“Wh-what is this?”
“It’s why I left, Mol.”
Pale green eyes on his. “I-I don’t understand.”
“I fucked up, sweetheart,” he said. “I accepted some money from people I shouldn’t have then dismissed the threats until they made it clear that I couldn’t dismiss them.” With that photo.
She dropped the cell to her desk, pushed up from her chair, and paced away from him. Five steps from him she stopped, spun around. “When?”
“What?”
“When did you find this out?”
His brows drew down. “They sent the picture the morning of the wedding.”
Her eyes slid closed then opened slowly, understanding in their peridot depths. “That’s why you didn’t show.”
“I couldn’t.”
“This wasn’t the first threat.”
Her words weren’t a question, but rather a statement, and he knew he owed her nothing less than the absolute truth. “No.”
“Ah.” Molly tilted her head back and was so still that she could have been a statue. But then she released a long, shaking breath. “And is there a reason that you didn’t tell me that any of this was going on?”
The question was deceptively calm.
“I—”
It was probably just as well that she only let him get that one syllable out. Because he didn’t have a good reason, other than the fact that he’d thought he was doing the right thing by protecting her.
“Your life was threatened. My life was threatened,” she said, pushing past him and pacing again. “And you thought what? That I couldn’t handle knowing? That I was too weak to know the truth?” She turned, closed the distance between them, and jabbed a finger into his chest. “I was going to be your wife. We were supposed to be partners, and the fact that our lives were at risk didn’t register even a mention on your list of things you should talk to me about?”
She had a valid point. One he hadn’t quite grasped until that exact moment.
“Baby—”
“Molly,” she corrected.
“Molly,” he said. “You’re right.” He reached for her hand, but she stepped back, not allowing the contact. “Of course, you’re right. I wasn’t thinking clearly about any of it. Everything got so big and out of control so quickly, and . . . I didn’t know what to do.”
“No.”
He blinked. “No?”
She shook her head. “No, Jackson. You didn’t keep this from me because you were scared or were trying to protect me. Or not only for those reasons,” she added when he opened his mouth to reply. “You didn’t think I could handle it.”
He froze, started to tell her that, no, he hadn’t thought that. Except . . .
This Molly, the one standing in front of him, the one who was so capably running a business, who was taking this news without hysteria and tears, without fury, was a very different Molly from the one he’d been engaged to. That Molly had been a little fragile, already under stress from the wedding and the new business. That Molly had loved him with a depth he’d never doubted . . . and if he was admitting it, he’d liked that devotion.
It had fed his ego to have someone so utterly committed to him. He’d liked that she’d almost been more involved in his life than her own, that she knew what clients he was meeting with every day, that she sent deliveries to his office tailored to what they preferred. He liked that she’d made dinner every night, that she had picked up his dry cleaning, that he’d never once had to make a run for food or stop at the grocery store on the way home from work.
Fuck. He was an even bigger asshole than he’d thought.
She sighed, dropped into her chair, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. “Anything else?”
“What?” His gut was churning from what he’d just realized, guilt swelling within him, a wave that had begun when he’d received the papers, one that had continued to gain height as he’d debated coming to the bakery, then had grown bigger as he’d seen what she’d built. One that was pounding into him, trapping him against the rocks that lined the shore as it beat against him again and again and again. He’d hurt her without realizing it, hadn’t appreciated her, had taken and taken and would have continued to take if he hadn’t broken things off.
He would have sucked her dry until she was nothing more than a shell of herself.
And that made him fucking despicable.
“Is there anything else you kept from me?” she asked, eyes still closed.
Throat tight, he said, “No.” It was the truth. There was nothing except for the fact that the photograph had shown him how much of a close call she’d dodged when he’d called off the wedding.
Molly sighed again, eyes opening, those pretty green eyes locking with his. “I hated you for what you did. For a long time, I absolutely hated you.” She pushed up from her chair. “But honestly? You did me a favor, Jackson. I wasn’t . . . fully formed four years ago. I was living off you, making my whole life yours. I was weak.” One step and she was close enough that her scent surrounded him.
Sweet. Fuck, she always smelled so damned sweet.
But also . . . in that moment, he’d never felt more sure that she was too fucking good for him.
Another step, her moving past him toward the door again.
He’d spent the day getting his fill. He’d leveled with her. He’d made it clear it wasn’t her fault.
Should he have done that four years ago? Fucking, of course, he should have.
Could he build a time machine and go back, fix what he’d done? No.
But could he make it better for her now, take a worry off her shoulders, remove himself from her life, one he had no right interfering in? Yes.
Jackson heard the click just as he opened his mouth to announce that he was going to sign the papers and remove himself once and for all. He frowned and spun toward the sound.
“You hurt me.”
Then, suddenly, Molly was there, within arm’s reach, looking so fucking beautiful that he couldn’t imagine how he could have ever left her.
But he’d been a different man then.
“I know I did,” he said. “And I’m sorry. I was wrong . . . about so many things.”
Her expression hardened. She took another step toward him. “Yes.”
“If I could change it, if I could go back and—”
She rose on tiptoe, eyes coming level with his, hurt swimming in their depths. “You can’t go back.” A beat. “We can’t go back, Jackson.”
“I—”
Molly kissed him.
Seven
Molly
She was probably an idiot.
Hell, she was definitely an idiot.
But he’d shown her that photograph, she’d seen the dot on her forehead, and terror had gripped her for long enough that her lungs had frozen and she’d felt her mind swim from a lack of oxygen.
It was a violation, and just because it was a violation from four years ago didn’t mean she couldn’t understand.
Jackson hadn’t been thinking.
He hadn’t broken it off because of her.