Chapter 4 – Liam
I’d never been inside Molly’s house before, so seeing such a personal side of her felt… odd. Still, it was exactly what I would’ve expected. The space was flooded with natural light and filled with soft pinks and quirky chicken trinkets that were somehow perfectly her.
A blush rug tied the living room together, matching the pillows scattered across her white couch and the accent chairs on either side of her white-washed fireplace.
In the kitchen, a pink runner stretched in front of the sink, and fresh rosy flowers sat in a clear vase atop the butcher-block countertops.
I hadn’t gone beyond the living room and kitchen, but if I had to guess, I knew exactly what I’d find—more pink.
“I didn’t exactly expect to have a guest tonight, so I didn’t have time to tidy up,” she said, scooping up the stack of books and jackets that had claimed the entire couch.
I picked up one of the paperbacks she missed, flipping it open. “What’s this about?” I asked, studying the cover.
“Well, I haven’t finished it yet,” she said casually, “but so far, this woman ends up in a small town and gets stuck taking care of her eleven-year-old niece. Then she meets this guy who helps her out—and there’s lots of sex in between all of that.”
I coughed, suddenly very aware this was not a Little House on the Prairie situation, and set the book back on the coffee table with more care than necessary.
“Got it.”
“Your lemon bars are in the fridge. Make sure you eat the pan on the right—not on the left,” she added, adamant about which pan I took.
“I’m going to take a quick shower before the pizza gets here.
Help yourself to anything. I’ve got tea and water if you’re thirsty.
I’ll be back in ten,” she said before she disappeared down the hallway.
After a few minutes of boredom sitting on the couch, I finally made my way to the kitchen in search of the lemon bars I’d been promised.
It didn’t take long to find the glass baking dish sitting on the middle shelf of her fridge with powdered sugar dusted neatly across the top.
I grabbed the pan, picked up a bar, and leaned against the counter, taking a bite as my attention drifted to the front of the refrigerator.
Photos were held up by mismatched magnets, each one a small glimpse into Molly’s life.
There were several of her with her brothers, Colt and Jace, their arms slung around each other, smiling happily.
Others showed her with Cassie and Ellie, her best friends, laughing into the camera.
There was even one of her as a little girl.
At no more than five years old, Molly sat atop a massive horse, wearing a pink cowgirl hat that was almost too big for her head. She was barely more than a speck against the size of the animal beneath her, yet she looked confident, not scared.
I smiled, wondering if she’d learned to ride before she ever learned to walk, growing up on McKinley Ranch. Her grandfather had built it from the ground up, a legacy passed down to her father that was now slowly being handed over to Colt and Jace.
As I thought about all the time I’d spent on the ranch as a child playing with the McKinley brothers, a sudden scream ripped through the house.
I dropped the lemon bar I was eating onto the counter and instinctively reached for the 9mm I always kept on me, sprinting down Molly’s hallway.
I hadn’t heard the bathroom door open, which meant she had to still be inside.
I knocked. “Molly? Are you in there? Can I come in?” My hand was on the knob, ready to turn it.
“Yes—hurry,” she pleaded.
I burst through the door, bracing myself for blood or something worse.
But instead, I found Molly standing wide-eyed, pointing at a spider crawling across the tile floor.
“Get it!” she screamed.
I crushed it with my boot in one clean stomp. She looked up at me, then down at the gun in my hand, hanging loosely at my side.
She brought her hand up to her mouth, hiding her laugh from spilling out. “That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” she said.
“Dramatic?” I said, holstering my weapon. “You screamed like you were being murdered.”
“I was about to be,” she said seriously. “By that freakishly large spider.”
“Next time you scream that loud,” I said, “there better be a real emergency.”
She lifted her hand in a mock salute. “Sir, yes, sir.”
My eyes flicked down without thinking, and I realized the awkward situation I’d accidentally walked into.
Molly stood there in nothing but a towel.
Her hair was still damp from the shower, darkened by the water and clinging to her shoulders.
Her face was bare, freshly washed, and somehow softer than I’d ever seen it.
If anything, she looked even prettier like this.
The towel was wrapped around her chest, hanging just low enough to brush her thighs—secure enough to stay put but leaving very little to the imagination. My brain filled in the blanks, sending my body reacting in ways that were wildly inconvenient.
I swallowed hard.
This was a mistake. A big one.
I needed to get out of that bathroom before she noticed my staring—or worse—before things got awkward in a way we couldn’t walk back from.
“I’m, uh, going back to the kitchen,” I said quickly. “I’ll see you when you’re done getting dressed.” I didn’t wait for her answer. I just turned and shut the door behind me, grateful for the barrier and the chance to collect myself.
When Molly returned to the living room, she was wearing matching pajama shorts and a silk spaghetti-strap top with a pattern of tiny blue hearts on the fabric.
I wondered if taking a shower had made her feel any better.
Anytime I had a long day at work, coming home and taking a hot shower always helped, but I had no way of knowing what Molly was feeling.
“Did the shower help?” I asked as she sat down on the couch next to me.
“Yes, actually. Until the spider showed up.” She laughed.
Molly and I were more than a safe distance apart, but seeing her in something so casual and revealing made the oxygen in her living room seem nonexistent.
I felt like an idiot. All I could see was Molly’s collarbone, and I was still about to pass out.
I had no idea why I’d offered to stay with her until she felt better. It was probably the sheriff in me—I couldn’t walk away from someone in need. A couple bites of pizza and some small talk, and I’d be out of here before the sun went down.
Molly brought her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs as she turned in my direction. “You still have time to make it to boys’ night. I feel better, Liam. I promise,” she said, trying to convince me.
“And what happens when I leave? Will you start getting in your head again?”
“Sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes the answer is no,” she admitted truthfully.
“Then I’m not gambling on the answer being yes.”
“Suit yourself,” she said, sitting up straighter. “Don’t be surprised when I ramble on all night.”
“I’m sure you’ve got a slew of things you want to talk about just waiting in that little head of yours,” I said.
“As a matter of fact, I do. My first question is what made you want to go into the military?” she asked, not holding back in the slightest. Very Molly McKinley of her.
I thought for a second, debating whether I wanted to give her an honest answer or not.
“I wanted to get the hell away from Great Falls. At the time, my life was hell and I needed to find myself. The military seemed like the right move. On my fourth and final deployment overseas, we took on enemy fire, and I got shot in the hip. Shattered everything on impact. I’m fine now, but when I was stuck in a hospital bed healing, I decided my time in the military was over.
I wanted to come back to Montana. It might sound crazy, but I missed this small-ass town.
Missed hanging out with Jace, missed the food at Maggie’s. ”
I could tell Molly was shocked by my confession. Not a lot of people knew that I got injured. I didn’t talk about it much, because I didn’t want anyone’s pity. It happened, I conquered it, and it was over with now.
“Next question,” I said.
“What made you want to become sheriff?”
“I like structure and routine. That’s why I loved being in the military so much.
But I like helping people more. Silver Creek isn’t exactly high on the list of towns with crime, but it has plenty of old ladies who need help getting their cats out of trees and neighbors who need help settling random disputes.
Not to brag or anything, but Silver Creek Elementary asks me to come to their career day every year.
I’m kind of a celebrity there. So there are lots of perks to the job. ” I chuckled.
“I’m sorry you got shot and were alone through all of that,” Molly said, her voice sounding truly sincere.
“It’s fine. Probably for the best. I didn’t really want anyone to see me that way anyway.”
A knock at the door caught both our attention. I hopped up, pulling my wallet out of my pocket as I made my way to the door.
“Pizza delivery,” the curly redheaded kid said as I pulled the door open. He was probably barely sixteen.
He handed me the pizza boxes as I handed over the cash I owed for the order. “Keep the change, kid,” I said, nodding at him. He looked down at the bills, realizing I gave him way more than he was owed.
“Thanks, man,” he said, beaming.
I remembered what it was like to be young, working whatever job you could just to save a little money. Maybe he was saving for college. I’d been saving to get the hell out of my house—to live on my own and get away from my dad.
“One meat lovers and one pepperoni with pineapple—for the crazy lady who lives here,” I said as I set the pizza boxes on the kitchen counter.
“Don’t knock it till you try it,” she said, flipping the lid open and inhaling the smell of freshly melted mozzarella.
Molly grabbed a couple plates from the cabinet and handed me one.
“We can sit on the couch and eat if you want. That’s usually my makeshift dinner table,” she explained.
I grabbed a slice from my box, and we settled back onto the couch, pizza in hand, hunger finally winning out. “So what other weird shit are you into besides disgusting pizza toppings and books with sex in them?” I asked.
She laughed. “You know sex is a completely normal thing, right Liam?” Then she suddenly sat up straighter, her eyes going wide. “Wait—don’t tell me. You’re a virgin?” she asked, looking at me like she almost felt bad for me.
I choked on my pizza, pounding my chest a few times until the coughing stopped.
“No, Molly. I am not a virgin,” I muttered, shooting her a sideways glance. This girl said literally whatever popped into her head, and it was going to make me lose mine.
“Then how come every time I make a sex joke in front of you, you shrivel up like a raisin and get that look on your face?” she asked.
“What look?”
She scrunched up her face, giving her best impression of me.
“I do not look like that.”
“Oh yes, you do. Like, all the time actually. Some would say constantly.” She took another bite of her pizza. “I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve seen you smile since I’ve known you, and two of those times happened tonight.”
I gave her a mocking smile and realized how awkward it felt when I tried to do it. Maybe I didn’t smile as often as I thought I did. Maybe Molly was onto something.
But why smile when your life is one big dark cloud, pouring rain on you constantly? No rainbow at the end of the storm. No leprechaun holding a pot of gold.
“I’m trying to think back to the first time I met you,” Molly said.
I remembered the exact moment I met her. I’d never forget it.
Jace and I had been friends for a while, and I’d finally convinced my mom to let me stay the night at his house. We ran around the ranch like the wild boys we were, growing up without a care in the world. I was probably twelve or so.
Eventually, Jace and I got bored and came up with the brilliant idea to head to the lake on his property and swim, the summer sun already beating down on us.
After a while, Molly walked up. I didn’t realize she was Jace’s sister at first. She sat on the dock, watching us without saying a word.
“What do you want, Molly?” Jace asked, trying to brush off his annoying little sister.
“Nothing. Just thought I’d let you know there’s a snake in the water,” she said, pointing to a spot between Jace and me.
We both twisted in the water, searching for something slithering along the surface. Then something moved a few inches from us.
We panicked, splashing like idiots, paddling as fast as we could toward shore.
We crawled out of the water, panting, convinced our lives had just been spared.
Molly was still on the dock, laughing so hard she’d dropped down onto all fours.
“That’s not funny, Molly. We could’ve been bitten,” Jace said, scowling at her.
She didn’t listen. She just kept laughing. After another minute, she pointed back to the same spot.
“It’s a piece of rope, you big babies,” she teased, holding up the clear fishing line she’d tied to it to make it move like a snake in the water.
That was the first time Molly McKinley ever teased me.
As you can tell, she basically never stopped.
Molly stood up from her place on the couch. “I’m going to get a drink. Do you want anything?”
“I’ll take a water, please.”
“One glass of water, coming right up.”
I continued eating my pizza with no pineapple when Molly came running back into her living room frantically.
“What?” I asked, worried.
“Where’s the pan of lemon bars that were on the left side of the fridge?”
“Uh…” I pointed at the pan sitting on the coffee table. “Maybe I grabbed the wrong side?”
Molly’s eyes went wide.
“What’s the problem? A lemon bar is a lemon bar, isn’t it?” I laughed awkwardly.
“The pan on the left had weed in them,” she admitted frantically.
“They what?” I asked, standing up. “How much damn weed do you have in this house, Molly?”
“Well, it was THC to be exact. Clara gave it to me to try, but the bottle specifically said not to drink it willy-nilly, so I decided to bake it into something. I thought I was just gonna hand you the normal pan myself when you came by before guys’ night, and that would be the end of that, but that’s not what happened, and now I accidentally got you high, since it looks like you’ve already eaten half the pan,” she said, rambling on.
“I genuinely don’t think I’ve ever had one normal experience being around you.” I laughed as I sat back on the couch. I could be mad, sure, but what’s done was done.
Molly McKinley got me high using her delicious lemon bars. What could possibly go wrong?