"Someone's working their arms, that's for sure."
Lia's face stayed even, which was annoying, because if you lost the ability to bait your little sister, were you even living your life right?
"I'm hungry," Claire yelled from the driveway. "Can we go in, please?"
"Oh, did your legs stop working when you got out of the car? No one is making you wait," Lia said over her shoulder. Finn tucked his hands in his pockets, but I saw his cheeks lift in a wide grin.
Isabel ignored the exchange between the twins. "He's got that Clark Kent thing going that I am not mad at."
"Don't think I won't make you suffer if he hears you say that."
I dropped my head in my hands. Probably good Noah didn't come. The front door of the house opened, and Emmett whooped loudly.
"Hey, Finn! I saved you a seat by me! We can almost beat the girls in numbers now!"
Isabel climbed out as Lia, Claire, and Finn made their way to the door. I took a second to watch them shuffle into the house. Chaos was so ingrained into the normal ebb and flow of my life in various ways. It was hard for me to understand it any other way.
Even the apartment I shared with Iz, small and cute and tucked in an affordably safe building downtown, was never quiet. We always had music playing, the TV on, or an audiobook going while I cooked. If we were home more, we probably would've had a dog or two that I could take on walks and snuggle on the couch with.
Maybe that was why thinking about Noah made me sad for him, causing a slow, unfurling ache in my chest that I wanted to rub at until it went away.
I didn't want him to be sitting alone in the dark, and it wasn't because I wanted to heal any emotional wounds.
Liar, a voice in the back of my head whispered.
I didn't want that man sitting alone in the dark because I liked him, and there was no earthly reason I should've. He was snappish and grumpy. His moods shifted faster than the weather, and for some reason, he refused to acknowledge that there was another side to him than The Machine.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
This was my curse, apparently. Something that made me good at my job when my own feelings weren't on the line, but horribly inconvenient when they were. Without trying all that hard, I had a sixth sense that jangled like a bell when it came to the people I was forming relationships with.
Noah needed warmth and laughter. He needed someplace where he didn't need to be perfect all the time. Where he could just be Noah.
My phone, still connected to the Bluetooth, rang loudly through my car's speaker, and I took a deep breath when I saw Beatrice's name flash across the screen.
"This is Molly," I said.
"Molly, it's Beatrice." Wasn't it fun when we all started our calls like we didn't have caller ID? "Sorry I'm calling at dinnertime. Do you have a minute?"
"Sure, go ahead." Paige opened the door and held up her hands questioningly. I held up my finger, then pulled my hand to my ear to signal a phone call. She nodded and went back into the house.
"I just got off the phone with Rick. He's on his way back from Tampa."
My fingers tightened in my lap. "Yeah, he told me he plans on being there for filming tomorrow. We've got everything set up for a defense only practice and some stuff in the weight room."
She hummed. "Yes, he told me that as well."
Something about her voice pricked uncomfortably. "Did something happen, Beatrice?"
"He's thrilled, you know, with how it's going with Noah."
"That's ... good. Right?"
She kept talking as if I hadn't said anything. "Marty sent him footage from Noah's apartment last night, raving about your ability to draw him out. Get him to lower his guard."
I rubbed my lips together and fought the irrational impulse to flee the car. "We were just talking about football. I didn't do anything special."
"Molly, I wish you’d been honest with me about knowing him."
My whole body went ice cold in an instant. "Beatrice, I ..."
"Both Rick and Marty were thrilled that you had previous history with Noah." She paused meaningfully. "Not something I appreciated hearing from them as opposed to my own employee."
"I'm so sorry, Beatrice," I said in a rush. "I should have told you. I didn't know Noah was even coming to Washington when you offered me the promotion."
Because she couldn't see me, I leaned forward and dropped my head in my hands again.
"Is this going to be a problem?" she asked. "Your history with Griffin."
"No," I answered instantly.
The question was jarring to just about every part of my brain, like a cloth that was ripping off center away from the main seam. Whatever I was feeling toward Noah, I knew without a doubt it wouldn't be reciprocated. He had one relationship in his life, and that was football, and I'd do well to remember that.
What mattered was doing my job.
What mattered was keeping my eye trained on that, no matter what instincts he was pulling out from inside me.
"I know I'm being tough on you, Molly." Her tone had softened, which had my shoulders relaxing slightly and the nauseous tumbling of my stomach settling down just a little. "I'm only hard on the employees who I think have potential."
That had me sitting up. "Th-thank you, Beatrice. I kind of thought you gave me the promotion as a ... I don't know ... a test you expected me to fail."
"I'm not as awful as you think," she said wryly. "And if that were true, it's not a very good use of my budget, is it?"
"Probably not."
Would this be a problem? No matter how quickly I’d told her it wouldn’t be one, I still had to be honest with myself. It was Noah. And if I closed my eyes, I saw him as he'd stared at me the night before. That look that had singed me straight through. But that look could've meant a thousand different things. Maybe he was pissed that I noticed something he'd done poorly before he fixed it. Maybe he was impressed that I knew what the hell I was talking about.
"You don't have to worry about a thing," I told Beatrice firmly.
"No?"
Isabel was right. Noah's issues weren't my responsibility. I could do my job and still maintain a professional level of distance. Because if I couldn't, then what right did I have to feel frustration at Beatrice's reservations?
"No," I repeated. "I hear you loud and clear."
"Good." She sighed. "Now, I have one more call to make, and if I remember correctly, you have a family dinner to get to."
My eyebrows popped in surprise that she remembered. "I do."
"Enjoy it. Thanks, Molly."
"Thank you," I told her. I meant it too. Her call was a timely reminder that I needed. Noah wasn't mine to fix, no matter how he'd looked at me, and I'd do well to remember that.
Chapter Thirteen
Noah
Normally, I didn't think of myself as a slow thinker. Just the opposite, in fact. A defensive player should have the ability to see possible scenarios play out before they happen, in the twitch of a finger, the shift of body position, or the pivot of a foot. But when it came to Molly Ward, I was a little slow on the uptake.
It took me two days of actively avoiding her while we filmed to make the connection that I was not, in fact, the ignorer. I was the ignored. And because it was me, I had to mentally break down, in detail, how the hell that had happened and how I missed it.