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“I need to know what Dean asked you to tell me.” I stand straight clutching my side, willing my dick to settle.
Mollie doesn’t reply. She moves to walk past me, but I grab her wrist, forcing her to stop. “I need to speak to him first,” she says. “Make sure what you’re saying is—”
I don’t let her finish her sentence. Grabbing her neck with my other hand, I push her back to the wall.
She drops her belongings to the floor, her steps quick as both hands grip hold of my wrist.
I slam her back, her head hitting the paint with a thwack. “We’re all out of time, Baby Doll.” She grimaces at my pet name for her. “Now tell me what it is that onlyyoucan tell me. His last wishes? Is that what it fucking is? His last wishes?!”
“Yes!” she cries, her nails scratching into my skin. My hold on her isn’t as tight as it could be. “He wrote it all down. A note for you. And one for Mads.”
I grind my teeth, my jaw twitching. “Where is it?” I ask. Mollie doesn’t say anything. “Fucking where, Mollie?” My patience is wearing so thin. She stares at me, her heart clearly pounding. Is she worried that this signifies the end? The end for Dean? The end of her time here?
As if reading my mind, her eyes glass over, but no tears fall. “I have it. At my office.”
My hand around her throat flexes.
Silence then settles for a moment before she asks, “Now what?”
I aimlessly draw a few strokes with my thumb across her delicate neck. “You get it for me, today. I’ll have to go speak to Mads.” What the hell am I going to say? I don’t know how or why Dean came to know that his time was up. All I know is that he wassure.
“Then?” A hopefulness seems to skate around the edge of Mollie’s question.
I stop my strokes, dropping my hand to my side. “Then we move on.” My heart feels heavy, my words holding significance. Stepping back, I turn to walk out the door. An unknown feeling suddenly buries itself deep inside me. Remorse? Regret?
“It wasn’t my fault,” I hear Mollie whisper.
She must feel it too.
Like a gas burner flickering on, the small flame in my gut is ignited. I stop walking. “What wasn’t?” I know exactly what she’s talking about, but she owes me this. Owes me this explanation after eleven fucking years of not knowing why she aborted our child and never said so much as one wordto mebefore she upped and left. I try to steady my heart. Try to ebb the rush of every emotion trying to destroy me in this moment. It’s no good.
“You know what.”
Yeah, I do. “I need to hear you say it.” It’s all I’ve ever needed.
“I… I can’t,” she says after taking a breath. “You ruined everything.”
The sardonic laugh that leaves me riles her. I step closer to her again, but this time she remains unprotected, no time to put up the walls she can hide behind. “I may have ruined your faith in love,” Mollie lets out a sigh, “but I wasn’t the one who turned my back on us. You did. The day you decided my life for me.”
Her eyes pick up off the floor, looking directly at me. “I made a decision for us,” she balks, tears filling her eyes as she frantically tries to blink them away. “It wouldn’t have worked. I ran because you would never have changed.”
“I did fucking change.”
She shakes her head. “Travis, you wanted freedom and the club. Not a wife. Not a kid. If you changed, why don’t you have either of those things now?”
I let out a breath. “Like you?”
Mollie falls to the wall, her back pushed flat against it. “Fuck you,” she sobs defeated. She drops her head, and maybe for the first time since she’s been back, the smallest part of me hates the way she looks so sad. “He died you fucking prick.”
My eyes dart to her. When she doesn’t look at me, I slide my hand to her chin, lifting it, slowly making her look at me. She fights me at first, but I hold her tighter, not letting her go this time. “He died? When?”
Mollie sniffs. Lines in her forehead scrunch together. “Do you care?”
I don’t drop my gaze or my hold. “I care. Because now you know what it feels like to lose the one person you loved the most.”
One tear. That’s what I get. One single tear. It drops to her cheek as she closes her eyes, unable to look at me any longer.
“Apparently, it doesn’t matter how far you run. You always end up back here.”
