But no man would ever be as hard to leave as the woman in the black dress. And yet he couldn’t ask Mollie to go with him. She didn’t belong in Texas. It was obvious from the way her eyes lit up every time she stepped onto a Manhattan sidewalk. Obvious from the way she was 100 percent in her element when she was surrounded by New Yorkers.

Plus he wasn’t at all sure he was ready to ask her.

Jackson knew Mollie was nothing like her sister. She wouldn’t spend years toying with his heart only to rip it out when he was at his lowest. But Jackson was far from being anxious to jump into another serious relationship.

He didn’t know what the hell he’d been wanting to get out of this time with Mollie, but he knew he hadn’t had nearly enough time to get rid of his demons.

Still, none of that made it any easier to do what he had to do—tell Mollie he was leaving.

And he was leaving. He had to. There was a job waiting for him. His real job. A job that didn’t require him to wear a suit and to spend every day trying to reacquaint himself with computers. In a town where a burger didn’t cost eighteen dollars and where he could go for a drive whenever the hell he felt like it.

And then there was football. He missed it.

Sure, as a coach, he’d never again feel the weight of his pads. Wouldn’t even have much occasion to put his hands on the leather of the ball. But he’d be on the field. Talking the talk. Surrounded by his people. People he understood and who understood him.

New York had been a worthwhile experiment, but that’s all it was. He couldn’t stay.

He didn’t want to stay.

His eyes locked on Mollie.

Did he?

“You ever need to tell someone something hard?” he heard himself ask Mitchell as he took a sip of his drink. “Something that you know will hurt them?”

Mitchell gave a quiet laugh. “You have no idea.”

Jackson glanced over and saw the other man watching his wife, clearly taking a trip down memory lane. Jackson felt a little stab of hope—Mitchell and Julie had clearly worked through whatever it was.

“Let me guess,” Mitchell said. “What you need to tell her is going to cause her pain. And yet not telling her…Well, you risk someone else telling her first, which will bring more pain.”

Jackson grimaced. “Yeah. That.”

“You probably don’t need me to tell you this, but your best shot is to have her hear it from you. Even though saying it will be the hardest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Is that what you did? Told her yourself?”

“Uh…no,” Mitchell said, his jaw going hard. “She heard it from someone else. In the worst possible way. And trust me, not a day goes by that I don’t regret it.”

Julie looked over then, giving Jackson a friendly wave before her brown eyes locked on Mitchell and darkened slightly before she gave him a slow, private smile.

“Seems like it worked out okay for you,” Jackson said dryly.

“I got lucky,” Mitchell said. He turned and glanced at Jackson. “Whatever it is, she can handle it.”

Jackson transferred his gaze back to Mollie just as she threw her head back and laughed at something Cassidy’s girlfriend had said.

Yeah, she could handle it. She could handle anything.

But could he?

—

Something was on Jackson’s mind. She’d been feeling it for days now, but for some reason it seemed stronger tonight. As though, with him on one side of the room and her on the other, she could suddenly see him clearly.

And what she saw troubled her.

He was having a good time. She could tell from his easy laugh with the guys, the way he occasionally shot the bird along with the rest of them, that he liked these people. Not party-small-talk like, but genuine like.

And yet he held himself back too. Almost as though he deliberately kept himself apart from the rest of the group. At first she’d thought it was maybe them doing that clique thing that good friends tend to do, but she’d learned pretty quickly that this group seemed to be of the more-the-merrier type when it came to friends.

No, it was Jackson’s choice to hang back. To pull himself away whenever a conversation lasted too long or a joke got too rowdy.

But why?

Julie Greene, a bubbly dark blonde with friendly brown eyes, came up beside Mollie and wrapped an arm around her waist. “Two things: One, this dress is incredible. Two, you get the impression our men are talking about us right now?”

Mollie gave a not-so-subtle glance over her shoulder and saw Jackson talking to Julie’s husband. Both men looked away the second she made eye contact.

“Yup. They’re definitely talking about us.”

“Better than not talking about us, I suppose,” Julie said. “Unless Mitchell’s scowling. Is he scowling?”

“Mitchell’s always scowling,” said Riley Compton. “And you like it.”

If Mollie had to describe a classic pinup girl, she would probably look a lot like Riley. The woman had a teeny-tiny waist, and boobs and hips that were not tiny. Her long black hair was styled in perfect waves, her blue eyes were rimmed with the perfect amount of black eyeliner, and her red lips should have looked overdone but really just looked stunning.

Julie gave a little happy sigh. “Mitchell’s scowls do make me hot.”

Riley waggled her eyebrows. “You know what makes me hot?”

“Everything,” Emma Sinclair said, joining the group. “Everything makes you hot. And hungry.”