Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Molly
“ I figure it’s our thing now. Taco bars for big celebrations. Anyway, it’s Maddy’s favorite,” my best friend Emma says, smiling over at her newly adopted daughter, who is sitting on the couch with Emma’s grandparents. The rest of our family and friends wander around the living room we use as a reception area and chat in small groups. The mood of the whole house is happiness and love. It’s perfect.
“And yours.”
I put down my plate of tacos and pick up Emma’s hand to admire her engagement ring. I feel a rush of pure happiness at the look on my best friend’s face. At the love and contentment when she glances down at the ring that used to belong to her mom, who died when Emma was eight. The ring that Jeremy Wright, former professional hockey player and love of Emma’s life, put on her finger earlier today right before Emma finalized Maddy’s adoption.
It’s been a big day, and if I have anything to say about it—which I usually do—it’s about to get bigger.
“We’re not just celebrating an adoption today anymore. It’s engagement o’clock up in here, and we’ve got another wedding to plan. Hang on, I’m going upstairs to find my wedding binder. We can get started now.”
Before Emma or anyone else can tell me it’s too soon to start planning a wedding, and to let Emma and Jeremy enjoy being engaged and newly minted parents before we dive into dresses and flowers and venues, I fly up the stairs and straight into my office.
I’m glad Emma decided to have the joint engagement/adoption party in the house we turned into our office, because for reasons I can’t remember right now and probably aren’t important, I stored the wedding binder here.
I pause in the center of the room, turning a slow circle, trying to remember where in the chaos I put it.
Most people know me as the smart, competent estate planning attorney with a photographic memory and an encyclopedic knowledge of the tax code. They assume my color-coded file folders and multi-colored pens are for organizational purposes and that my surroundings must reflect the stoic nature of the law I practice.
Most people would be wrong.
In reality, plain files are ugly, black pens are boring, and organization has never particularly interested me. Some people might call me messy, but I’ve never seen it that way. Nothing about me is orderly. Not the clothes I wear or the food I eat or my love of people and parties or my dual passions for complex tax law and art and design, or my third former passion that we don’t talk about. So I’ve never seen why my office or my home should be either.
I wasn’t meant to be structured. I was born to stand out. I live life way, way out loud. I’m not everyone’s taste, and that’s fine with me. Nine years ago, I found my people, and they love me exactly for me. I’ve never needed anyone else. Except for that one time when I did, but we don’t talk about that either.
Besides, we have a binder to find and a wedding to plan.
Julie got married first, in a surprise backyard wedding last summer, with no binder necessary and no planning help required from me. She was so damn happy, and her husband Asher is such a good guy that I wasn’t salty about it. Not much, at least. But our other best friend Hallie’s wedding to Julie’s brother Ben required all the planning, so last fall, the binder was born. And now Emma is marrying Ben’s best friend and has an adopted daughter who is my little sister in sparkles. It’s a complex web of friendship and pseudo-family, and it’s the most important part of my life.
Hallie, Julie, Emma, and I have been best friends since our first year of law school. Almost two years ago, we said fuck off to the patriarchal boys’ club that is big law, and we now own a law firm together in Hallie and Julie’s hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
I’m a California girl through and through, and until my senior year of college, it never occurred to me that I would settle anywhere else. But when fate hands you a shattered heart at twenty-two, an unexpected career path, and the three best friends any girl could ever hope for, you listen.
“The closet,” I mutter, striding over and opening my office closet door.
Jules, bless her, tried her hardest to organize it for me when we first started our practice, but it never stayed that way for long, and eventually, she gave up. It’s an organized sort of chaos, though. Like, I can instantly locate my client files, or my favorite treatise on generation-skipping transfer tax law. But the more obscure contents of my office closet, like the scarf I tore off and tossed in here last week when it was itching my neck or the binder that contains everything a girl needs to plan a perfect Pittsburgh wedding for her best friends, can be difficult to locate.
I’ve always loved a challenge.
“There you fucking are,” I crow, shoving aside a sweater, a pair of pants, a two years out of date copy of Purdon’s Pennsylvania Statutes, three bags of black licorice, and, inexplicably, a red lace bra to grab the pink two inch binder with the puffy painted cover.
I’m a little extra and puffy paint is my jam. Sometimes I think I was born too late. I would have killed as an eighties kid.
Thrilled at the prospect of another round of wedding shenanigans, I’m out of my office like a shot.
“I found it!” I call, thundering down the stairs. “We can start…”
My words die on my lips, and I come to a screeching halt halfway down the staircase.
It’s his scent that hits me first. Ocean and pine. In all the years we spent together, I could never figure out how he smelled like the ocean when he spent his entire life in Northern California, nowhere near the beach. It was part of his magic. I understand olfactory memory from a theoretical standpoint, but in this moment, I comprehend it on a cellular level as my entire body reacts to the scent of him.
The memories come at me in flashes. Walking the Berkeley campus tucked under this strong arm. Him grinning at me as he carved our initials into our favorite campus Redwood tree. Late nights watching him work in the robotics lab—God, I fucking loved watching him work, those long fingers racing across a keyboard or building something only his genius tech brain could comprehend. Binge watching the Marvel Cinematic Universe late at night when the rest of the world was sleeping. Curled up together, watching the Northern Lights. His arms around me, secure in the belief that we were forever. His eyes when he watched me dance.
The same eyes that stare up at me now.
I grab the banister with one hand, holding it as tightly as I can to keep my hand from shaking. I bring the binder up to my chest like a shield.
My heart knocks against my ribs, and my lungs struggle to take in air.
Because standing just outside the front door is the only man to ever own my heart. And the only man to break it. Julie and Asher stand in front of him, but I can see the way his blue sweater hugs his muscles and the light shadow of stubble across his jaw. It’s been ten years since I last saw him, but I know his body like my own. My subconscious has conjured it more times than I can count. But I’m not sleeping, and this is not a dream.
“Gabe?” My voice is quiet and shaky, and I hate that. I’ve thought of a hundred different ways it would go when I saw him for the first time after all these years, and none of them involve anything but me, incandescent with rage, telling him exactly what I think about him waltzing back into my life. And the way he left it.
But I don’t feel rage. I feel sadness and grief so deep it’s like it’s been living in my bones for a decade, waiting for its moment to resurface.
Gabe looks up at me with a soft smile. His eyes swirl with emotions that have my stomach sinking straight to my toes. When he speaks, his voice is raspy and deep, and his words are bathed in feeling.
“Hey, Rory.”
My old nickname on his lips is a punch to the gut.
I want Gabe out of my office, and I never want him to leave again. I want to shove him out the door, and I want to throw myself at him and never let him go. I want to fall apart into a million pieces, and I want to stand strong, never letting him see me crumble.
Every one of my muscles tenses, bracing as if expecting a blow. But my fingers also twitch with the need to touch him, and my feet shuffle on the stairs as if my body senses him and still needs to be wherever he is.
And fuck if I know what to do about that.
I don’t know what expression is on my face right now, but it must be bad because I have never seen six people move so fast.
Julie takes a step closer to Gabe in the doorway while Hallie and Emma move to flank her. Ben, Jeremy, and Asher are up the stairs in a flash. Ben and Asher stand on the step below me, arms crossed like bodyguards, while Jeremy stands next to me, his hand on my shoulder, squeezing lightly in a gesture of support that has emotion bubbling up in my chest.
“It’ll be okay, Mol. Ems will know what to do.”
His quiet words of assurance and Ben and Asher’s protective stances, when none of them have any clue what’s going on, have tears burning behind my eyes. But I will them away because I’ll be goddamned if Gabriel Sullivan sees me cry.
Just as Jeremy predicted, Emma looks up at me and our eyes lock. She studies me for a beat and then she nods slightly, reading me in that spooky way of hers before she turns back to the door. Her voice is kind with an undercurrent of steel.
“I’m sorry, but none of us are available right now. You’ll need to call and make an appointment.”
Gabe’s shoulders straighten in determination. I’m fascinated in a kind of detached way by how I know all his tells, even after a decade away. He sticks out his hand to Emma.
“I’m sorry, I probably should have introduced myself. I’m?—”
“We know who you are,” Julie says cooly, ignoring his outstretched hand.
“Take him down, Juliette,” Asher murmurs from his perch in front of me. I smile despite myself, amused, as always, by the awe in his voice when he talks about his wife.
Without turning around, Julie sweeps a hand in the general direction of the stairs.
“As you can see, this office is full of professional athletes, so I can assure you that none of us are impressed by fame. We don’t care who you are, and we don’t care how much money you have. When my partner here said none of us are available, she meant that not one single one of us has time for you right now.”
Julie reaches over to the table we keep in the entryway and grabs a business card from the holder, handing it to him.
“Please contact us during normal business hours, and if we’re available, we would be happy to take your call.”
Gabe glances up at me, a pleading expression on his face like he’s expecting me to overrule Julie and agree to talk to him. But I stay where I am, feet frozen to the step. I say nothing, forcing my face into the most neutral expression I can manage. If he’s here, it means eventually, I’ll have to talk to him, but not now. Not while I’m caught off guard and flayed open without any armor in place and no way to protect myself.
I think he can still read me, too, because he turns back to my friends, smiling and holding up the business card.
“Thanks for this. I’ll be in touch.”
“Be sure that you are,” Hallie says, her voice just edging towards hostile and her face uncharacteristically hard.
My nerves are shredded, and it’s taking every ounce of strength I have not either to scream or burst into tears. But I also feel a rush of love for my friends and the men who love them. They don’t know what’s going on here because I’ve never told them about this part of my past. But the way they knew what I needed and jumped to my rescue has me filled with gratitude for all of them.
I’m one of the lucky ones.
With a nod to my friends, Gabe turns on his heel and walks away. Julie closes the door and all three of my friends join their men on the stairs. I can see the questions on their faces. I expected them. But ten years is a long time to keep a secret, and this is a hard story to tell.
I’m not ready.
The guys go back down, giving us some privacy. Hallie, Julie, and Emma stand in front of me, their faces filled with love and concern in equal measure. Once upon a time, I thought Gabe Sullivan was the other half of my heart. But looking at the three women standing with me, ready to fight for me and hold me together and slay my dragons if that’s what I need, I think it’s them who are the missing pieces of me.
I love them so fiercely.
But right now, I can’t give them what they want.
“Not here, okay?” I say quietly. “I know you have questions, but I can’t answer them now. I need some time. Go back to the party. Please. I swear we’ll talk, but not now.”
Julie and Hallie glance at Emma, who studies me. As the empath among us, she’s the one who always knows what everyone needs. I will her to get it right this time, because I think if I have to say any more words, I’m going to lose it right here on the stairs. Emma reaches out and takes one of my hands.
“Take all the time you need, Mol. You know we’re here for you when you’re ready.”
I hug her tightly and feel Julie and Hallie each put a hand on my back.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
“Anything. Always. You know that.”
With one final squeeze, she lets me go, and with a backward glance from each of them, they make their way downstairs and back to the party.
I wait until everyone is occupied, then slip down through the kitchen and out the back door. I don’t remember getting into my car or driving home. Eventually, I just end up at my front door. Once I’m inside, I go up to my room, strip out of my clothes, and walk straight to the bathroom. I turn the shower on as hot as I can stand, and when steam fills the bathroom, I step in and close the glass door behind me.
It's only under the pouring water, hidden by the steam, that I sink to the shower floor. With my knees to my chest and my head resting on my arms, I finally let myself break.