Chapter Twenty-Two #2
I take my time. I owe her that. I owe her more than that, but time is what I have right now, and I'm going to spend every second like currency I'll never earn again.
I kiss her mouth — slow, the way she asked — and feel her soften underneath me by degrees, like ice giving way to something warm. Her fingers trace the line of my jaw, my neck, the cords of muscle at my shoulders, and every touch is a question she's too proud to ask out loud.
I answer with my hands. I run them down the length of her sides, thumbs tracing the ridges of her ribs, the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips.
I feel the goosebumps bloom under my fingers.
She shivers, and I kiss the shiver away, mouth pressed to the hollow beneath her ear where her pulse is going wild.
"You're shaking," I whisper.
"Shut up," she whispers back, but her arms tighten around me, pulling me closer, and the contradiction is so perfectly Molly that it makes my chest ache.
I reach down between us and work my jeans open.
She helps — impatient even now, even when she asked for slow — and together we get them off without too much graceless struggling.
When there's nothing left between us, she goes still beneath me, and I feel the weight of the moment settle over both of us like a held breath.
Her eyes are open. Watching. Waiting. Not hiding.
I've never seen her this unguarded, and the sight of it — Molly Rogers, stripped of every barricade, every sarcastic deflection, every wall she's ever built — hits me harder than any fist ever could. I feel something crack inside my chest, some last defense I didn't know was there.
“I love you,” I murmur.
“I love you, too,” she says, open, shaking.
Neither of us moves.
Then I lower myself, bringing my lips to the junction of her thigh. I want to taste her, please her, worship her before I fuck her.
My mouth finds her, and the sound she makes — a raw, startled gasp that breaks into something desperate — is the most honest thing I've ever heard from her.
Her fingers thread into my hair, grip tight, and I feel the war in her body: the instinct to close, to guard, to pull away, fighting against the part of her that's already falling open.
I go slow. The way she asked. I use my tongue like I'm learning her, mapping the terrain of what makes her breath hitch, what makes her hips roll, what makes her fingers tighten until it stings.
She tastes like salt and heat and something underneath that's purely Molly — fierce, alive, impossible to forget.
"Fuck," she breathes, and the word is torn from somewhere deep, somewhere she rarely lets anyone hear.
Her thighs tremble against my jaw. I press my palm flat against her stomach, feeling the muscles jump beneath my hand, and I keep going — steady, deliberate, relentless in a way that isn't about power but about proving something I can't say with words.
That she's worth the patience. That someone can hold still for her without wanting something in return.
Except I do want something. I want everything. And the guilt of that wanting sits like a stone in my chest even as my tongue traces circles that make her spine arch off the mattress.
Her hips lift into me, and I slide my hands beneath her, cradling her, pulling her closer.
She makes a sound that's half laugh, half sob — the noise that comes out when you've been holding your breath for years and someone finally tells you it's okay to exhale.
I press deeper, and her whole body goes taut, a bowstring drawn to the breaking point.
"Don't stop," she says, and it's not a command. It's a confession. "Please don't — "
I don't stop.
I feel the moment she lets go. It rolls through her like a wave — her thighs clamping hard against my ears, her back bowing, her fingers pulling my hair so hard my eyes water.
The sound she makes is low and guttural and beautiful, and it goes on for longer than she expects, because I don't ease up, I keep her there, riding it out, giving her every second of it until she's gasping and pushing at my shoulders.
"Come here," she pants, voice wrecked. "Get up here. Now."
I climb up the length of her body, kissing as I go — her hip, her navel, the scar, the soft underside of her breast, her collarbone.
By the time I reach her mouth, she's already pulling me down, kissing me with the taste of herself still on my lips and not caring, not flinching.
Her legs wrap around me, heels pressing into the backs of my thighs, and the heat of her against me is unbearable.
I position myself and pause, forehead to forehead, our breathing ragged and mingled. She's looking up at me with those green eyes that hold nothing back — not the fear, not the want, not the terrifying, naked trust that I know I haven't earned.
"Hey," she whispers, and her hand comes up to trace the line of my brow, my cheekbone, the corner of my mouth. Like she's memorizing me. Like she's afraid I'll disappear.
"Hey," I say back, and my voice is barely there.
I press into her — slowly, the way she asked — and the world narrows to a single point of contact, a single breath, a single sound that comes from both of us at once.
She's warm and tight, and her eyes don't close.
She watches me the whole time, jaw clenched, lips parted, and I watch her back because I owe her that.
I owe her the honesty of not looking away.
Her hand finds the back of my neck and holds on.
I move slowly. Each stroke is deliberate, measured, like I'm trying to say something my mouth can't form.
Her breath hitches on the first one, steadies on the second, and by the third she's meeting me — not rushing, not fighting, just matching.
Finding the rhythm between us as if it was always there, waiting.
"There," she breathes. "Like that."
I keep it there. Keep it exactly there. My arms are trembling from the effort of holding back, from the weight of wanting to give her everything at once when she asked for it piece by piece.
The headboard doesn't move. The bed barely shifts.
It's just us — skin on skin, breath on breath, her fingers pressing five small bruises into the back of my neck that I'll carry like medals.
She makes a sound — quiet, surprised, like she didn't expect it to feel like this. Like she expected rough and got something she doesn't have a name for. Her eyes go glassy, and for a horrible, beautiful second I think she might cry.
She doesn't.
Instead, she pulls me down and kisses me, slow and open, her tongue tracing mine like she's trying to learn the shape of every lie and truth living in my mouth.
I kiss her back and pour everything into it — the guilt, the love, the terror, the impossible math of wanting two people safe in a world that only lets you save one.
My hips roll into hers, and she gasps into my mouth.
Her legs tighten around me, heels digging into the small of my back, and I feel her body open up to me in a way that has nothing to do with anatomy and everything to do with surrender.
Not the weak kind. The brave kind. The kind that says I'm choosing this even though it could destroy me.
"Evan." My name in her mouth sounds different now — not a warning, not a weapon. A bridge.
"I'm here," I say, and I mean it more than I've ever meant anything. More than the lies I've told. More than the promises I’ve made. More than the fears that I carry.
She pulls me deeper, and I go willingly, burying my face in the curve of her neck where her pulse hammers against my lips.
The rhythm we've found is something I didn't know existed — unhurried, devastating, each movement a conversation neither of us has the courage to have out loud.
Her fingers slide from my neck into my hair, not pulling this time, just holding. Just being there.
I feel her building again beneath me. It's in the way her breathing changes — shorter, sharper, the pauses between inhales growing longer, like she's trying to hold on to something slippery.
Her body tightens around me in increments, muscles clenching and releasing, and I adjust — just barely, angling my hips the way she responded to before — and she rewards me with a sound so quiet I almost miss it.
A whisper of a moan, swallowed before it fully forms, like even now she's trying to keep something for herself.
I won't let her.
I slow down even more, which shouldn't be possible, and she makes a frustrated noise against my shoulder. “Evan, I swear to God.”
"I've got you," I say again, and this time she doesn't tell me not to say things like that. She just digs her nails into my back and holds on.
I feel her crest. It's different from before — quieter, deeper, rolling through her like an earthquake that starts miles underground.
Her whole body locks against mine, spine arching, breath seized, and then she breaks apart in my arms with her mouth open against my neck, soundless, shaking so hard I have to hold her through it.
I press my lips to her temple and keep moving, gentle now, carrying her through until the tremors ease and she goes boneless beneath me, chest heaving, eyes shut.
"Hey," I whisper.
Her eyes open. They're wet. Not crying — just full, like a glass that's been filled to the exact brim and is holding by surface tension alone.
"Don't you dare say anything sweet right now," she warns, but her voice is ruined, all the sharp edges sanded down to something raw and tender.
I smile against her cheek. "Wouldn't dream of it."
"Good." Her hand finds the side of my face, thumb brushing my cheekbone. "Now stop holding back."
She knows. Of course she knows. She can feel it in the tremor of my arms, the rigid control I've been white-knuckling this whole time, the way my jaw has been clenched so tight my teeth ache.
"Molly…"
"I said stop holding back." Her voice drops, rough and sure. "I can take it. I want to take it."
Something inside me snaps — not violently, but completely, like a rope that's been fraying for weeks finally giving way.
I bury my face in her hair and let go, let my body take over, let the rhythm build from that aching slowness into something urgent and honest and raw.
She meets me thrust for thrust, her hips rising to mine, her fingers clawing at my shoulders, and the sounds she makes now aren't quiet — they're open, unguarded, the sounds that come from a woman who's stopped performing and started existing.
I feel everything. The heat of her skin against mine.
The dig of her heels in my lower back. The way her breath breaks apart against my ear in ragged little pieces that I want to collect and keep.
My arms are shaking, my whole body is shaking, and I can't tell anymore if it's from the effort or the emotion or the sheer, unbearable weight of knowing that this is real and I'm going to destroy it.
She pulls my face to hers and kisses me, hard and messy, teeth catching my lip, and I taste copper — hers or mine, it doesn’t matter.
Her body tightens around me again, and I groan, a sound that comes from somewhere primal, somewhere I don't have a name for.
The pressure builds at the base of my spine like a fist closing, and I know I'm close, know I'm right there at the edge where thought dissolves and instinct takes the wheel.
"Molly," I say her name as if it's the only word I know. Like it's the answer to every question I've ever been too afraid to ask.
"I'm here," she says, and her voice cracks on it, and that crack — that tiny fracture in the armor of the toughest woman I've ever known — is what sends me over.
I come apart inside her with a sound I don't recognize, something wrenched from my chest like a confession.
My body locks, every muscle seizing, and for three or four heartbeats the world goes white and silent and still.
There's nothing — no Midnight, no June, no timer, no lies.
Just her. Just the heat of her wrapped around me and the impossible softness of her hand on the back of my neck, holding me steady while I fall.
I collapse against her, and she takes my weight without complaint, her arms wrapping around my back, her cheek pressed to my temple.
We lie there, breathing together, our heartbeats slowly untangling from the frenzy into something that resembles calm.
The sheets are twisted beneath us. The air smells like sweat and sex and the fading ghost of garlic from dinner, which shouldn't be romantic but somehow is.
Neither of us speaks. For a long time, there's just the sound of breathing and the distant hum of someone's TV through the wall.
I don't move, and she doesn't push me off.
Her fingers trace lazy, absent patterns on my shoulder blade — circles, lines, something that might be letters.
I can't tell if she's writing words or just touching me because she can.
I press my lips to the hollow of her throat. Her pulse is slowing beneath my mouth, settling from a sprint into a walk.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“I know,” she says, hesitating for a moment before adding, “I love you, too.”
I roll to the side, casting my eyes to the ceiling to avoid looking at her.
I didn’t expect to feel this way. Didn't expect the depth of it.
Didn't expect her to sit me down to a home-cooked meal and make me feel, for the first time in years, like someone was taking care of me.
But she did. And now a weight has settled in my chest that wasn't there before: this is no longer a job. This is real.
Real in the worst way possible.