by Devney Perry
“Ashley,” I mimicked. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were jealous.”
“I’m not jealous,” she muttered, her hands diving for another weed and ripping it from the ground. “But I think she’s been testing the limits of professionalism.”
I opened my mouth to tell her that Ashley had asked me out today but decided it was better to keep that to myself. Her flare of jealousy was enough to make me grin, because Molly wouldn’t be jealous if there weren’t something between us.
“I don’t want Ashley,” I told her.
“Oh. Whatever. It’s not my business.”
I didn’t miss the small smile tugging at her supple mouth.
Scooting over a foot, I started on another patch of weeds, adding to Molly’s pile.
“I let it get out of control back here.” She shook her head, scolding herself.
“You were busy.”
“I know. But I hate weeds.”
“I can get you on the rotation with the flower crew.” I had a team solely responsible for flowers. They traveled around the valley, tending to clients’ flower beds and flowerpots so there was never any weeding or trimming necessary. It was an elite service, mostly requested by my wealthier customers.
“No, but thank you,” she said. “I don’t mind. When it’s not so far behind, it’s actually kind of a stress reliever.”
“You’re home early today. I thought you’d be at the restaurant until six.”
“Me too. But it was really slow. It happens when the weather gets like this. People get in their sunshine while they can. Poppy and I flipped a coin for who had to stay and work. I won.”
We continued to weed along the flower bed until we reached the end. My good hand was smudged, my cuticles stained brown. “Damn, but I missed dirt.”
Molly laughed and scooted closer, pulling off her gloves. Her fingers were much cleaner, but her face had a few smudges. “It’s weird to see your hands clean. They just don’t look right unless there’s some dirt under your fingernails.”
“And I’ve always thought you were sexy when you got a little messy.” I brought my hand to her face, using my thumb to rub a streak of dirt from her cheek.
Our eyes caught. Hers flashed darker. A rush of color spread across her face as I let my hand drift across her cheek, the tips of my fingers skimming up and over the shell of her ear.
“You’re beautiful.”
Her breath hitched and her lips parted.
The warmth from the sun was replaced by the scorching heat between us. I leaned in, letting her draw me closer.
Molly didn’t lean back. She stayed there on her knees, her hands at her sides as I brushed my lips across hers. “Finn,” she whispered.
“Molly.”
“What are you doing?” Her breath caressed my mouth.
“Kissing you.”
She stayed still as I repeated the movement, this time letting my tongue dart out and trace the seam of her lips. She tasted like mint and sunshine. She smelled like heaven and earth.
“Kiss me,” I ordered.
“I don’t—”
“Kiss me. Kiss me like I know you want to.”
She let out a small moan of protest.
Fuck. I’d pushed too hard. I was certain she’d pull away any second, but then her arms lifted, hesitantly looping around my shoulders. Her chest pressed into mine.
It was all the agreement I needed.
I crushed my lips to hers, slipping my tongue past her teeth. I wrapped my arm around her back, pulling her tight as I immersed myself in the sweetness of her lips.
A rush of blood pulsed in my cock. The familiar twitch was so goddamn welcome. Thank God, it still worked. I hadn’t asked the doctors if sex was on the table. I didn’t care. I’d reinjure myself every day of the week if it meant getting another shot with Molly.
I shifted closer, wanting to press my arousal into her belly, but my boot caught on the lawn as I shifted and sent a sharp sting up my leg.
“Ah.” I winced, pulling away from Molly’s mouth.
“What?” She was off me in a flash, her eyes scanning me from head to toe. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” I waved her back into my arms, but she was already gone.
She stood, wiping the loose tendrils of her hair out of her face, then she ran a hand over her mouth.
So close. I hung my head, taking a few breaths to get my dick under control. I silently cursed the boot.
“I think you need to go home.”
“What?” My eyes whipped up to Molly. Home? I was home. “What do you mean?”
“I think you need to go home. It’s too confusing.” Her arms were closed around herself. She took another step away.
I used my good side to stand, careful to avoid too much weight on my bad leg. “There’s nothing confusing about this, Molly. I’m here. I want to be here. And not just until I can drive or until I’m completely mobile. I want to be here. With you.”
Her mouth fell open a bit, her lower lip still puffy from our kiss.
I took her momentary shock and shuffled closer. “What if we took this slow? I’ll court you. You can remind me of all those old-fashioned rituals you love so much.”
“Finn—”
“Think about it. Don’t answer now. I’m going to go inside and take a shower. A cold shower. Then we can have dinner together when the kids get home. We can watch a movie and if you want, you can hold my hand. Then tomorrow, we’ll do it again. Until the day you realize I’m here. I want to be here. With you.”
Molly studied my face, her eyes narrowing like she didn’t believe a word I said. “There’s so much history.”
“Then we forget it. Erase it completely. We start with a blank slate.”
“Forget it?” A flash of irritation crossed her face. “I can’t forget. I won’t forget.”
Before I could grapple with what I’d said to piss her off so quickly, she stormed past me and into the garage.
I took a step to chase her, but the fucking boot slowed me down. So I hopped over to my crutch. Then I chased.
When I found her, she’d shut herself into her bedroom. I listened at the door and heard the water running in the shower.
“Well, shit.”
What did I say? Why wouldn’t she want to forget about the pain we’d caused one another?
I tested the knob. It was unlocked, so I opened the door a crack, peeking inside to make sure she wasn’t in the bedroom. She wasn’t. I let myself inside and walked to the bathroom door.
I left that one shut, resting my forehead on its face. I spoke to the wood, hoping she could hear me over the running water.
“What did I say, Molly?”
Footsteps stomped my way. The water turned off one second before the bathroom door flew open.
“I don’t want to forget,” she snapped. “I don’t want to forget all the times you said you loved me. Or how it felt to be a family. I don’t want to forget the times we laughed together. Or the times you made love to me. Those memories, they’ve kept me going for six years. Six. Years. I don’t want to forget them. Not when I’ve cherished them.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Whatever.” Molly tried to shove past me, but I caught her by the elbow.
“That’s not what I meant,” I repeated. “I’ll never forget the way you used to steal pencils from my backpack because you kept giving yours to the kid in Econ who never had one. I’ll never forget the way you smiled at me when you were in labor with Max, even though you were in so much pain, because you wanted me to stop worrying. I’ll never forget the way you used to whisper you loved me right before you fell asleep. I don’t want to forget those times. I want to forget the bad times. The fights. The divorce. The—”
“Other guy?”
My entire body jerked. Pain seared down my spine at the reminder.
“That’s just it, Finn.” She dropped her chin. “We can’t forget. It’s not possible. The good turned bad. If
we forget that, it will only happen again. And I don’t have it in me to go through it again. It almost broke me once. I can’t risk it. So please, go home.”
My arm dropped away from her elbow.
She hurried out of the room, leaving me alone as her words sank in.
She didn’t want to forget. Okay, then what did she want? That kiss in the yard said she still wanted me, at least.
I turned to follow her because I wasn’t letting this go. I wasn’t leaving either. But as I took a step away from the bathroom, my eyes caught on an envelope on her nightstand. I didn’t need to see the handwriting to know what it was. Another letter had come and she’d hidden it from me.
I grabbed it then relaxed when I found it unopened.
She’d kept her word.
I took it to the kitchen where Molly was at the sink, scrubbing furiously with a bleach cleaner.
“Were you going to open this?”
Her hands stilled. “No. Maybe.”
“I asked you not to.”
She tossed the sponge into the sink and hung her head. Then she rinsed her hands and dried them before spinning to meet my gaze. “I wasn’t going to. It came today and I told myself I wasn’t going to read it. But then . . .”
“Then what?”
She crossed the distance between us, lifting the letter out of my grip. “I have to know.”
“Nothing good will be in that envelope. Rip it up. Please.”
“And forget?” She stared at the envelope for a few long moments.
I held my breath, hoping the next sound I’d hear was that of crumpled paper, because if she opened that letter, we wouldn’t have a future. “Please, Molly.”
She looked up at me with tears swimming in her eyes. “I have to.”
- LETTER -
How could you?
You are my wife.
You are MY wife.
You are my WIFE.
I hate you for this. I hate you for letting another man inside you. I hate you for throwing away everything we ever had. You broke my fucking heart.
We’re done.
Chapter Sixteen
Molly
It didn’t take long to read the letter. The first time through, a stab of pain pierced my heart so deeply I nearly collapsed. But my knees held strong. They locked tight, enough for me to read it again.
Then again.
By the fourth time, the pain faded away.
I was numb.
Maybe Finn had been right. Maybe I should have ripped this one to shreds. But he’d told me at the beginning these letters were his way of expressing his feelings. They were raw and real.
And since he’d hidden the raw and real from me, kept it back, these letters were the only way to see into his soul.
The gushing wound was there, laid out with blue ink on white paper. It was devastating. I’d destroyed him.
I’d destroyed us both.
There’d be no tears for this letter. I didn’t get to cry. We’d had problems in our marriage, but the person who’d torn it apart was me. I deserved every single lick of his pain. I deserved to read this letter every day.
What I didn’t deserve was Finn.
“Okay,” I whispered, folding the letter back up and sliding it into the envelope with shaking hands.
“Okay?”
I nodded and handed Finn back the letter. “Okay.”
He took it, staring at me like he was waiting for an explosion. There wasn’t one. I went to the sink and resumed my cleaning.
“That’s it?” he asked.
“That’s it.”
Finn stalked close and slammed the letter on the counter. The paper didn’t make much noise. His palm did. “That’s it? You make a big show of opening this letter, and that’s it? Why?”
“I had to.”
“Why?”
“Because.” I whirled on him. “You don’t trust me enough to tell me how you feel. You kept things from me for years, choosing to write things in letters you never sent. You escaped our problems by running to work. You kept me in the dark. After all this time, after everything we’ve been through, I have a right to know how you really felt.”
“I kept them from you because it was for your own good.” He swiped the letter up, shaking it in his fist, the paper crackling. “Did you really want me to leave this lying around?”
“At least it would have made us talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about.”
I clenched my jaw. “You can’t forget it happened.”
“I can sure as fuck try.”
“And that’s why we’re never going to work,” I shot back. “I had sex with another man.”
He grimaced, the pain on his face rolling over his entire body. “Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t say it out loud? It happened. I made the biggest mistake of my life and this letter is the first time you’ve actually admitted out loud that I hurt you.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes. Yes, it is. I told you the truth. I came to you the next day and owned my mistake. And instead of yelling or crying or showing me any kind of emotion, all you said was, ‘Get a lawyer.’ You were indifferent. You were done with me. I got the cold shoulder for months, to the point where I didn’t know if you had ever cared. I hurt you and you dismissed me. You shut down.”
“You broke me. That wasn’t a secret.”
“And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve apologized. I’ll always regret it.”
“Just . . . don’t.” Finn ran his hands through his hair. “Please, I don’t want to talk about it. I can’t.”
“Fine.” I sighed. “Listen, I’ve got a bunch of stuff to do before the kids get home. Maybe you should pack. I think Poppy and your parents can get you to and from work and PT for the next couple of weeks.”
He staggered back a step. “You’re really kicking me out?”
“Yes.” I nodded. “I meant what I said outside. This is too confusing. I can’t do this with you again. My heart can’t take another ending with you.”
“Molly,” he said gently. “It doesn’t have to end.”
“But it will.” I lowered my voice. “It will. You want to pretend like we didn’t slaughter each other. This.” I picked up the letter. “This is a problem. It will resurface, maybe not tomorrow or the next day. But eventually, it will come up again and rip us apart. We can’t ignore it.”
“You really want to talk about it?” His jaw ticked. There was fire in his eyes. “You want to know how I feel?”
I braced. “Yes.”
“I feel the same way I did when I wrote that letter. I hate you for it.”
A punch to the gut would have felt better. “You hate me?”
“I hate what you did. I hate that another man was inside of you.”
“So do I.” My chin fell as shame washed over my shoulders.
“How? Why, Molly? Were things really that bad and I didn’t see it? Why didn’t you talk to me?”
Talk to him? The pain eased as my temper flared.
“I tried to talk to you,” I snapped, poking a finger into his chest. “I tried to talk to you every day. Yes, things were that bad. But you didn’t want to talk. You moved out. And every time I tried to talk to you or offer up a solution, you shut me out. You didn’t even bother showing up to a single counseling session.”
“I was busy.”
“Right,” I muttered. “Too busy. That was always the excuse. You were too busy to try and save our marriage. All I asked for was a few hours of your time to talk to a counselor.”
“You know how I felt about that counselor.”
“No. I don’t. Because you never told me. You just didn’t show up.”
“There was no way I was going to talk about our marriage to one of your mother’s fucking friends. The last thing we needed was Dr. Deborah knowing all about the shit going on in our life.”
“Seriously? That’s your excuse?”
“It’s not an excuse.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” My arms flailed in the air. “I would have picked another counselor. I would have gone to anyone. But instead, you just didn’t show.”
“I told you from the beginning I didn’t want to see that counselor. You made the appointments anyway.”
“Because I wanted to save our marriage. We were drowning.” I’d been drowning. I hadn’t tried to hide it either. I’d worn my exhaustion on my face. The slump of my shoulders. The way I’d curl into a ball and sleep huddled into myself at night. They’d been there. All of the signs. “And you didn’t seem to care.”
“That’s bullshit.”
I steeled my spine and challenged, “Is it?”
He opened his mouth but clamped it shut with a snap.
“Everything that happened. All of it. I thought you were done. I thought you didn’t care. I thought we were over.”
And instead of telling me, or showing me that he cared, he’d turned to blank pages. He’d given the pen and the ink his feelings.
He hadn’t trusted them to his wife.
“We weren’t over, Molly. We were still married. You were still my wife.”
“You’re right. You’re absolutely right.” My agreement caught him off guard. I guess he’d been expecting me to argue, but I had still been his wife. And I’d betrayed him.
We’d betrayed each other.
“I don’t say this because I am making an excuse,” I said. “But, Finn, that might have broken you. But you crushed me that night.”
“What night?” he asked.
“The night. The night of Lanie’s bachelorette party.”
His forehead furrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“I came to Alcott that night. Before the party. I was all dressed up in that black dress you always loved. I thought, I had a babysitter, you were alone, and maybe what we needed was a night to ourselves. No distractions. Just you and me remembering that we loved each other.”
I’d spent an hour on my hair, taming the curls. I’d watched three YouTube videos to learn how to get that smoky-eye look with some charcoal eyeliner.
