Sparking the Fire (40 page)

“Your therapist?

Molly frowned. “Yes. But also Wyatt.”

“Wyatt did a number on you?”

Have another glass of wine, Cal.
“No, well, yes, but that's not what I meant. Wyatt said my ex did a number on me.”

“True,” Cal said with the wisdom of the almost-drunk.

“He also said if I let the bullshit mask the good stuff, Ryan wins.”

“Also true.”

Molly sipped her wine. “The thing is, I spent the summer living Wyatt's life and he loves it the way it is.” She had loved it, too. So much that her heart pined for it. For him. “He adores his family, his job, tinkering with his car. I'm not saying he'd have to give any of that up, but if we were to be together, and I mean really be together, as a unit, he would have to come into this world sometimes and he'd hate it.” She looked around the beautifully appointed room, a million times removed from Wyatt's cozy bubble. It left her cold. “He says he'd be okay with the reporters and the attention, but I've seen how he reacts. It'd eventually chip away at him. At us. He'll want to defend me, I'll tell him that it's part of the game, and he'll get pissed off and leave.”

“Wow, you're already headed to divorce court?” Cal let out a low whistle. “Hope he signed a prenup.”

“You know what I mean. I already went over the rainbow and it's a one-way trip. I can't go back into his world and he'd hate it in mine.”

Cal looked disgusted. “You're worried that he'll trust his happiness to you and that somehow you'll fail him because your life is as nutty as it looks from the outside? Molly, there'll always be reporters. There'll always be crazy, mouth-breathing stalkers who want to sniff your panties.”

“Eww!” But true.

“There'll always be those photos. And that's what it comes down to. Ryan fucked you over, emotionally and literally. He was your first major relationship and he set the blueprint for all your future relationships. And that blueprint is like an Escher drawing. It's filled with impossible stairs and corridors that go nowhere and pathways that fold in on themselves. It's twisted like the man is twisted.”

She paused for a breath and a sip of wine.

“You have to take control, Molly. Stop letting Ryan and those photos overshadow everything. Stop allowing the press to dictate how you're going to live your life. Fight back and take what's rightfully yours.”

Wyatt. He was hers. It started all those years ago and transformed into something unexpected. Something absolute and real.

Knowing her friend was right didn't make it easier, only more frustrating than ever. Molly was mired in that Escher drawing with its infinite loops. One minute she'd been running toward Wyatt and then the stair hung a left just before she reached her goal. Happiness was just over that next hill, then fear had set a booby trap that blew up in her face.

But Cal wasn't right about everything. Ryan wasn't her first major relationship; he was just the most public one. Before Ryan, before the crazy, there had been someone else. Sexy, strong, a straight talker, brave on so many fronts.

Her blue-eyed, badass Marine.

She had a warrior heart beating inside her chest, yet she had failed the one person who had healed it and made her whole again. She'd let the bullshit mask the good stuff. Raised a white flag to the haters.

The realization was empowering, but not nearly enough.

Something big needed to happen, the narrative changed, a statement made. She was a product of Hollywood, after all. She needed to take a page from the Book of Wyatt and put that warrior heart to use.

And hope to God she wasn't too late.

 CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

T
he view from the upper hitting deck at Diversey Harbor included the lake, Lincoln Park, and teasing glimpses of Chicago's skyline, but it wasn't quite spectacular enough to compensate for what you had to do to enjoy said view.

Play golf.

Or, more specifically, bang the shit out of a bucket of small balls on the driving range.

“Set your feet farther apart,” Eli instructed as Wyatt prepared to line drive a ball into the lake. Given the distance and the net set up to catch balls that made it to the edge of the range, that would have been technically impossible, but at this moment he suspected his rage might give him superhuman strength.

He planted his feet closer together than Eli suggested, because these days, he was furious at everyone and hell-bent on being a contrary asshole, and struck the ball. It landed about half the distance of Brady's shot. Cue a raspy huff of laughter from the big chef sitting behind him.

“I hate golf,” Wyatt griped, and sat down on the bench three feet away from the strike zone.

“Only because you suck at it,” Gage called out from the hitting mat one spot over, where he was paired up with Beck.

“Besides, it's good for your shoulder,” Luke said as he readied for his shot. That would be the same Luke who Wyatt knew also hated golf because it was the kind of “white-glove-country-club crap” that people like Eli indulged in. His brother drove his ball perfectly down the fairway and celebrated with a triumphant whoop. “That's how it's done.”

Wyatt glared at his brother's back.
Asshole.

For all the Dempsey men to have the same night off was as rare as unicorn shit—and Wyatt wasn't buying it. Some serious favors must have been called in at the firehouse and the bar so everyone could be here, ensuring that Wyatt didn't slip into more-than-average moroseness, he supposed.

Or, he assumed this was the plan until Brady asked, “How's Roni doing?”

“Fine,” Luke said before Wyatt could speak. “Course, would have been nice to get a chance to say good-bye in person before her mom rushed her off like that.”

Wyatt's chest tightened. “You wanna do this now?”

“What? Talk about how you screwed things up?” Luke took a seat on the bench, a foot apart from Wyatt. “Sure, bring it.”

“Gentlemen,” Eli cautioned. “Not during golf, if you please.”

Wyatt ignored him. “Getting a bit sick of your holier-than-thou 'tude, Luke. So this won't go down as a banner year for decision making in my life, but to hear the guy whose motto is ‘Hit first, forgiveness never' criticize how I played it with those reporters is more than I can stomach right now.”

Luke looked taken aback. “I'm not criticizing that. Hell, if I'd been there, I'd have whaled on those pricks with everything I had. So I wasn't too happy with how things went down with Roni at first, but spending time with her this summer more than made up for it. And we'll see her again. That's not the problem here.”

Wyatt glanced up at Eli and Brady. Back to Luke. “Then what?”

“What in the fuckity fuck of all that is fucking fucked did you do to drive your woman away?”

“You're assuming it was my fault?” Gage and Beck had ambled over to take part in what was starting to look like . . . shit, an intervention? The expressions of the rest of the guys appeared to concur with Luke. “Women are capable of screwing up, too.”

This statement was found to be uniformly hilarious.

Eli shook his head. “That's what I imagine is the first of many errors in your judgment, Lieutenant. It does not matter who is technically at fault. It does not matter that your lady got out of bed on the wrong side and started grumbling at you because the coffee you'd prepared for her is five degrees cooler than she likes it. And it certainly does not matter that every decision you have ever made has been with her as the central focus, yet she still thinks you're, and I quote, ‘an unscrupulous pigfucker.' What you must accept is that by virtue of being born with a dick, you are always, always wrong in these matters, and that your only mission in life is to make it right.”

Luke waved a hand at Eli. “What he said.”

“Hey, don't be so hard on him,” Beck said. “Knowing what a woman wants is a learned skill.”

Gage's brows hitched high. “So much simpler when you like dick.”

Luke rolled his eyes at Gage and redirected his attention back to Wyatt. “Remember this time last year when you told me to get down off my cross and go get my girl? How chicks need the big gesture?”

Was his brother fucking with him? Advice like that was always easier to give than to receive. “Sure do. I also remember that she shut your ass down and sent you packing back to Chicago.”

“Yeah, it sucked golf balls at the time, but Kinsey needed to see me coming for her. She's not one for snap decisions, so she had to think on it and figure out what it meant for her, and once she did that, the rest was history.”

Was there anything more self-satisfied than a man hitched for life to the woman of his dreams? Wherever had Wyatt stashed his smug-wipes?

“I laid it all out on the table. Told her the press, her ex, all that shit means nothing to me because all that matters is us. So when you do that for a woman, when you”—
open a vein and bleed your heart out on the hallway rug
—“lay it out there and she still doesn't want you, then I think you have to recognize that it's time to call the game for darkness.”

His declaration threw a pall over the group. There was nothing that he would have done differently. He was cracked open, a gaping wound, and Molly was the salt and the suture. Gage, recognizing that alcohol might be the only thing that could improve the collective mood, moved off to the bar to pick up another bucket of beers.

Times like this Wyatt wished he drank. Sick to blazes of his own misery, he turned to Brady. “So when're you gonna make an honest man of my brother?”

Brady glanced over his shoulder to make sure Gage was out of hearing range. “Thinkin' of asking him soon, maybe next week. Our one-year anniversary.”

No effen way.
Only trying to redirect the conversation, Wyatt hadn't expected that Brady would actually have a plan. He'd always assumed Gage would be the one doing the asking, but hey, those two loved each other, so why shouldn't low-key Brady be the one to go big?

“That okay with you guys?” Brady asked the Dempsey contingent, which was pretty damn cute, to be honest. Eli didn't look in the least bit surprised, but then he and Brady were tight.

Luke grinned. “Like we'd say no. It's not as if you're a dickhead like Cooper here.”

“Yet you've welcomed me with open arms, Almeida,” Eli said drily.

“Only because my sister terrifies the bejesus out of me. Your happiness is incidental.” Luke and Eli exchanged knowing smiles. They'd come a long way in the last six months.

Brady and Gage tying the knot shouldn't have changed a thing, but somehow it did. Four of the Dempseys hitched, and the last holdout, the man on the sidelines, was still Wyatt.

Gage returned with beers and eyes narrowed to curious slits. “You guys were talking about me, right?”

“We talk of nothing else, Short Stack,” Luke said with a friendly head rub for their baby bro and a sly look at Wyatt. They were on the same page again, and that eased ever so slightly the hollow ache in his chest. This was good. Back to normal, simpatico with his family, and even if he wasn't mate material, he had this.

The best people, and the people who knew him best.

Beck's phone rang. Almost immediately, both Luke's and Eli's phones joined the party, earning dirty looks from other driving range patrons. Wyatt shot back a dirty look of his own. Hardly the cathedral of St. Andrews here.

“Yeah, he's here,” Beck muttered into his phone.

Thirty seconds and a series of grunts later, all of them were now staring at him with expressions ranging from discomfort to superlevels of discomfort. He shared a puzzled glance with Gage and Brady, both of whom merely lifted shoulders of not-a-clue.

“What's wrong?”

After a couple of screen taps, Beck passed his phone over to Wyatt. “You need to read this.”

The banner of
Vanity Fair
blazed at the top of a Web page labeled
“
Suck It, Haters, or How I Learned to Get Over Mean Girls, Bad Boys, and Myself.”

By Molly Cade.

What the hell had she done? He lifted his gaze to his crew, who watched him warily. If they were expecting him to regale them with a bedtime story by reading this shit aloud, they'd be a long time on the hook. Inhaling deep, he turned back to the phone.

I thought about addressing this letter to the world, but that seems a bit on the pretentious side, so I'll dial down my diva and say, “Hey, whoever you are, thanks for reading.”

My name is Molly and I'm an actor. Yeah, I'm throwing that out there like an addict admitting her addiction. But that's true. I'm addicted to my job, to the lights, to the rush in my veins when I nail a performance. And like all addictions, there's a downside. I know, I'm famous, I need to get over myself. Drought over, here are all of America's tears.