Mine.
“Jesus, I’m sorry,” I told her again, beyond torn apart by it all. “Tell me what to do. Tell me how to fix this for you and I’ll do it.”
I leaned back on my heels to give her space, but she scrambled closer and gripped ahold of my arm.
Taking that as my green light to come closer, I placed my hands on her hips.
This time, she didn’t flinch.
“I never should have left you there,” I said hoarsely. “I didn’t protect you, and I’m so fucking sorry for that.”
“You’re not supposed to have to protect me like that,” she cried. “You’re not supposed to have to worry about that happening. Fathers aren’t supposed to do the things your father does, Joe.”
I knew that.
Of course I fucking knew that.
“I’m not him,” I choked out, needing her to hear me, to fucking believe me. “I’m not, Aoife, I swear.” Reaching up to cup her face between my hands, I pulled her head close to mine and whispered, “I am nothing like that man.”
“I know you’re nothing like him,” she cried, leaning close to rest her brow to mine. “But I’m nothing like you, Joe.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I can’t brush something like this under the table the way you can.”
“I’m not asking you to,” I hurried to say. “I’m not. I’ll take you to the station myself, Aoif. I won’t cover for him anymore, I swear to you, and I will never ask you to do that.”
“That’s not what I mean,” she whispered. “I meant it when I said that I didn’t want to report it.” Sniffling, she added, “It’s not like he actually did anything. I mean, what did he really do aside from push my pants down and pull my hair—”
“Only because I walked in on time! Don’t play it down. Don’t give that prick an out for what he did to you,” I snarled, trembling with anger, as my mind tormented me with flashing images of what I’d walked in on. “He did enough, Aoife. Looking in your direction was too fucking much.”
“That’s still not what I meant, though.”
“Then what?” I shrugged, at a loss. “What did you mean?”
“How you live? What you live with? I thought I knew about it. I thought I understood, but I don’t, Joe. I never had a clue,” she admitted hoarsely. “I don’t come from a home like yours. I’ve never had to be afraid like that.” Sniffling, she cupped my face between her hands and exhaled a broken sob. “Tonight, I felt a kind of fear that I never want to experience again.”
“I don’t know what to say.” I couldn’t change where I came from or how it had morphed me into who I was. “What do you want me to say here?”
“I’m just…” Shaking her head, she expelled another ragged breath before saying, “I’m seeing a lot of red flags shooting up around us now. Ones I never used to see before tonight, but can’t get out of my head ever since.”
Struck fucking dumb, I just stared at her, unable to read the signs, or hear the meaning of whatever the fuck she was trying to tell me. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that your life scares me and maybe you were right when you told me that you were a bad idea for me.”
Her words hit me like a slap across the face and I physically recoiled, feeling like she had cut me open and left me to hemorrhage at her feet. “Do you really mean that?”
“No? Maybe?” Sniffling, she shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know what I mean anymore.”
“Okay.” Cold to the bone, I stared at her for the longest moment before shaking my head. “Okay, I should leave.”
“What – no, no, don’t go!” Sinking onto my lap, she threw her arms around me and buried her face in my neck. “Don’t leave me!”
“I don’t know what you want from me,” I admitted hoarsely, as wave upon wave of devastation continued to crash over me, fucking drowning me. “I don’t know what to do here, Aoife, because you’re telling me to go with your words and to stay with your actions.”
"I know," she cried, shaking her head, as she wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. “I know, I know, I’m sorry, okay?”
“Are you breaking up with me?” I forced myself to ask. “Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing, or how I’m feeling right now.” Clutching the front of my hoodie, she choked out the most heart-breaking fucking sound I'd ever heard. "But I know that it hurts and I don’t want to feel it.” Her lips were on my neck when she cried out, "This feeling is killing me. I feel like I’m dying here, and I don’t want it."
Well, that wasn’t one bit comforting, and her words caused the tightening sensation around my windpipe to significantly worsen.
“What do you need from me?” I asked her – I practically begged her to show me how to make this right. “Whatever you want me to do, whatever you need, say the word and I’ll do it.”
With tear-filled eyes, she stared at me for the longest time, before exhaling a ragged breath and fusing her lips to mine.
I froze, hands still on her cheeks, uncertain and fucking terrified of doing something wrong.
“Kiss me back,” she cried out against my lips. “Show me how to forget it.”
Jesus.
Trembling, I did exactly what she asked. Kissing her with everything I had in me, our tongues and teeth and lips clashed in a frantic kiss that was nothing like how we usually kissed.
This kiss was one of desperation, I realized.
It was a matter of necessity, needing to have her mouth on mine as much as she needed mine on hers.
Technique or suavity didn’t matter one bit right now, because the need to comfort the other was too fucking strong to think about anything other than touching, feeling, kissing, being…
When she reached a hand between our bodies and loosened the front of her towel, I felt my shoulders bunch up with tension.
“I don’t want this if you don’t want this,” I warned, needing her to be very sure of what she was doing here.
She was all messed up in the head right now, and Christ, I didn’t blame her, but I was not the man people thought I was.
I was not my father.
I would never take something that wasn’t offered to me with a free heart.
“I mean it,” I pushed. “Don’t fuck me if you’re going to regret me afterwards.”
“Don’t you want me?” she breathed, reaching for the hem of my hoodie and roughly dragging it over my head along with my t-shirt.
“You know I want you,” I replied, as my dick strained against her. “But I don’t want you to do this if you’re not in the right frame of mind.”
Tracing my bottom lip with the tip of her tongue, she leaned closer and teased my tongue with hers.
“What I want…“ Pushing hard on my shoulders so that I fell onto my back, Molloy quickly rid herself of the towel and straddled my hips. “Is for you to make me forget.” Her fingers traced the tattoo on my chest and she leaned in close to trail her tongue over the ink. “Can you do that for me, Joe?” Raising up on her knees, she pulled at the waistband of my sweatpants. Tilting my hips up, I allowed her to roughly pull the fabric down my legs, right along with my jocks. “Hm?” The moment it was freed, my dick shot to attention, visibly fucking straining to get to her. “Can you make me block it out just like you block everything out?”