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“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.”
