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“You should’ve said something.” I flex my fists, chastising myself for not using a gentler tone. It’s not her that I’m upset with, but the fact that I’m unable to take this burden from her.
I try again, softer this time. “You don’t have to hide these things from me. I can help you.”
“What did you want me to say? That my mom, who suffered through years of breast cancer treatments, hospital visits, and eventually lost the battle for her life, loved this place almost more than anything in the world? That I’m the one refusing to let it go because it’s all I have left of her?” She shakes her head. “I couldn’t. We hardly know each other.”
The admission of her mother having cancer rocks me. It brings a rush of memories pounding against the mental barrier where I’ve kept them hidden for so long, inaccessible, even to me.
“That’s not true,” I say, blocking out the noise in my head as I take a few careful steps toward her. “I know that you’re loud, expressive, and have one hell of a sweet tooth. You have an incredible talent for playing the piano. You’re smart, genuine, and you’ve got more heart than anyone I’ve ever known.” Desperate for even a glimmer of her usual light, I add, “And you know that I’m a grump, a hermit, and, on occasion, overbearing.”
Molly twists toward me, and her green eyes flick up to mine. The silver light casting through the pane beside her highlights her face, and I damn near fall to my knees when she half-heartedly smirks. “On occasion?”
“Okay, maybe more often than that.”
“The wholesaler I buy my stock from needed to meet sooner than we agreed, and I panicked. But that’s not the only reason I didn’t say anything.” I watch as she retrieves the rag and wrings it out over the can. “I didn’t want you to see me as a failure. I don’t know the first thing about flowers, and the truth is, the shop’s been struggling for a while now. Dad’s asked me to consider selling, but how can I part with it?”
Tears fall freely from her lashes, and her pain cripples me.
“Your mom may have loved this place, but she loved you more,” I assure her. “She would hate seeing you suffer this way, and you won’t convince me otherwise.”
She doesn’t look at me when she mutters, “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want you to apologize, Molly. I understand what it’s like to feel confused after losing a parent. To be responsible for something that meant so much to them.” I cup the back of her neck and force her to face me. “But you don’t have to hide from me. We’re in this together.”
I pause through the knot forming above my throat, ready to lay my heart bare. “If you think that I’m only using you?—”
“There’s… something else I need to show you,” she murmurs, cutting me off.
Staring at the rag she’s lifted off the counter, she hesitates before pressing it to the right side of her face, and then scrubs her cheek. She’s not gentle, rubbing hard enough for a layer of makeup to cover the cloth, and she doesn’t stop until her skin is red and raw.
Then she tosses it back down, chin up as she holds my gaze, and I realize then that the redness isn’t from how rough she was, but a large, strandy mark visible along her forehead, eye, and most of her cheek.
“I’m a freak, Rowan, just like Wade said. I’m an ugly, undesirable woman who has no business being engaged to someone like you, let alone being seen with you.” Tears continue to flow. “This is why I ran from you the day you found me in the pool.”
“Because of a birthmark?”
My heart seizes when I raise my hand and she flinches.
“It’s not just a birthmark,” she says angrily.
She lowers one strap of her overalls until it’s hanging by her hip, then the other. After yanking her shirt overhead, she drops it to the floor, exposing darker reddish-purple splotches that track down her neck and shoulder. They look the same as the one on her back that I mistakenly took for a tattoo.
“Do you know how badly I just want to be normal? To date men who won’t cringe the moment I wash my face? To not be looked at as if I’m contagious?”
All at once, I’m sickened by our species. Always picking off the ones who don’t fit in, don’t look the same, dress the same, walk or talk the same. But Molly’s no less beautiful to me now than she was moments ago.
Her nostrils flare and her eyes widen in panic when I reach for the rag.
“W-what are you doing?”
“Please.” I raise it to her face, and murmur, “Let me do this.”
It takes a tense moment for her to relax enough for me to touch her, but when she does, I gingerly swipe the rest of her stubborn makeup away until the right side of her face is bared to me.
Beneath the deep red and purple hues of her birthmark, I only see a striking, willful woman.
“Do you want comfort or a solution?” My voice is barely above a rumble, and I watch as a trail of goosebumps rises along her arms.
“What do you mean?”
