“Zeke...”
He opened his eyes to find Mollie standing in front of him. She had a smudge of dirt across one cheek and the neckline of her T-shirt was darkened with sweat, and he’d never seen a more beautiful sight. But then he noticed the tears shimmering in her blue-green eyes.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “All this time, you’ve been carrying so much guilt... If I had known—”
“I was afraid to tell you, Mollie. Afraid to admit I’d ignored the warning signs that could have meant saving Patrick’s life. That last visit, I was so sure something was wrong...”
Zeke longed to let go of the crushing weight he’d carried for so long, but he couldn’t. Not when so many questions still remained. “He wasn’t himself, Mollie. If he wasn’t suffering from depression, then what was it? He was so distant, so closed off. He was my best friend and—”
“He slept with Lilah!”
Mollie’s outburst came out of nowhere. A sudden blast echoing out for miles over the giant oaks and maples, the valleys and streams, to hit the mountains and ricochet back with enough force to send Zeke stumbling back a step.
“He...what?”
She lifted her trembling hands to her mouth as if she could recapture the words, but truth was written in her sorrow-filled gaze. “I’m so sorry, Zeke.”
“Patrick...and Lilah? No,” Zeke denied, even though he didn’t know why he bothered. He knew Mollie wouldn’t lie to him. Except...what the hell else could he call the past two years of silence? And why did that betrayal—beyond that of his fiancée, beyond that of his best friend since second grade—cut him to the core?
“It’s true, Zeke,” Mollie told him, her voice as flat and lifeless as the day she’d shown up at his door and told him Patrick was dead. “It was Patrick’s first weekend home. The night of the welcome home party my parents threw for him.”
Almost against his will, Zeke flashed back to that night. He’d been excited to see Patrick and Mollie. The three of them had always been so close, but since his engagement a few months before, he’d felt Mollie pulling away. He’d thought Patrick’s arrival would be just the thing to bring the three of them together again. But right before the party, he and Lilah had had a fight. Not that that was any surprise. The closer they came to the big day, the bigger their fights had gotten. And he remembered that Lilah hadn’t wanted to go to the party.
He’d chalked that argument, like all of the others, up to cold feet.
“If it helps at all,” Mollie continued in that same flat voice, “Patrick told me Lilah was the only woman he ever loved. She broke up with him when he went into the army instead of following her to Chapel Hill. He never got over her.”
“If it helps?” Zeke echoed. “How the hell could that possibly help?”
He’d been months away from walking down the aisle with a woman who had cheated on him with his best friend. God, what if Lilah hadn’t broken up with him? Would Mollie have still held her tongue and let him promise to love, honor and cherish a woman who’d betrayed her promise and his trust with Patrick standing by his side as his best man?
He took a stumbling step, nearly tripping as his heel hit a loose rock. Humiliation washed over him like a wave and he had to swallow the sickening bile rising up inside him. To think he’d been such a fool! His best friend had been in love with his fiancée and he’d—he’d missed it entirely. How could he have been so blind?
Mollie flinched. “I’m so sorry, Zeke. Everyone wanted to see Patrick as a hero who’d never do anything wrong, and I—maybe I wanted everyone to see him that way, too. But I’m not perfect. I’m just...me. And if I made a mistake in keeping silent, then it was only because I loved my brother.” She wiped at the tears streaking her freckled cheeks. “And because I love you.”
Standing in front of Zeke, Mollie felt stripped raw. She had no more secrets to tell, no more shields to hide behind. Her every emotion was exposed to a gaze that she’d never thought could be so cold.
“Zeke, please, try to understand—”
“Oh, I understand. I understand that you’ve lied to me for the past two years. All that time I spent wondering what I’d done, why Lilah left. All those times you told me I deserved better.”
“You did,” she whispered.
“I deserved the truth, Mollie! I deserved to hear it from you. But you—”
Mollie was saved from hearing how little Zeke thought of her as the EMTs loaded the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. “I’m riding to the hospital with Bobby,” Zeke announced without looking at her. “If you talk to Amy, tell her I’ll see her there.”
The double doors slammed behind him, cutting Mollie off. Arti let out a low, mournful howl, straining at the end of her leash, and everything inside Mollie ached to give in. To let the dog have her lead and for the two of them to run after the ambulance as the emergency vehicle pulled away. Instead, she held her ground and kept a tight grip on the long nylon tether. “Not this time, girl,” she whispered.
There would be no more tagging along. Zeke Harper had left her behind...this time for good.
Chapter Fifteen
“I still can’t believe it!” Amanda’s eyes were wide as she stared at Mollie over the open pint of double-chocolate-chunk ice cream in her hand. Her gaze shot to Claire, seated on the other side of Mollie’s kitchen table. “Lilah and Patrick?”
“That is not the part of the story I need you to focus on right now,” Mollie muttered around her own spoonful of cookies and cream.
She hadn’t planned to spill her guts over a thousand-calorie serving of ice cream, but Claire had been with Matt when Zeke called to let him know they’d found Bobby. Claire had called Amanda, and the two of them had shown up at Mollie’s house, ready to celebrate Mollie’s and Arti’s roles as heroes.
Mollie could barely swallow the cold and creamy dessert around the lump in her throat.
Some hero.
She wouldn’t have bothered opening the door to her friends, but they hadn’t stopped knocking and Arti hadn’t stopped barking and Mollie...
Mollie wiped her knuckles beneath her eye. She couldn’t stop crying.
Her friends had taken one look at her tear-streaked face and immediately rushed inside. Claire had made a pot of tea while Amanda plied her with tissues, an arm around Mollie’s shaking shoulders as she poured out the whole, horrible story. She’d managed a few swallows of tea, the warm liquid soothing against her aching throat, before Amanda declared something stronger was needed.
Seated at her kitchen table, the three of them dove into the ice cream Mollie fortunately kept in stock. The cold comfort was all she had to look forward to now that Zeke was gone.
“I know, but—wow!” Amanda slumped back in her chair. “I mean, I knew they hooked up back in high school, but I thought it was just a summer fling.”
“Not to Patrick...and I’m guessing not to Lilah.” She couldn’t help thinking that Lilah hadn’t gotten over that long-ago relationship any more than her brother had.
“I still can’t believe you kept quiet about this for so long,” Claire added.
Even though her friend’s voice was free of any accusation, Mollie still flinched. “I wanted to tell Zeke at first. I was devastated when they got engaged, so the thought of anything breaking them up was enough to have me doing backflips. And if Lilah had slept with any other guy, I probably would have told Zeke in a heartbeat. But because it was Patrick, I didn’t say anything. I was afraid of ruining the friendship the three of us had. Patrick was my closest connection to Zeke, and I couldn’t risk losing that. I couldn’t risk losing him. So, see?” Mollie pushed the pint of ice cream across the table, unable to stomach another bite. Remembering Zeke’s reaction was enough to make her nauseous. “Lilah was right. I was being selfish.”
“Okay, first, I can’t let the phrase ‘Lilah was right’ go unchallenged in an
y situation,” Amanda argued. “And besides that, you are the least selfish person I know. Look at all the work you do at the shelter. Look at what you did for Bobby.”
Claire nodded. “Matt’s told me how much having Charlie around has helped Bobby. He also said that you stopped by Veterans Affairs and offered to help match the other vets with shelter animals. Those are not the actions of a selfish person.”
“Claire’s right. And second, you had no idea how Zeke was feeling or that he blamed himself. If you’d known how he was suffering and still kept quiet, now that would have been selfish.”
As much as Mollie wanted to believe her friends, she still couldn’t let go of the blame. “I should have told him the truth.”
“Okay, so let’s play what-if.”
“What-if?”
Amanda nodded and scooted her chair closer to the table. “You don’t think that what happened on his last trip home—with Lilah, with Zeke—had anything to do with Patrick’s death, right?”
“Right. I don’t know what he was thinking—or wasn’t thinking—that led him to sleep with Lilah behind Zeke’s back, but he wasn’t depressed and he certainly wasn’t suicidal.” That wasn’t her brother. He would have fought to the end, and that likely was exactly what he had done. “He wanted to come back home. He was looking forward to life after the army. We talked about that all the time.”
“Okay, so what if you had told Zeke what happened that very night? What if Zeke confronted Patrick and Lilah? What if they had this big, nasty fight where they said all kinds of hateful things in the heat of the moment? And then, what if Patrick left, returned to his unit and went on that same mission? How do you think that would have made Zeke feel if his last moments with his friend were marked by all that hurt and anger and betrayal?”
“I never really thought of it like that.” Although wasn’t that why she hadn’t told Zeke about Patrick and Lilah afterward? Because she hadn’t wanted to tarnish Zeke’s memories of his friend? “I really was trying to protect him.”
“Of course you were.” Claire reached across the table to take one of Mollie’s hands in hers and Amanda followed suit. “That’s what you do when you love someone.”
Her words had Mollie’s eyes filling with tears once more. “I’m sorry, Amanda. You were so sweet to set me up with Josh, and he really is a great guy.”
Her friend smiled. “But he’s not Zeke, is he?”
“No,” Mollie agreed, her voice little more than a whisper.
If Mollie had ever had any doubt that her feelings for Zeke were real and lasting and not just a girlhood crush, she now had her answer. This was love.
Nothing else could hurt so much.
* * *
Seated in a back booth at the Grille, Zeke wanted nothing more than to be left alone. He’d even brought along one of his medical reference books, hoping that keeping his nose buried in the massive hardback would discourage anyone from stopping by his table.
In a town like Spring Forest, he should have known better. “Hey, Zeke, how’s it going?” Matt asked as he slid uninvited onto the vinyl bench across from Zeke.
“Busy,” he muttered, not lifting his gaze even though the letters in front of him might as well have been ants marching across the page from the way the characters blurred and swarmed. He rubbed at his tired eyes, but the words still didn’t make sense.
Nothing made sense anymore.
He wouldn’t have bothered going into town to eat, but he hadn’t been grocery shopping. And he couldn’t bear the thought of stepping into his dining room with all the memories of Mollie lingering there so strongly. Just passing by the doorway, he could still see the bright, colorful mix of decorations, the streamers and balloons drifting in and out of his peripheral vision, and Mollie...
The mix of emotions on her lovely face—the laughter and the tears. The husky tremble in her voice as she whispered his name. The sweet promise in her kiss and the feel of her in his arms...
He couldn’t eat in that room. Just like he could no longer sleep in his bed, so he’d been camping out on his living room couch most nights. He’d even crashed at his office the day before.
Ignoring the brusque answer and keep away vibes, Matt slapped a hand down on the table. “Man, me, too. The doctor wants Bobby to stay off that sprained ankle for another few days, so I’ve been putting in extra hours covering for him at the shop. So between work, hanging out with my sister and Ellie and the pups, and with the wedding just over six months away, it’s been crazy! But a few months ago, who would have thought, right?”
“Right,” Zeke echoed hollowly. He wanted to be happy for his friend, he really did, but at the moment the emotion was beyond him. Buried too deep along with what was left of his heart. “That’s great, Matt, but right now I’m—”
“Moping?” his friend suggested.
Zeke’s mouth dropped but by the time he’d readied a comeback, Matt was waving over a waitress. “I’ll take two double cheeseburgers with the works and a side of chili cheese fries.”
He shot a pointed look at Zeke who mumbled, “Not hungry.”
Heaving a sigh, Matt told the waitress, “My friend will have the same and we’ll take a couple of beers.”
Slamming the reference book shut, Zeke leaned across the table. “I am not moping.”
Matt leaned back against the burgundy vinyl bench and crossed his arms over his well-worn army T-shirt. “Okay, doc, what would you call it?”
“I’m—” Zeke’s words stopped short, cut off by the ragged ache in his throat. For a man trained to dig deep into emotions, he refused to diagnose his own. The wound left by the betrayal and lies Mollie had revealed was too raw. “Not moping,” he finally finished after a long moment grappling with all the pain and loss he refused to allow himself to feel.
Matt sighed again, but the waitress’s arrival with their beers offered Zeke a temporary reprieve. “You know, Claire and Amanda went to see Mollie the other day.”
Zeke’s hand clenched around the cold bottle. “So?”
“So...she told them what happened. With Patrick and...everything.”
“She told them?” he echoed. Lifting the bottle to his lips, he took a swallow of the beer but the cold brew did little to wash the bitter taste from his mouth. All those years of keeping him in the dark only to turn around and spill those same secrets to her friends.
“Yep.” As he eyed him over his own raised bottle, Matt murmured, “How does that make you feel?”
Zeke slammed his beer back down on the table hard enough for a bit of foam to bubble over the top. He shot his friend a death glare at the clichéd use of a psychologist’s frequently uttered opener. “Seriously?”
Matt chuckled. “Sorry...couldn’t help myself.” Sobering quickly, he leaned forward, his large, scarred hands wrapped around the beer. “Look, the way I see it, Mollie kept quiet because she wanted to protect you.”
By covering for the fact that his fiancée and his best friend had cheated on him? Zeke didn’t feel protected. He felt like the world’s biggest fool.
“That couldn’t have been easy for her, especially since...” Matt cut himself off to take a large swallow of beer.
“Especially since what?” When the other man hesitated, Zeke ground out, “Not really in the mood to have people keeping things from me right now, Matt.”
The former army corporal sighed. “Especially since she’s crazy about you.”
I love you, Zeke...
His hand tightened around the cold bottle. That was one revelation Zeke wished Mollie had kept to herself. No, that wasn’t true. He wished—hell, it didn’t matter what he wished. None of it would change the reality of what had happened.
He wasn’t about to tell Matt that he and Mollie had made love or that he’d been her first. But maybe that info had been passed along to Claire during Mollie’s gabfest, too, and was
something else his friend already knew. “Mollie’s been through a lot with losing Patrick.”
All too often he dealt with patients who’d mistaken a physical relationship for an emotional one. No matter how conflicted his feelings for Mollie were at the moment, he should have done a better job of protecting her. Even if it meant protecting her from himself. “She’s vulnerable right now. Loving me probably seemed...safe to her.”
Until he’d completely lost his temper—something he rarely did with anyone and never with Mollie. He focused his gaze on the label on the beer bottle rather than meeting his friend’s gaze across the table.
Matt snorted. “Yeah, right. Listen, if there’s one thing being with Claire has taught me, it’s that women are far stronger and far braver than any guy is when it comes to love. Mollie wasn’t feeling ‘vulnerable.’ If anything, she was fed up with waiting around for you to open your eyes to see the amazing woman she’d become and finally found the courage to tell you how she really feels. How she’s felt about you for years.”
“What are you talking about?” Zeke still couldn’t wrap his mind around the idea that his best friend was in love with him. To think she’d loved him all along? “No.” He shook his head hard enough to dislodge the impossible idea from taking root, unable to believe he’d missed something so huge once again. “No, I would have realized if she...”
“I’m pretty sure Mollie knows her own heart better than you. And news flash, doc. You’re not a mind reader. You’re human, just like the rest of us. You can’t know everything.”
Zeke leaned across the table and lowered his voice to a rough whisper. “My fiancée cheated on me with my best friend and my other best friend—” He cut off without saying the words he couldn’t bring himself to believe. “Those are two pretty big misses.” Practically throwing his shoulders against the back of the padded booth, he demanded, “How could I be so blind?”
“Ah,” Matt said wisely, as if the one word explained everything, before he tipped his bottle back.
Not Just The Girl Next Door (Furever Yours Book 3) Page 17