"I won't stop you from coming into my house," he replied sadly, "But it won't change anything, son. She's not ready –"

"Then can she just tell me that herself?"

"Daryl –"

"I'm not ready."

The moment I heard Molly's raspy voice, my gaze flicked straight to her tear-stained face as she hovered in the foyer behind her father.

"Molls." The pain I thought I had felt up until this moment paled in comparison to the way my heart spliced down the middle when she met my gaze.

She looked at me like I was a stranger.

And maybe to her, in this moment, I was.

My heart plummeted.

"Can we please talk?" I asked, keeping my eyes locked on her. "Please."

Sniffling, she wiped her cheeks with her sleeve and stepped on the porch.

"I'll leave you both to it," her father said before excusing himself back inside the house.

Pulling the door shut behind her, Molly folded her arms around her middle and looked over my shoulder as she spoke. "I'm real tired, Daryl, and I'm too worn out to argue. So, I'm gonna give you five minutes to say whatever it is that you came here to say and then I'm going to bed."

"I came to tell you that I'm sorry," I told her hoarsely. "So fucking sorry."

Nodding stiffly, she continued to stare off into the darkness, unwilling to look in my direction.

"All that stuff about your mom?" Jaw clenched, I pushed my hands through my hair. "About Wren and your mom?" I shook my head and groaned. She looked so lost, sounded so utterly broken, that it fucked with my head real bad. "I never wanted you to find out like that."

"So you knew about it all this time?" she sniffed, wiping her cheek with her shoulder. "The affair. Why our parents didn’t want us to hang out?"

"I knew what they were doing," I forced myself to whisper. "Wren and your mom – I caught them, but when I told my mom, she called me a liar. When I confronted Wren, he beat me down so bad that I couldn't walk straight for a week. I was too scared to tell your father in case he reacted the same as Wren. No one believed me, Molly, and knowing what they were doing behind my mom and your dad's backs made me feel so fucking dirty that I kept it to myself. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want your heart to ache the same way mine did. I wanted to protect my best friend from our parents' bullshit. I guess I fucked that up epically considering the situation we're in right now, but my only motivation for keeping my mouth shut was to protect you."

Flinching, she clenched her eyes shut, and whispered, "And Bobby…did you know about Bobby being Wren's?"

"You have to remember that I was only a kid when all this went down, Molls," I defended, throwing my hands up. "I didn’t understand any of what was happening, not in a sexual context at least. But, yeah, I heard my mom and Wren fighting at night about your mama's baby." I shrugged, helpless. "I guess that I put it together."