Chapter Eighteen

Callum

They weren’t words he’d planned on saying. He hadn’t thought of them or considered them beforehand. Not like drafting an important speech or creating those notecards for the school presentation.

Yet right then, those words felt like the most important words he’d ever spoken. It wasn’t poetry or anything remotely artistic, but they were the only words he had, and they were written on his soul. Those five words and nothing else.

He looked down at Molly right after he’d said them. He expected her to fall into his arms whispering yes, oh yes Callum again and again. He expected her eyes to brim with tears from him opening his soul and revealing all to her. He even half thought she might thank him or do something a little naughty to express her gratitude.

What he did not expect her to do was laugh.

“Did you just laugh?”

She crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow. “Did you just tell me you wanted me to stay?”

“Yes.”

She nodded. “Then yes, I just laughed.”

“I mean it,” he insisted, not understanding why she didn’t believe him.

“You don’t know what you’re saying.” She laughed again, pushing him away. “You’re just drunk.”

He pulled her back, tight and firm and close. “I’m dead sober, Molly. I know exactly what I’m saying.”

She shook her head. “You’re just wrapped up in the thrill of it all. We’ve had a lot of fun. We’ve fucked a lot. We’ve—”

“It’s not just about the sex,” he tried to say.

“No, but it is about the fantasy.” She dug the heels of her palm into her eyes and sighed. “You don’t mean what you said, Callum. You just don’t. You’re a duke. You’re the Duke, and you need to act a certain way, and the way you need to act does not include someone like me.”

“I’ve changed,” he said. “I’ve changed because of you.”

That got her to drop her hands and glance tentatively at him. She was clearly waiting for him to continue.

“Before you came here, I wasn’t myself. You saw that from the moment you came into the ballroom. You also clearly had no problem calling me out on it.”

She blushed sheepishly, making him grin.

“The guilt of the accident, the weight of my father’s death, the expectations of my mother, my family, my people—it all crushed me. I was trying to be someone I wasn’t, and it was eating me alive. I was lost. And then you came.”

She started to say what he knew she’d try to say. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do that. Really, it was all you.”

“No,” he said. “It was you. It was all you.”

She bit her lip, about to contradict him again.

“It was you, Molly,” he added, his voice just as commanding as the day he stopped her in the hallway.

With her silent, at least for the moment, he took a deep breath and went on. She had to hear this. She had to know.

“You’re talented and brave and honest and special. You are special.”

She didn’t disagree this time. She merely looked up at him with wide eyes that he could tell wanted to believe what he was saying. He, too, wanted her to believe. If there was any rock-solid truth that Callum Harding knew, it was this.

“You’re not meant for cages, Molly. You’re not meant for a cubicle or an office building or even the boundaries of New York City. No one should tell you what to paint or hell, even what to create. Your art isn’t meant for restrictions. You should paint wildly. You should live wildly. Because you’re wild.”

He wasn’t even sure what he was saying, but it all felt right. And he meant every single goddamn word.

“If you go back, Molly...if you take that job…you’ll be someone you’re not.”

If you leave me, you’ll be someone you’re not.

He’d also wanted to say that, but he held it back. Even though he believed it. Together, they inspired and challenged each other. They pushed each other, daring to be more and more themselves.

“Believe me, I know what it’s like to be someone you’re not. You saw what happened to me. You saw the duties, the bars like those of a jail. I never want to see those bars on you. It would destroy me.”

Her freckles seemed to twinkle like stars and her hair moved like ripples over the lake outside Floors Castle. Tracing her lips would be like tracing the gentle roll of the hills in the distance. She was so beautiful tonight. Everything about her, he realized, was like Kelso. If she left, he’d be cursed. He’d never stop seeing her everywhere.

“And so, Molly,” he said with a smile, “you just can’t leave.”

His smile was wide and open and warm. A smile encouraging her to believe him. To trust him. She was also starting to smile, but it was different. Her smile twitched at the corners and threatened to fall from a cloud of doubt and hesitation. Something was missing.

“I want to believe you,” she said, staring down at the gravel. “You have no idea how badly I want to believe you.”

He could sense what was coming next.

“Let’s just wait until tomorrow, all right?” She slipped her hand into his. “Sometimes we think we’ve changed and…it’s harder than we think.”

He pondered her cryptic words. She didn’t believe that he had changed, did she? Was she worried this was temporary? An act? Couldn’t she see he never wanted to go back to the way he was when she’d found him?

As he was thinking of how to prove this to her, she shivered.

“I’m a little cold.”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and walked her back to the car. He handed her the dress and she slipped it back on, ripped and muddied as it was. Then, as he was helping her into his jacket to keep her warm, he reassured her again.

“You’ll see.”

Molly glanced at him over her shoulders, and her eyes met his.

“One way or another,” he insisted. “You’ll see.”