He presses a kiss to my temple. “I know.”
"I mean it. This was just—"
"Molly." His voice is soft, but there's something underneath it. Something that sounds almost like regret. "I know."
I glare at him. “You’re not sleeping over.”
He laughs, soft and satisfied. “I wasn’t planning on it.”
“Good.”
He moves his thumb, slow and deliberate, caressing the underside of my breast in a way that sends tingling sensations through my body. “You kick everyone out after?”
I roll my eyes. “I don’t make a habit of this.”
He tilts his head, studying me like I’m a puzzle he can’t quite solve. “Seemed like you needed it.”
I tense up, bristling. “Don’t start thinking this is some kind of therapy session. And don’t start thinking this means you get access to my life, either.”
Evan meets my eyes without blinking, then they flicker away from mine to look at where our bodies still meet. “I think it’s too late for that, Molly.”
My stomach drops. He doesn’t say it like a threat; he says it like a fact.
And the terrifying part is that I know he’s right.
With a sigh, I shift in bed, plant a soft kiss on his chest, and look him in the eyes. I hate myself for what I’m about to ask, but I know there’s no fighting it.
“What if you stay for a while?”
Chapter Fourteen
Evan
I wake up to the sun slashing through Molly’s bedroom like it’s got something to prove, stripes of gold and white cutting across the walls, and Molly herself sprawled over my chest, one bare leg thrown across my hips like she’s staked a claim. The clock on her nightstand says it’s too early, but I can’t remember the last time I woke up like this, feeling sore in a way that means something, Molly’s hair a red snarl on my chest, freckles scattered like a map leading nowhere good. Her skin is warm where it touches mine, but her hand trapped beneath my ribs is cold, her fingers curled into a fist. She’s not dreaming, exactly — just floating somewhere safe. For a moment, I let myself believe I belong here.
Then my phone buzzes.
Once.
Twice.
I freeze because nothing good ever calls you back to reality gently.
I slip my arm from beneath Molly’s body with surgical precision, slow enough that she squirms but doesn’t wake. She just burrows deeper into the pillow and lets out a sound halfway between a growl and a sigh — a sound you’d never know she could make unless you’d slept beside her, unless you’d seen how soft her armor goes when she thinks no one’s watching.
I grab my phone in my fist like it’s a live grenade and slip out of the bedroom. I stand in the living room and tap open the message. The harsh white of the screen makes my eyes sting.
It’s a photo, the kind you can’t unsee: June. My sister. Tied to a chair, hands lashed behind her spine with what looks like ripped phone cord. A rag forced between her lips, eyes swollen nearly shut. Her left hand is curled the way it always is when she's trying not to cry — thumb tucked inside her fist, the way she's done it since she was small. Bruises ring her wrists and jaw, ugly and familiar in a way that makes me want to throw the phone through the window.
The message under it:Hurry up.
I stare at the message until my jaw aches from clenching. For a minute, I forget I’m standing in Molly’s apartment — forget there’s anyone but me and the phone and the cold, hollow space where my insides used to be.
How much longer does she have? How long before Midnight and his men tire of the waiting, of the leverage game, and decide to see what other parts of June break? I think about her as a kid, about the way she’d throw arms around my neck and shriek when I tossed her into the lake, about the scar on her knee from when I dared her to climb the steel fence behind our first apartment.
I lower my phone and stare at my reflection in the dark glass of Molly’s balcony door. I look like a man who deserves to rot.
I want to go back into the bedroom, crawl under the sheets and press myself against Molly’s back, lose myself in the slow, messy tangle of her. Pretend I have a day where nothing worse is coming. But I don’t trust what will happen if she wakes up and sees my face like this. I don’t trust myself not to tell her everything, and the whole point of all this was to escape, not to shatter each other’s lives before the sun even rises.
