by Eden Butler
Not missing a beat, her gaze meets his. “I threw them out.”
He sighs, nods once as though expecting her honesty. “I deserve that. The flowers, not so much.”
He exhales and Mollie blinks quickly, trying to ignore how hot his breath is. “I think I deserve for you to hate me.” I don’t, she thinks. “I deserve for you to punch me.” I really only wanna touch you. Vaughn nudges forward so that his hips are against her. “I don’t deserve you, Mollie. But I want to.” And before she can think of a snarky response, Vaughn lowers his lips to her mouth, slips his tongue in as though it was welcome.
It’s not.
Oh, it so is, dummy.
But Mollie inherited more than her whiskey eyes from her daddy. If Mojo Malone was a stubborn son of a bitch, then his kid Mollie was the bitch that copied him. She breaks away from him, lays on her back to give herself some breathing room.
“Explain. Now,” she says, trying to get her breathing back to normal.
“Okay.” Mollie doesn’t like how quick he is to agree. She doesn’t like that he is smiling, that there isn’t a sad, remorseful smile on his face. Shouldn’t he be upset? Shouldn’t he be begging? Vaughn leans up on his elbow, but doesn’t touch her. She hates how disappointed she is by that. “I got spooked. I thought I failed you.”
“I told you—”
He covers her mouth with two fingers. “I’m trying to explain here.” She opens her mouth and his glare is swift. “You done?” She nods and Vaughn drops his hand. “I’m sorry. I’ve been fucked up for a long time and seeing you there on that ground, bloody…” he closes his eyes, inhales deep, “and even today, still cut up, Mollie, it levels me that I didn’t get to you in time.”
“Would you have punched Emily?”
“What?”
“If you’d gotten there and Emily and I were fighting, would you have pulled me off her so you could get in a few licks?” When he hesitates, Mollie laughs. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. That was my battle, Vaughn. Mine. They came after me, not you and though I got my ass handed to me, I still put up a fight.” Mollie doesn’t wait for Vaughn to touch her. She sits up, stretches over him to move her breasts to his chest. “That’s what I want, Vaughn, an equal, not a protector. I want someone who lets me fight my own battles, who I can let fight theirs. I don’t want any heroes. I want a partner.” His lips are not touching and Mollie has to force her eyes away from the soft texture of that bottom lip. “So I guess the question becomes, what do you want, Vaughn?”
Vaughn’s expression is muted, still, and Mollie isn’t sure why he’s hesitating, but before she can ask, he takes a breath, angles his body so that she is forced to her back with him hovering over her. “I told you I was broken, but I know now that’s not true. You fixed me. I was broken and you healed me. I don’t deserve you. I don’t know why in God’s name you’d want anything to do with me, but I’m tired of not having what I want.” He is so close now that she can feel the outline of his chest, the steady breath that warms her forehead. “So here’s what I want. You. Plain and simple and in all those variations. I want foul-mouth Mollie and sweet Mollie and DJing Mollie and the Mollie who watches bad Mexican soap operas with her neighbor.” Vaughn grips her arms, his fingers tight against her skin and she has to force herself not to moan at the smell of his breath or the brush of his fingers as they rub against her triceps.
“I want the Mollie with a convict father and the bitch from hell mother, the one who stutters and says ‘ain’t’ when she’s upset. I want the Mollie that is loyal, is fiercely protective of her friends, the one who wanted to proxy kick my ass for calling her dad a squid.” Vaughn shifts so that she sinks deeper on that plush dark bed that promises good, good trouble. “I want you. Today, right now, tomorrow. I told you, I didn’t ever want to stop kissing you, touching you, but the truth is, I won’t ever stop loving you.” Mollie holds her breath when Vaughn’s face comes within inches of her mouth. “I’ve wanted so many things and I gave them up. I gave them all up, Mollie because I didn’t think I deserved them. I’m done with that and there is no fucking way I’m giving you up.”
And she couldn’t argue, couldn’t find any words in the stores of her mind that made sense. There would be no arguing, no doubting, no losing out on what she wanted. She, like Vaughn, was done with that and so she let Vaughn Winchester take her down, on that good trouble bed. She let him kiss her, tease her, not caring that her family waited outside, not bothered that they were clever enough to know what she’d gotten up to.
Mollie had been so lost for so long, drifting under her mother’s roof, searching for serenity, hoping that it wasn’t too far out of her reach. She found it. Maybe it found her in that sleepy town that became her home. Cavanagh had given Mollie grace, hope and ties that ran deeper than blood. Her father had given her strength and a reason to believe that she could be better, that she could find all the missing pleasure his absence had taken from her. And that night, on Vaughn’s black bed, Mollie held on to him, let him touch her, let him love her, like she belonged to him. And she did, just as much as he belonged to her.
CAVANAGH EXTRAS
Cavanagh, a History
Mickey Cavanagh came from County Cork, in Ireland, fleeing from a rouge article call Riley O’Sheen. The rogue, as many of the folk who knew the dirty business that unfolded were want to call him, was a burley sort, fond of drink and women of loose morals. He was a menace to the good folk of County Cork, stealing as it suited him, and disrupting the peace whenever the mood took him, both he and the small congregation of roguish blokes that lived by his leave. It was, of course, the loose morals bit that had landed Mickey in the mess in which he found himself.
It had been a Friday afternoon, wage day and like his brothers and their father before them, Saints, Mary and the Jesus rest him, wage evening began with whiskey and tempting his pub mates on who would be the first to spew wage day drink.
Mickey always won, would pocket more of his mate’s pay than they could afford and then staggered home, piss drunk, belly full and no sense about his head a’tall.
Until, it seemed the rogue came upon him.
O’Sheen, you see, had an eye for Mickey’s sister Bridgett, a fair girl of only eighteen. But Bridgett had a heart for the Lord and wanted to be in His service, wanted most passionately to become a Sister of the Church and not some fretful bride worrying when her husband came back from the pubs or how she’d go about feeding her children should she have any.
Mickey’s temper flared then, when he came upon O’Sheen doing his best to sway Bridgett from her chores, to keep her from her duties of minding the laundry as it hung out to dry.
“I’ll thank you to leave me be,” Bridgett said to O’Sheen when he saw fit to grab her about the waist and pull her close. Night was coming and she’d been late for her duties, having taken too long at confession, though Mickey couldn’t say what his sweet sister would ever have to confess.
“Come now, darlin’,” O’Sheen went on, smelling of drink far worse than Mickey did. It was enough that he’d come upon Bridgett when she was alone. That in itself was inappropriate, but when the rouge tried to kiss her, to touch her in place no man ever would, when he wouldn’t see fit to keep his fat fingers from her round breasts, both Bridgett and Mickey’s blood went to boiling.
“I’ll thank you, Riley O’Sheen to leave off my sister.” Mickey’s addled brained had gone dead sober upon seeing how Bridgett struggled to break free from the man.
But O’Sheen would do nothing of the sort, in fact, the fiendish rake laughed at Mickey who was so much smaller than himself, with wiry arms and lanky legs. Riley stood between Bridgett and her brother, blocking either from view, digging in his coat for a pistol, which he went on waving about at Mickey’s head, then his chest, laughing all the while.
“You’ll leave off, won’t you Mickey Cavanagh, while I court your sister.” This point he illustrated by centering the barrel of the pistol right between Mickey’s eyes. “Now be a good
lad and run inside. I’ve business to attend…” and when O’Sheen the rake cocked back the hammer and the whole of Mickey’s life flashed in the seconds that came then, there came a quick whoosh of air from Riley O’Sheen and his eyes went wide, the blue irises going dull when sweet, virtuous Bridgett, took the blade their father had given her and shoved in the side of his neck.
Then Riley O’Sheen was no more.
The night had gone dark and eerily quiet, but at the sight of what she’d done, Bridgett wailed something fierce, dropping the blade in a fit. “Oh, sweet Jaysus, he would have killed ya, Mickey.”
“Aye, he would have.”
Then Mickey, who had never done much that was clever or virtuous and remotely selfless, lifted his chin, pulling his sister to his chest and let her weep. “Hush, darlin, hush now.” He thought desperate thoughts then, wild things that seemed impossible. There were no factories with great furnaces to burn up the rouge’s body. There was no time to pull him away from view before his brothers returned from the pub or the neighbors caught site of the blood and the fat article leaking it on the Cavanagh front garden.
“Don’t you worry,” he told his sister. “I’ll say it was me. I’ll take the blame…”
“You’ll do no such thing!” Bridgett could fuss and worry her brothers as though she’d already taken her vows. “I’ll not add lying to my sins, Mickey. I’ll not…”
“Tis the only way…”
And on they went, for hours it seemed, until finally it was decided, but not by them alone.
“You’ll go off,” their eldest brother Matthew said.
“Yes, it’s the only way,” the younger brother Willie agreed.
And so it was that the Cavanagh brothers took the rouge’s body away from their home, to the edge of County Cork, right to Blackwater river. Against an Alder tree they placed the body, the knife along with it, for there was no disguising such a deep knife wound.
Matthew and Willie would pass around the rumor of seeing the rouge courting trouble with a married woman; something to do with her husband, a man neither one could say they knew. As for Mickey and Bridgett, the folk would believe that both would make for parts unknown. Mickey, to find adventure and work and things he could not in County Cork and Bridgett to win souls for Jesus.
Lesser known was that the siblings made for the train station, then off on a grand ship that would bringing them to the states, from New York and then far from it, to a place that was lovely, as Bridgett had suggestion. “A place to begin again.”
And so, they did, did Mickey and Bridgett Cavanagh, to flee from the home they so dearly loved, to hide from the rouge’s mates and the magistrate and all those folk that would not take kindly to the business done to O’Sheen.
It was a long journey, the fleeing, but after some months the Cavanagh siblings came to the great mountains of Tennessee, most of which was young and covered well with trees and forests and all manner of great, wonderful things they had never seen.
It was there, in Tennessee, that Mickey Cavanagh made good use of his charm. He learned trades, became friendly with men of questionable morality in the town of Cameron. Hooch runners, so they were called, selling whiskey not fit for public distribution, or the county laws, until it was that Mickey himself, improvised and adjusted those long-held recipes.
In time, Mickey sent Bridgett off to New Orleans, to the convent she’d long admired to become a sister and seek forgiveness for the great sin that sent the Cavanagh siblings from their home.
But Mickey, so lonesome for Ireland and now, quite wealthy from his endeavors, sought to grow his family, a wife now and three sons, and to build from his memories a place that would dim that homesick ache.
At some great age, Mickey acquired three hundred acres and had constructed pathways and buildings of a small town, so like County Cork. First came his home, a large, brilliant thing of fine wood floors and a large porch that ran the length of the home. Here he and his wife, a creole woman called Lisette from New Orleans, would sit and watch the mountains and the ridges below, were their land grew and prospered.
Soon, there came storefronts, brightly colored buildings with bowed storefronts, fine buildings of learning, libraries and churches of cut stone with shamrocks in the stained-glass to remind the folk, some of whom followed Mickey from Ireland, of their homes and the memories gained there. Pitches and fields were built to house Mickey’s great love of rugby as were lovely parks filled with flowers of varying colors to perfume the town with their sweet scent.
Bridgett returned as Sister Mary Catherine some years later, given the task of starting an orphanage funded from the generosity of her beloved brother Mickey and every Sunday afternoon, after mass, the siblings would sit on Mickey’s front porch, looking down on the town below, marveling how so like the home of their birth it had become and how well-favored they’d been despite their long-committed sins.
Cavanagh grew into a small, quaint place with reminders of home and the land that still took up the greatest bits of their hearts. It stands today, nestled between the lush mountain cabins in Gatlinburg and the quietness of Maryville as a reminder of the past and the sweet hope of the future.
Map of Cavanagh
CLAIMING SERENITY EXCERPT
(Lyla and Donovan)
It was the too large, manly foot resting on her chin that woke her.
Layla sprawled over a flattened pillow, a crick pinching her neck, head pounding something fierce and an anonymous male foot resting right against her chin.
Shit, she thought, trying to decipher the smells of the room. There was a chance, but only a slight one, that Walter, her on-again, off-again boyfriend, had somehow convinced her to come back to his apartment for what was a continuous cycle of “We Need To Talk” chats. Those had been lasting a good month now. But she would never be in Walter’s bed and she had to believe he would be too proper, too gentlemanly, to fall asleep with his foot slapped against her face. Besides, the room did not smell like Walter. It smelled, in fact, of stinky male—soiled socks and athletic gear that had not been tended to in quite a while. Layla knew the stench. Her father’s constant flow of rugby players on the university squad he coached made that particular smell familiar. Stinky, male and very familiar.
With that idea in her thundering head, and the throb aching behind her eyes growing worse, Layla tried to hold onto the sparse flashes of memory that replayed the previous night’s disconnected events.
A fight with Walter. Her screaming over his judgmental opinions about her friends and then… sitting on the tailgate of someone’s pickup?
There had been liquor, the cotton ball texture of her mouth told her that much, Patrón was a possible culprit and then…
Oh, Sweet baby Jesus in Heaven please, please no.
Donovan.
Donovan the Demon.
Donovan who Layla hated with the intensity of eleventy billion suns.
Dear Lord, she prayed, if you make this not my reality, I promise to stop drinking. Much. I promise to never, ever to say the F word, ever in my life again. I promise to stop cheating on my Chemistry exams. I promise to…
The low grunt from under the covers and the movement of that offending foot from her face, stopped Layla cold.
Please, please, please. Thank you. Your friend, Layla, she hurried to finish.
The lump under the covers didn’t do more than roll on its side and after keeping still and silent for a full minute, Layla was able to take a shaky inventory of herself. She pulled up the worn chenille blanket and surveyed underneath.
Fuck, fuck fuckity fuck!
She was completely and utterly naked and the realization had her head pounding double time. Naked, except for her shoes. Or, one of her shoes. Layla lifted her foot from underneath the blanket, away from the snoring lump, and spotted one of her black Jimmy sandals. The other rested next to her discarded clothes on the floor. Eyes moving around the room, all vestiges that she did not do something immensely stupid vanished. She knew
the room. Less than two months before she snuck in there and situated a large bucket of oil-based fluorescent green paint onto the top of the open door. It had been one prank among dozens she’d visited on Donovan Donley since their unspoken prank war began. She’d finished up by slicking his bathroom floor with butter and only felt mild shame over the sprained ankle Donovan had suffered in the process.
The giant shit should have never stolen my puppy.
Escape from her mortification and that lump grunting under the covers was forefront on her mind. The sooner she could begin her walk of utter humiliating shame, the faster she could ignore that she ever let him touch her. Oh God. She let Donovan Donley touch her. Or did she? Layla squeezed her scratchy eyes shut, trying desperately to focus on the pickup and the laughing—she remembered there had been a lot of laughing and flirting? No. She would never flirt with him. Arrogant, bullheaded, humiliating bastard that he was. Never.
She had to know what had happened. The whole being naked bit didn’t give her much hope that they passed out before anything truly nefarious could take place, but maybe they had, maybe they’d both been too drunk to finish the deed. Maybe… there were no maybes about it, not when Layla slithered a bit unsteadily from the bed and her foot brushed against something cold on the floor. Condom wrapper. An open condom wrapper.
She took a moment, her throbbing, pulsing head held in her hands, to let reality settle in. She had sex with Donovan. Something she vowed to God and Buddha and Santa Claus that she would never do. Donovan, who tortured her all through high school. Donovan, who Layla only managed to escape when she and her parents went to Ireland for six months so her father could scout new recruits for the squad. Donovan Freaking Donley, who had only given her a reprieve from his constant bullying because he didn’t want her father to find out how much he pestered her.
That had changed when one of her friends, Autumn, began dating Donovan’s best friend, Declan. Then their paths converged and one snarky comment from Layla about how Donovan only managed to get on the university squad because of his father’s deep pockets had stirred the smoldering fires of contempt.