Molly McAdams - Needing Her

“Connor!” she cried when I turned to leave. “Why are you doing this to us? I know you, I know you want to be with me too. Is it Dakota and Dylan, did they find out? Are they making you do this?”

I stopped walking when I reached her door, but couldn’t look back at her when I said, “You don’t know anything about me. The fact that you somehow made yourself believe there was an us is proof of that. There is no us.”

“How can you sa—­”

“Because we fucked, Maci, that’s all we did!” I turned to look at her beautiful face, filled with pain. “It’s not my fault you let yourself believe we could be something. It’s not my goddamn fault you don’t know how to keep your feelings and your needs separate.”

Her head shook slowly back and forth, and her hand came up to cover her mouth as a strangled sob left her. “You’re lying,” she choked out. “Please don’t do this!”

“Goodbye, Maci.”

“Connor!” she sobbed when I shut her door behind me.

I hurried into my apartment and threw the can of beer at the wall, suppressing an agonized roar as I stormed into my bedroom. For the rest of the night, I stood with my forehead and palms pressed against the wall that connected our bedrooms, and listened to her sobs. And for the first time since I was last beaten at seven years old, I cried.

Maci

“UP! COME ON, get up!” Amber yelled as she charged into the room we were sharing.

Glancing over at her when she jumped on my bed, I looked back up at the ceiling and suppressed a sigh. “I think I’m going to call it an early night. I’m exhausted from traveling up here.”

“Bullshit you are! You’re moping and being all stupid depressed because Connor turned out to be a dick!”

My chest ached, hearing his name. “Amber . . . please, just let me be upset about this for a while.”

“Nope, no. Not going to happen. As your best friend, it is my duty to make sure you get back to being all happy happy because it’s almost Christmas, have an awesome fucking vacation, and get laid by some random hot ski instructor.”

I actually cracked a smile. “Ski instructor? Really now . . .”

“Yes, and it will be perfect. It will take your mind off the asshole, you won’t have to see the guy again until next year—­if you even see him again.”

“Ahh . . . no thanks. But, really, have at it.”

Standing up, she grabbed my ankles and started dragging me down the bed.

“Holy shit! You’re such a fucking bitch. Oh God!” I wheezed when my back hit the floor with a hard thud.

“I’m your bitch, and it’s why you love me. So let’s slut it up, hit a few bars and—­”

We both looked toward the hallway when one of my brothers yelled my name.

“Why do I feel like I’m about to be in trouble?” I whispered to Amber when she helped me up off the floor.

“Maci, get the fuck up here!” one of the boys yelled seconds before I heard him pounding down the stairs.

We stood there frozen as we waited, and I jumped when my door was thrown open so hard, I was sure it left a dent in the wall.

“Jesus, Dyl—­”

“Shut the fuck up and get your ass upstairs. Now.”

“Excuse me? Don’t be fucking rude! Get out of my damn room, you son of a bitch!”

“Maci!” Came another voice from upstairs. Seconds later, Craig was standing behind Dylan. “You might want to come upstairs.” It wasn’t a suggestion. It was a command, and he sounded just as pissed as Dylan.

I looked up at my ceiling when I heard my dad yell, “Calm down, Dakota! Let the man talk.”

Connor. My heart raced and ached at the same time. My stomach started churning, and I was afraid I was about to lose what little of dinner I’d actually eaten. I didn’t want to see him, but why would he be here and upsetting my brothers if it weren’t for me?

Grabbing Amber’s hand, I pushed past my brothers and tried to ignore the way their glares made my skin crawl. Running up the stairs, my shoulders slumped and I had the ridiculous urge to start crying when I saw him standing there.

Connor hadn’t come for me. Bryce had.

The loss I’d been dealing with over the last twenty-­four hours since Connor had thrown me out of his life seemed to double. That little glimmer of hope that he’d changed his mind had been crushed when I saw Bryce instead of the man I loved standing there next to my dad.

“What are you doing here?” I asked Bryce. His family vacationed here every winter, just another reason why we’d been close for so long. But when he’d texted me to see if we could talk while we were here, I’d thought my ‘Fuck off’ response had said it all.

“You lying bitch,” Dylan said under his breath as he and Craig shoved past me, pushing me into Amber.

“Hey, baby,” Bryce said, a smile lighting up his too-­perfect face.

“Baby?” Amber and I said at the same time.

“Oh, hell no. I thought we were finally done with you,” Amber sneered.

Bryce sent a glare her way before looking at me again. “As always, Amber, what a pleasant surprise to see you.”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

I held my hand up to keep them from going into one of their fights, and stepped forward. “Bryce . . . why are you here? I told—­”

“I was just telling your father about our plans.”

Plans?

“Maci,”—­my Dad began—­“this young man has just informed me that you’re going to be getting married within the year . . . ?”

“What? No!”

“You don’t have to keep lying just because your brothers are here,” Bryce said as he stepped up to me. One arm went around my waist, the other cupped my cheek. His eyes roamed my face before zeroing in on my nose. When he spoke again, it was soft enough that only Amber and I could hear him. “I thought we agreed you were going to take that thing out? And please tell me your hair will be blonde again soon, I was planning on announcing our engagement at the beginning of the year.”

“You are such a little piece of shit.”

Bryce kept talking like Amber had never spoken. “I told you, Maci, no one will take you seriously when you look like this. You’re the mistress . . . remember? I need a wife. It’s time to grow up, baby.”

The air in my lungs left in one hard rush. It had hurt the first time Bryce had said that, but now, after Connor? It was killing me. He was right . . . all I was, like this, was a fuck buddy. I wasn’t relationship material, and, according to Bryce, I wasn’t marriage material either.

“I know,” I said as I nodded my head in his direction. Suddenly, I felt a large presence behind me.

“I suggest you leave,” Dylan said.

“Now. And if you don’t stop touching my sister, I swear to God you will spend Christmas in the hospital,” Dakota added.

Okay, make that two large presences.

Bryce actually had the balls to look up over me and say, “I’d like to speak to my future wife, if you don’t mind.”

“Nah, man. That’s not about to happen. You’ll leave; we have to talk to her. Seeing as you just dropped this on our whole family when none of us even had a clue about you, I’d say this is the wrong time for you to be here.” Dylan grabbed my arm hanging limply at my side, and pulled me back toward him, and away from Bryce.

“Maci?” Bryce looked at me.

“Let me walk you out,” I choked out, and wrangled my way out of Dylan’s grasp.

Not looking back to see if he was following me, I turned and headed toward the front door. Once I got there, I waited until Bryce was near me before jerking the door open and stepping outside with him.

“Mac—­”

“Leave, I don’t want to see you again. I thought I’d made that clear to you before, apparently I was wrong.”

“Don’t you realize how well I’ll be able to take care of you? After how much history we have, Maci, you can’t tell me you don’t want this. If it’s because I’m telling you to change your appearance, I’m only helping you. I’ve told you no one takes you seriously looking like this, you aren’t going to find a man that wants to make you his wife when—­”

“Stop,” I cried out and slapped a hand over my mouth as I tried to collect myself a little bit. “You need. To leave. Don’t call me, don’t come back here . . . and don’t come to my apartment when we’re back in Mission Viejo. You need to find someone who would be happy in your life, but I’m not her. God when did you even turn into this person?” I asked and waved my hand at him. “You’re turning into your dad!”

“Maci,” he said as he reached toward me, but I stepped back.

“No. Go. We’re done. Good-­bye, Bryce.”

Walking back inside, I shut and locked the door behind me before turning to face my family. My mom and sisters-­in-­law looked confused, Amber looked annoyed, Dad looked disappointed, and my brothers all looked pissed beyond reason.

All at once, my brothers started yelling at me about keeping something like that from them, how much they couldn’t stand him, and how I wasn’t supposed to see him again.

I looked to my mom and dad for help as Amber came and stood by my side. She grabbed my hand, and waited out the screaming with me as my parents tried to get my brothers to stop talking. Tears were steadily falling down my face from having heard those words from Bryce again, having my heart broken and wishing Connor had been the one to come for me—­and realizing he wouldn’t—­and having to listen to my brothers trying to run my life again.

I was so used to turning off these kinds of emotions around them, but I couldn’t anymore. I was too close to breaking from everything. My tough exterior I showed my family was cracking, and I knew I only needed one of them to poke me before I shattered into a million pieces. The moment they saw the tears, each one of my big brothers froze and looked like they were going to lock me away somewhere safe before going on a killing spree for whomever had made me cry.

Sam and Dakota were the first ones to start toward me, but I held my hand up at the same time a sob burst from my chest, and they both stopped their advance. Their gray eyes wildly searched my face, and it looked like Dakota was struggling to find something to say to me, but I didn’t wait to find out what. I turned and headed toward the stairs with Amber.

Once we were in our room with the door locked, Amber grabbed me in a hug and let me cry against her shoulder. She didn’t say anything, she just stood there and slowly ran a hand through my long hair, trying to soothe me as we listened to my family flipping out upstairs.

Four different times, ­people came to the door and spoke through it. Sometimes it was my brothers and the last was my parents. My brothers were freaking out over seeing me cry, but were still pissed off over Bryce; and my parents just told me they loved me and would talk to me about Bryce tomorrow.

“Did you think it would be Connor?” she asked when my parents had left, my body had stopped shaking, and the tears had dried out.

I nodded against her shoulder and released my death grip on her. Turning around, I headed toward our bathroom and wasn’t even shocked when I saw how horrible I looked. I felt even worse; the streaked makeup was just the cherry on top. Grabbing my makeup remover and face wash, I turned on the water and went about cleaning up.

Looking at myself in the mirror when I was done, I let everything Bryce and Connor had said to me in the last day race through my mind.

“I do look like the mistress,” I whispered to my reflection.

Amber did a double take from where she’d been standing at the entrance of the bathroom. “I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

I took out the hoop in my nose and set it on the counter as I continued staring at myself in the mirror. “Bryce is right, I need to stop being like this.” A short, pained laugh burst from my chest. “Both he and Connor were right. I need to grow up. At my hair appointment in two weeks, I’m going to start going back to blonde.”

“No, Maci . . . don’t do that because of what that douche said.”

“The only two guys I’ve been with have both told me to grow up within a short time. There has to be truth to that, and if this is part of the process of growing up . . . then it’s what I’m going to do. I know it won’t bring Connor back to me; I never meant anything to him.” I winced saying those words out loud. “But I can mean something to someone. I just—­it’s just what I need to do,” I said resolutely before walking out of the bathroom and crawling back in bed.