She kissed him again, and he closed his eyes, losing himself in her.
She whispered against him. “That’s a hard way to live, never letting anyone get close to you.”
He went on alert at her tone. She sounded the same way whenever she talked about Mr. Darcy or walked around a ghost town wondering who would’ve lived in this or that decrepit house. Molly the romantic.
But she shouldn’t be romanticizing anything about him, and as he sat there getting his guts together, knowing that all these emotions would soon pass, he searched for a way to mentally push her out of his life. And he knew what would do it—the last thing he’d ever thought he’d use on her.
The truth. The reality. It seemed like she hadn’t learned anything from the strip club or the bars. She was still a tourist in his world.
He girded himself; she’d asked for answers, and now she’d get them.
“There was . . . one person.”
A wide space seemed to come between them for a second, but it closed up as Molly waited for him.
“I was still a kid when I met her,” he said, his voice already hardening, getting back to normal. “Nineteen years old and as dumb as shit, but she was one of those older girls, already twenty-one, and she held some kind of sway over me.”
Long dark hair, big brown eyes . . . Johanna.
He laughed without any humor. “I should’ve known that any woman you meet at the tables, knee-deep in losses at a casino, isn’t going to be girlfriend of the year. But, at first, she . . .”
“Was magic,” Molly said.
See—still romanticizing. “At first she was.”
He swallowed, but Molly was stroking back his hair again.
Don’t let her get to you. “As I said, I was young. And I was floored by her, especially since she called me out on having a fake ID, then offered to buy me a drink. She seemed so . . . worldly, so together. But it wasn’t until I got to know her better that I found out she was a recovering drug addict and was just holding on by a thread. By then, I’d started to care.” Another cutting laugh that he couldn’t stop. “The first time I ever let myself do that, and it had to be Johanna.”
Molly’s hand stilled at the sound of the name. Maybe she didn’t like to hear it. Hell, he had spent a long time not saying it, only thinking the name again recently, after Molly had stirred everything up inside him that’d been dormant.
When she went back to stroking him, he somehow felt safe. So right, just for this moment in time.
“I finally had someone,” he said, “and she had me. But she wasn’t a strong person. Everything looked okay on the surface—she worked as a secretary for a family friend who was helping her recover, she went to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, and I kept her away from those casinos and the bars as much as I could. Around her, I cut out all my vices. But when we’d go out to the movies or the most innocent places, she’d get into . . . situations.”
“Like what?”
“Provoking fights with other women and sometimes men, then crying about it afterward. I only thought she was wild and exciting, a free spirit, but when it kept happening, I knew something else was going on. At first, I thought she only wanted the attention, but it was more than that.”
“Was she . . . ?”
“Touched in the head? Probably, but she would never get help for that. She told everyone she was sober and healthy, but one night, I caught her popping pills in the bathroom. She said they were for some pain she was having from an old injury, and I shouldn’t have believed her. Because she did it again. I took those pills and flushed them down her toilet, but she called me ‘just a kid who doesn’t know shit.’ What did I know about failing in life? How could I have had enough experience to feel what it was like to be on a treadmill that never went anywhere?”
“She’d been using for a while?” Molly asked.
He stared straight ahead, forcing his voice to be emotionless, even though it was cracking him in two.
“Yeah, and I was too dumb to admit it. She told me to get lost, that I didn’t mean anything to her anyway. At first, I fought to stay with her, but she shut me out, moved away, and I had no idea where she went.”
He could tell by the way Molly relaxed a little in his arms that she thought this was the end of the story: kid gets his heart broken, then carries the bitterness with him throughout life after learning early on that love sucks.
He wished that was it.
“I guess you could say I carried a torch for her,” he said. “But I moved on.”
Molly snuggled into him, tucking her face into his neck.
He breathed her in, but he didn’t hold her too tight. “That is until one night, about a year later. I was tooling around Nevada, looking for a game, and she called me, stoned out of her mind. She told me that she needed me.”
Molly had tensed up again, but it was too late to stop.
“I’d been torn up by her already, and I wasn’t about to climb on that roller coaster again. So I told her to get to an NA meeting wherever she was. She hung up on me, and I thought that was the end of it.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No.” He went cold. “Looking back, I should’ve taken her more seriously, because soon after, I heard that she overdosed and died.”
Molly froze, but slowly, so slowly, she sat up, looking at him.
He didn’t let her see into him. No one would ever be able to do that.
He kept his voice level. “I always wondered if she killed herself because of me, if I was the last straw. But I came out of the experience knowing something for certain—I couldn’t depend on anyone else because they always disappoint you. They kill you inside.” He raised a finger. “She was my kind of people, Molly. She’s my reality.”
When Molly continued to stare at him, he thought that, finally, she was getting it—no matter how cozy they were, this wouldn’t go anywhere.
So why didn’t that feel as freeing as it should’ve?
***
Now Molly understood why Cash always seemed to be looking for something that he wasn’t finding in all the places he went. No wonder he was such a loner, although it sounded as if he’d been that from early on, before Johanna.
But couldn’t he see that Molly wasn’t anything like her? Yes, she had an addict in her life, too, but Arden’s gambling wasn’t something that could directly kill. Couldn’t Cash understand that people could be good, no matter who he’d grown up with or associated with now?
She cupped his face in her hands, a face she would never forget. A face she wanted to see again and again, no matter who he was or what he’d been through.
“Not every woman is a Johanna,” she said. “Especially . . .”
She was about to say “me,” but then she realized that wasn’t true. These past few days had turned her into an undependable terror. She hadn’t even contacted her best friends since this morning because she’d been so under Cash’s spell.
His smile was weighed down by what she thought was anguish. Was he thinking that he was the one who’d made her undependable? Had he molded her into the only kind of woman he could deal with in the aftermath of Johanna—the kind who spent a night with him and never asked for anything more?
He touched her cheek, and she actually believed that this was it—he was going to tell her that she was different from all the rest of those women. She was Molly P. Preston, and she’d persuaded him to change his life.
But then he lowered his hand and smacked her on the ass, removing her from his lap and standing her on her feet as he got to his.
Numb, she could only watch him as he put himself back together, then got dressed again.
“So that’s it?” she asked.
“I didn’t tell you that story for my health.”
Bewildered, she narrowed her eyes. “Then what was the point? To tell me that you don’t
ever want to get out of this life?”
His shoulders slumped, as if she had no chance of understanding.
Couldn’t he see what was possible?
“You think you can save me?” he asked in a low voice. “Is that it, Molly?”
He was . . . mocking her. Not in an obvious way, but there was pity in his tone, as if he thought she was too naïve to live.
“I . . .” she started.
He shook his head, going for the door. When he spoke, he didn’t look at her.
“I’m going to get us some dinner. They’ve got a fast-food freezer and a microwave in the gift shop. Any requests?”
How could he ignore everything that’d been said? “Cash . . .”
Then he was out the door, leaving her in an anesthetic limbo.
Had she imagined all of it? Hadn’t they been this close to finding something between them . . . ?
She buried her face in her hands. There hadn’t been anything, couldn’t have been, and she’d been a damned fool for thinking it.
Shame and embarrassment attacked her at the same time, and something snapped inside Molly—she ripped off the rest of the dress he’d bought her, jamming it into the nearest trash can. Rising anger—which was usually such an orderly process for her—blinded her.
He’d shown her what he wanted from a woman, and she’d been too stupid to see it. Did he want her to be just like the rest of the ones he threw away? Well, she could be. She could give him what he wanted. Fuck him.
Fuck her for getting her own hopes up and smashing them.
Molly had never known she could act like this, and she gave into the resentment—at him, but mostly at herself. She swiped the plastic shopping bag full of health and beauty aids off the floor and brought it into the bathroom, flicking on the light so she could look at herself in the mirror above the sink.
It wasn’t low enough for her to see the words he’d written on her, like bad girl and fuck.
But she felt every one of them.
***
Cash brought back a tray of microwaved burritos and some cold bottles of beer and water from the motel office and unlocked the motel room door, expecting to find Molly taking a shower so she could scour off the pen ink he’d written on her in preparation for their trip to her home.
Marks that’d been amusing during this adventure but didn’t have any place with them now that he’d set the record straight.
At the thought of her rejected expression, his chest clenched. But he’d only done what was necessary. Already he felt better, knowing there were just six hours of road ahead of them before they were officially finished.
But the soreness in his chest stayed as he opened the room door.
It got even worse when he saw Molly on the bed, waiting for him, the sheets and covers kicked down to the edge, her body without a stitch of clothing. She was wearing more than she’d been this afternoon, though—more words in places that wouldn’t be hidden by sundresses or T-shirts. Capital letters on her skin, bold and jarring.
SLUT on one arm.
WHORE on a leg.
USED on her chest.
And, on her face, she’d drawn a different kind of screw-you art: a coat of red lipstick so thick that she looked painted and definitely used. Mascara and eyeliner and even a jaded come-hither expression that reminded him of . . .
Bettie Page?
Cash held back his surprise, pushing the food and bottles onto the table where he’d had Molly earlier. He shut the curtains, praying no one had walked by to see this.
“What’re you doing, Molly?”
“Waiting for you.”
“Let me rephrase that. What the fuck are you doing, Molly?”
He hadn’t meant to get emotional, but she had a way of pulling that out of him. Just another reason to get her back home.
She lazily raised her arms over her head, emphasizing her breasts. “I thought I’d make our last night together special.”
“This isn’t special.”
“Why? I’m not what you made me yet?”
He was too stunned to even spit out a curse word, and he went to the nightstand, yanking tissues out of their box. He got on the bed, going to wipe the lipstick off her.
She tried to get away from him, pushing at his hands. “I’m living for the moment, Cash.”
I am what you made me.
The words echoed in him as he got ahold of her, scrubbing off the lipstick, accidentally smearing it over her mouth and chin. She scratched at him, and he hunched away, fisting the tissues in his hand.
All he could see was Johanna picking a fight, needing attention, then crying and apologizing.
But . . . hell, Molly was right. She was what he’d made her—another version of the woman who’d cruelly left him, forcing him to drive way too many roads with a load of guilt as baggage. Sadly, she was the only kind of woman he could be with. They were all the same in the end.
Even . . . Molly.
He threw the tissues aside, not wanting to look at her anymore because this wasn’t the Molly he’d . . .
He’d been about to say “fallen for.” But he hadn’t done that. He hadn’t done anything for her except bring this affair around to where it’d always been meant to end up.
“Going soft on me?” she asked, still not done with him.
All he heard was Johanna mocking him, and without knowing what he was doing, he eased a hand between her legs, and she arched, taking in a hard breath, grasping his wrist.
“Is this what you want?” He could be every bad thing Molly thought he was, too. “Do you want me to treat you like one of them?”
“One of who?”
She was going to force him to say it, so he didn’t. He only played with her pussy, wanting her to come so she could stop talking. She only turned her face away, her mouth smudged with that lipstick, the words on her skin glaring at him.
Slut. Whore.
I am what you made me.
When she made a tiny, frustrated sound, he removed his hand, starting to get off the bed. He didn’t like what he’d become, either.
She propped herself on an elbow, then struck at him, hitting his arm, and he took a step back, his fingers coated with her.
Mindlessly, he rubbed them together, wishing things were different. Wishing . . .
No. No wishes. He’d already blown all of them with Molly from the word “go.” He couldn’t help destroying everybody he came into contact with.
With a tight, regretful laugh, she drew her legs to her, wrapping her arms around them. The sight made his heart shatter, and he walked to the bathroom, getting a washcloth, wetting and soaping it.
When he came back, he gave it to her, avoiding her gaze.
She began to clean the slut off her arm. “That was wrong.”
No shit.
She scrubbed harder. “I was angry at you, because whether you want it or not, I know you, Cash. I know how you’ve been operating, and that story about Johanna only confirmed it. You’re always trying to drive away from her, but you can’t escape.”
He didn’t refute that. How could he when she’d nailed him?
Slut wasn’t coming all the way off her skin, but she kept at it. “Dammit.”
He couldn’t bear to watch this, so he took the cloth, gently but firmly wiping her skin, doing his best to get rid of what he’d marked her with.
He could feel her watching him, and that was almost too much also. But he stayed, seeing this through.
For once in his life.
“I’ve never been one to spill my heart out to anyone,” she said, her voice quavering, “but there were times when . . . when I thought . . .”
“You shouldn’t have thought it.”
“But I did. Maybe it’s because I haven’t had as much sex as you. Maybe it’s because I�
�m inexperienced and not very good at living outside a book, but . . . well, I’m experienced now, and I know what I’m feeling.”
Fuck. He stopped wiping at her arm—slut had only faded and wasn’t disappearing as he’d hoped it would.
“What if,” she said, “we started all over again and, instead of running from everything, we faced it?”
He could tell that saying this had taken all she had in her, and he almost broke again.
Yeah. What if?
She seemed to read him. “I know we’re totally wrong for each other, but by whose rules? Who says?”
He couldn’t stop himself from meeting her gaze—those green-blue eyes that made him feel like he was floating soundlessly in a new place where nothing could get to him, except for her.
Could they do what she was saying? Could they get past who they were “supposed to be” and “not supposed to be”?
As he kept looking at her, a smile grew on her face. Touched, he leaned forward, putting the washcloth to the sides of her mouth, wiping away the lipstick so he could get the full force of that smile.
The hope, the brightness.
But there were still smears, just like there’d be with everything else—reminders of another life, the one he was meant to live. Dragging her into his crap wouldn’t be fair.
He put the washcloth on the bed, getting to his feet. Her smile wavered.
Make it fast, he thought. Get out of here before she sucks you in again.
“There’re better things ahead for you than this,” he said.
She looked away from him, staring at the wall, her eyes going glassy. Tears. God, he couldn’t handle tears.
But then she climbed off the bed and fled to the bathroom, shutting the door behind her, and even though it hadn’t been a slam, it still jarred him.
So this was how it’d end. It had to be this way, because if he knocked on that door, she’d think he’d changed his mind. And maybe he would.
That’s why Cash wrote the note before he left for good.
21
Molly held back the tears, listening for the sound of the room’s closing door to tell her that Cash had left her alone. After that, she would let her tears go.
Rough and Tumble Page 24
