“Do you remember when you flunked your second driving test, Molly?”
She nodded, throat tightening. He had to bring that up.
“Do you remember taking out Landon’s car for a little practice drive and crashing the hell out of it?”
She nodded faster, her throat tightening even more.
“You pulled me out of a damn Spurs game in the final period. And I fixed things. Fixed them
so that you’d never be caught, gladly taking the super-fun lecture from my brother and mother for you. I never ratted you out. Never.”
Throat burning thick now, she kept her eyes closed and prayed he didn’t notice the dampness in her lashes, the tears stealing from between her eyelids to slide down her cheeks and to the pillow. “I’m sorry,” she gritted out helplessly, opening her eyes to see the blurry vision of him. “You’ve always been my hero. I’m sorry I turned out to be the villain in your plot!”
He laughed, a sarcastic sound that said he didn’t even care, and then he said no more and leaned a shoulder on the window and stared outside, probably wishing he was anywhere but here. With her.
“If we hadn’t slept together,” she asked his profile, “would you still be my best friend and talk to me?”
He rubbed one of his arms absently over his chest as he continued staring out the window. “Ask Garrett to be your bud,” he said quietly.
Her eyebrows furrowed, and the anger and injustice that had been building up in her for days overtook her in an explosion. She jumped to her feet, shaking in fury. “You know what, Jules? Go to hell! If you want to hang on to the one thing I’ve done wrong to you in my life, that’s your call. But you know I’ve been there for you every single second of your life like your own private cheerleader. If you had a fan club you know damned well I’d be the president. I happen to think that there’s no one in the world as perfectly wonderful and special and incredible as you. But if you think that I would willingly hurt you in any way, for anyone else, even your brothers, then you’re an idiot. And you don’t deserve me or my friendship, much less my love!”
She was just too hurt and too tired to beg anymore. She’d thought what Julian and she had would survive anything. That they were invincible and powerful.
And now here they were, strangers and almost enemies, as if they hadn’t once meant everything to each other.
He didn’t reply to her words, but kept staring stiffly out the window, his profile taut.
Molly sighed and dropped back to the sofa, tired from her trip, from twenty-three days without sleep, weeks of wishing to find love and losing everything precious in her life in the process. Tired and frustrated, she tossed and turned on the couch, and she did that until finally sleep took over.
During the night her eyes fluttered open to see him still sitting by the window. Every time she looked, she found those green eyes watching her in the darkness.
The last time she woke up shivering and confused, and when she saw him still sitting there, alone and watching her with eyes that were almost as shadowed as the room, she curled herself into a ball and groggily said, “You should get some sleep, Jules. You can keep on hating me tomorrow.”
He started coming over with something in his hands. “People with insomnia don’t sleep, Molls,” he murmured, and covered her with a blanket.
And that was as close as he got to her.
Eleven
It was past 7:00 a.m. when Julian heard someone fiddling with the outside bolt, and he stalked across the room like a man chasing a diabolical fiend. He’d slept exactly zero hours, had been torn between taking Molly in his arms and breaking a freaking window with his fist, but he would be damned if he gave his family the satisfaction of doing either.
No. He was through doing whatever they wanted him to do.
They thought he and Molly would have something to celebrate? The only thing Julian was going to celebrate today was ramming his fist into his brothers’ jaws.
And that was exactly what he did as soon as the bolt was removed and he pushed the cottage door open to find Garrett outside, turning to leave.
“Good morning,” Julian said to make his brother turn back around. He did.
And the force Julian put into his punch was so heavy it floored him instantly. Garrett smacked the ground with a loud thump.
Inside the cottage, Molly jumped to her feet with a start, her eyes wide and startled as she came over and saw the middle Gage brother sprawled at Julian’s feet. She whipped her face up to him and fiercely scowled. “Oh, you were just itching to do that, weren’t you? You’ve been talking about your guns for months!”
Frowning, Julian stretched out his fingers in confusion, because damn, that had hurt. Apparently, Garrett was too hardheaded to punch without getting a bit of a jolt in his knuckles, too.
“Yeah,” Julian admitted to her. Then he glowered down at his brother and nudged him with his foot. “That felt real good, you son of a bitch!”
Coming up to a sitting position, Garrett wiped the blood off his mouth with the sleeve of his polo shirt and spat out the rest. “We have the same mother, you moron.”