Chapter 31
In a couple of days, the show would be over.
In a couple of days, she would be walking down an aisle.
In a couple of days, she could be married.
But not if she stuck with Ben.
Her heart floundered in her chest, telling her everything about how it was feeling right now, yet she couldn’t ignore that her original aim of marrying Duncan was still a possibility.
Was she really going to let this false bubble she was living in with Ben stop her from achieving it? I’m worried we both wanted the marriage, more than we wanted each other. She’d raised it as a question to Duncan, but it was one she needed to answer for herself, too.
‘Pink or yellow.’ Chloe pursed her lips. ‘Or red, maybe?’ She spread the photos of the floral arrangements onto the table. ‘This is ridiculous, planning a wedding I know I’m not going to go through with.’
Molly was sitting with Maya, Chloe and Jasmine, all of them trying to choose their wedding flowers. It was just one of a whole list of things the producers had given them to sort out in the next couple of days.
‘But you don’t know what you’re going to say until you actually get to the end of that aisle,’ Jasmine insisted.
‘Err, no way am I committing myself to a lifetime of Liam, and only Liam,’ Chloe protested. ‘Not even for a free holiday in frigging Hawaii. And anyway, this is so sexist, us girls sitting here choosing flowers while the guys bugger off and play tennis.’
‘I hear you.’ Maya flicked through the book they’d been given. ‘But I guess in the guys’ defence, they’d arranged to play before they knew what we’d be doing this morning.’
‘Duncan will be here after his gym session,’ Jasmine chimed in. ‘Before he left he told me he thought we should go for pink though, so that’s cut down the choices.’
Molly froze. He was actively planning his wedding to Jasmine, yet at the same time saying he wanted to marry her? ‘Ben wouldn’t be much help even if he were here.’ She forced herself to keep the conversation going. ‘He’d just tell me to choose whatever I wanted.’
Chloe gave her a thoughtful look. ‘At one point I thought I was going to get a shot at him, but he seems to be all over you right now. Bet you’re fucking like rabbits, yeah?’
‘Chloe!’ Maya rolled her eyes, nodding towards the cameras in the corner of the room. ‘That’s between Molly and Ben.’
‘Why? We all joined this show knowing we were going to have any relationship talked about and scrutinised.’
‘I’m enjoying being with Ben,’ Molly replied quietly, trying to ignore the way Chloe had tagged seems to be and right now onto the bit about him being all over her.
‘But are you going to marry him?’ Jasmine asked, in between carefully noting down the codes for the arrangements she liked. ‘That’s what we’re all supposed to be here for, isn’t it? To get married.’
‘It’s certainly why I came on the show,’ Molly agreed.
Maya raised an eyebrow. ‘Is that a big hint that you’re going to say I do?’
If Ben was standing at the altar, what would be the point? He wouldn’t say it back. Yet if Duncan was the man waiting for her, would she really still want to marry him? Especially as he was lining up a reserve bride? ‘I’m just saying when I came on here, I really wanted to get married.’
Maya frowned. ‘Why?’
Molly couldn’t remember ever being asked that question. ‘It’s the certainty of it, I think. The security of knowing that you’ve found someone who’s not only promised to stick with you, no matter what, but they’re willing to make that promise legally binding.’
‘Yeah, but married couples break that promise all the time,’ Jasmine argued. ‘For me marriage is all about kids. I think it’s easier for them to have the same surname as their parents, and it kind of gives them a bigger official family, you know? It joins his family and mine. Plus my mum wants to buy a fancy outfit and my dad wants to walk me down the aisle.’
Maya laughed. ‘All good reasons. For me, getting married is the ultimate expression of love. Living with someone is like hedging your bets, playing it safe. Marrying them says I know I’m never going to meet anyone I’d rather spend my life with.’ She gave a little shrug of her shoulders. ‘To be honest, I’m not sure I’m there with Marcus yet.’
Is that what Ben was doing with her, Molly wondered, hedging his bets? Waiting for someone better to come along? With a sigh, she looked down at the bouquet images. ‘I’m going for red.’
Everyone made their decisions, and then the floral arrangements were taken away and in their place trollies were wheeled in, filled with cake samples.
Natalie clapped her hands together in that way she had that was part school teacher, part showman. ‘Now we come to the best part of wedding planning, choosing the cake. In HEA Towers we don’t have a wedding meal after the ceremony, as not all your weddings will end in marriage.’ She paused to mime wiping tears from her eyes. ‘But we hope you’ll all want to celebrate the end of your time here with cake and champagne, so find a trolley and get sampling.’
‘Bet the guys turn up now,’ Molly muttered.
Rachel, who’d come to stand next to her, laughed. ‘We just passed them in the corridor.’
‘Was Duncan with them?’ Jasmine asked, frowning. ‘He told me not to choose without him.’
Molly could have saved her the worry and told her Duncan’s idea of the perfect cake was one made with carrots, oats and yoghurt.
Was he part of her past now?
And what about the man who’d just strolled into the room, hair still damp from the shower? Where did he fit into her life? Dressed casually in faded jeans and a navy polo shirt, one hand loosely in his pocket, her heart swooped as she watched him walk over to her, long legs eating up the distance.
‘Hey.’ The quick kiss he pressed to her lips woke all the butterflies in her stomach. ‘Looks like we missed the flowers and made the cake. Some would say that’s a result.’
‘Some would say that was planned,’ she countered, which made him laugh.
‘Not sure how helpful I’d have been.’
‘But you can force yourself to eat cake?’
‘I’ll try my hardest.’ He bent to whisper into her ear, causing her to inhale a lungful of freshly showered male. ‘Then can we get out of here?’
Damn those sparks of arousal that skated down her spine. That made her crave his touch, his attention, crave him, like she’d never craved anyone. ‘Probably.’
He grinned. ‘Let us eat cake.’
* * *
Sex with Molly: outstanding. Sex with Molly in the middle of the afternoon: unbeatable. Even on a stomach full of marzipan, Victoria sponge and white chocolate. He could have predicted she’d insist on trying every sample, even though he’d attempted to persuade her the first one was fine. It wasn’t like it mattered; they weren’t actually getting married.
‘We have to come up with a list of people we want to come to the wedding,’ Molly murmured, breaking through his thoughts.
She was half lying on top of him in the bed, his bed, this time, because he’d argued they might wear the bedsprings out on hers. He’d only been half joking.
‘We really have to invite people to a wedding that isn’t going to happen?’
‘The wedding will happen. What might not happen is the marriage.’ She shifted, moving away from him and onto her back, creating a physical distance yet also, it felt, an emotional one.
‘Might not happen?’ Unease rippled through him. ‘You’re not still hoping we’ll get married, are you? Because I told you?—’
‘You won’t marry me. I know.’ Her eyes avoided his, and that unease became full-blown alarm. ‘But Duncan told me if I asked to swop to him, he would marry me.’
What the fuck? He wanted to wrap his hands around the man’s thick arms, shove him against the wall and ask him what the hell he was playing at, trying to pinch Molly from under his nose. ‘That bastard plays dirty.’
‘You think it’s a game?’ She snapped back. ‘You don’t think he could actually want to marry me because he loves me?’
Instantly contrite, Ben sat up. ‘Shit, I’m sorry. Of course he could love you. I’ve told you, you’re very easy to love.’ Emotion jammed his throat and the next words came out scratchy. ‘Damn it, Molly, I love you.’
Her emerald bright eyes searched his. ‘But not enough to marry me.’
‘That’s not fair.’ The pressure on his chest felt suffocatingly heavy, like someone was standing on it. ‘You know my views on marriage. It’s unhealthy, binding yourself to someone else, making them responsible for you, for your happiness.’ Helena’s face flashed through his mind, her eyes full of hope, her expression so trusting as she told him she was alright now she’d married him. As if he could save her. ‘Relationships should be partnerships, supporting each other, being there for each other. But not being consumed by each other.’
‘Marriage doesn’t mean that to everyone,’ she stated quietly, the pity in her eyes cutting him to the quick. ‘Maya said it was the ultimate expression of love. A public declaration that you’re never going to love anyone else like you do the person you’re marrying.’ She gave him a sad smile. ‘She said living together was just hedging your bets.’
Christ, that sounded awful. And not how he thought of it at all. ‘Is that how you feel?’
She bit into her lip, eyes darting towards his, then away again. ‘You know what happened to me with my first mum. I guess being rejected like that didn’t just make me need the words, it made me need the legal promise. The security of knowing I won’t be abandoned at the drop of a hat again.’
‘Shit, Molly. I don’t know what to say.’ Emotions swamped him. Fear he was losing her, panic he couldn’t do anything about it. ‘Can I hold you? Please?’ She hesitated, and his heart went into free fall, but then she gave a small incline of her head. As he bundled her into his arms, a little of his fear subsided when she didn’t resist him.
Holding her tight, feeling her body snug against his, he cursed fate that the two women he’d fallen in love with had both needed more from him than he could give.
‘With your mum,’ he asked after a while, ‘did you have any warning she was going to leave?’
‘None that my seven-year-old self picked up on. I caught her crying a lot, yes, but she’d wave my concerns away and I figured that’s what adults did. That morning she made me pancakes, which was usually a weekend treat, so maybe I should have realised something was off, but at the time I just thought it was my lucky day. Then she dropped me off to school like normal.’ Her body shifted as she burrowed further into him, her voice turning quieter. ‘Turns out it wasn’t my lucky day, after all.’
His chest squeezed painfully. It was so totally fucked up that a mother could do that to a child.
‘Maybe there were more signs that she wanted to leave me, signs I should have picked up on,’ she whispered after a beat. ‘Because it turns out I’m not great at noticing them.’
His stomach plummeted. ‘I bet you’re looking for those signs now.’
She exhaled a breath. ‘Every frigging day.’
Guilt slammed through him like a runaway train. How could she ever be happy with him if she spent every day expecting him to blindside her again?
‘I’m in love with you, Molly. And I don’t want what we have to end when we leave the show. I want to continue seeing you. Be in a committed relationship with you.’ It felt like his heart was breaking down the middle. ‘I wish I’d met you before Helena, but I didn’t and now … fuck, I’m terrified what I can offer isn’t enough, but it’s all I’m capable of giving you right now.’
There was a long, humming silence, filled with unspoken words. When she finally did speak, it did little to ease the pain in his chest. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I know.’