“So, I go see a therapist and magically get better,” I snorted.
“No, you go see a therapist and you realize that you can’t control everything. Then you go home and you fuck Molly like you really want to.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Molly
Saturday
I decided that the best way to ensure that Tony could go with me to see my parents was to go directly to his boss. It was a little sneaky and underhanded, but I had a feeling that Tony was the one that was making excuses not to go. We still had a three hour drive ahead of us, so I wanted to get Tony out of work as soon as possible. But I wasn’t really worried about it. I was a people person, and I was pretty sure that Tony’s boss would be thrilled to have him meet his future in-laws.
“Molly,” Sebastian said with a grin as he met me at the door. “Is today the day?”
“You remembered.”
“Of course, I did. It’s not every day that one of our guys gets to go off and meet the in-laws. Well, his girlfriend’s parents,” he grinned.
“I thought you would understand.”
“Come on in,” he said, jerking his head toward the elevators. “Let’s go get him. We don’t want you to be late.”
I smiled and followed him to the elevator that still fascinated me with all its gadgets. It really was a sight to see, and I wondered if someday I would get my own pass into the building. That would be so cool.
“Tony, look who’s here,” Sebastian said, peeking his head into the conference room. The laugh from Tony’s face fell and he stood, walking over to me. He looked almost angry.
“What are you doing here, Molly?”
I laughed slightly. “Silly, we’re supposed to leave soon for my parents’ house.”
His eyes widened and he shook his head ever so slightly. “We broke up, Molly. I told you I didn’t want to see you anymore.”
I nodded in understanding. “I know, but remember that I told you that it’s not a good time?” The man was trying hard to push me away, but I saw Storm wink behind him. So, I steeled my spine and prepared for the battle. “Anyway, I totally get it, but we can’t disappoint Momma and Daddy, so grab your stuff and let’s go.”
“No.” He turned to Sebastian, obviously looking for help. “We have that…that job.”
“Cancelled,” Sebastian answered, leaning back on his heels, his hands shoved in his pockets. He was obviously having fun with this.
“And that training that we have tomorrow.”
Sebastian waved him off. “We’ll do it another time. Besides, now that Maggie had the kids, I’m really only here to make sure that everything is in order for the next week. I think we’ll just take some time off unless there’s a job.”
“Maggie had the babies?” I gasped in excitement.
“Yeah. Tony here actually helped deliver them.” Some kind of weirdness settled over everyone for a moment, but then Sebastian smiled. “Anyway, two girls and a boy.”
“Wow! What are their names?”
“Lily is the first. Then Carter and Julia was last. She’s such a peanut.”
“Do they get to come home soon?”
“No, they’ll have to be in the hospital for a week or two, but they’re doing great and so is Maggie.”
“That’s so cool. I’ve never known anyone that had triplets.”
“Yeah, we didn’t plan it. Anyway, you guys should hit the road if you’re going to get down there in time for dinner.”
Tony’s jaw locked down, ready for battle, but so was I. I glanced at Storm and nodded imperceptibly. I had this. I was ready for anything.
“Look, I didn’t want to do this, but Molly, you’re terrible in bed. We just don’t mesh sexually. I’m sorry, but there’s no chemistry there.”
Okay, I was not prepared for that. My face flamed, but I held my ground. “Really? Then why did you come so hard down my throat the last time we were together?”
He looked stunned, just stood there completely speechless. Cap barked out a laugh and clapped Tony on the shoulder. “Go pack your shit. Don’t keep your girl waiting.”
Tony shot him a glare, but Cap tightened his grip on Tony’s shoulder and returned the glare. I smiled triumphantly and let out a deep breath when Tony turned and stomped away.
“He just needs a firm hand sometimes.”
“Don’t I know it,” I laughed, thinking of how I had to wrangle him in the bedroom.
Storm walked up to me and pulled me to the side. “That was brilliant.”
“Thank you,” I said with a grin.
But then his face turned serious and it had me a little worried. “Look, he’s gonna do his best to push you away while you’re gone. Remember, he needs you, whether he knows it or not. Just don’t let anything he says hurt you. He’s just lashing out right now because he doesn’t know what else to do.”
I nodded. “Don’t worry. I’ve been laughed at, cursed at, and a million other things my whole life. I’ve got this.”
Something almost sad or guilty passed his face. He gave a tight smile and walked away while I waited for Tony to return for our trip.
✯✯✯✯✯
Tony was pissed. Like, really, really pissed. He insisted that we take the company SUV, since there was no way he was driving three hours in my ‘piece of shit car’, as he put it. He had been refusing to speak to me the entire hour we had already been driving, but that didn’t stop me from trying to get him to open up.
“So, don’t you think you should ask me a few questions before we get to my parents’ house?”
“Why would I do that?” he bit out. “It’s not like I actually had a choice in coming along.”
I snorted out a laugh. “Of course you did, silly.”
“No, I didn’t. When Cap glares at me and tells me with his eyes that I have to go along with this, that isn’t exactly a suggestion. And since I don’t want to go back to working at Taco Bell, I figured that I should do as he asks.”
“Why were you working at Taco Bell?” I asked curiously.
He sighed and drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. It was torture drawing anything out of him, but I figured if I could even get a scrap of information out of him, I should take it as a win.
“I was medically discharged from the military. I was in the Marines and I got too close to a concussion grenade.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a grenade that’s not designed to kill. It’s used to cause a distraction. So, if it was a flash bang, I would have been temporarily blinded, but with a concussion grenade-”
“It made you deaf,” I finished.
He nodded. “Yeah, well, it’s supposed to be temporary, but…You know, when you’re in combat, you see something thrown that looks like a grenade, and you assume it’s a grenade. You don’t have time to stop and think about what it could be. I shoved my teammate aside and dove for it, fully thinking that I would die.”
“Wait, you dove on it, knowing that it would kill you?” I asked incredulously. “Why? Why would you do that?”
He gave a one shoulder shrug. “It’s not really something I thought about. When you sign up for the military, you’re basically handing your life over. You’re putting your life in the hands of everyone that you work with, and in return, vowing to protect those that have your back. Besides, the guy next to me, he had a wife and kids. I wasn’t married. I only have my brothers and my parents. I guess it was just always in my head that if a sacrifice had to be made, it would be by me.”
“Tony,” I said quietly, not really sure how to explain this to him. How could he not see that his life was just as important? It didn’t matter that he didn’t have kids or a wife. Someone was out there and they would miss him if he was gone.
“Anyway, it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t a grenade. But I was pulling it into my body when it went off and it exploded right by my ear. And that was that. The guys had my back and nobody died that day, but I was discharged from the Marines, and I was fuckin
g pissed. I had planned to go the full twenty, so I was really fucking angry when I got out.”
“But you work with Reed Security.”
“Yeah, because Sebastian doesn’t give a shit about me using a hearing aid, but you can’t serve with a hearing aid. So, I got out and I had literally nothing. I didn’t have a truck or an apartment. All I had was a little money I had saved, but that wasn’t going to last forever. So, I went looking for a job. Taco Bell was the first place that hired me, and let me tell you, that was not the place to work right after getting out.”
“Why?”
“All those people working behind me with knives and loud noises? I was jumpy as hell. I was lucky I lasted as long as I did. Not to mention how fucking rude everyone was. I swear to God, I got out of the military and entered a world where everyone was an asshole to anyone standing within three feet of them.”
Well, that all made sense now, but there was still one question that was bugging me. “So, why did you tell Sebastian that you wet the bed?”
He snorted and the first smile of this trip appeared on his face. “I just wanted to fuck with him, and hell, you should have seen his face. He was trying his best not to look judgmental, but he was panicking. I could tell he was trying to figure out how to let me down easy.”
“You know, that’s kind of mean.”
“Maybe, but I had to have fun where I could.”
“So, there is a fun side to you,” I smirked.
He smiled ever so slightly. “Yeah, I used to be fun.” He got quiet and I could tell he was uncomfortable, so I wasn’t at all surprised when he shifted the conversation to me. “So, what’s with that freaky cat of yours?”
“Kitty? There’s nothing freaky about her.”
“Are you kidding? That thing could be a security dog.”
“She’s not that big.”
“She’s huge. I can guarantee that there’s no cat on earth as big as she is. I’m not even sure she could qualify as a cat.”
“Shut up,” I laughed. “She’s adorable.”
“You couldn’t even confuse her for a wildcat because she’s too fat.”
“Hey, she’s been in my family for years. I won’t let you talk about her like that.”
“What did you feed her growing up?” he asked, laughing at me like I was some kind of unhinged zookeeper.
“She came to me like that.”
“Really?”
“Half ear and all,” I swore. “A man dropped her off at our house and said that she needed a good home. Of course, my mom wasn’t too thrilled about having a cat. We already had one indoor cat, but I fell in love with her, so my parents gave in. That lasted all of one night. She snuck into my bed that first night and started chewing on me. I thought that my other cat, Trouble, had come to snuggle with me. I should have known better. Trouble never snuggled with anyone.”
“Wait, she was chewing on you?”
“Yeah, like, really gnawing on me, and it scared the crap out of me. So, I locked her out of my bedroom, and the next day, she became an outdoor cat. But then we got a hail storm and it broke one of the windows in the basement. Kitty kept sneaking into the house and coming upstairs. We couldn’t keep her out until we got a new window and we couldn’t shut the basement door because Trouble’s litter box was down there.”
“So, how did she go from being an outdoor cat to living with you?”
“Well, Kitty disappeared about six months after she came to live with us. We had some outdoor cats and she didn’t get along with them. My dad eventually chased her off with a hammer when he saw her attacking one of the other cats.”
“And this is the cat you have living with you,” he muttered.
“Anyway, she ran off, but then five years later, I walked down to my basement to get something and I heard M-ow.”
“No shit,” he said, his eyes wide.
“I’m totally serious. I thought I was hearing phantom voices or something. Turns out, Kitty was back and had snuck into the basement somehow. It was winter and my dad had all these heating pads out for growing seedlings, and she was sleeping on it. We still have no idea how she got inside. But apparently she had been living in our basement for a while.”
“So you kept her?”
“Well, I figured that if she wanted to be with us that badly, it was for a reason. So, when I moved out here, I brought her with me.”
He gave me a side eye, shaking his head at me. “You know, you’re kind of crazy.”
“Yeah, but you already knew that,” I grinned.
“So, what do I need to know about your parents?”
“Hmm,” I thought about it. “Well, Momma can be a little much to take when she gets excited. It’s best to just go along with the flow and keep her happy. And Daddy, he’s probably your best ally. He’s learned over the years to ride the wave until it dies down.”
“That’s not really helpful at all.”
“Ooh!” I exclaimed, having almost forgotten about the most important topic of the visit. “I should probably warn you that Momma is kind of wondering about how many kids we plan on having.”
“Kind of?”
“Okay, she flat out asked, so we should probably have an answer prepared for her.”
His eyes bulged and he choked out a laugh. “Kids? Molly, I just tried to break up with you an hour ago after breaking up with you this morning.”
“I know, but that doesn’t mean the question won’t happen.”
“We say nothing. It’s not happening.”
“Well, obviously we have to talk about this some more, because I want kids.”
“Good! That’s great for you, but it won’t be with me. I broke up with you,” he said slowly. “As in, no longer together. I’m only going on this trip because my boss made me.”
“Okay, I’m really confused here. The way you’re acting is nothing like you’ve been acting before. So what changed?”
“Molly, it’s been less than a week, and half that time, I was trying to figure out who the fuck you were.”
“Well, that’s just silly. You could have just asked. That’s what dating is all about.”
“Molly, even if we met and hit it off, what were you expecting? Did you really think that we were just meant to be together and this was only the beginning?”
Was he insane? “Yes,” I answered matter-of-factly.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Tony
It was official. Molly had jumped off the deep end and she was taking me down with her. Why didn’t I just stand up to Cap? I could have told him there was no fucking way I was going with Molly, but instead, I stood there and refused to say anything, because I knew that if I didn’t do this, he would put me through hell. So, I figured, it couldn’t be that bad, right?
“Oh, shoot. I think that was the tree.”
“The what?”
She spun around in her seat and stared out the back window, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration. “Shoot.” She spun back around and searched out the front window. “Was it that tree or the bigger one?”
“What tree? What are you talking about?”
“Oh, I always miss the turnoff,” she said, waving me off as if this wasn’t a big deal.
“How do you always miss the turnoff? Don’t you go home a couple times a year to see your parents?”
“What?” she asked distractedly. “Oh, I go home once a month.”
“Then how the fuck do you not the know the way?”
“I do know the way, but it’s a long enough stretch of time that the details get fuzzy. And I suck at directions, by the way, and there are so many roads and trees. And I can never remember if it’s the tall tree with a lot of leaves or the short tree that doesn’t have any leaves.” Her lips pursed and she quirked her nose to the side in this really cute way that I tried really hard not to look at. “Or did they get rid of that tree?” she asked, tapping her chin with her finger.
I pulled off to the side of the road and put the truck in park. “
Molly, what street do your parents live on?”
“Rte. 13 in the country. Right outside of Lions Park.”
“Okay, so I’ll pull up maps and figure it out.”
“You could, but you probably won’t get cell service out here. Too many trees,” she clarified.
I looked at my phone, and sure enough, we were in a dead zone. I draped my arm over the steering wheel and shifted in my seat so that I could look at her. “If there are too many trees out here for cell service, then why the hell are you using trees as land markers to get home?”
“Well, there are certain trees that just stand out more. I’m better with landmarks than I am with street names.”
“That’s not likely,” I said under my breath.
“And I know that there’s this one tree that reminds me of a wizard, the way it looks when it sways in the breeze, but there’s no breeze today, which makes this a little more difficult.”
“Don’t you know what it looks like when it’s not swaying in the breeze? Has it always been windy when you’ve driven home?”
She grinned at me. “Those are the days I take the secondary route home.”
“Okay,” I said patiently. “Let’s take the secondary route home.”
“Sure, we can do that. Alright.” She looked around, out all the windows and then back once more. “So, if we keep driving for the next five to twenty miles, we should come across an old barn. It has a huge hole in the top of it. That’s our turn.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I said with a nod. I put the truck in park and checked my mirrors.
“Unless they’ve patched it. I think they had started on it last year.”
I shoved the truck back into park and turned back to face her. “And if they have patched it, were there any other markers that you would recognize?”
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