Great, he thought, his heart sinking further. It was one of the most important days in the restaurant’s history, and a member of his fucked up, no good family was ruining it for her.
“Brady, look out!” Molly shouted.
He looked down, saw that Connie had managed to grab a knife off the prep table. He caught her wrist in his hand and twisted it.
She seemed immune to the pain—fucking pills—and he was afraid he was going to have to break her wrist before he got her to drop it.
Finally the knife clattered to the floor.
“I’m calling the police,” Molly said.
“Good idea,” Brady grunted as he took a bony elbow to the ribs.
Connie continued to kick and flail. “You’re calling the cops on me? I should call the cops on you! You better let me take him home, or I’m going to have the arrest you for kidnapping!”
“You really think I’d let him go home with an addict who abandons him for weeks at a time?” he said as he jerked his head back to avoid meeting the back of her flailing head with his nose.
He swept his leg under her feet and knocked her to the ground. She landed on her stomach and Brady twisted her arm behind her back and held her down with his knee pressed into her butt.
“Oh, Mr. High and Mighty,” she panted, writhing futilely against his hold. “You always thought you were so much better than us, but you’re just a domineering asshole who thinks his shit doesn’t stink. No wonder your wife cheated on you.”
He heard a gasp, felt his stomach clench with dread.
“You have a wife?” Molly asked in a strained voice.
“Ex-wife,” he grunted, tightening his grip on Connie’s wrist when she tried to use his distraction to wriggle away. “It was a long time ago—”
He was cut off by the arrival of two of the sheriff’s deputies, who quickly subdued Connie and hauled her handcuffed and screaming through the restaurant and shoved her in the back of the waiting cruiser.
For a moment, everyone was dead silent. Brady felt his face flame under the weight of dozens of pairs of eyes staring at him.
He’d tried so hard to keep it hidden, tucked in the past, but now everyone in his new home knew exactly what kind of people he came from. Humiliation bubbled up from his stomach in a nauseating wave, threatening to choke him.
“Bryan, stop filming,” Carrie hissed.
Great, as if it couldn’t get any worse, Connie and her drug-addled antics had all been caught on film.
A low murmur broke out in the crowd, hushed whispers growing louder. Reminding Brady of dozens of times growing up, the feeling of accusing eyes on him while they gossiped about his family’s latest fuck ups and misadventures.
His gaze locked on Jordan, head bent, shoulders slumped, the only person in the room who knew exactly how shitty it felt.
Brady squeezed his eyes shut, wishing that when he opened them he’d find that it was all a nightmare, that it hadn’t really happened.
He opened them to meet Molly’s shocked, accusing stare. Full of hurt. Disappointment. Betrayal.
He wanted to rush to her, take her somewhere private so he could reassure her that none of this mattered, he was nothing like his family, and she had every reason to trust him.
Before he could move, Molly pasted a carefully blank smile on her face. The smile he recognized as the one she used when she wanted to shut the world out and pretend everything was fine. “Well, that should give you something for your blooper reel.”
Everyone laughed awkwardly.
“Yep, having someone arrested is definitely a first,” Reggie said.
“Just give us a minute to clean up and we can finish up,” Molly said and started for the kitchen.
“It’s okay,” Carrie said with a tight smile of her own. “I think we got everything we needed.” She looked to Reggie, who nodded in confirmation.
“Right, the rest is mostly voice over stuff, and it seems like you have more important things to deal with right now.” She nodded at the remaining deputy, who had come back inside to take their statements.
The crew dutifully began packing up.
“If it’s okay, I’m going to take him home,” Brady said after the deputies had left. He slid an arm around Jordan, who was pale and still visibly shaken.
“Of course,” Molly said, too brightly. “Take the rest of the day off. We’ll be fine without you.”
He caught her arm when she would have darted away. “Molly—”
“Let’s not do this now,” she said, the faintest tremble in her voice.
“I’ll come over to your place later, okay?”
She nodded. He bent to kiss her, but she ducked so it landed on the crown of her head.
The knot in his gut pulled tighter.
Chapter 14
Molly worked the rest of the day on autopilot, hiding out in the kitchen for the most part so she wouldn’t have to hear everyone talking about Brady’s crazy sister.
Adele and Ellie tiptoed around her after she shut down their attempts to talk to her about what happened. Inside she was seething, barely keeping control of the panic racing through her, the voice shouting in her head that once again she had made a stupid mistake.
She’d known Brady was dangerous from the start, and yet she’d given her heart to someone she barely knew. Someone who had a sister who was a drug addict who would have stabbed him if she’d had the chance.
Someone who had been married before but never saw fit to tell her about it. How many other skeletons did Brady have in his past that he was so determined to keep hidden?
By the time she closed up and went home for the evening, she knew what she had to do.
Even though her heart was cracking open inside of her chest, she knew she had to end this now, before it went any further. Before she fell even deeper under his spell. Before she wasted another decade with a man who kept too many secrets, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
###
The look on Molly’s face when she opened the door hit him like a kick to the chest. Eyes tearstained, soft mouth set in a firm line. The knot that had taken up residence in his gut increased its diameter by a few inches.
“I’m so sorry about what happened today,” he said as she stepped aside to let him in. He took that as a good sign that she even let him through the door.
“How’s Jordan?”
“He’s okay. He said to tell you he’s sorry too.”
“It’s not his fault,” Molly said sharply.
“I know, and I told him that, but he still feels bad, embarrassed by the scene his mother made. So am I.” He followed her into the living room and took a seat on the edge of the couch.
Tried not to read too much into it when she sat in the armchair across from him instead of next to him.
“It’s not your fault either. You can’t control your sister’s behavior.”
He felt a spurt of hope that maybe this wasn’t going to turn out like he thought it was after all. That she wasn’t going to dump him on his ass, now that she’d seen firsthand the kind of people he came from.
“So tell me about your wife.”
“Ex-wife,” he said tightly.
“You don’t think I might have wanted to know about her?”
His hands curled into fists on his thighs. He hated this feeling of being backed into a corner, feeling guilty when he knew he hadn’t done anything wrong. “It was so long ago I barely remember it happened. It has nothing to do with us and it’s not something I like to talk about—”
“You don’t like to talk about anything!” She exploded. “Everything I know about you before your life in Big Timber I’ve had to pry out of you with a crowbar.”
“What, you want to hear about my ex-wife and how I came back from a tour in Afghanistan to find her knocked up with someone else’s kid?”
“It’s a start,” Molly said tartly. “Then there’s your family—”
“You want to know all the details of my fucked up family? Fine. My mom and dad both come from a long line of deadbeats, thieves, and drug dealers. Then they got together and had Connie and me. Like I said last night at dinner, I left home as soon as I could because I knew if I stayed I’d end up exactly like them. End of story.”
“End of story?! You have your entire life up until the age of eighteen that you refuse to share with me. Who knows what other awful secrets are going to come out?”
Acid churned in his gut as he imagined telling her about all of the dark and dirty truths, the look of disgust and disdain that would cross her face. “Whatever they are, they don’t have anything to do with me, or us.”
Molly shook her head and buried her face in her hands. “I can’t do this, I’m sorry. You told me yourself, you weren’t the kind of guy to have a relationship. I’m so stupid. I should have listened.”
Desperation tasted sour in his mouth, the feeling so awful and unfamiliar it made him want to throw up. It was as though he was sucked back into a time portal and was once again the surly teenager who knew he was no better than his family, who knew better than to ask for more.
And Molly was every girl he’d ever liked, every girl he’d ever been dumb enough to ask for more than a tussle in the back seat of her daddy’s car.
“I knew it,” he spat out. “I knew you would never be able to handle the truth. Perfect Molly Tanner with her picket fence dreams would never lower herself be with white trash.”
“This isn’t about your family—”
He cut her off. “The hell it isn’t. Fuck it, it doesn’t matter.” He schooled his expression into a derisive sneer that said he didn’t give a shit what she or anyone else thought of him. “I know girls like you, Molly. That bullshit about wanting more? I was just telling you what I thought you needed to hear so you’d keep fucking me. And that was getting old anyway.”
He stomped toward the door, forcing himself not to look back, not to turn tail and throw himself onto his knees and beg her to give him the chance to prove he wasn’t like his family. That he wasn’t like her father or Josh who’d taken her love for granted.
He knew it was no use, so he ignored her as she called after him. He might have had his heart pulverized, but he sure as shit wasn’t going to let her stomp on what was left of his pride.
Such an idiot, believing he could ever leave his past behind. That he could ever be worthy of the love of a woman like Molly. All of the dreams he’d had of her, their future, were nothing but the delusions of a fool.
He should have known better than to reach so high. Should have known he would only get smacked down.
But he never could have anticipated how devastating it would be when he came crashing back to earth.
He climbed into his truck, feeling hollow and scraped out like the jack-o’-lanterns decorating the front steps of the houses on Molly’s street. He drove home, numbly wondering if he would ever stop paying for other people’s mistakes.
###
Molly collapsed onto her couch in a daze, feeling as though she’d been hit by a truck. Inside she was screaming after Brady, wanting to explain that her ending things had nothing to do with his family, and everything to do with his desire to keep secrets—too many secrets—from her.
But in the end, it didn’t really matter, did it? Regardless of the reasons, Brady was not the right man for her. She was an idiot for thinking for a minute that he might be.
Still, she tossed and turned all night, stomach churning at the memory of how not just angry but hurt Brady had been. She hated the idea of him thinking that she was so shallow that she would reject him just because of the kind of family he came from.
The next morning she had an appointment with Dr. Stewart. She was tempted to cancel, since everything causing the turmoil swirling through her brain was nothing she wanted to bring up with her therapist.
Reminding herself that she’d have to pay for the session anyway if she canceled last minute, she drove herself to the doctor’s office. If nothing else, there was her father’s latest rejection and the fiasco during the
Simply Delicious
shoot to talk about.
“That must have been very painful,” Dr. Stewart said after Molly read her the email her father had sent.
Molly shrugged. “I should have known after all this time, if he’d wanted to be in touch, he would have been.”
Dr. Stewart sat back in her chair, pursing her lips. “Has it occurred to you that maybe his rejection doesn’t have so much to do with you but with his own feelings of inadequacy?”
“He basically told me he doesn’t ever want to talk to me again,” Molly said with a dry laugh. “How is that not about me?” Just saying it out sent a little stab to her chest.
But that was nothing compared to what was really making her heart feel all achy and bruised. Brady. And the fact that they really were over was what made her eyes burn and made her want to curl up in a corner.
“He knows he’s already disappointed you once. Maybe he’s afraid of doing it again.”
Molly let out another laugh, but this time it came out more like a sob. “And now I have a knack for picking men who disappoint me. First Josh, then—” She cut herself off.
“Who?” Dr. Stewart leaned forward, interest piqued.
Molly shook her head again. “It’s—” but before she could get the words “no one” out of her mouth, she found herself spilling the entire story about Brady. Starting with the night of Ellie’s wedding to yesterday’s fiasco and everything in between. By the end Molly was sobbing, clutching the box of tissue Dr. Stewart had so thoughtfully handed to her.
“So your ending things has nothing to do with his family?”
“Of course not,” Molly sat up straight and blew her nose. “I know he’s not anything like his family. It’s just, he tries to keep it all such a secret. I don’t really know him. How can I trust him if he doesn’t let me know him?”
Dr. Stewart was silent for several moments, a pensive look on her face. “Interesting that you say that. You said you confided in him about your father when you didn’t share that with anyone else. On some level you must have instinctively known you could trust him.”
“I think we’ve established my instincts—especially when it comes to men—aren’t exactly reliable,” Molly said.
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that.”
Molly shook her head. “He keeps so much hidden—did you miss the part about his ex-wife?”