Letters to Molly (Maysen Jar, #2)(72)

“Other guy?”

My entire body jerked. Pain seared down my spine at the reminder.

“That’s just it, Finn.” She dropped her chin. “We can’t forget. It’s not possible. The good turned bad. If we forget that, it will only happen again. And I don’t have it in me to go through it again. It almost broke me once. I can’t risk it. So please, go home.”

My arm dropped away from her elbow.

She hurried out of the room, leaving me alone as her words sank in.

She didn’t want to forget. Okay, then what did she want? That kiss in the yard said she still wanted me, at least.

I turned to follow her because I wasn’t letting this go. I wasn’t leaving either. But as I took a step away from the bathroom, my eyes caught on an envelope on her nightstand. I didn’t need to see the handwriting to know what it was. Another letter had come and she’d hidden it from me.

I grabbed it then relaxed when I found it unopened.

She’d kept her word.

I took it to the kitchen where Molly was at the sink, scrubbing furiously with a bleach cleaner.

“Were you going to open this?”

Her hands stilled. “No. Maybe.”

“I asked you not to.”

She tossed the sponge into the sink and hung her head. Then she rinsed her hands and dried them before spinning to meet my gaze. “I wasn’t going to. It came today and I told myself I wasn’t going to read it. But then . . .”

“Then what?”

She crossed the distance between us, lifting the letter out of my grip. “I have to know.”

“Nothing good will be in that envelope. Rip it up. Please.”

“And forget?” She stared at the envelope for a few long moments.

I held my breath, hoping the next sound I’d hear was that of crumpled paper, because if she opened that letter, we wouldn’t have a future. “Please, Molly.”

She looked up at me with tears swimming in her eyes. “I have to.”





- LETTER -





How could you?





You are my wife.

You are MY wife.

You are my WIFE.





I hate you for this. I hate you for letting another man inside you. I hate you for throwing away everything we ever had. You broke my fucking heart.





We’re done.





Sixteen





Molly





It didn’t take long to read the letter. The first time through, a stab of pain pierced my heart so deeply I nearly collapsed. But my knees held strong. They locked tight, enough for me to read it again.

Then again.

By the fourth time, the pain faded away.

I was numb.

Maybe Finn had been right. Maybe I should have ripped this one to shreds. But he’d told me at the beginning these letters were his way of expressing his feelings. They were raw and real.

And since he’d hidden the raw and real from me, kept it back, these letters were the only way to see into his soul.

The gushing wound was there, laid out with blue ink on white paper. It was devastating. I’d destroyed him.

I’d destroyed us both.

There’d be no tears for this letter. I didn’t get to cry. We’d had problems in our marriage, but the person who’d torn it apart was me. I deserved every single lick of his pain. I deserved to read this letter every day.

What I didn’t deserve was Finn.

“Okay,” I whispered, folding the letter back up and sliding it into the envelope with shaking hands.

“Okay?”

I nodded and handed Finn back the letter. “Okay.”

He took it, staring at me like he was waiting for an explosion. There wasn’t one. I went to the sink and resumed my cleaning.

“That’s it?” he asked.

“That’s it.”

Finn stalked close and slammed the letter on the counter. The paper didn’t make much noise. His palm did. “That’s it? You make a big show of opening this letter, and that’s it? Why?”

“I had to.”

“Why?”

“Because.” I whirled on him. “You don’t trust me enough to tell me how you feel. You kept things from me for years, choosing to write things in letters you never sent. You escaped our problems by running to work. You kept me in the dark. After all this time, after everything we’ve been through, I have a right to know how you really felt.”

“I kept them from you because it was for your own good.” He swiped the letter up, shaking it in his fist, the paper crackling. “Did you really want me to leave this lying around?”

“At least it would have made us talk.”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

I clenched my jaw. “You can’t forget it happened.”

“I can sure as fuck try.”

“And that’s why we’re never going to work,” I shot back. “I had sex with another man.”

He grimaced, the pain on his face rolling over his entire body. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what? Don’t say it out loud? It happened. I made the biggest mistake of my life and this letter is the first time you’ve actually admitted out loud that I hurt you.”