CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE MOLLY
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
MOLLY
“I’m going.” I was following Ashton around the room the next morning.
“You’re not.”
Over dinner last night, a very, very late dinner, I learned that Jess was going with her mother to the hospital.
Right then and there, I knew I had to go.
I couldn’t explain why. There was no rational logic for me to go, but I had to go.
I just knew it. My gut was sparking something bad, and I didn’t think it was the lettuce I forgot to wash.
I was the fixer in this group. It was my job to go, and he needed to understand this.
I was pleading my case this morning by just repeating that I was going because he’d stopped listening about the group dynamics and roles.
My plan of attack was to wear him down, and it was working.
He picked up a tie, putting it around his neck. “You’re not. You have to look at the security photos from Octavia, remember?”
“I have to go. The photos can wait.”
He finished looping the tie through the hole, then tightened it. “That look okay?”
It didn’t. I stepped in, righting it. “So.”
His hands went to my hips. “No.”
“I’m going.”
He moved aside to look in the mirror. “You’re not. Thank you for this.”
He was pulling on his suit jacket, and damn. Very business Mafia dangerous-esque. How did he look so good, and I was the one who got him?
Then I switched back to the mission. “I have to go.”
He checked his phone, responded to a text, and opened our bedroom door, leading the way down the hallway, up the stairs (yes, we were in the basement, but we had a secret exit and it was so cool), and around to the kitchen.
There were voices talking. I recognized Jess and Trace, but I followed him, not done. “Are you ignoring me?”
He entered the kitchen. “Morning, you guys.”
Trace and Jess were hunched over a tablet on the far side of the main counter. “Hey.” That was Trace. He frowned at me. I was still in my robe, because who wouldn’t be if they had an option to wear a fuzzy robe that felt like heaven on you? “What’s going on?”
I turned to Ashton. “I have to go. I’m not asking anymore.”
He hit the brew button and turned sharp eyes on me. “Excuse me?”
I flushed but raised my chin up higher. “I’m telling you. Life or death—”
His eyes flashed. “Exactly. I’m not risking you.”
“—if I don’t go. I have to go.” I was aware my argument wasn’t the best.
“Go?” Trace moved closer to us.
Ashton looked his way. “Genius here—”
I smiled.
“—has decided she has to go with Jess today. Jess and her mom.”
“What?” Jess’s head popped back up from the tablet. Her frown was immediate. “No.”
“Yes.” I nodded. Firm.
“No way.”
Trace looked at her, stepping back with his own coffee in hand.
The machine started brewing behind Ashton. “I don’t want you to go. Jess doesn’t want you to go. You’re not going.”
“Trace hasn’t said anything.”
Trace held his hand up. “I don’t want you to go.”
My gut was flaring again, twisting and churning like a tornado with IBS. “I have to go.”
“Why?” That was from Jess.
I shook my head, lifting my shoulders up. “It’s a feeling. I have to go. Like, if I don’t go, I know something bad will happen.”
“Have you gotten amnesia about all the times you were not around me? How many guns have been pointed at you?”
I flushed again. He was sorta correct about that. “It’s a gut feeling, Ashton.”
He sighed, grabbing a coffee cup and pouring coffee into it.
He put the pot back, added some creamer to the coffee, then brought it over to me.
He held it in front of him, stepping closer.
His head inclined toward me, his eyes piercing.
His mouth was in a firm line. He dropped his voice low, where I was feeling it in my belly. “I cannot lose you.”
That same gut did a whole three-hundred-and-sixty spin from warmth. We’d come so far from him wanting to use me as bait. I reached for the coffee, but he wouldn’t let it go.
I whispered, looking right back up at him, “Something bad will happen if I don’t go.”
His eyes flared up.
So did mine, and I pulled the coffee mug away from his hands, slowly, but determined. We were having a conversation within a conversation here. “You need to trust me with this one.”
“No.” But he whispered the word.
“Yes,” I whispered back. “I don’t get these feelings often, but when I do, they’re always right.”
“Ashton,” Trace spoke up, a few yards away. “If she’s having this feeling, then ...”
I closed my eyes, praying Ashton would listen to him.
When I opened them, Ashton hadn’t moved. He was still looking at me.
“I know you need a better reason than my gut, but that’s all I have. I have to go.”
“I don’t want her to go.” Jess’s voice rang out, loud and authoritative.
Ashton closed his eyes now.
I angled my head around Ashton to see her.
She had folded her arms over her chest. “I’m only going because my mom is insisting on me.
Trust me, if I could stay in hiding during this time, I would.
” Trace quickly looked her way, and she flicked her eyes to him.
“I’m not a fan of this, but I know the dangers.
I also know that if I ever saw Nicolai Worthing, that prick, in real life, I’d probably shoot him, but all that said, I agree with Ashton. ”
Ashton snorted.
“I agree with this prick here, that you shouldn’t go. Stay here and remain safe.”
“I’m not going to react to that because you are that important to me.” Ashton sent her a short glare.
She rolled her eyes.
I still had work to do with them.
Ashton turned back to me, and since I was holding the coffee, he touched my hips, pulling me closer to him. Leaning down, he rested his forehead to mine and whispered, “I can’t let you go.”
“But—”
“If something happened to you? Don’t you get it? If something happened to you ?”
He was leaving the question hanging for me, and damn. That was a good tactic. Warmth swirled up in my chest, easing some of the bad gut sensation, and I was getting it. Me. I was important to him.
“Run and I’ll burn the world down for you.” I remembered his words. A tingle went through me.
“Three uncles. My grandfather. Not you.” He moved his head, his lips pressing the softest kiss to my forehead. “Not you.”
My throat closed up. A different memory was coming to me.
I lifted my head to look him in the eyes.
His mother. My mother. We never talked about why he wanted the truth out, and I’d forgotten until now.
How could I have forgotten about that? Maybe my own mother issues?
I didn’t know. I didn’t like thinking about her, but that was another layer between us, and I felt it pulsating.
I sighed. “Okay. Fine, but if I’m not going today, then you need to have it out.”
Ashton straightened, frowning. “What are you talking about?”
I nodded at him and Jess. “You two. Both of you. Neither of you will tell me what happened, but I know something happened. What was it?”
“Now’s not the time—” Jess started to say.
“So when is?” I clipped out.
“Molly.”
I held a hand up, stepping back from Ashton.
Trace wasn’t saying a word.
“There’s a group dynamic here. Between all of you. I’m late to the group, but I’m here. I know my role. I know all your roles. Do you?” I gestured to Ashton. “He already knows. I’ve rambled about it to him, but I’m serious.”
“Molly.” Jess was already shaking her head.
“I mean it, Jess. You are going to marry that man by you. He is in the middle of a war with the man next to me. There’s strained history between you two, and it needs to be resolved. Today. Now. Before you leave because I do have a bad feeling.”
She didn’t say anything.
Ashton wasn’t either.
Trace was watching Jess with a pensive look.
“What happened? What was so horrible—”
“I tortured her.”
My head whipped to Ashton, to his sudden declaration, and he was watching me back, waiting. Waiting for what? I frowned. “Torture?” I whispered. “You tortured her?”
“It was that night when I came to get her at Easter Lanes.” His darkness. I felt it again, but my own was pushing up. The darkness that I liked to pretend wasn’t there but was, and I knew it, he knew it, and he accepted it.
He accepted me.
“Run and I’ll burn the world down for you.”
He fell silent after that, but I was still waiting for more information. More of an explanation. He wasn’t giving it to me. “You’re going to drop that bomb and not say anything else?”
“We had a mole. I needed to make sure it wasn’t her.” His jaw clenched. His eyes were blazing before he banked them. A wall slid back into place. I felt the draft by how cold he’d become. He was reverting to his default setting.
My own jaw clenched.
Trace was still watching Jess. I could only shake my head. “You don’t have anything to add? He’s your best friend.”
Trace shifted his attention to me, barely blinking. “He and I have resolved things.”
“He put me in the hospital.”
Trace echoed. “I put him in the hospital.”
Jess wasn’t looking at anyone. Her head was down, and her hands were opening and closing into fists. “And you?”
She lifted her head now, her eyes pained. Haunted. “There’s nothing that can be said after what he did to me.”
I moved toward her. “You’re just cool letting him hang out to dry? Between him and his boy?”
I was focused on Jess, but I sensed Trace’s head jerking to mine.
Jess’s eyes widened, just a fraction. Some blood drained from her face, and she said through gritted teeth, “Not really the best time to go down that memory lane, Molly. Especially considering where I’m going and what news I might be getting about my mom’s health.
Also, especially considering your ‘bad’ feeling. Why are you pushing this?”
“What do you need from him?”
She flinched, warily. “What do you mean?”
“What do you need from him to make it better?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. She shrugged. “He’s already doing it.”
“I am?”
She didn’t look his way but lowered her head.
“You’re looking for Kelly’s killer. Words can’t undo what you did.
” She lifted her head, now seeing him. She barely flinched this time.
“I know why you did what you did, but you did it to me . And you did it behind Trace’s back, and even that I get, but no words can take away that damage.
You’ve already laid the groundwork. You apologized.
You meant it, and now, doing is the best way to heal anything.
I’d let you torture me infinity times over if it meant you found Kelly’s killer just once.
I loved her. She was my family. Mine, and someone took her from me.
Justin was a good man too. They took both of their futures.
They took her.” Her words grew thick. A sob came out.
“Her kids would’ve been my nieces, nephews.
I might’ve not seen them, but I would’ve known about them.
I would’ve known she was happy and had finally, God, finally, got her happily ever after.
They took that from her, so you and me, I don’t care anymore.
I just want to find who killed her. Find them, and we’re solid. ”
“Trust me,” Ashton clipped out. “I am working on it.”
“We know.” Trace moved to Jess, a hand curling over her shoulder. She reached up, grabbing it. He pulled her into his chest. “She’s slowly letting it go, but he didn’t know that.” He looked Ashton’s way. “We’ll be fine. All of us. I believe that.”
The two were sharing a look. It was heated and long, and somehow, when Ashton nodded, blinking rapidly, I was thinking something good had happened here.
“I don’t need the words,” Jess said to me, holding tight to Trace’s hand. “Words are empty to me. Never put much stock in them, but actions. That takes time, and”—she looked Ashton’s way—“it’s happening. I’m okay with that.”
He jerked his head in another nod, blinking again before focusing on me. “How about you?”
“Me?”
“You found out I tortured your friend. Are you going to judge me?” Those eyes of his, so dark and so defiant right now, but I knew better. I knew him better.
I shifted on my feet. “Are you sorry you did it?”
“Yes,” he grated out.
I already knew my answer, and he should’ve known it, too, but fine. I’d string it out. “Will you do it again?”
He frowned. “Not her.”
Trace snorted.
Jess shot him a look.
Ashton ignored both of them. His gaze was focused on me. His words were for me alone. “What else?”
He was asking what else I needed to know. What did I need? I needed him to know me better. “You should know better,” I chided, softly. His eyes flashed, but I added, “If you could do it again, would you have—”
“Never.” His answer came so fast after my question.
“I would never do it again. There was a time I thought I would.” He shifted his gaze to Trace.
“A time when I was full of self-righteousness about what was ‘best’ for the families, but that was before I understood.” His gaze slid from Trace to Jess, then to me.
An extra fire was lit there, burning at me. “Before I got it.”
I felt that burning in my stomach.
“You said I should know better, but I do, and I need you to know this.” He said, swiftly, “If Trace ever touched you ? Took you ? Put you in a chair? Made you feel like you were drowning over and over again? If he dared even consider doing any of that to you, and I’d—”
We shared a look, and a pulse went between us.
“You’re no longer the woman I’m going to use to end this war. You’re the reason for this war because if anyone hurts you, touches you, I’ll kill them. Are you hearing me? All of them.”
He cut himself off, before pulling his gaze away. He said to Trace, “You showed restraint when you put me in the hospital.”
“You’re right. I did. You’re welcome.”
He shifted to Jess. “I am sorry that I hurt you .”
She drew in a deep breath, blinking as her eyes grew wet, before she nodded. “Thank you.”
He held her gaze for a second before shifting his attention my way. His eyes gentled. “Of the two of us, Trace is the better man.”
That burning was back inside of me, and rising, spreading throughout me. “You should know better.” I said it again. Softly.
His jaw clenched, and his tone gentled. “You should be judging me.”
I shook my head. “I’m not built that way. Of the two of us, I’m the one who’ll do something stupid. Remember?”
The corner of Ashton’s mouth curved up. “Sometimes I like when you do stupid things. I get to be the good guy.” He sent Trace a look before closing the distance between us.
He pulled me to him. His hand slid to the back of my neck, and he dipped down, his mouth finding mine.
He whispered there, just for me to hear, “I will never lose you. I refuse.”
To a girl like me, those words had my fuzzies all aflutter. My job was done.
There was an extra peace among the group.