Molly
The bar top is clean enough to eat off. I know because I’ve wiped it three times in the last five minutes. And that’s in addition to all the unnecessary cleaning that Riley put it through less than an hour ago. It shines like my eyes do, despite all the blinking and wiping I do. Evan sits on the other side like he belongs there, like he didn’t just rip a hole through my life and call it love. His face is pale, rugged jaw tight, eyes locked on me like he’s afraid I’ll disappear if he blinks.
I keep my hands moving, because if I stop, I’ll feel it. The silence between us is deafening. Not peaceful. Not calm. It’s the silence that comes in the aftermath of wreckage.
When he opens his mouth to speak, I wish he’d keep it closed. I’d rather the silence than hear anything from him. I still can’t believe he came back. I don’t know if I’d rather be kicked out of the MC than standing here, across from him, while he looks at me with a mix of regret and love.
“You don’t have to do this,” he says quietly. “I can do this alone. I should do this alone.”
I don’t look up. Instead, I pick up a glass and start polishing it so hard I might rub it out of existence. “Do what?”
I know what he’s referring to, but I refuse to give him the satisfaction.
“Be here with me. After… everything.”
I set a glass down a little too hard. It clinks sharply. I frown, pick it up, and start polishing it again. “You mean after you fucked me for information? After you lied to me and manipulated me so I’d love you and let you into my life so you could betray everyone who matters to me?”
His throat works. He doesn’t flinch away from the words. He takes them like he deserves them.
“Yes,” he says. “After that.”
I finally meet his eyes.
He looks wrecked. Not in a performative way. In a tired, raw way, like he hasn’t slept since my hand hit his face. Like he’s been subsisting on whatever punishment his guilt can invent.
Good.
“You clearly came back here because there’s some part of you that just can’t leave me in peace. You had to come back and fucking poke my broken fucking heart one more time. So say what you came to say,” I tell him. My voice comes out flat, bartender-professional. It’s the only voice I can trust not to shake. If I spoke as me — as Molly Rogers, the girl who’s had her heart broken by the same boy twice — I’d be on the floor, my words coming between sobs. And I refuse to give Evan the satisfaction of seeing how much he’s hurt me.
“I’m sorry, Molly,” he says. “I can’t undo the hurt I did to you. I lied to you about so many things. I used your kindness. I used your pride. I twisted everything I could just to get close to you. But, even more…” He pauses, his voice stopping on a slight shake. “I didn’t plan to…” He shakes his head once, like the sentence tastes bad. “I didn’t plan to feel this. I didn’t think that I’d actually fall in love with you. What we had back when we were young, I thought it was just a memory. Something that I could use… and then I met you, and I found out that the feelings I remembered for you don’t even come close to how I really feel.”
He stops himself. His jaw flexes hard.
I lean in a fraction, voice low. “How do you really feel?”
His eyes don’t leave mine. “Like I’d rather die than see you hurt. Like the word ‘love’ is just a fucking shadow of what you make me feel inside.”
Behind my ribs, the love I’m trying to kill kicks at its cage.
“You don’t get to talk to me like that,” I whisper.
“I know I don’t deserve a damn thing, but I need you to hear it anyway, before...” He swallows again, eyes bright, but he doesn’t let the tears fall. “I’m sorry, Molly.”
My name on his lips, that look in his eyes — it’s a knife cutting through my defenses. I glance away before my face betrays me.
Out the front window, the Devils’ bikes are lined up in the lot, a menacing wall of black steel, chrome, and thunder.
My fingers tighten around the rag, and I squeeze it, fighting with all my strength to hold in the pain that wants to fight its way up my throat. I breathe deeply, hoping to force it down. It doesn’t work. And the breath I release comes out as a hurried gasp.
He speaks again, softer. “Can you forgive me?”
I turn away. Forgiveness is a big word. It implies rebuilding. It implies trust. It implies I open my heart to something real and let this damnable man close enough to cut it out again.
I look back at him.
I can feel the edge of a ‘no’ forming; the answer my instincts urge me to give. The answer that’ll protect me. The answer that’s clean, simple, safe.
But I also feel the part of me that remembers being eighteen, with my lipstick smeared, with his hands bracing me against the wall and me clinging to him like he was the only solid thing in a spinning world. I hate that part of me; I love that part of me.
