Chapter Nineteen
Tristan
The bourbon burned my throat, but it was a nice, comforting burn. I wanted to numb myself against everything that had happened between Molly and me, but the more I drank, the more I seemed to feel. I put aside my glass and tried to figure out how to get on with my work, despite the conflict raging inside my head.
I knew that Molly had already called reception to inform them that she was checking out tomorrow morning. I looked towards the calendar standing on my desk and realized tomorrow was Christmas. It was also the official opening of the resort. There were a ton of things I needed to check on, but my mind just wasn’t capable of focusing on work.
When Ben walked in, I looked at him gratefully, hoping that he might be able to distract me. “Is everything on schedule for the ribbon cutting ceremony tomorrow?”
“Everything’s fine,” Ben nodded. “Just a few last-minute adjustments I need to take care of.”
“And the staff?”
“They’ve been briefed, and they’re ready.”
“Have you had a word with senior staff members?”
“They’ll be overseeing everything,” he assured me.
“And things are in order for the ribbon cutting ceremony?”
He frowned. “You already asked me that.”
“I did?”
“As I walked in,” he nodded.
“Uh… What did you say?”
Ben sat down opposite me. “Is everything alright?” he asked. “Because you look… Well… You don’t look so good.” His eyes fell to the half-empty glass of bourbon next to me. “It’s a little early to be drinking, don’t you think?”
“My resort is opening tomorrow,” I said. “I’m allowed to celebrate.”
“Except you don’t look like you’re celebrating anything,” he pointed out. “In fact, you look like you’re in mourning.”
I looked away from him, unable to keep the disappointment from my face.
“Does this have something to do with Molly checking out tomorrow?” he asked gently.
“You heard?”
“Of course,” he nodded. “I hear everything that happens in this resort.”
“We had a fight,” I admitted. “Well, she fought, and I just sat here like a dick and didn’t say anything. She was pissed, and I deserved it.”
“What happened?”
“She wanted to talk about what happened between us,” I said. “And I basically told her it was a mistake and we should just forget the whole thing ever happened.”
“Is that all you told her?”
“I told her I would have slept with any woman.”
“You really are a dick,” Ben said honestly.
I groaned and put my face in my hands. “Fuck,” I said loudly. “I’ve really screwed up with Molly, haven’t I?”
“You knew that before you slept with her,” he pointed out.
“She’s too good for me,” I said, trying to defend my behavior. “If I get involved with her, I’m bound to hurt her somewhere down the line.”
“So you decided to hurt her now instead of later?” Ben asked, incredulously.
“Fuck,” I said again, as I stood up and started pacing. “She’s really leaving.”
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t want her to go.”
“Why not?” he asked. “It seems like the best thing for both of you is for Molly to leave. She’s obviously in love with you, and you’re obviously not.”
I stopped short and turned to Ben. “What if…”
“What if what?”
“What if… I am in love with her?” I said softly. It was the first time I was allowing myself to say the words out loud. The moment they left my tongue, I realized what I had been afraid of all this time.
He smiled, and I realized he had just been waiting for me to realize that this whole time. “Then you need to make a choice,” he said. “And you need to stick to it. But first, I think you need to apologize.”
“She’s still Jason’s sister,” I pointed out.
“Is that supposed to mean something?” he asked.
“I have to respect the bro-code,” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “What are we, tenth graders? You’re not in high school, Tristan; neither is Jason. You and Molly are consenting adults. If you want to date one another, I doubt Jason will stand in your way.”
“And my lifestyle?” I said. “You know how hard we have to work.”
“I do,” Ben nodded. “And, I think Molly is smart enough to have realized that, too. It doesn’t seem to be a factor for her. So, why do you keep insisting you know what’s best for her? Why do you keep making her decisions for her?”
I bit my lip and kept pacing. “I’ve been trying to run from my feelings for so long… I don’t know how to stop now.”
“You stop by admitting the truth,” Ben said.
I stopped pacing and looked at him. “I don’t want her to leave,” I said. “I can’t let her leave.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know when I’ll see her again,” I admitted. “And I don’t want to have to endure another six years without seeing her face.”
He smiled. “I think you need to tell her that.”
“What if it’s too late?” I asked, suddenly nervous. “What if she leaves anyway?”
“Then at least you tried,” he said. “I don’t understand how you can be so fearless in business, but not in your personal life.”
“Because there’s more to lose here,” I said. “Molly is…special.”
“Then don’t let her go without a fight.”
I stared at Ben for a second and then jumped into action. He was right. Gregory was right. Molly was right. Apparently, everyone had been except for me. I needed to be a man and stop running from the things that scared me.
I headed straight for Molly’s suite, without stopping to talk to anyone on the way. When I arrived at her door, I paused with my hand inches from the wood.
I was scared, but I took a deep breath and knocked anyway. I stood away from the peephole so that Molly couldn’t see whom it was. I was worried she wouldn’t answer the door if she knew it was me standing there.
A few seconds later, the door opened and Molly stood before me. She was wearing the same faded blue jeans from yesterday and a plain white-shirt that brought out the blue in her eyes. Her hair fell carelessly around her shoulders, and I realized she looked most beautiful when there wasn’t a stitch of makeup on her face.
“Molly,” I said.
She stared at me for a second and then she proceeded to slam the door in my face. I jammed my leg into the threshold, preventing her from closing the door completely.
“Get your foot out of my doorway,” she said in a no-nonsense tone.
“I can’t do that.”
“What do you want, Tristan?” she demanded.
“I just want to talk.”
“The time for that is done,” she said coldly. “I’m not interested in talking now. Nor am I interested in assuaging your conscience of guilt.”
“That’s not why I’m here.”
“Why else would you be here?”
“If you let me in, I could explain,” I suggested.
Her blue eyes were pinpricks of steel, so I searched the rest of her face for some small indication that she might be softening towards me. Her expression was impatient at best, however, and I could barely see the rest of her through the small opening in the door. My leg was starting to hurt a little bit, too.
“Please, Molly,” I said. “I owe you an apology after the other night.”
“Consider it given,” she replied. “Now if you’ll excuse me—”
“That’s not all I want to say to you.”
Molly sighed deeply and shook her head. “Why are you doing this, Tristan?” she asked, and her tone sounded hopeless. “Can’t you at least let me leave with some small amount of dignity? Must you drag this out? It’s already painful enough.”
“I’ve hurt you,” I said directly. “I know that, and I need to explain myself. But I would much rather do that face to face, instead of face to…door.”
Molly’s blue eyes flashed to mine for a second. She seemed to be contemplating her options. I could see that stomping on my foot and slamming the door on me was still an option for her. Luckily, her kind nature won out, and she opened the door, allowing me to walk into her suite. I could see part of her room from where I stood, and I saw that her suitcases were out and half packed. The sight of it gave me the encouragement I needed to start talking.
“I’m sorry,” I started.
“You already said that,” she said impatiently.
“I was scared, Molly,” I said honestly.
I saw her expression change a little as she turned to me. “What were you scared of?”
“Of you…of the idea of us,” I admitted. “I wanted you, and I knew I shouldn’t. You’re Jason’s sister. In my head, you were always off limits. Which wasn’t a problem for me—until that one trip we made during Thanksgiving. Do you remember?”
“I remember,” she nodded.
“We stopped by your parents’ house, and I was standing in the backyard, admiring the cornfields when I saw you from a distance. You walked straight up to me and said hello.”
“I remember that, too.”
“That was the moment things changed for me,” I said. “That was the moment I stopped seeing you as Jason’s sister. That was the moment I saw you for what you really were—a beautiful woman.”
Molly looked at me with surprise. “That was two years after we met.”
“Yes.”
“I was sixteen.”
“Yes.”
She shook her head. “I had no idea you even noticed me. Not even then.”
“How could I let on?” I asked. “Quite apart from the fact that you were Jason’s sister, you were also sixteen. I was twenty; there was no way I could have acted on my feelings.”
She frowned at me with concentration. “The Christmas party,” she said softly. “That kiss…”
“I remember it,” I said, finally admitting to the truth after all these years. “I’ve always remembered it. To this day, it was the best kiss I’ve ever had. And I think that was because of you and what you meant to me…even though I hadn’t admitted to myself the extent of my feelings for you.”
Molly looked like she was processing everything I was telling her. “You remember,” she whispered.
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” I told her. “I just thought… I knew you expected me to acknowledge what had happened between us. It was the hardest thing in the world to sit across that breakfast table from you and act as though nothing had happened.”
“You were very convincing.”
“I had to be,” I said. “I couldn’t get involved with you. I was convinced that I had a loyalty to Jason to keep, and I needed to stay away from you. But that was just my excuse. The truth is… I was scared of committing myself to one person. I was scared of relationships. I was scared of screwing up with you. I knew I couldn’t afford to take that risk.”
“So you made the decision for me.”
“I’ve since come to realize how stupid and presumptuous that was of me,” I admitted. “I’m sorry for that, too.”
Molly shook her head at me. “Six years,” she said. “Six years you had me believing that that kiss meant nothing to you.”
“I was an idiot.”
“I watched you drive away with my brother that day,” she told me. “Then I went up to my bedroom and cried for an hour. My nose and eyes were so red and puffy that night, Mom thought I had caught a cold.”
I looked down at the carpet for a moment. “I haven’t treated you very well over the years, have I?”
“No,” Molly said bluntly. “You haven’t.”
I nodded. “I understand if you just want to kick me out of your room. I definitely deserve it. I just want you to know one thing before you decide what you want to do.”
“Which is?”
“I want to give this a shot, Molly,” I said, throwing caution to the wind and deciding to be brave. “I want you. I’ve wanted you since you were sixteen. When we had sex the other night, it was probably one of the best things that ever happened to me. I was just scared of my own feelings, so I pushed you away like I did six years ago. I was lying when I told you I would have slept with anyone that night. There’s no one else, Molly. It’s only ever been you.
“In all these years, of all the women I’ve been with, you have always been the one constant. You were the one daydream I kept going back to. I don’t know if I’m going to be any good at a relationship. I don’t know if I’ll end up breaking your heart. All I know is that I want to give this one real shot, come what may.
“Because I just realized something. It’s worth the risk. You are worth the risk.”
I finished my little speech, knowing that I had just laid my heart bare for her. Now it was up to Molly. I stood my ground and waited for her verdict.