Mollie wanted love. It had been written all over her face last night. And while he could probably take the cheap out that they’d only been a thing for a few weeks, that wouldn’t be the full answer.
The full answer was that he didn’t believe in love. At least not the lasting kind that Mollie was looking for. Not after his disastrous marriage. He’d loved Madison Carrington with everything he had, and it had turned his life upside down in the worst possible way. He couldn’t survive something like that again.
His silence stretched on too long, and the hope in her eyes extinguished altogether.
“Do you still love her?” Mollie asked in a small voice.
“God, no,” he said savagely. “Is that what you think this is? That I’m still hung up on Madison?”
Mollie pressed her hands to her head. “I don’t know! I don’t know what to think! You guys were together for so long, and she says these things—”
Jackson reached for her again. “Forget her. This isn’t about her. I don’t know when it happened, but I want you. I want to figure out what this is.”
She stared at him in misery. “And yet you’re moving to Texas. You’re leaving.”
He closed his eyes briefly. He didn’t know what to say. He wanted them both. Mollie and the coaching gig. His old life back and Mollie.
Jackson swallowed. “Can’t we just…we can figure this out. Maybe try long distance, or…Fuck, I don’t know what you want me to say! Football’s been my entire life, Molls. You know that better than anyone. And this thing with us, it’s new, and—”
“It’s not new to me!” she shouted.
Jackson took a step back, unnerved by the blazing passion in her eyes. “What?”
“You’ve been seeing me as more than a friend for a few weeks,” she said. “I’ve been seeing you that way for years.”
He felt joy mingle with disbelief and panic. “Mollie—”
“Don’t,” she said wearily. “Please don’t tell me it was just a crush. I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to convince myself that it would pass, but it didn’t, and it hasn’t, and—”
Her voice broke off on a hiccup before she drew a deep breath and forged on.
“I’ve always been in love with you, Jackson.” Her shoulders lifted in a little shrug. “I love you.”
Her words tore through him, leaving Jackson feeling like someone had ripped his heart out. He’d suspected that her feelings had run deep these past few weeks, as his had, but she was saying…the whole time. The whole damn time.
Holy hell.
He couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know what to say.
He knew what he should say: that he loved her back. It was the expected response.
But he couldn’t.
Couldn’t risk that he and Mollie would end up like him and Madison. That he would lose her and go through the darkness again. Because if that happened, there’d be no Mollie to pull him out of it, and he needed her…he couldn’t risk losing her.
“Shit, Mollie—”
The fire in her eyes slowly faded to flatness. She shook her head tiredly as she bent to pick up her purse. “It’s okay, Jackson. My heart’s a pro at handling unrequited love.”
She headed toward the door, and he moved to stop her. “Don’t. Don’t go like this.”
“You know,” she said, spinning around, her eyes snapping with anger, “I should actually be thanking you for your whole secret Texas job. I think it’s exactly what I needed.”
“What do you mean, it’s what you needed?” he asked, already dreading her answer.
“We are not the Schistosoma mansoni worms. We are not mates for life, or even a year.” She lifted her chin. “You’ve finally given me exactly what I need to get over you.”
Mollie opened the door and was gone.
And by the time he heard the door close with a final click, Jackson was hit with a searing, awful realization.
He didn’t want Mollie Carrington to get over him.
Chapter 29
“Riley, your collection of junk food is impressive.”
“I know, right?” the brunette said as she came back into the kitchen. “Some people collect stamps, I collect chips.”
Mollie accepted the pair of folded sweats Riley held out, even as she continued to stare at the cupboard stocked with chips, candy, cheese crackers, and chocolate-covered pretzels.
“Not quite the shelf life of stamps, though,” Mollie mused.
“Pretty damn close,” Riley’s husband muttered from the kitchen table, where he sat bent over a laptop. “That crap is so full of preservatives it could withstand a nuclear holocaust.”
Riley made a crude gesture at his back, and Mollie smiled in spite of her ravaged mood.
She still wasn’t quite sure how she’d ended up here. Upon walking out on Jackson a couple hours earlier, she’d found herself standing on Park Avenue, on the verge of a complete breakdown and with absolutely nowhere to go.
She’d nearly called Kim. But while Kim was her best friend in the whole world, her friend had a teensy problem with the phrase “I told you so,” and that so wasn’t what Mollie needed to hear right now.
So instead she’d called a newer friend—one certain to give it to her straight, even if straight hurt.