Because Molly was watching Ben intently, she saw a haunted look cross his handsome face. It cemented the realisation that he’d not been trying to fob her off when he’d told her talking about what had happened with Helena was painful.
She was a heartbeat away from telling him to leave it for another day, when he started to talk.
‘I met Helena at university. I was like a moth to her bright, burning flame. She was beautiful, sure, but there was something else that drew me to her.’ He paused, gave her a small, tight smile. ‘In many ways she was similar to you. Lively, outgoing, gregarious. But where you’re strong, she was more fragile.’
‘Me, strong?’ Molly gaped at him. ‘If I was, I wouldn’t have crumpled so heavily after you left me.’
‘Don’t. You picked yourself back up again. Opened your heart to Duncan.’ His mouth tightened. ‘A weaker person would have locked it up, preferring not to risk it again.’
How did he see things in her that she didn’t? ‘Thank you.’
‘I’m only telling you the truth. But please, can we not talk about you and Duncan.’
His voice was strained, his body tense. Feeling the need to connect to him, she reached to squeeze his hand. ‘You were telling me about Helena.’
He glanced down at their clasped hands and then drew them to rest on his thigh. ‘I fell for her hook, line and sinker, so much so that when she said she wanted to get married, I went along with it. Even though I knew we were too young.’
‘You were married?’ Molly faltered. ‘You talked about your ex … I assumed you meant ex-girlfriend.’
‘No, ex-wife. But we’re jumping ahead.’ He drew in a breath, hand pressing down on hers against his thigh. ‘I should have realised then, the way she seemed almost desperate to marry me, that there was something not quite right, but I thought it was just her way of demonstrating how much she loved me.’ His fingers twitched. ‘To be honest, I wasn’t a fan of marriage. I’d seen how miserable it had made my parents, but Helena wanted it, and I was young and besotted. It was only after we married, that I realised there was a darker side to her. One she didn’t want anyone to see, so she hid it by self-medicating. Unbeknown to me, while we were dating she’d moved from trying to mask her depression with alcohol and soft drugs, to regularly using cocaine. Her family was rich so getting hold of the money to finance her habit wasn’t an issue. And we still had separate accounts after we married so I only started to suspect what was happening when her mood swings became more obvious. Of course I confronted her, told her cocaine wasn’t the answer, that it was making her depression worse, not better, but she denied she was depressed.’ He paused, raised his fingers to mime quotation marks. ‘“How can I be depressed now I have you to look after me?”’ He exhaled in one, long, sigh. ‘She promised to give up the cocaine but of course she didn’t, and the more I tried to get her to seek help, the more aggressive she became.’ His fingers tightened around her hand. ‘Fuck, Molly, I was twenty-four and clueless. She needed someone who could talk to her properly, be patient with her. Not a guy who struggled voicing his own feelings.’
His voice was rough with emotion, his face tight with pain, and Molly’s heart swelled, as if it had decided to go against her instructions and make room for him. ‘I’m sure you did everything you could.’
‘Did I?’ In one sharp movement he let go of her hand and leapt to his feet. He started to pace restlessly. ‘I tried contacting her parents, but she found out I’d gone behind her back and was livid. Said it was nobody’s business but hers what she did with her life. And her parents were worse than useless anyway. As far as they were concerned, she was now my responsibility.’ He drew a hand down his face and looked out across the lawn. ‘I was lost. I didn’t know what to do, how to help. Everyone kept saying it had to come from her, that I could only support her.’ Finally his gaze found hers, his eyes a turbulent mix of brown and green. ‘Have you any idea how hard it is to watch someone you love suffer and to feel utterly clueless about how to help?’
Unable to watch his agony, Molly rose to her feet and threw her arms around his waist. ‘I’m so sorry, Ben. So sorry.’
His arms tightened around her and she lay her head against his chest, hearing the heavy thump of his heart. But a moment later he untangled himself from her arms and stepped away. ‘Save your sympathy; I don’t deserve it,’ he muttered harshly, turning away from her to stare into the distance. Seeing God knows what.
Sensing he wanted to finish without any interruption, she reluctantly went to sit back on the bench.
‘We were together for six years, married for three of them, but in the end I became so frustrated, I divorced her,’ he continued, his voice detached, like it was coming from someone else. ‘Nice of me, huh? She’s at rock bottom and I washed my hands of her, like her parents did.’ He gave a grunt of disgust. ‘Part of me hoped it would jolt her into doing something, but another really selfish part of me didn’t want the drama anymore: the fleeting ups followed by the hellish and all too frequent downs. I was twenty-six. I had my master’s degree; I’d found a job. I didn’t want to be married to an addict who only wanted me as an emotional crutch. I wanted to get on with my life. And I did, for a few months.’
His shoulders rose and fell as he sucked in a breath, and when he started talking again, his voice began to crack. ‘I’ll never know if she intended to kill herself, or if the overdose was accidental. I only know I wasn’t able to save her.’ He swallowed. ‘I wasn’t able to get her to seek help, or go into rehab. I couldn’t even get to her in time when she phoned to tell me she didn’t feel right. Her heart was racing; she felt too hot. I … I can still hear the panic in her voice. Like my mind is determined to remind me how much I failed her.’ He blinked, turning his face away from her, but not before she’d noticed a telltale glistening of his eyes.
Her heart ached for him. ‘You tried to help, but she didn’t want to listen. You didn’t fail her.’
He let out a low, humourless laugh. ‘People have tried to tell me that: friends, the therapist I saw for a while. And there are days when I almost believe it.’
Her stomach pitched as she realised what she’d been doing. ‘But then there are days when someone accuses you of being uncommunicative, and the doubts come flooding back.’
He crouched in front of her, hazel eyes raking hers. ‘Do you understand now why I broke it off with you?’
‘“It’s not you, it’s me”,’ she parroted, the words etched on her brain. ‘I hated it, such a frigging cliché.’ Yet slowly what he’d been saying these last few weeks began to sink in. ‘It really wasn’t about me, was it?’
‘It really wasn’t.’ He bent his head, seeming to gather himself. ‘I should have handled our split better, given you a proper explanation, but I was such a fucking mess back then. I shouldn’t even have started anything with you; it had only been a few months since Helena died.’ He gave Molly a sad smile. ‘You were impossible to ignore though, and I was in desperate need of some of the happiness you were offering. But then I found those tickets, and I realised you were making plans for the future. It scared the shit out of me. How could I dive into another relationship when I’d failed the last one so catastrophically?’
His expression was so tortured, her eyes burnt with tears. ‘Oh Ben.’ Leaning forward, she rested her forehead against his. ‘Thank you for telling me.’
‘I was careless with you,’ he said quietly. ‘And I’ll never forgive myself for it.’
‘Well, I forgive you.’
His body stilled, and then his shoulders dropped and he heaved out a sigh before slipping back onto the bench next to her. For several minutes they sat in silence, him with his arm slotted around her. Her leaning into him, waiting for the tension to leave his body. When it didn’t, she glanced up and found him staring ahead, his expression like he was still wrestling with something important.
‘Ben?’
‘I’m terrified of cocking things up again, of failing you, but I’m more scared of not trying. Of watching you slip through my fingers a second time.’ He swallowed. ‘But on the coach you told me you’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time thinking about marriage. Is it a deal breaker for you?’
She jolted, like he’d tasered her. ‘I … I don’t know. Maybe, yes. Why?’
He looked wretched. ‘Because I really don’t think I can do that again.’
‘Oh.’ Her heart floundered, the dream she’d nursed since she’d made the decision to choose Ben, now a pile of ashes at her feet. Yet when she looked into his red-rimmed eyes, she didn’t see a man who didn’t want to marry her. She saw a man who seemed to care deeply for her. ‘I guess that gives me a lot to think about.’
* * *
That evening, the house was treated to outside caterers and a band. Ben sat with his arm across the back of Molly’s chair, listening to her tell their table about the time they first met, wishing he knew what was going round in her head.
Were they over? Was she going to ask Rachel to swop her to Duncan now? And let’s face it, his sister, the production team, they all wanted a marriage at the end of the show. If he wasn’t going to supply it, why wouldn’t they swop her to someone who might?
‘So, you have a history of chucking your drink over Ben,’ James summarised as Molly finished recounting their first meeting. ‘It’s a pretty corny way to pick a guy up but it certainly seems to work where he’s concerned.’
‘She didn’t spill her drink over me the first time,’ Ben corrected. ‘The action of her knocking into me, caused me to spill mine.’ He waited for her eyes to meet his. ‘And she didn’t pick me up. I went after her.’
Her brow wrinkled with a frown. ‘You did? I mean, I started talking to you—’
‘And I asked if you wanted a drink. Then I moved us from the bar to a quiet table. I sat close so I could stare into your eyes because I’d never seen eyes that green before. I touched you any opportunity I got; your fingers when I handed you another drink, a brush of my thigh against yours. When you didn’t flinch, didn’t move away, I shifted closer.’
Her breath hitched. ‘I remember,’ she whispered, her mouth so close he only had to move a few inches and he’d be kissing her. Was everyone else still listening or had the conversation moved on? He had no clue. All he could hear was her choppy breathing. ‘But I was the one who suggested you bought me a drink,’ she said softly. ‘And who deliberately moved my stool so I could get closer to you.’
Her hand settled on his thigh and he had to stifle a groan. Was that a reflex, because he knew Molly was a touchy person, or was it deliberate?
‘Oh my God, go and get a room,’ Chloe exclaimed. ‘There’s like fireworks going off between the pair of you and it’s making my eyes hurt.’
When he looked up he realised only Chloe and Liam remained at the table. The others had disappeared onto the dance floor.
Liam winked at Chloe. ‘Come on, let’s leave these two lovebirds alone and join the others.’
The moment they’d gone, Ben turned to Molly. The feel of her hand, the warmth from it, sent arousal scorching through him, making his trousers alarmingly tight. He swallowed to ease his throat, but no words came out.
‘Don’t give me time to think.’ Her hand crept towards the place he really, really needed to feel it. ‘Take me to your room. My room.’ He held his breath, hissing it out again when her hand cupped him. ‘Any room with a bed in it.’
He went from hard, to fully erect, a throbbing beast beneath his zip. ‘Is that wise?’
She let out a strangled laugh. ‘Definitely not.’
But her hand slid over him, as if she was reminding herself how he felt. ‘Molly, what’s happening here?’
‘I don’t know. But you opened up, told me the truth, so the oxytocin trust thing isn’t a problem anymore. As I see it, I know exactly where I stand now, so while I’m thinking about what to do about that, there’s nothing to stop us from—’
Ben lurched to his feet.
But he sat back down with a thump as he spotted Natalie, Rachel and the cameras heading purposefully in their direction.
‘Shit.’ Bad enough being filmed, but being filmed nursing a raging hard-on? And with your sister looking on? As subtly as he could, he tried to rearrange himself under the table. When he flicked Molly a look, he found her biting her bottom lip.
‘If it’s any consolation,’ she whispered huskily. ‘My knickers are—’
‘Not helping,’ he rasped, which made her giggle.
‘Having a good evening?’ Natalie’s eyes swept round their empty table until they rested on him and Molly. ‘It certainly looked like you were from across the room.’
‘Yes, thanks.’ Ben gave her a tight-lipped smile, which he hoped she’d read correctly as go away. He slid his sister a quick glance, too, but she responded with a shake of her head which he interpreted as no frigging way are you getting out of this twice in two days.
‘We haven’t caught up with you this evening yet.’ Ignoring his please, bugger off vibes, Natalie settled herself on a vacant chair and turned her attention to Molly. ‘Are things as cosy between you and Ben as they look?’
‘I’m not sure you’d describe it as cosy. We have a lot to work through, but he’s started to open up, which I’m grateful for.’ She slid him a smile. ‘Plus he’s great company, makes me laugh and I think we can all agree he’s super-hot. It’s hard for a girl not to have her head turned by him.’
Natalie laughed and switched her focus to him. ‘And how about you, Ben? How do you feel things are going between you two the second time around?’
She wants something I don’t think I can give her, but I’m certain another guy in this house can. The thought cripples me, but she’s not closed the door on me so I’m not giving up. How the hell could he say any of that to blasted camera? ‘You can see for yourself.’
Disappointment hurtled across Molly’s face and he didn’t need the shake of his sister’s head to know he’d fucked up.
‘When I say he’s started to open up, maybe I was a bit optimistic.’ Molly gave them a sad smile. ‘Sorry, but I need to go to the loo.’ She jerked her head towards Natalie. ‘Please excuse me.’
His heart slowly sank in his chest as he watched the beautiful redhead in a shimmering green dress hurry away.
‘You have some bridges to repair,’ Rachel remarked coolly as Natalie and camera crew left, presumably to find another victim.
‘No shit.’
She gave him a searching look. ‘You’ve told her about Helena, haven’t you? I was trying to work out if that was what you were discussing yesterday at the theme park, but it seemed more like you were protecting her.’
He sighed and rose to his feet. ‘I love you, but what we were talking about is none of your business.’
He made to walk off, but Rachel put a hand on his arm to stop him. ‘I could see she was upset, just as I saw you were upset today, talking to her on the bench. You can’t blame me for being concerned.’ Her eyes found his. ‘I want to see you happy, Ben, that’s all.’
‘Yeah, me too.’ He stared in the direction Molly had walked off. ‘But it feels like one step forward two steps back at the moment. And being on this show is not helping.’
‘I can see that. But I can also see that without this show, you wouldn’t have met Molly again.’ She tugged at his arm, forcing him to look at her. ‘The algorithm, our matchmakers, they put you with Molly for a reason. And they were right.’ Her expression softened. ‘You’ve fallen in love with her, haven’t you?’
He’d known for a while, but hearing it said out loud was terrifying. ‘Is it that obvious?’
‘It is to me. But maybe not to the person who’s only just learning to trust you again.’
‘You mean the same person who came on here to get married. To Duncan,’ he added bitterly.
‘If she wanted Duncan, she would have chosen to swop after two weeks.’ Rachel gave him a tight hug before stepping back. ‘You need to decide whether you love her enough to offer her the ending she really wants. Or whether your view of marriage is so blinkered you’re prepared to let her go and see her get married to someone else.’ She smirked. ‘Potentially a man in a too tight tuxedo.’
He ground his teeth, but couldn’t fault her neat summary. With his mind a jumble of thoughts, his body an angsty mess of hormones and his heart weighed down with emotions he needed to work through, Ben strode off to find Molly.