Page 66 of Jagger
When I said I could’ve loved him…I meant it. Because if Jagger could’ve been a better man, he’d have been perfect for me. He’d have been able to protect me. Now he wants to take his own life for what he did to me.
“No. You should live with your feelings, Jagger.” My voice is cold and nothing like I feel, but I refuse to let him in. Not him. “Live with your guilt. Your actions.”
I rise to my feet surprisingly easily in my stilettos, and Jagger stares up at me. My chest is heaving, my breathing ragged. I’m shaking.
“Wouldn’t you rather I was dead, Molly?” Jagger rises to his knees and shakes his head. “Fucking punish me, Molly. Do something. Dosomething!”
“Stop telling me what to do!” I snap, waves of rage spilling through me. “You don’t get to tell me what to do, Jagger. What you didruinedme more than anything Lawson ever did to me. You know why?”
Jagger closes his eyes.
“Because I felt something. You said I madeyoufeel? Well, you made me feel too. So fuck you—youbetrayedme. You fucking betrayed me!”
“I’m so sorry,” Jagger whispers, but it’s not enough.
“You could’ve saved me,” I half scream, a sob clawing at my throat. But something shifts within me, and a tidal waveof realization sweeps over me. All this time, I’ve been waiting for someone to save me. To take control and take ownership for everything that’s happened to me. To blamesomeone else. The men, the abuse, the drugs, the alcohol. The pain…God, the fucking pain. The constant need for money and fame. But now? I can save myself. It’s within reach—I can and Iwillsave myself.
Then I’m hitting him with all my might. It’s not much, but it makes me feel better. He doesn’t even move, doesn’t attempt to stop me. It feels so fucking good.
“You fucking made me feel!” I scream at him, shoving him to the floor and straddling his chest. “I just wanted to get through senior year, you fucking pig!”
“I’m sorry!” Jagger yells back at me, grabbing my wrists and pulling them to either side of his head. “I’m so fucking sorry, Molly.”
I hate how strong he is. How he’s stopping me from hurting him. But he releases my hands and leaves his palms up on the floor, his chest heaving. He’s crying. Jagger is crying.
“I hate you,” I say between strangled sobs, wanting to smack him again. “I fucking hate how you make me feel!”
Jagger reaches up to stop me from hitting him, his eyes searching mine as the feeling in my chest intensifies.
This can’t be happening to me.
What the fuck…
But itishappening, and I’m sick for letting it happen. But when he releases my hands for the second time, his hands reach up to cup my face.
I let him. I close my eyes and cry, letting him wipe away my tears. He sits with me in his arms and holds me while I sob. He doesn’t say anything, but he holds me like his life depends on it.
“You’re so beautiful, Molly,” Jagger mumbles as he stares down at me. “I’ll never be able to take back what I did, but I needyou to know that you’re beautiful. Inside as well as out—don’t ever feel any other way, okay?”
He’s addressing my insecurities, and he’s the last person I should be allowing to do that. But I listen, because for some sick, crazy reason, I want to hear him; I want him to tell me that I’m beautiful.
Because I’m tired. I’m tired of trying to be beautiful when my hair is falling out and my bones ache. I’m tired of living on drugs and alcohol just to be thin enough to get the next best audition. I’m exhausted, and somehow, Jagger knows. He knows better than anyone, because he’s holding me right now and without saying a word, I fucking know that he knows.
“Can I stay here tonight?” I ask in a small voice, knowing I’ve probably completely lost the plot. But I haven’t—Jagger did what he did for his reasons—it doesn’t justify it, but it does make me feel slightly better. He asked me to take his life to make up for it—I couldn’t.
I couldn’t because of the feeling in my heart when I saw him having his panic attack, at the thought of him dead. It panicked me—it made me realize that I don’t want him dead. That he may well be a monster, but maybe that’s what I want.
My own monster.
34
MOLLY
I wake on the leather couch with a thick blanket covering me. I can hear someone talking—someone who sounds pretty pissed off.
It’s Jon. “Then let me see her. She can tell me that herself.”
Then, Jagger. “I’ll ask herwhenshe wakes up. Until then, you’re not coming in.” That acidic tone. The one he used to reserve for me, and only me; now he sounds almost…protective.
