“B-because! I said so! I’m better off alone.”
I offer my dry gaze for all of two seconds, ensuring she can see just how weak of an excuse that was.
We both know she doesn’t have a truly good reason other than her being scared.
She huffs. “Maybe I just don’t want a relationship. Is that not a valid enough reason? Do my feelings not matter?”
She’s glancing away, unable to keep her stare hooked to mine now.
Running. She’s running as we fucking speak. And that irritates me.
It’s my turn to narrow my eyes, a disgruntled growl building in my chest. Instead of answering, I toe off my boots and climb onto the bed, dropping her flat on her back with a startled exhale.
She attempts to scramble away, but I’ve already anticipated her move and have her wrists pinned above her head before she can make it two inches.
Stray curls fall over her face, and she pants from below me, seething at me with a fire that rivals the heat emanating from her pretty little cunt.
“You’re scared, and I get that. You’ve been alone nearly your entire life and don’t know what it feels like to have someone take care of you. Fine, we can work through that.” Then, I lower my voice, ensuring she can see just how fucking serious I am. “But what I will not do is allow you to run from me.”
I lean down until my lips are a hairsbreadth away from hers, her breath warming my face in short bursts.
“Don’t worry, little ghost. I’m going to teach you how to spend forever with me.”
She blinks up at me with widened eyes filled with bewilderment.
“You’re crazy,” she breathes.
“About you,” I correct. “I’m crazy about you.”
“You barely know me.”
“I know you better than you know yourself,” I retort, my stare drifting back down to her pink mouth. “I don’t need to know your favorite color to know that I was the first man to make you feel good in your own body.”
That pouty bottom lip curls between her straight teeth, and I can’t help the burn of jealousy. I want to bite it.
“Do you think it's better for me to know if you prefer bacon over sausage in the morning or that you’ve fought like fucking hell to get to where you are and would eat both just because you can?”
She cocks a brow. “You think I eat pigs for breakfast?”
The corners of my lips tip up, and my voice drops into a whisper. “I think you’d eat it right in front of them because you enjoy the morbidity of it just as much as chopping up dead people as their food.”
“I think you’re searching for things to love, but eventually, you’re going to realize that I was never meant to be happy, and you’re only wasting your time. ”
My chest tightens at the sorrow in her eyes, and the burning desire to fix it is insatiable. I will never know peace for as long as Molly Devereaux is sad.
“You can’t fix me,” she finishes.
“I don’t want to fix you, Molly. There’s nothing to mend when you’ve already done that yourself. The only thing I will do is ensure there isn’t a single part of you that is empty. Your life, your heart, and your sweet pussy.” I lean in closer until my lips lightly rest against hers. “Filling you will never be a waste of my time.”
I’m crushing my mouth to hers before she can respond. She doesn’t need to when her body is already doing so. Her back arches, pressing her chest against mine, and her lips part easily beneath the pressure of my tongue.
A little moan brushes the roof of my mouth, and it’s the only confirmation I need that while she may run again, she sure as fuck loves being caught.
I pull away, catching her heavy-lidded stare. “Tell me that you’re mine.”
Her brows furrow, a small frown tipping down her swollen lips. “Since walking into your store, I don’t think there was ever a time that I wasn’t, Cage.”
Molly
Three Months Later
2022
“GO EMMA!”
The scream comes from her mother, Margot, her blonde ponytail bouncing as she jumps up and down on the bleachers only a few rows from Cage and me.
I’m on my feet, screaming along with Margot, though I’m still careful not to say her name. Cage is also on his feet, clapping his hands loudly and wearing a smile on his face.
He doesn’t know her, but he knows everything about her, and he’s learned to care for her from afar, too.
There've been many sleepless nights where I cried for the little sister I’ll never get to know, and he’s held me every time, talking me through those moments until I reminded myself that she’s happy.
“Are you going to introduce yourself to her?” Cage asks quietly .
My smile slips, and I shrug, trying to hide how the mere thought makes me want to vomit.
Cage took it upon himself to look deeper into Layla’s life, just to ensure she was as happy as it seems on the outside. And she is. But he discovered that there might be a part of her missing, too. He found her posting questions on public forums anonymously, asking for advice about the possibility of her parents lying to her about her early childhood. She wrote that she has vague memories of another mother-like figure in her life, but her parents will tell her nothing about it. She knows she’s adopted but feels like her parents are strangely secretive about where she came from and how they came about adopting her.
It broke my heart and made me question if I was genuinely doing the right thing by staying out of her life.
“I don’t want her to know what I do,” I say. Something I’ve said a million times before. “And I don’t want to lie to her, either. She’s been lied to enough in her life.”
“Is one lie worth never knowing her at all?” he asks. Something he’s asked a million times before.
And I still don’t have a good answer.
He stares at me intently, and I’m reminded that he could only know his sister for twelve years. The choice to know her longer was taken away from him.
Guilt eats at me, and a battle rages inside my head, only I still haven’t figured out who’s winning. The part of me that wants to know her, or the part of me that feels she’s better off without me.
Either way, Cage feels I’m taking that choice away from her.
“Her parents would hate me if I reappeared in her life, I think,” I continue .
“Possibly. But only because they’ll feel threatened. Maybe confused. But if you trust them with who you are, they might learn to trust you. You’re not there to take Layla away from them.”
“I would never,” I agree. “She belongs with her family, and I’d never do anything to change that.”
“You’re her family, too, baby. And once they know that you’re not trying to take her away, they might be happy to have you fill in those gaps for Layla. They’re so secretive about her past because they don’t know. They know nothing about who she really is or where she comes from, and maybe it’ll bring them some peace, too.”
It's all hypothetical.
Theoretical.
There’s no way to know if that’s how they truly feel, or if that’s what they’d truly want. No way to know if it’s even what Layla would want.
Sure, she might think she does. But what happens if I tell her, and it sends her into a tailspin because now she must face the fact that her birth parents were sick, depraved people? Would it cause an identity crisis? Would she feel like her blood is tainted by evil?
They’re thoughts I’ve had to come to terms with myself. Would I end up like my parents eventually?
I don’t want Layla to suffer from those insidious thoughts. I don’t want her to ever know the pain of having her biological parents see her as nothing more than a cash cow. To know that she meant so fucking little to them.
Because she meant everything to me .
Everything.
Layla scores one more goal before the clock runs out, knocking the ball into the net with her head. Her team beelines for her, lifting her up in their arms and screaming for yet another win. They’re undefeated so far, and it looks like they’re quickly on their way to Nationals.