THIRTEEN
Three blinks. On the fourth, Mollie’s eyes focus. She is on a bed; a large one with thick pillows and pale yellow sheets. She can move her limbs, wiggle her bare legs against the cool linen, but when she rolls over, a thundering pain whizzes against her head.
“Shit. Balls. Crap.” She reaches for her eye, which only opens a sliver, but stops when she hears Layla’s voice behind her.
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Layla?”
“I’m over here, sweetie.”
Forcing her lids to open wider, Mollie spots her best friend sitting in a leather chair next to a fire. There are slate stones stacked the entire length of the fireplace, reaching the pine log ceiling. Her eyes focus, and with a few more blinks the blur diminishes. Mollie can make out Layla’s hair set high in a ponytail and the blue cover of the book she reads. “Hey.” She reaches out a hand, calling the blonde forward and some of the tension in her shoulders releases when she feels Layla’s soft, thin fingers.
“Hey yourself.” Layla stands on the mattress and walks to the other side, making Mollie loll backward as she sits down next to her. “You scared me, bitch.”
“How’d I do that?” Mollie rolls onto her back to see her friend better.
“Wreck, hello.” Layla helps Mollie sit up, holding her until she can wiggle against the headboard. “You don’t remember?”
“No,” Mollie says, spotting the glass of water on the bedside table and pointing at it. “Thanks.” Layla nods and Mollie’s throat is instantly refreshed when she downs the whole glass.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
She closes her eyes and memory and dreams mesh together like a silent film, all black and white, muted and vague. “The cute cop.”
“Can’t say I’m familiar.” Layla lowers to rest on her elbow. “Vaughn said he took you to talk to a detective and when y’all left, you got rammed at a four way.”
“That… that sounds eerily familiar.” Mollie can see clearer now, to the large room she’s laying in, clearly a log cabin, and the light streaming in from the attached bathroom. “Where are we?”
“Vaughn’s cabin. Or, his family’s cabins, I’m not too sure. His sister wanted you incognito until they can transfer your dad to a safehouse.” Mollie’s chest fills with hope, with possibility at her father finally being free, at the end of this entire madness. Layla lifts the blinds from the window next to her side of the bed. “Way up in the mountains. Those are clouds, friend.”
Mollie inclines, leans on her elbow. “Damn. I don’t think I’ve ever been this high before.”
“Liar. I remember junior year.” Mollie throws a pillow at her best friend, but she only catches it, doesn’t throw it back like she’d usually do. When Mollie looks at her face, Layla’s eyes are red and glistening. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Layla’s voice isn’t clipped or frustrated and concern quickly filters into Mollie’s mind. Layla never speaks like this, never shows anyone her real worries.
“What?”
The blonde gives her arm a gentle shove. “Vaughn and his sister told us everything. About your Dad, what he’s doing, why Vaughn showed up at the Dash, why you’ve been off with him.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, ‘oh.’ Molls, you texted me almost every day and didn’t tell me once what was going on. I’m your best friend.”
Mollie moves over, making room for Layla and then points to the space she’s made next to her. The blonde joins her, resting shoulder to shoulder with Mollie against the headboard. “That’s why I didn’t tell you.”
“Huh?”
“Layla, you know how fucked up my childhood was. You know where I come from. None of that ever touched me here, except my raging bitch of a mother.”
“And sister.”
“And sister, true.” Without really thinking about it, she takes Layla’s hand and they both stare up at the ceiling, looking at the high sheen on the logs and the orangey hue that reflects the soft light from the bathroom. “But now, all this stuff? It already touched you. That fire, that was meant to hurt me. You got in the way, same as Autumn.” Mollie turns and Layla copies her. “You have all been my family and not a substitute, but the real deal. If something bad happened to any of you because of me…”
Layla waves her hand, placing her fingers over Mollie’s mouth to silence her. “Guess what, genius, family is family through the great and the not so gravy. And in case you forgot, this little family of ours hasn’t always had only good times.” She sits up, takes her hand off of Mollie’s mouth. “Hey, you remember that time Autumn almost died?”
“Not funny.”
“Not meant to be. I’m making a point.” Layla again lays on her side picking up the ends of Mollie’s hair and running her fingernails to the knots she finds there. “You can’t handle the shit on your own. Not when you’ve got us. That’s what families do, Molls… they shovel the shit right with you.”
Mollie exhales, pulling her matted hair out of Layla’s fingers. “I love you, bitch.”
“I know. I’m so freaking lovable.”
The girls share a laugh and Mollie stretches. Eager to see if her legs still work, she pulls back the covers and swings her feet onto the hardwood floor. It’s then that she notices the vase on the bedside table containing four magnolia flowers. Glancing over at Layla, she raises her eyebrows but her best friend only shrugs, as if she has no clue where they came from. Mollie finds it weird, finding her favorite flowers here. As far as she can remember, she has never told anyone why she loves them, that her father took her to the place where his family was buried only once when she was ten. It was a large farm, lost to bankers a generation before, but the cemetery still stood and all around the broken, brittle headstones were magnolia trees perfuming the air so that when Mollie sat down next to her Daddy, neither one of them felt sad.
“See, not such a bad way to spend eternity, huh Mimi?” He pointed to the largest headstone at the center of cemetery. “That’s Granny Tippit and she always had the prettiest gardens. She planted these trees a long time ago.” Mollie had been fascinated by the thick branches and the beautiful green leaves that shown like wax in the sunlight. “Family keeps family,” he told her, “and Granny Tippit knew enough to keep things pretty for everyone here.”
The flowers in the vase were wide, white, with petals that stretched out like stars and a yellow center that filled the massive room with the distinctive scent that reminded Mollie of Jackson and her Daddy and the beauty Granny Tippit created all those years ago.
“So, I guess I better tell Vaughn you’re awake.” Layla walks toward the door and Mollie smiles at her, as if to say ‘how do you mean?’ “He wouldn’t leave and so I told him he stank.”
“Layla…”
“Molls, two days we’ve been here and you’ve been in and out of it, but that dude hadn’t showered once because he thought you might wake up when he was gone.” Her best friend smiles, the glint in her eyes wicked and calculating. “He is so very into you.”
She dismisses the remark, not ready to explain the clusterfuck of whatever one would call her relationship with Vaughn. His face comes to her and then she remembers something from the crash—his bloody shirt, how pale he’d grown, but the images are fractured by the collection of hazy recollection when she tried to sort through what had actually happened and what her mind invented. “Wait! He got shot! I saw the blood!”
“He’s fine. Just a graze, but you know he did that whole ‘Me Marine, Is Fine, No Stitches’ crap at the hospital.” Layla leans against the bed post, pulling her hair through her fingers. “Declan threatened to hold him down if he didn’t get patched up.”
“Declan? He was there?”
Layla steps back in front of her. “Duh. Deco, Autumn, Sayo, me, we were all there, sweetie. And we’re all here now.” The blonde leans down, tips Mollie’s chin before to leaves a quick kiss on her cheek. “Family, remember?”
“So tell me what I missed. Sayo mentioned something about you and a bucket of paint?”
Layla cringes. “In my defense, the dousing flour incident was a low blow.” She leans in, whispers in Mollie’s ear. “It took me two days to get all the flour out of my ass crack.”
“Nice visual, thanks.” Mollie waves off Vaughn’s offer of more ribs. She was stuffed already and couldn’t take anymore protein.
Her friends were adjusting to seclusion, despite Sayo’s constant complaints of needing to be at the library. It was summer semester and very few students milled around her library, but Sayo wanted to be there even with the threat shadowing Mollie and her friends. Mollie smiles when Declan moves his half-full glass of sweet tea, giving Layla a disappointed frown. “I’d say the lowest blow was glitter in Donovan’s bleeding vents.”
“Hey you, no picking sides.” The salad dressing on Layla’s fork flies across the table when she points it at Declan. “He’s your best friend, so you are biased and therefore get no opinions on the matter.”
“That’s shite and you know it. I’m the sorry sod who had to hear him yammering on for a week about all that mess in every crevice of his car.” Declan waits a beat, as though he’s recalling Donovan’s loud complaints in his head. “You know he’s had to sell it, right?”
Mollie notices the quick wince on Layla’s face, but it shifts quickly and her best friend recovers with a flippant shrug. “Two words, Fraser: Kidnapped Puppy.”
“That puppy hasn’t been a puppy for three years.” Declan’s had a few beers, Mollie can tell. His bright green eyes are red rimmed and Autumn replaced his beer with tea at least two drinks back. “And you’re deflecting. Paint? Go on, tell her then.”
Seeming to realize Declan won’t let her off the hook, Layla deflates and she rests against the back of the chair, looking at Mollie. Across the table, Mollie sees Vaughn’s wide eyes, the grin that dimples his cheek as though he’s enjoying the entertainment. “Fine. So, that asshole doused me as I’m trying to work on my tan, at my house, mind you, which is just a violation of general prank decorum.” Declan’s snorts and Layla glares at him. “So, I thought, fire with fire, and went to his apartment. Which, by the way,” here she closes her eyes and shudder works over her shoulders, “single grossest place I’ve ever stepped my Jimmy’s onto in my life. Smells like weed and those Neanderthals seem incapable of picking up their dirty underwear or used condom wrappers.”
“Not everyone can have a maid, love.” There is a niggling tone in Declan’s voice and over Layla’s loud “whatever,” Mollie hears Declan making excuses to Autumn for his friends’ disgusting apartment.
“Newsflash, Irish, we don’t have a maid. We have a cook and that’s only because my mom is a surgeon and is too damn busy to cook anything, so shut it.”
Declan laughs, raises his hands in surrender.
“So, how’d you get into his apartment?” Mollie asks.
“Pffft, easy. A couple of Kappa Sigs picked the lock. Andrew Shipley is the president and he owes me since I got Walter to tear up the ticket he wrote them for public indecency.” At Mollie’s frown and slight head tilt, Layla explains. “Streaking at the Founder’s Day luncheon. Idiots.”
Vaughn leans in, captivated. “Does she always talk this much?”
Mollie nods, distracted, and her attention quickly returns to her best friend.
“So I got him good. Waited until I knew he’d be at practice, thank you, Dad, and snuck in. That pothead he lives with was totally crashed out on the sofa and so I slip into Donovan’s room with a can of fluorescent green oil based paint.” Mollie shakes her head, eyes closed, knowing that the oil based paint would be impossible to get out. Layla catches Mollie’s frown and her smile becomes obnoxious, as though she’s proud at the devious levels of her prank. “I’m waiting outside his window when he gets home, all stinky and disgusting from practice.” She wrinkles her nose, but then, when the next chapter in the story pops into her mind, the blonde’s smile grows wicked. “Then I hear it… the whine of his door, the simultaneous flick of the light and thunk of the paint can knocking against his head. I got everything on my phone, of course.”
“Tell her how you managed to sprain his ankle.” Declan isn’t smiling and his waves off Autumn’s elbow to his ribs.
“That wasn’t intentional,” Layla tells Declan.
The Irishman leans forward, gaze shifting between Mollie and Vaughn who are clearly the only people at the table unfamiliar with the levels of Layla’s prank. “This crazy bird buttered the bloody floor in his bathroom. With real bleeding butter so my poor mate is screaming his head off, paint all over, and he runs into the bathroom to clean himself up a bit and slides all the way across the floor, lands on his arse. He’s out of commission for the first two matches of the season.” Declan shakes his head. “Best you mind yourself, Layla. He’ll have far too much time on his hands to think of devious revenge.”
“Please. I’m Prank Queen. He’ll never get that paint out of his apartment.”
“You could have really hurt him, Layla,” Sayo says, leaning her elbows on the table.
“It wasn’t that much butter and Donovan is a big boy and quick on his feet.” Layla catches how Declan shakes his head, how Autumn stops him from saying anything with a touch on his arm. Vaughn mumbles to Mollie, they both laugh and Mollie tries to keep her humor in check, but Layla spots her smirk and she pushes her plate aside, frowning at Vaughn. “What?”
Vaughn looks around the table watching everyone’s expression. “So I take it none of you have nutted up and told her what’s really going on, right?”
“What’s going on?” Layla asks, as she brings her gaze to around the table, to her friends and their shifting attention. No one will look at her directly.
Finally, Vaughn exhales, moving his elbow onto the table surface. “Layla, you could end all this misery very easily.”
“How?”
He picks up his glass and takes a sip, offers her a slight shrug. “Fuck him.”
Layla’s face is ashen and her mouth drops open, despite the hysterical laughter around her.
When she protests, the laughter only gets louder. “That’s just… how, ew no. He’s disgusting.”
“And yet, last month at Sayo’s barbeque,” Mollie offers, “you couldn’t keep your eyes off of him when he jumped in the pool.”
“I have a boyfriend.” Mollie thinks her best friend’s protest is a little too loud, her chin uplifted a bit too high.
“Who you didn’t even call to tell you’d be out of town,” Sayo says.
Mollie’s stomach aches with the humor taking over her body and when Layla stands from the table and throws her napkin in Vaughn’s face, she has to lean on the table to catch her breath.
“You know what, fuck you all. I’m going to bed.”
Mollie makes to follow Layla, but Sayo brushes her off. “I’ll get her, hon. We’re in the north cabin. You shouldn’t have to walk all that way.” And Sayo and Layla disappear from the dining room before the laughter has completely settled.
Autumn stands with two plates in her hand and her shoulders still shaking. Mollie loves seeing her like this, loves even more how Declan follows her, how they move together so easily. Autumn nods to several dishes and Declan grabs them before they both disappear into the kitchen. When Mollie stands as well, grabbing her plate and Layla’s, Vaughn moves to her side and takes them out of her hand. “Why don’t you go catch a shower? I’ll help them clean.”
“Vaughn, I bumped my head. I’m fine.”
“I’m aware, but you are my guest here.” Two cups and a few napkins are added to Vaughn’s stack before Mollie can stop him. “Let me try to make up for getting us in a wreck.” Mollie doesn’t like how easy Vaughn takes blame. She begins to argue, to reassure him that she doesn’t blame him for anything, but Vaughn gives her a little shove on her ass, directing her toward the bedroom. “Go on. I’ll come check on you in a little while.”
The bathroom is a mammoth; more slate covering the walk-in shower and a wide double vanity with copper sinks. Mollie strips quickly, setting the shower to hot before she is completely naked. Above the vanity is a wall-sized mirror set in a black metal frame and when Mollie looks at herself, steam billowing already in the room, she notices how the dark circles under her eyes have vanished, how the faint lines at the corners of her lids are now gone. Layla had told her she slept in and out for two days and it seems to Mollie that long sleep has served her well. Her body aches, muscles tight and she hopes the shower will alleviate some of the lingering soreness from the crash.
Her thick hair, now clean and de-matted thanks to her best friend’s expert combing before dinner, feels soft between her fingers as she twists it up, working an elastic to secure the bun on the top of her head. When she enters the shower, Mollie releases a low moan, loving the hard, hot spray against her skin and the how it massages away the knots she’s accumulated in her shoulders.
The soap on the built-in shelf is white, barely more than a sliver and when Mollie grabs it and inhales, it smells like Vaughn, his musky, masculine scent that always leaves her mouthwatering. He was in here this morning, his large body naked, his massive back touching the same warm stones. The thought has Mollie trembling, despite the heat of the water. He kissed her this morning though when she first saw him after she woke, she’d been certain that he was keeping to his “no touch, I made a promise” policy. But then, he saw her sitting on that massive bed, hair fanning out in all directions, and the at-a-arm’s-length Marine did not make an appearance. He climbed onto the bed, held her, and pulled her onto his lap, cradling her head under his chin. Mollie loved the sensation of being so close to him, listening to the slow rhythm of his heartbeat as she rested against his chest.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,” he’d told her, arms tightening when she rubbed her cheek up his chest. “I was so scared, seeing you like that…”
Mollie knew Vaughn had seen horrors, had experienced his own nightmares made real when he returned to the States and so she did not want him thinking of her battered and broken in that car. She’d distracted him by pulling his shirt to the side and examining his wound.
“Layla said it was a graze?”
“It’s fine. I’ve had worse.” He’d been trying for strength, to diminish his own injuries and focus on Mollie. The self-sacrificing behavior is the one thing about him that Mollie respected and hated equally.
“Well, I’m glad you’re okay too.”
And then, Vaughn ran from the promises he made, skating from the things he thought were right and sensible and kissed Mollie. He hadn’t demanded, had been very gentle, but Mollie had missed the texture of his lips, the way they were both rough and smooth at the same time. She’d missed his hands holding her head as his mouth worked over her and so, she’d tugged on his collar, poured into that kiss everything she couldn’t admit to him. With the swipe of her tongue she said “I’m sorry” and “I need you” and “You can’t push me away.” He responded, became as worked up by that small gesture as she had and when they fell back onto the bed, when Vaughn’s hands left her neck and tugged onto her hip, Mollie thought she’d die from relief.
“Shit.” Vaughn had pulled back, fingers tugging on her shirt as though he was trying to restrain himself. “Your friends are out there and I’m supposed to be manning the grill.”
“Ribs?” Until he mentioned food, Mollie didn’t realize how hungry she was.
“Naturally.” He’d sat them up, holding her close to him. “Can we pick this back up after dinner?”
“We better.”
They hadn’t talked about what happened before the wreck or Vaughn’s instant jealousy over Ryan’s invitation, but Mollie figures that isn’t important. Not now. Not when she knows what to expect tonight. Smiling, she replaces Vaughn’s soap on the shelf and reaches for the body wash with the delicate flower on the label before she lathers up.
The heat and steam from the bathroom escapes through the door when Mollie opens it and the shift in temperature has her a bit light headed. Her legs wobble and she reaches for the desk next to the door, then smiles when a pair of wide arms circle her waist.
“Woah. I’ve got you.”
She pats Vaughn once and he releases her, follows her to the bed. “Maybe a little too much wine.” Mollie’s shoulders are a bunched mess and when she stretches them, wincing at the sharp ache through the top of her back, Vaughn points to the floor, before he sits behind her. “You don’t have to do that.” But she is already lowering to the floor with Vaughn’s thick legs on either side of her.
“I know I don’t, but please. I am the king of ‘Oh God’ massages.”
She looks up, smiling at him. “Confident are we—shit,” she continues when Vaughn begins rubbing away her knots. “I concede. God, you are the king.” Her head lolls forward, and Mollie can’t help the release a soft, low moan. Vaughn’s hands are a miracle, just strong enough that the touch flirts toward pain, soothing enough that the knots in her muscles vanish under his thumbs.
“Like that?”
“I like everything you do to me, Semper Fi.” She smiles at his laugh and his attentions on her shoulders double.
“Take your hair down.”
Mollie releases the bun, shifts her fingers through her hair and places the elastic band on the bedside table as Vaughn massages her scalp. “Shit, this is heaven.” The flowers in the vase are still bright and fragrant and Mollie stares at them, taking in the delicate petals and soft texture on the surface. “That was you?” she asks Vaughn, nodding toward the vase.
His fingers on her scalp continue working. “You were dreaming. You were telling your dad to pick the white ones.”
Mollie thinks she should be embarrassed that she was talking in her sleep, but if those small murmurs about something she loved in childhood fetched magnolias, then she didn’t really care about being embarrassed. “They’re my favorite.”
“I’ll have to remember that.” Vaughn pats her shoulder, effectively ending the massage and he places a soft kiss on the top of her head before he gets up to help her off the floor.
Mollie wants to kiss him, to hold him tight but she hesitates, not sure if Vaughn meant what he said earlier about picking things up after dinner. Instead, she climbs onto the large mattress with him watching her, waiting for an invitation, she supposes. “Where are you sleeping?”
He sits on her bed, scoots toward her until she is forced to lean back with him climbing over her. “Wherever you want me.”
“What about your promises?”
“Fuck my promises.” And then, Vaughn doesn’t need an invitation. He is kissing her, touching her, moving between her legs until Mollie can feel him hard against her, until she is panting and pulling his shirt over his head.
She lifts her hips as Vaughn slides her shorts down her legs. He touches her, prepares her, but she is ready, wet and warm, without barely a few strokes. “Me dinging my noggin changed your mind?”
It was meant as a joke, something benign to distract her from how hot the room has become, from how desperate this man makes her. But then Vaughn stops, inches away from filling her and he looks down, expression hard, serious. “Yes.”
“Oh.” Mollie takes his kiss, the feel of his lips over her bruised eyes, across the gash on her forehead, loves the way his tongue and his dick slip right into her at the same time. He is so full, so thick that her legs move apart, her hips sinking into the mattress to take all of him.
Vaughn is over her, moving inside her, but his arms are firm, straight, as his hips work and the stare he levels at her, makes it impossible to focus on little else save the low cast of his eyes and the soften features on his face. But she feels him in her, loves the way he pushes in deep and the slow, methodical pump of his hips. “I thought I’d failed you,” he whispers, stilling to rest against her. His next kiss is deep, wet and takes Mollie’s breath away. “I thought I couldn’t protect you.”
“This wasn’t your fault. None of this.” Those low lit eyes come right to hers when she cups his face between her hands. “And you’re protecting me now. Better yet, you’re protecting the people I love most in the world. You don’t know how much that means to me.”
Another pump of his hips and Vaughn shudders, moans when Mollie clenches around him. “I think I’m in trouble.”
“Why?”
He stills, leaning up on one elbow. “Because I almost knocked that detective out when he offered to take you for a drink.” She laughs. “It’s not funny. I’ve never been like this over a woman.” Vaughn buries his face between her breast and groans, frustrated before he looks back up at her. “I’m a little out of my element here so if I act like a prick, you gotta tell me.”
“I think I can handle that.”
And then he tests the limits of what she can handle, picking up speed, clamping down on her hips, moving her leg up for better traction.
“Do me a favor, Semper Fi?”
Breathing hard, Vaughn groans again, slowing his movements. “Mollie, you are naked and wrapped around me. I think if you asked me to run through Cavanagh in nothing but my boots and dog tags, I’d break my neck to do it for you.”
“Not necessary, but thanks.” She hesitates, hopes that her voice is strong enough, expresses her fear without scaring him. “Just don’t get jumpy. Don’t try to do the right thing and push me away again. I… I don’t know if I could handle watching you walk away again.”
“You won’t have to.” Vaughn’s body is slick against hers, his thick thighs heavy as he moves deeper, but Mollie feels the full weight of him inside her and the slow, lingering kiss he gives her. “I’m here. You just don’t get it. Seeing you hurt, seeing your blood and not knowing if you’d…” He shakes his head, blinking quick. “It brought back a lot of things, things I’ll tell you about one day, when I can.” He moves the hair off her face. “I couldn’t handle seeing that again, knowing that I couldn’t stop you from being hurt. It would kill me.”
She wants to tell him that she understands, that she’s seen enough violence herself for a lifetime—it’s something sad they have in common. But the moment is not right and Mollie doesn’t want to do anything now but reassure him. “Then let’s makes sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Vaughn smiles, and it is a genuine expression full of hope, of confidence that makes Mollie’s heart swell. “Ooh Rah.” And then he finishes the business at hand.