Of course, he hadn’t actually told her he wanted her for more than one night…
God, couldn’t she just lie back and enjoy the afterglow? Tomorrow, she could deconstruct the whole thing with Lara, or call Jenna and tell she had risen to the challenge. Or rather, Jake had.
She bit back a laugh. This was ridiculous. She was supposed to be a grown woman now, but here she was having sex on her parents’ sofa because she didn’t have anywhere else to go, and thinking about what she’d tell her friends tomorrow. She might as well be sixteen and back in school again.
No, the only person she needed to discuss this with was lying beneath her on this couch.
Sighing, Jake shifted to raise himself up on his elbow, looking down at her. “What are you obsessing about? I can practically hear your thoughts whirring.”
“Just thinking about how this feels like me circa age sixteen,” Molly admitting, waving a hand to indicate the sofa.
Jake raised an eyebrow. “Not all of it, I hope.”
“No, not all of it.” Her cheeks felt warm at the memory of him inside her. She’d definitely never had anyone like Jake when she was sixteen.
“Which parts, then?” Jake asked.
“Location, mostly,” Molly admitted. “Almost had me thinking about what I was going to tell my friends at school tomorrow.”
“Oh God, you’re going to tell Lara, and she’s going to tease me about it for all time.”
“Probably,” Molly admitted. “But actually, I was mostly thinking about my friend Jenna, in London. I promised I’d let her know if…” she trailed off, realising too late what she was about to admit.
“Let her know if you managed to get me into bed?” Jake guessed.
Molly’s cheeks burned as she nodded.
“So, you had a plan for this?” Jake shook his head. “I should have known. Especially after your suitcase burst open.”
“I wasn’t exactly subtle about it,” Molly pointed out. “Besides, Jenna challenged me. You were my last unfilled resolution.”
“Resolution?” Jake’s forehead crinkled up in confusion. It was a cute look on him.
“Yeah.” Molly snuggled a little closer for warmth, and covered her mouth as she yawned. “This year is the first time ever I’ve managed to actually keep all my new year’s resolutions.”
“And I was one of them?” Jake asked, his voice curiously flat. “What were the others?”
Molly ticked them off on her fingers. “Move to London, get a real job, and sleep with you.”
“And you scored the full hat-trick.”
“I did.” She smiled up at him. “But I definitely think this one was my favourite.”
She’d expected him to kiss her, or to return the smile at least. But instead, Jake stared down at her, his eyes cool and assessing.
“And, I mean, that wasn’t the only reason I… that we…”
“Had sex,” Jake finished for her. “I should hope we’re both grown up enough to actually say it.”
“Of course. It’s just… the other two things had been on my list for years, and after last New Year’s Eve, I added the one about you almost as a joke. Except not, because I really, really wanted it. I just didn’t think that you did.”
“Why? Because I stopped kissing you when your brother walked in? That was just self-preservation, Molly.”
“Because you avoided me afterwards. You didn’t even come to my leaving party.”
“Did you ever think I just didn’t want to see you go?”
Molly stilled at his words. She’d been cross with him for six months about not showing up for that party, and with twelve words he’d cut away all that anger.
“Is that true?”
Jake sucked in a deep breath, and lay back down beside her, pulling her head onto his chest before he spoke again. “I wanted you to go because it was what you wanted. You’ve talked for years about moving to London and getting a job that didn’t involve working weekends and holidays.”
“Turns out you might be the only one who took that talk seriously,” Molly muttered, but he didn’t react to it.
“I wanted you to have the life you dreamt of. Still do. But the selfish part of me? That part really didn’t want to see you move two hundred miles away.”
“Why not?” Molly was almost afraid of the answer, but she couldn’t not ask.
“Why do you think?” Jake sat up, the blanket falling away from his perfect chest. “Molly—”
He cut off as the lounge door opened, and they both twisted to see who it was.
“Are you two – Oh God! Sorry… I… Never mind.” Dory shut the door firmly behind her, as Molly felt the panic rising in her chest. This truly was her teenage years all over again. Humiliation, and the possibility of ruining everything through sheer stupidity.
“I need to talk to her. I need… clothes, to start with.” She could reason with Dory. Her sister had kept her secrets before. No one needed to know how badly she’d screwed this up – risking one of the most important friendships in not just her life, but her whole family, just to keep some stupid resolution. To win a dare with a friend she’d only known six months. What had she been thinking?
Jake handed her dress over. “What are you going to say to her?”
“What do you think?” Molly tugged the dress over her head. Underwear and tights would have to wait. “I’m going to tell her it was a mulled wine fuelled mistake and beg her never to tell my parents. Or Tim.” That, at least, should make Jake happy. “As long as no one else ever finds out, it can be like this never happened. We can go back to how we were before.”
“Do you really believe that?” Jake was still naked, sprawled on the couch before her, the blanket barely covering all the relevant parts.
“Why aren’t you panicking about this more?”
“Because what’s done is done. We just need to figure out what we want to do next.”
“No.” Nothing was ever that simple. And if she screwed this up, she knew her family would never let her forget it. It would be one more flaky Molly story to tell at Christmas dinners long to come. “What we need to do is make it look like it never happened at all.”
And with that, she left the man she’d been fantasising about all year naked on the sofa and went to talk to her sister.
The kitchen light was on and, when Molly walked in, she found Dory making tea in the tiny stainless steel pot only she ever used.
“Okay, so what you saw…” Molly started, but Dory cut her off.
“I told Tim I wasn’t imagining that there was something different between you and Jake this year.”
“I know. I heard. You told him that if he told me not to get involved with Jake it would be the first thing I’d go out and do.”
Dory winced. “You weren’t meant to hear that. But, you know, I was kind of right.”
“No you weren’t.” Molly shut the door behind her and sank into the nearest kitchen chair. “It’s not… it wasn’t like that.”
Grabbing two cups and saucers from the shelf, Dory poured them both tea. “Then tell me what it was like,” she said, placing one cup in front of Molly.
Molly scrunched up her nose at the smell. “Peppermint?”
“It’s calming,” Dory said, sitting opposite her. “And, after three courses plus mince pies, good for the digestion. Now, talk.”
Where to start? “Well, you remember last New Year’s Eve?”
It took embarrassingly little time to recap everything that had happened between her and Jake in the last year, mostly because hardly anything had. Until tonight.
“So what now?” Dory asked. “Was this really just a one night thing to fulfil some stupid resolution?”
“I thought it was.” Molly swallowed, remembering Jake lying there telling her what was done was done. “I thought that was all he would want either. But now… I don’t understand why he’d suddenly be willing to risk everything.” Although she had a horrible feeling it had more to do with her family than her
.
“Don’t you?” Dory gave her a small smile. “Then maybe you should ask him.”
Chapter 16
The front doorstep was cold through his jeans, and Jake wished he’d taken time to grab his coat when he got dressed. But he’d needed fresh air, needed to move away from that room, to get out of the house, even if he hadn’t gone far. The front door was on the latch behind him, and he could vaguely make out Dory and Molly’s voices in the kitchen, although not what they were saying.
He could imagine, though. Molly was probably explaining to her sister how this whole thing was a big mistake. A stupid resolution she had to follow through on. One night only.