We Told Six Lies(65)

Molly led me to the back and down a couple of steps into a sunken living room. It was impossibly dark, but I could see the smoke that stained the walls from people lighting fires to keep warm. It was a miracle this house had any stand left in its old bones.

I took your face in my hands and kissed you. You released your weight into my arms, and I held you up. I would never let you go again. Your arms rose to wrap around my shoulders and gripped the muscles there. You trailed your hands down my arms and my back, feeling me. I was so much bigger than you, and it struck me how much you must trust me to allow me access to your body. In the dark. In the quiet. With the closest person several rooms away, distracted.

You stepped back and started to remove your shirt, but I was there to do it for you. I bent and trailed kisses along your stomach as I lifted the fabric and threw it to the side. Then I reached for your skirt, unzipped the side, and suppressed a groan as you shimmied out of it.

I removed my jacket, shirt, and jeans and shivered before you because it was cold as shit, but I planned on keeping you warm. I planned on doing so many unspeakable things to you.

I lifted you off your feet and laid you on top of my jacket. Goose bumps raced across your skin, and I was there with my mouth. With my weight.

I leaned back to remove those tights, and as your leg slipped from each hole, you locked eyes with me.

“Cobain,” you said.

I shook my head, and you quieted. I didn’t need you to say it anymore. I knew how you felt now. You couldn’t have hidden it if you tried. And my God, how you tried. It was all over your face right then—your fear, your love.

I lowered myself between your knees and kissed you again. You wrapped your legs around me, and I wrapped myself around you, and I think the house finally was engulfed in flames, at long last. Taken by the night. Taken to the ground.

You arched your back, and I slipped my hand between your shoulder blades. Your bra came away in my hand.

We pressed our bodies together, and our breath came faster, our fingers dug deeper. You reached down to push off my boxers, but there was no time for that. I had to have you, Molly. And you needed me, too. I knew because you said, I need you, I need you, I need you against my neck.

So I pulled myself out of my boxers and pushed your underwear to the side, and I slipped my fingers between your legs to make sure you were ready. And you were. Your legs parted farther, and you threw your head back, and I sank into you.

The last of you became the best of me inside that house, on that soot-covered floor with the stars burning outside a broken window.

And I loved you, Molly.

I loved you, Molly.

I loved you.

So I held you tight and rocked against you and drank in every bit you offered to me that night. And when it was over, and I collapsed beside you, and you slung a thin, white-as-fog leg over my torso, I thought I might want to die that way. Happy. In your arms. Knowing you loved me back. Certain nothing would ever come close to touching this moment we’d shared.

And then you looked at me with eyes so green that Spanish moss clung to the edges, and you said—

“We can’t be together anymore, Cobain.”





MOLLY


Molly dreamed about that night with Cobain and woke with an ache between her legs. When she remembered where she was, however, the want died.

She hadn’t seen the light outside in three days. A sliver slipped in through the cracks—enough to tell her whether it was day or night—but it wasn’t enough.

She’d lost his trust.

He wasn’t angry that she’d freed the bird, exactly. It was that she’d made a decision that he hadn’t initiated or authorized.

This was about control, she reminded herself.

And if she was to stand a chance, she had to give him a sense of reclaiming it.

And so her mind began to turn in circles like a carousel, wide-toothed horses and griffins spinning round her brain.

She stayed in the shadows for one day and part of another one, and when the idea finally came to her, she smiled. This would go against everything her father had ever taught her, and if she failed, well, he just might kill her.

But at least this thing would come to an end, at long last.

When Blue finally appeared in her doorway carrying a tray, she came to him softly. As softly as a lion. She reached out, claws retracted, and took the food. Shoved it into her mouth and ate furiously, her eyes locked on his. The crusty bread filled her mouth and slid down her throat. She reached for the strawberry preserves next. Ate them with a spoon straight from the dusty mason jar.

When she finished, he lifted the tray and made for the door.

He meant to leave her down here again. But she was done with such games.

“I planned to kill you,” she said, climbing to her feet.

Blue stopped.

“I was going to talk you into killing yourself.”

He turned to look at her.

“My father was a master manipulator.” She nodded to show him it was true. “Once, he even talked an employee of his into blowing his head off. That’s Daddy for you.” She pointed at Blue. “And I was going to do the same to you. I still could. You wouldn’t even know it, and I would be doing it.”

Blue’s grip on the tray tightened. Molly wondered if he was angry or afraid. Probably a little of both.

“But I don’t want to be like him. And I’ll be honest, I don’t want to be here, either. All I really want to be is out there.”