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“Yeah.”
Another strained silence settled between us, and it made me feel uneasy.
“You do know that Casey was completely off the mark earlier, right? That girl I was talking to back there is a friend of Shannon’s,” I hurried to explain, heart gunning in my chest. “You get that, right?”
“Yeah.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper when she said, “Katie mentioned something about that.”
“So, you’re okay then?” I pushed gently. “You know that there was nothing going on.”
“No, I’m not okay,” she choked out, voice thick with emotion now. “I haven’t been okay in weeks.” This time she did look at me, and it cut like a knife when I saw the tears pooling in her eyes. “But you seem like you’re doing a lot better, so clearly this breakup is working for one of us.”
“Are you serious?” I took a step back, feeling like she had just knifed me in the gut. “You think I’m not hurting?”
“I don’t know how you feel anymore.”
“In love,” I bit out. “With you.”
“Don’t…”
“Nothing’s changed for me, Molloy,” I interrupted, needing her to know. “Nothing.”
“I can’t do this,” she admitted, voice torn. “I can’t.”
“Can’t do what?” I asked, feeling panicked. “Can’t talk to me?”
“Be here with you and not be with you,” she strangled out, pressing a hand to her forehead. “It’s too much. It’s too hard.” Shaking her head, she turned to walk away. “I can’t.”
“Aoife.” A fucked-up combination of guilt and fear coursed through me as I watched her leave. “All I’m trying to do is protect you.”
“No—” Swinging around, she stalked back to me, looking mad as hell. “No,” she repeated through clenched teeth, pointing her finger at me. “This is not protecting me, Joey. Waking away is not protecting me. Leaving me is not protecting me, dammit!” Furious, she blinked back her tears and glared up at me. “That is not how you treat the person you love, which goes to show that you never loved me the way I loved you.”
“Never loved you?” I gaped at her. “Are you fucking crazy? You’re the only person on this planet I do love!”
“No,” she snapped, shaking her head. “You don’t get to do that. You don’t get to come back and wreck me.” Placing her hands on my chest, she pushed me back when I reached for her. “You don’t get to tell me you love me and then go right back to breaking my heart!” She choked out another pained sob when I cupped her cheek. “You don’t love me, Joey.” Eyelids fluttering, she leaned into my touch and sniffled. “You don’t know how to love anyone.”
“Maybe I do it badly,” I choked out, as my heart splintered apart. “But I do love you.”
“You’re a shithead.”
“I know.”
“I can’t live like this.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean it, Joey,” she breathed, jerking away from me with a shiver. “I can’t take another second of it.” With that, she turned on her skyscraper heels and marched back inside the house, tossing the words “It hurts too much” over her shoulder as she went.
I knew that I should turn in the opposite direction and walk my ass away from her, but that wasn’t what I did.
No, because like the sick, masochistic fuckup I was, I followed her back into the Biggses’ house, knowing that Molloy wasn’t one to take being scorned lying down.
There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that she had every intention of making me pay for not giving her what she wanted, which just so happened to be exactly the same thing as I wanted.
Fuck my life.
8
Don’t Get Mad, Get Even
