Molly

A blast of frigid air hits me in the face as we push out of the restaurant and race to Teagan’s car. I climb into the back, letting Shay have the front seat.

“Did you know Brayden would be there?” I ask.

“I did,” Shay says.

“Shay! What the hell? I just made an ass of myself.” And now I have this awful feeling in my stomach. Like maybe I’m in the way and if I already know I can’t be with Brayden, I have no right to keep him from someone who could plan a future with him.

Shay buckles up, then turns sideways in her seat to look at me. “It didn’t go as planned, okay? I thought Brayden would notice you were there and come over to say hi.”

I gape at her. “I see him every single day. I live with him. And you made me look like some sort of awful stalker because you were hoping he’d say hi?”

Shay and Teagan exchange a look, and Teagan says, “She was hoping Sara would see the way he looks at you and back off before trying to get him back.”

The way he looks at me? I swallow the bubble of hope those words put in my throat. It doesn’t matter how he looks at me. We are what we are, and nothing more. And anyway, she’s probably mistaking lust for something else. “I feel like a pawn, and I don’t like it.”

“I’m sorry.” Shay throws up her hands. “I swear I don’t normally meddle so much in my brothers’ love lives, but I’ve been protective of Brayden since Sara left, and Molly, the two of you are making me crazy. Can’t you just jump him before he makes a big mistake and takes her back?”

If my interaction with Brayden hadn’t cemented the second mimosa as a bad idea, I’m sure of it now as I try and fail to understand Shay’s logic. She took me to brunch hoping Brayden would say hi, and she wants me to jump her brother? Hello—been there, done that, plan to do it again tonight. “You’re not making any sense to me.”

“Has Brayden told you anything about Sara?” Shay asks as Teagan starts the car.

I frown. The night I met Sara was weird. Brayden practically pinned me against the building, and for a minute I actually thought he was going to kiss me, but he kept his history with Sara a secret. “Not much. He was pretty upset that I interfered, so I didn’t bring it up again after I got home. What happened between them?”

“I think he’d be irritated with me if I told you,” Shay says.

I sag in my seat in disappointment. “Okay. I understand.”

“So I’m going to do it,” Teagan says. She pulls out of her parking space and onto the road. “Ten years ago, right before Brayden was going to propose, the bitch cheated on him with one of her law professors.”

My stomach drops. “Oh, no.” I shake my head. “Wait. Teagan, I didn’t think you even lived here ten years ago.”

“I didn’t. I just know the story,” Teagan says, meeting my eyes in the rearview mirror. “He didn’t tell anyone what happened, but word got around. Brayden thought they could work through it.”

“He loved her so much,” Shay whispers.

“Then she ghosted him,” Teagan says. “She skipped town, changed her number, blocked him on social media, and told her family she didn’t want them to tell him where she was.”

I know my jaw is hanging open, but all I can do is shake my head. “She ran away from Brayden? Did she leave with the professor?”

“Nope. He still teaches at JHU. No one knows exactly why she left,” Teagan says, and Shay nods along in agreement, her lips sealed. “But it destroyed him. She was the love of his life.”

“That sounds like someone running from an abusive relationship.”

Shay turns up her palms. “I know, right?” She snaps her mouth shut again and looks at Teagan.

Teagan gives her a soft, sympathetic smile before continuing. “It killed him. He tore himself up trying to figure out what he did to make her feel like she needed to disappear like that.”

Shay turns back in her seat to face the road, and I barely hear her when she says, “He’s never been the same. Never moved on or wanted to . . .” Her eyes are sad when she slowly turns back to me. “Until you, Molly. Until you.”

Brayden

The stars shine so brightly tonight that I can almost forget about the bitter wind wrapping around me and threatening to seize my bones.

The back door clicks behind Molly as she joins me on the patio. After my breakfast with Sara, I spent the rest of the afternoon and most of my evening at the office. I wasn’t ready to face Molly or to think about how easy it was for her to downplay our relationship, as if she’d be happy to help me reconnect with Sara, happy to step aside. To leave.

By the time I got home, Molly and Noah were in the middle of their bath-and-bedtime routine. I went for a run on the treadmill in the basement, and when that didn’t clear my head, I came out here.

Molly offers me a tentative smile and hands me a beer. “I thought you might need this.”

I take it and study the label as she settles into the seat beside me. “Thanks.”

“Do you want to talk about Sara?”

I want to talk about you. I search her face for any indication that she might understand what’s really gotten under my skin, but I see none. “Ten years ago, Sara up and left me, and I didn’t know why. Today, she explained.” I swallow. “So, now I finally know, and . . .” I squeeze the back of my neck, but it does nothing to release the tension knotting there.

Molly puts her beer down and stands behind my chair. Her hands settle on my shoulders, her thumbs rubbing circles on my neck. I close my eyes and feel the tension leak away. Not just because she’s massaging my tight muscles, but because she’s here.

I bow my head to give her better access to my tight spots. “I can almost understand why she did it. She knew I would’ve walked away from everything to be with her. Not just the family business, but Jackson Harbor. And she knew how important my family was—is—to me. She needed to get away from it, and I was so blind to her battle with alcoholism that I didn’t even know.”

“She hid it? The alcoholism?”

Shame washes over me. “I like to think I’d have seen it if we’d lived together, but we didn’t. She didn’t want to move in until after we were married, and I never questioned her wishes.” I sigh as I see those days through a new lens. “I knew she could get out of hand when she drank. Sometimes it was hard to pull her away from the booze at parties and out at the bar, but we were young, and I told myself it was only sometimes. She was in law school, for Christ’s sake, and at the top of her class. It was easy to write off any passing concerns I might have had, because other than those bad nights, her life seemed great. Seemed is the keyword, I guess.”

“If you weren’t living with her and she worked to hide it, I’m not sure how you could have known.”

“I didn’t want to know. That’s on me. Until today, I had no idea how much she was struggling. I caught her sleeping with her law professor a few days before she left, and even that didn’t clue me in. I thought they were having an affair, but she confessed this morning that she’d agreed to sleep with him if he’d change her grade. It’s just one more piece of evidence proving I had no idea what was really going on with her when she left.”

“Brayden,” she says softly. “She hurt you. You couldn’t have been expected to see through such a betrayal when you were in the middle of dealing with it.”

“I saw what I wanted to see—the woman who made me relax, who helped me cut loose when I was stressed, and who dreamed of the same future I did.”

Molly stills behind me, and her touch goes lighter. “What did you dream of?”

“The normal stuff. A family, kids, to stay in Jackson Harbor and turn my father’s business into something so big the whole world could see how talented he was.” I blow out a breath and watch it cloud in the cold air. “I can take responsibility for not looking closer at what I sometimes suspected might be a bigger problem for her, and I can understand why she thought leaving was the best thing for me.”

“Then what’s bothering you?”

I’m glad she’s behind me. I’m glad I don’t have to see her face when I admit, “I wanted to be enough for her to be selfish. I wanted to be so necessary to her happiness that she could have at least given the choice to me, let me decide if the sacrifice was worth giving us a chance.”

“She . . . wants you back?” Was that a hitch in her voice or just wishful thinking on my part?

“Yeah. She does.”

“Maybe you’d feel better if you talked about it.”

I reach back and take her hand, squeezing her fingers in mine. “There’s not much to talk about.”

I swallow. The truth is, between the time Sara left until last spring when the job with Jackson Brews brought Molly into my life more regularly, I thought I wouldn’t ever feel like that for someone again. I’ve avoided any relationship that would make me that vulnerable. I didn’t want to give anyone the power to hurt me like Sara did. But I know without a doubt I’d happily hand that power over to Molly.

Hell, if I’m honest with myself, I already have.

Molly

Brayden fell asleep holding me, and I look at the clock by his bed and give myself ten minutes before I have to go up to my own bed. Any more, and I risk falling asleep myself.

I rest my cheek against his chest and close my eyes as I soak in his heat and the strength of him. He moans in his sleep, and his hands slide around to rest on the small of my back. Joy flutters to life in my stomach. Even with all the hustle of work and preparing for Christmas with Noah, I can’t deny the last three days have been a bit of a dream. Honestly, my life was a dream before. I had an amazing job, great new friends, and Brayden’s quiet but rock-solid support through every day—at work and at home. And now I have Brayden too. His hot eyes on me, his seductive whispers in my ear.

Soon, Christmas will be over, the New Year will be here, and it’ll be time to move out. I won’t have an excuse to have morning coffee with Brayden or evenings soaking with him in his hot tub. The plan was that we’d end this when I left, and if I don’t want to end it—if I want us to try to be something—I’ll have to do it without an excuse. I’d have to be willing to admit it’s what I want, and be willing to risk it all falling apart.

Brayden’s breathing is steady and deep, and I watch the clock tick through the minutes, feeling my allotted time coming to its inevitable end. I don’t want it to. I want to stay here in his arms. I want so much I’ve never let myself imagine before this week. And because it scares me—the intensity with which I want it, and all I could lose if I make the leap and miss—I pull out of his embrace and climb off the bed.

“Molly?” He pushes himself to sitting.

“You don’t need to get up.” My thoughts sink into my stomach and twist into a knot. One end is yanked tight by everything I want—the fairytale, the unlikely happy ending—and the other by everything I know I’ve done and who I know I am.

Maybe we all make mistakes, and maybe I’ve had my reasons. Maybe I’m not to blame for being so fucked up and broken, but it doesn’t change that I am. And Brayden deserves more than a broken mess who doesn’t even know how love works.

I dip my head and press a kiss to his jaw, to the shadow of stubble there, and when I pull back and meet his eyes, I see his thinly veiled pain. He wants me to stay. To sleep with him.

I press a second kiss to his jaw, wondering if I could do it—if I could be brave enough to ask for more. I don’t think he’d deny me. I think he’d try. Even if it’s not what’s best for him, if I wanted everything, he’d do his best to deliver.

Brayden doesn’t do anything halfway. It’s what makes him so successful. And maybe it’s what scares me.