Chapter 1
Chapter One
Gabe
I stare up at the brick house, my fists clenching and unclenching in time with the rapid beat of my heart and my stomach in knots.
I’ve never been an anxious person, but right now, I’m considering the possibility that my anxiety might just end me right here on the sidewalk before I even have a chance to go inside.
For the first time in a decade, I’m about to breathe the same air as the one person who has always been my reason for breathing. And fine, maybe I’m being a little dramatic, but I’m meeting the moment, okay?
The sign in front tells me I’m in the right place. Evans, Parker, Langley, and Jenkins, P.C .
She’s a lawyer. A very successful one if everything I’ve seen and read is true. And I know it is. I don’t know how her life brought her here, to a partnership in a small law firm in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but I do know that she always went after what she wanted with her full chest, and she didn’t stop until she got it. Her tenacity was one of the things I loved most about her. Her tenacity…and basically everything else.
I just really fucking loved her.
Love her? Can you love someone you haven’t seen in ten years? I think I’m about to find out.
The house is a pretty red brick, the small front yard well maintained with flower beds in a riot of colors. Planters flank the wide front door overflowing with more colorful blooms.
I bet Molly planted the flowers or at least directed the person who did. The organized chaos of the design looks like something she would conjure up in that gorgeous, brilliant brain of hers.
Or maybe not. I don’t know her anymore.
The thought has my stomach sinking and my fight or flight instinct kicking into high gear.
“Get your shit together, Gabriel. You’ve come this far,” I mutter.
The ding of my phone stops me before I can take a step up the front walk.
I smile when I see the message is in the group chat with my sisters. Amelia created the group chat with the phone I gave her for her fourteenth birthday. I’ll never forget her hugging me that day and telling me we made a good team. It was the first time in the two years since our parents died that I felt like maybe I wasn’t completely fucking everything up, so the Team Sullivan group chat was born.
Team Sullivan
Ames
So did you do it yet?
Me
I’m standing in front of her office.
Liv
Why are you standing in front of the office and not inside the office telling her you never stopped loving her and begging her for a second chance?
Ames
Now there’s a question.
Me
Fuck off. I’m taking a minute.
Liv
Good parents don’t tell their kids to fuck off.
Me
Well, it’s a good thing I’m not your parent then. Brothers can tell their sisters to fuck off anytime they want.
Ames
It’s going to be okay, you know. No matter what happens, we’re here.
Liv
What she said.
Me
I know. I love you both.
Ames
But for what it’s worth, Molly would be crazy not to give you another shot. You’re way hotter now than you were ten years ago.
And you’re a literal billionaire. But I guess if she’s really the one, she won’t care about that.
Liv
And also, you’ve got the whole single dad thing going for you.
I laugh despite myself. I may have lost both my parents and have had to live without the love of my life for ten years, but I have my sisters. I never could have gotten through the last decade without them.
Me
I don’t think it counts as a single dad thing when the kids are eighteen and twenty-two. And also not your actual kids.
Liv
Okay but like, you did the work to get yourself all happy and healthy and emotionally intelligent, and you waited until I was in college to go get your girl. That is swoon central, G.
Ames
What she’s saying is, you did all the right things. Now go get her. It’s time.
Liv
Text us after.
Me
I will. Love you. And thanks.
I try and hang on to some of my sisters’ confidence, but the truth is, there’s a non-zero chance Molly is going to tell me to fuck right off, and I would deserve it.
There were so many times over the years when I almost came back for her. Begged her for another chance. But I had my sisters, which meant my life was chained to California. Having her would have meant asking her to uproot her entire life, and after the way we ended, that was never something I would have asked of her. If we ever got our second chance, I wanted it to be when I could turn my entire life upside down to be with her because Molly deserves nothing less.
I don’t deserve her. I probably didn’t deserve her even before my parents’ deaths broke me and then I broke us. But for almost fourteen years, Molly has been the reason my heart beats. Even after I let everything fall apart, just knowing she existed was sometimes the only thing that got me out of bed in the morning. Conjuring her face in my mind let me put one foot in front of the other when it felt like I had a permanent thousand-pound weight sitting directly on my shoulders.
For a decade, I’ve been trying to put myself back together. To make myself into the man she deserves—someone even better than I was before my whole world came tumbling down. Someone deserving of the magic of Molly Jenkins.
I think I’ve done the job. Or at least, I’ve tried my best.
Now, it’s her choice.
I’ve already made mine.
It’s time to get my girl.
The thought of seeing her face propels me up the stairs onto the small front porch.
Taking a fortifying breath, I turn the handle and push open the door.