28. Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Emmett
Preston was headed to Lucas’s, and I knew in my heart that was where Molly was.
Still, I let him go there because I needed a second to myself, even if it didn’t help.
Quiet moments like this were never my strong suit.
But I needed a chance to get my head on right before I saw Preston and Molly again.
I knocked on Juliet’s door, bouncing on my feet while I waited for her to answer.
“Hey, Emmett. What are you doing here?” She peeked around me and frowned. “Is everything okay with Molly?”
“I can’t find her,” I blurted.
Juliet’s eyes widened, and she ushered me inside.
“No, I can’t stay. I just needed to check if she was here. She wasn’t there when we got home this morning. But there was a note.”
“What did the note say?”
I tugged on my hair, trying to piece the note together from memory. “She’s almost done with her manuscript. She doesn’t want to be in our way anymore. She appreciates all we did for her.”
“And she just left?”
I nodded, antsy to check in with Preston. “A lot of her small stuff was gone, and she’s not answering her phone.”
“Let me get you some water. Please come in, Emmett.”
I glanced behind me, as if I’d find Preston walking up the driveway with Molly. Instead, I caught my reflection in the window next to Juliet’s door. A crazy-eyed man stared back at me.
“Water sounds good,” I mumbled, following her inside.
“You really care about her, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
Understatement of forever.
Being away from her overnight had sucked majorly. I was ready to confess my love for her and put a ring on her finger the second I walked through the door. When she wasn’t there, I was shattered.
“I always do this,” I muttered.
“Do what?” Juliet asked.
“I jump in too fast, and it just set us up for failure.”
She threw her head back and chuckled before handing me a glass of water.
“What’s so funny?”
“This hasn’t been fast—”
“Yes, it has. She moved in less than a month ago.”
“But the chemistry’s there. And you live together.
That fast tracks a relationship like no other.
” Lowering her voice, she looked around before leaning close.
“I thought I knew Romeo, but he leaves his socks on the bathroom floor. And he also sings when he’s getting ready for work in the morning.
One is adorable. One isn’t. I didn’t know either of those things until I moved in with him and it's made me love him more. Even the annoying one.” She shuddered.
“I mean, seriously? Who sings in the morning?”
It was easy to see why Molly was friends with her. Laughing despite the tension wrecking my body, I set my empty glass down and raked my fingers through my hair.
“If it wasn’t moving too fast, was it moving too slow? Did she get bored?”
Juliet shrugged. “I don’t know. She didn’t tell me she was leaving, so it must have been a split-second decision.
” She frowned and tapped her chin. “When you guys were all here, you worked pretty damn well together. I could see the three of you being endgame. And I’m never wrong about these things. So, what changed?”
“I have no idea. We had a few days off that we spent—” My cheeks heated, and I stumbled over my words. “Together?”
She smirked. “Go on.”
“We were having a great time and when we were working, she was writing. Then we had an overnight game and when we got back, she was gone. I thought things were going really well and while we were gone, I—” I hesitated, the sequence of events forming a catastrophically incorrect picture as I rewound them.
Preston and I kissed. That was when everything changed.
It was something I had wanted. But it happened so fast. And we didn’t talk about it.
Molly had been so distant that night, until things turned around. Again, a little too fast.
Did she think I only wanted him?
“Oh, shit,” I mumbled, leaning against the counter. “I need to find Molly.”
“I’ll call her,” Juliet offered, walking out of the room.
I tried to get a hold of my nerves, but Juliet strolled back in before I’d even taken a full breath.
“She said to meet them at home,” Juliet said, an easy smile on her face.
“Home?”
“Yep, she specifically said home.”
Shit. That word sounded so good coming from Molly.
“Home,” I repeated.
Juliet nodded, shoving me toward the door. “Her and Preston are leaving Lucas’s now.”
“Thanks, Juliet,” I called, blasting out of her house.
She didn’t have to tell me twice. I would happily rush home to them.
“Hockey players,” I heard her mutter from the porch, but she couldn’t conceal the laughter in her tone.
I smiled even bigger as I got behind the wheel.
I pulled into the driveway and Preston’s car wasn’t back yet.
Resting my head on the steering wheel, I sucked in huge breaths. When we got home and Molly was gone, it took me back to the moment I knew Janie wasn’t coming back.
That was a moment I never wanted to relive. And it was something I never wanted to experience with Molly. But Molly and I weren’t in a relationship—at least not one that I’d bothered to define.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” I muttered, pressing my forehead to the steering wheel.
If I was Molly, I would have hightailed it out of there the first second I could. She opened herself up to us, completely oblivious to what was going on before she got there.
Preston and I hadn’t even talked about what we were before she came along. We had shared so many moments since the day he moved in, but I had been so hurt by my divorce. I missed all the little signs I was falling for him until right before Molly moved in.
And then Molly came into our lives like a whirlwind, making me feel things I thought were long dead. Making me believe in love again.
Making me brave enough to imagine a future where I wasn’t alone. The three of us fit together in ways I never thought possible.
And then Preston and I kissed. It was everything and more. It was as indisputably perfect as everything with Molly had been.
This wasn’t like my relationship with Janie, where I had to convince myself it would work.
This felt natural.
Real.
I stared at the house I grew up in.
Molly had called this place home. Not just my place or my grandparents’ house where she was staying, but home.
That word had haunted me since Janie left. And suddenly, it meant something different. Because home wasn’t about the walls or the memories anymore. Home was wherever the three of us were together. That was why it had been so unbearably awful at last night’s game. We were too far apart.
Hopefully Preston and Molly were ready for Emmett 2.0 because they weren’t going to get a break from me anytime soon.
I sat up straighter, my reflection in the rearview mirror showing a man ready to fight for what he wanted. No, for who he wanted.
Both of them.
No more holding back. No more letting fear dictate my choices.
I was done being careful with my heart.