Chapter Thirty-Three
Evan
“What the fuck, Gator?”
That voice, in a tone I’ve never heard — enraged, hurt, mourning, murderous — rips through my sleep to pull me into the vicious world of the living. Just in time to feel a sharp crack across my cheek; an open palm, hard enough to snap my limp head sideways and make stars pop behind my eyes.
I blink, disoriented, mouth tasting like sleep and sex and something suddenly sharp and bloody.
The room is dim. The flickering light of the one functioning streetlight in the parking lot leaks through the blinds, slicing the bed in pale, blinking stripes.
Molly stands over me in one of my shirts, bare legs planted like she’s bracing for impact.
Her hair is wild. Her eyes are on fire, with tears leaking out the edges; a river of pain streaming from two beautiful pools of vengeance.
She’s holding my phone.
My stomach drops so fast it feels like I’m falling out of the bed.
“Molly, wait,” I say as I push up on one elbow, shoulder protesting. “I can explain.”
“Explain? Don’t even fucking start.” Her hand shakes around the phone.
She’s trying not to fall apart; she’s failing.
“Don’t say my name like you didn’t just — like you didn’t just — Fuck, Evan.
Fuck. Who the fuck are you?” She swallows hard, and a ragged, wounded sound comes out.
“Who the fuck is the man who’s in my bed right now? ”
I sit up slowly, palms open. Calm. Controlled. The way you survive around a rabid animal.
“What did you see?” I ask, even though I already know. “Let’s talk about this, OK?”
Her laugh is sharp and ugly. “Oh, I don’t know.
” She steps closer and shoves the phone toward my face.
“Maybe the part where someone texts you congratulations for ‘getting intel from the clubhouse’ and says sending you in to fuck the bartender ‘paid off.’ Is that all I am to you? A fucking bonus for some dirty fucking job?”
Her voice breaks on the last word, then hardens again like she welded it back together with rage. She throws the phone at me, and it bounces off my chest and lands on the bed.
I reach for the phone, then stop, because touching it feels like admitting every inch of the truth.
“Molly, listen to me. There’s more that you don’t understand.”
“No.” She slaps me, not as hard as I know she can hit — not as hard as the first time — but like she wants to leave a bruise instead of take my head off. “You listen to me. Who the hell are you?”
I draw a breath in through my nose. Release it slow and measured. My pulse is a war drum, but I don’t show any of it on the outside. I’m good at lying, it turns out.
“Evan Wilder,” I say.
“Liar,” she spits it like poison. “Evan is the boy I fell in love with in high school. The boy who was honest and reckless and had the cutest fucking smile and disappeared and left me with a broken heart. You? You’re not Evan. You’re not even fucking real.”
“I am.” The words come out too fast, too desperate, the racing in my heart propelling every syllable. I rein it in, think of June. “I am. I didn’t lie about… about everything.”
Her eyes flash, hands flex; she’s one wrong word from another strike, but one right word from coming back to my side.
That’s what love will do to you; it’ll wreck your convictions, make you betray others, turn those who matter into nothing but leverage.
“Oh? So what the fuck have you been honest about? Because right now, all I see is a fucking liar wearing a mask of the face of the boy I used to love. A fucking liar who fucked me and used me to get at my family.”
I swing my legs off the bed, careful and slow. I pat the spot on the bed beside me. “Don’t do this standing over me like you want to take my head off. Sit. Let me explain.”
She doesn’t sit. She takes another step closer, and I see it: she’s not just furious, she’s terrified. Like she’s realizing she let someone into her home, into her body, into her life… and it was a mistake big enough to get her killed.
“You explain,” she says. “Now.”
I swallow. My throat feels scraped raw. “My sister, June…”
“Don’t even fucking start, Evan. Or should I say Gator?
” Her voice cracks again as she spits that word, as if she can’t stand the taste of my road name in her mouth.
“Don’t you dare use a sister story. You told me that before.
In fucking bed. You looked me in the eye and you told me that bullshit and I fucking believed it because I fucking loved you. ”
“I wasn’t lying about June.” My voice drops. “She’s in trouble.”
“Whatever,” she says. “Tell me: why are you called Gator?”
I close my eyes for half a second, then open them. The truth that I need to tell burns in my chest. It needs to come out — it’s pulled by the pained, plaintive look in Molly’s eyes — but letting it free will burn down the last of everything between us. “It’s my road name.”
Silence.
Not calm silence — loaded silence. Like the eye of a hurricane of red-headed violence.
“You ride. For who?”
“Independent.”
“Don’t fuck with me. You sure as fuck aren’t acting independent if you’re taking orders — like fucking that bartender — from some asshole with an anonymous fucking number.”
“I’m not fucking with you.” She raises her hand in a fist, but I continue. “Molls, I’m not.”
“Molls? You think you have any right to say that? Shut the fuck up.” Molly’s mouth curls. “Tell me the truth. Who are you working for?”
“I’m not working for anyone. Working means I have a fucking choice. I don’t.”
“No choice, huh? No choice but to fuck me and betray me?”
“Yes. I had to… I had to do all that.” I force it out.
“The Sons of Sorrow. They have June. She used to date one of their members, and when they found out I grew up here, when they found out that you and I were… connected… they took her. She's twenty-two. She still sleeps with the lights on. She called me the night they took her, and I could hear her trying not to cry so I wouldn't worry. They’ve had her for weeks. They promised —” My voice catches, and my hand involuntarily forms a fist on my thigh. “They promised they’d do things worse than kill her before they sent her to me in pieces.”
Her eyes go colder. “So you did what they said. You came in here, you moved into my fucking apartment building, you became my neighbor, all to fucking use me.”
“I tried not to.” It sounds pathetic the second it leaves my mouth. I shake my head hard. “No. That’s not totally true — I didn’t want this. I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
Her face flickers with hurt so sharp I feel it in my chest, and then she surges forward.
Her fist slams into my face.
Hard.
I grunt, not from pain, but from the sick twist in my gut.
“I am sick of the fucking lies.” She swings again at my face. I catch her wrist on instinct and immediately loosen my grip, like her skin burns.
“Molly. Stop.”
“Don’t you fucking touch me.” She jerks away from me, striking out with her free hand, her nails scraping my forearm. “Don’t you think for a second I’ll let you touch me ever again.”
Her words hurt deeper than the bleeding furrows her nails have left on my arm.
“If you’ll just listen…”
“You used me,” she says, voice shaking. “You used me. I took you into my home. Into my bed. Into my hear—” She stops, voice choking. “You said you loved me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, and it’s too small for what I did.
She laughs again, a sound that isn’t laughter. “Sorry?” She points the phone at me like a gun. “Was that part of the plan? To say it like you mean it? To look at me like—like I mattered?”
I stand slowly, hands up again. “You matter.”
“Shut up.” Her eyes are wet now, vulnerability streaming down her cheeks, and she’s furious about it. “Shut up before I… Fuck, Evan, I told you I loved you. And you said you loved me. Was any of it real?”
Her words, her posture, her eyes, my heart — they break.
“It wasn’t supposed to happen like that.”
“How the fuck was it supposed to happen? Were you just supposed to fuck me, get close to the clubhouse, get whatever the fuck you wanted, and then just move on without breaking my heart? Without making me think that I could let someone in close enough to make me feel like I actually fucking mattered? I mean, you studied accounting with me. Accounting! What kind of fucking psychopath does that all for some fucking lie? You’re a fucking monster. ”
She lunges.
I block, forearms up, taking the hit against my arm instead of my face. She swings again; I catch her arm gently, redirecting, never gripping hard, never striking back.
She’s strong. Fast. All sharp edges and survival.
And every blow is a condemnation: I trusted you. I trusted you. I trusted you.
“Molly, please.” My voice is rough. “I didn’t want to fall for you.”
She freezes for half a heartbeat, chest heaving.
Then she slaps me again.
This one is quieter. Almost worse.
“I hate you,” she whispers. “I hate you and I hope you fucking die.”
“No, you don’t.” I shouldn’t say it. I say it anyway. “You’re hurt.”
Her eyes go bright with tears. “You don’t get to tell me what I feel.”
She steps back, backing toward the bedroom door, like she’s putting distance between us so she doesn’t do something she can’t take back.
My heart is in my throat. Despite all the hurt, I don’t want her to leave. I want her to stay and scream at me for as long as she needs. “Molly, don’t go. We need to talk.”
“Talk? Talking is fucking over. If I see you again,” she says, voice low and deadly, “I’ll kill you. And if anyone in the club sees you… Oh, I don’t have the words to describe what they’ll do to you. Leave Ironwood Falls, Evan. Leave, and never fucking come back.”
Then she turns and storms out.
The front door slams so hard that the walls tremble.
I stand there in the wreckage — arm bleeding, cheek stinging — staring at the door like it might open again and give me one more chance.