallway proudly in his Letterman jacket, his championship ring on full display. "How the hell are you, man?" he said when he reached me at my locker. "I feel like I haven't seen you since school finished."
Because he hadn’t.
"You know me, Mase," I replied, closing the door of my locker and slinging my bag over my shoulder. "I'm the same as always."
"Yeah, listen, I heard about the break up." Wincing, he fell into step beside me as I walked for my next class. "That's too bad, man. I thought you and little Molly were endgame."
"We didn’t break up," I bit out, tensing. "There's been no damn break up, Mason."
"You didn’t?"
"No," I growled. "We didn’t."
"No? Well shit, man," he chuckled. "You might wanna make that known because I just overheard Ashley Thomas talking to the other cheerleaders about how she was planning on mending your broken heart," he winked devilishly, "if you know what I mean…"
"Like I've said a million times before, I wouldn’t touch that girl with your dick," I told him. "So you can tell Ashley to go fuck herself."
"Whoa, dude, what's with the attitude?"
"Later, Mase." Brushing past him before he could darken my mood even further, I stalked into my intended classroom earlier than I'd ever been for class in my life.
Not stopping until I had parked my ass in the back row of Mrs. Kilmore's calculus class, I ignored everyone around me and focused my attention on glaring out the window.
I continued to stare out the window long after the bell rang and Mrs. Kilmore began teaching the class all about shit that sounded the same to my ears as I assumed Double Dutch would.
It wasn’t until the class was disturbed by a student late for class, and Mrs. Kilmore had to stop teaching to check over their slip, that I flicked my attention to the front of the room.
The minute that I did, the air was sucked clean out of my lungs.
"Holy shit."
Her wary brown eyes landed on me and every muscle in my body seized up.
She was back.
56 Molly
It had taken more than a month to work through my issues, and even now, I still felt overwhelmed. During that month of soul-searching, I had to go through the process of grieving my mother and Bobby all over again, but it was so much worse the second time around because now I knew the truth.
The woman who had given me life had planned to take it away that night.
Whenever I thought about what my mother did, which was all of the time, I found myself cradling my stomach, unable to comprehend or relate.
The mere thought of something happening to my unborn baby caused the fear of god to jolt through my heart. I loved my baby more with every breath I took, and constantly had to check myself and remember that my mother was a very sick woman, who wasn’t in the right frame of mind, when she made that choice.
It would have been easier to stay away than return to Ocean Bay, but I was fighter.
I never quit on myself when I was fighting for my life in the burn unit at ten years old, not one single time, and I wasn't about to start now.
With a baseball cap pulled down low over my eyes, and an extremely oversized school sweater that fell to my knees, I stepped inside the classroom, and handed the teacher my tardy slip, keeping my eyes trained on my sneakers the entire time.
"Holy shit," a familiar voice said and my eyes snapped to the back of the class.
And there he was.
Daryl King.
With his pretty green eyes, and his special k
ind of heartache that time could never heal.
"Hi," I mouthed, unsure of what else to do.
He just continued to stare.
"Bitch, you're back!" another familiar voice squealed from the other side of the classroom, and I swung my gaze to find Mercy grinning and waving at me from her perch in the third row.
"Excuse me," Mrs. Kilmore said, clearing her throat. "Did you just cuss in my classroom, Miss James? And call another female the b-word? Because that is totally unacceptable behavior."
Mercy rolled her eyes and offered me two enthusiastic thumbs up before mumbling, "I'll behave."
"I'll believe it when I see it," the teacher muttered before waving me on. "Welcome back, Miss Peterson. Take a seat."
Knowing that I would have to face Daryl sooner or later, I walked to the back of the class and took the empty desk next to his.
He never took his eyes off me as I moved, making me feel incredibly self-conscious.
Could he tell?
I hoped he couldn't.
At twenty weeks along, I was definitely beginning to show, but my father had assured me this morning that no one could see my bump under the ginormous sweater I was wearing.
Besides, Daryl deserved to hear it from my mouth.
Setting my bag on the floor, I squeezed into my desk and expelled a shaky breath.
When I finally plucked up the courage to look at Daryl, I found him staring at me.
"Hi," I whispered, hands trembling as I clasped them together.
He continued to stare at me for the longest time, eyes blazing with emotion.
"You came home," he finally said, so loud that everyone in class turned and looked at us.
My face flamed with heat and I nodded.
"Mr. King, would you mind turning your attention to the front of the classroom please," Mrs. Kilmore sniped. "As lovely as she is to look at, I doubt you'll find the answers to this week's calculus test on Miss Peterson's face."
"Yeah, I would," Daryl replied.