Page 42 of The Promise

Molly hauls her jeans up her legs, whipping my jersey from over her blonde tresses and dropping it to the ground, before pulling her own t-shirt back over her. “I knew we’d regret this eventually, we should have never started hooking up like this, Callie said it would end in tears.”

Tears, yeah, like the ones that prickle at my eyes right now, blurring my vision and trailing an icy path down my hot cheek. My skin is burning, neck sweating as I watch her get ready to leave me, walk out of here like this means nothing to her, like we mean nothing.

I sniff hard. “I never thought those tears would be mine.” I mutter, swiping a hand across my cheek, taking the moisture with it.

Molly’s face comes back into view and her eyes flutter with worry, as she takes my biceps in her delicate hands. “Ky, please don’t do that, I don’t—I can’t…” her face drops, fingers pressing into her temple like she has a headache.

I grab her waist, pulling her into me and tilting her chin with my thumb, forcing her uncertain expression to find me. “I don’t want to lose this, I don’t want to lose you.”

“I'm sorry Ky, but I can’t do this. I told you right from the start, I don’t want to be tied to someone.” She breaks away from me again, but this time I don’t care about my fucking dignity. I don’t care about looking weak because the truth is I am, I'm nothing without her and I can’t let her do this to me, to us.

“Molly please, don’t take this away from me.” I reach for her again, but she ducks away, her face wrinkling with hurt as she clutches her jacket to her chest. “You’re the one person in the world who manages to make me happy, without even having to try. I need you, you’re the only one who lets me breathe, be myself fully without needing to wear a mask and pretend I'm something I'm not.” I take one step towards her and this time she doesn’t resist, when my palms come to rest on her wet cheeks. “I don’t want anything from you baby, I just want to do life with you, that’s it.” Her lips part on a jagged breath, a tear running down my hand as I hold her rosy cheeks. Before she can say anything else to crack my heart in two, I kiss her, long and deep, gripping her waist when her knees buckle. She sighs into me, arms lightly hanging around my neck. I seal our mouths together, like this is the last time I’ll ever get to taste her sweet breath on my tongue. She breaks the painfully perfect kiss after a moment and takes a step back from me. “I should…go.” She croaks, the onslaught of tears still attacking her freckled cheekbones as she walks towards my bedroom door, the one that will take her away from me.

If I don’t say it now, I might never get the chance.

So before I can change my mind, chicken out and swallow my feelings as usual, I yell, “I love you Mol!”

She stops in her tracks, slowly turning to look at me from the open doorway. “What?” Her face is collapsing with pain, tears dripping from her chin onto the carpet.

“I love you, so fucking much it’s crushing me. We need each other Molly, you need me and I need you.” I choke out. My throat almost closes from the weight of anxiety as she stares back at me, her own expression coated in agony. I see the battle she’s fighting in her head, wanting to stay but letting the fear of what I'm telling her overwhelm every bone in her body, dragging her further away from me.

She sucks in a jagged breath, and with a whispered, “I'm sorry,” she turns on her heel and leaves. Her footsteps are heavy as she runs down the stairs, leaving me alone to collect the smashed up shards of my heart, that now lay scattered on my bedroom floor.

Chapter 30

Molly

My feet carry me down the stairs, faster than my body can keep up and I almost fall face first onto the laminate. I take a shaky breath, shoving my arms into my jacket and heading for the front door, not even glancing towards the three zombies on the couch. But unfortunately, one of them spots me before I can make a break for it.

“Mol?” Sean’s worried voice punches me right in the chest. “What’s wrong?”

I try to dart, but he grabs my arm in his warm hand, pulling me back, preventing me from running and that’s when the dam well and truly bursts. Tears stream down my cheeks and I scrunch my eyes shut, before smashing my face into Sean’s hard chest. The heat of his taut muscles feels comfortingly familiar, reminding me of the hundreds of times I’ve fallen asleep with my ear pressed against Kyle’s beating heart.

Sean’s hand finds the back of my head. “Hey, what’s going on? Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I-I,” I sniff, slapping my hands on my wet cheeks, trying to stop the assault of my tears as they pour. Then there’s a huge crash from upstairs, something breaking, followed by another thunderous smashing sound and my heart stops beating for a moment.

“Can you go and check he’s ok? I need to go home.” I sniffle, mascara probably circling my eyes like a panda, but I don’t give a shit in this moment. I just need to get as far away as possible from the guy who’s breaking my heart with his devotion to me, his love, his fucking everything. He’s fucking everything to me. But I just can’t get a hold on the anxiety, the panic, when I think about giving him all of me, every single piece and trusting him to take care of them. I don’t want to lose myself in him, I don’t want to give away tiny pieces of myself, until I have nothing left and then he leaves me. He’ll abandon me, just like my parents did, taking the stolen pieces of my heart with him.

Sean looks towards the stairs, his caramel eyes narrowing with worry. “I’ll go and check on him, stay here though and I’ll drive you home in a minute.”

I’m shaking my head before he’s even finished his offer. “It’s ok, I’ll get an Uber.”

“No,” he says, hand on my shoulder, voice gentle but firm. “Don’t get an Uber, Callie would kill me if I let you do that.”

“Well, then I’ll call her, she’ll come and get me.”

He eyes me for a moment, before another crash echoes from upstairs, so loud it sounds like someone is going to fall through the ceiling. “Ok, make sure you call her though Mol. Don’t leave until she gets here, ok?” I nod, the back of my hand swiping across my cheek again, to rid the remaining droplets of sadness. Sean drops a loving peck to the crown of my head, before taking two steps at a time up to Kyle’s room. Nick and Lewis are pretending to be focused on their game, whilst I whisper into the receiver, asking Callie to come and get me right now. She’s groaning, blabbering on about how she’s only just sat down to eat. But when one extra tear trickles down my face and I sniff it back, she hears the crack of pain in my voice and immediately does a 180, agreeing to come and get me right away.

Kyle

I’m dying. I swear I'm actually dying right now, this is it, this is what’s going to kill me. I should have known Molly Crawford would be the death of me one day, with her heart stopping grin, perfectly bowed lips and stellar ass. I never thought this is how she’d do it though, I thought maybe one day she’d rip my balls off or scratch my eyes out. But I never imagined she’d punch a hole directly through my chest and tear my heart out, taking it with her wherever she’s gone.

A light tap on the door stops my pacing, fingers yanking hard at my hair, hoping to rip it straight from the roots to numb the pain that’s making my chest collapse in on itself. But it doesn’t work, no other pain could overtake the excruciating agony that I feel in the depths of my soul right now. The splintering of my heart when she looked at me like that, after I confessed my love for her. The way she turned and left, tears streaking her beautiful face, eyes sunken and hurting. I just wanted to reach out and grab her, glue her to my chest and rock her until she stopped crying. But she wouldn’t let me, she ran from me instead, taking every fucking piece of me with her and not even stopping to look back at the shitstorm she left behind. Does she care? I’d like to think so. I don’t think my sanity could handle the possibility that she really doesn’t love me back right now. I may end up in a psycho ward in the local hospital, if I let my mind take me to that dark place. No, it’s just fear holding her back, the trauma of being abandoned once by her parents has left a scar so deep, even I couldn’t heal it for her. I think I'm right about that, I fucking hope I'm right.

“Hey man, you ok?” Sean’s wary voice permeates the sweltering air around me and I turn to face him, as he peers around my bedroom door. There’s shit everywhere. Glass, shards of plastic from the several trophies I launched at the wall out of pure anger, but mostly because I didn’t know what else to do. I wanted to launch myself at the wall too, but I got off that train pretty fucking quickly, when I thought about how Molly would feel if I purposefully harmed myself.

I drag a shaky hand down my wet face, the tears spurting from my eyes. “No, I'm not ok.”

---