Thank you again for all my lovely followers, reviews and messages! This will hopefully be the penultimate chapter - I hope you like it :)

Tom was now running towards the house, presumably, Molly thought, to come and grovel to her from below; as it so happens, he began searching frantically on the ground.

'That cost me Molly, what the hell do you think you are doing?' he half whispered, half shouted.

Molly put her hands onto her cheeks in despair.

'Oh my…you are actually looking for the ring,' she turned back into the room. 'He is actually looking for the ring,' she repeated in disbelief.

Sherlock had stood up by this point, his concern for Molly growing steadily; he hadn't ever seen her so angry…well, except for that time with the slap…

'Perhaps if I asked him to leave?' Sherlock suggested.

'He doesn't even care that I just saw him, face glued, to another woman, and to think I actually asked him to come back to me,' she continued.

Sherlock didn't know what to say. For once he rather stumped for words.

'I'm sorry,' he said, his voice vanishing into the air, useless and pitiful.

Molly ignored him and turned back to the window.

'Don't ever come back to my house,' she said without emotion, looking down at Tom. 'I never want to see you again.'

Tom rubbed his face. 'It wasn't meant to happen like this.'

'Wasn't it?' Molly shrugged her shoulders, her voice struggling to remain calm. 'Were you planning to have a party and announce it to all my family and friends?'

'Of course not,' he spat. 'I'm not stupid.'

'I incline to disagree,' came Sherlock's voice from behind her.

'Sherlock,' Molly warned.

'Sorry,' he apologised.

Molly took a deep breath. 'I don't want to see you here again.'

'Was it Mr Holmes? It must have been right?' He laughed. 'Of course he knew.'

'It doesn't matter who knew. What matters is that you…you-' she pointed in the direction of Lucy, who was standing there with the actual guts to look bored.

'It's only a fling,' he protested.

Molly laughed weakly.

'Please go,' she demanded.

'I need my stuff,' Tom moaned like a child.

Molly gripped the window sill, fighting the urge to go down there and punch him.

'Here, I believe this is everything,' Sherlock answered.

Molly stretched out of the window to see Sherlock was now standing on her porch…with a pair of red lace knickers out stretched in his hand.

Tom's face turned white.

'Such a cliché,' Sherlock mused, 'to find a pair of lace, red knickers stuffed down the back of a sofa as a result of panic when one hears their fiancé has come home early from work. Then again,' he shrugged, 'your level of intelligence suggests it is not beneath you.'

He tossed them at Tom's feet. 'Lucy left via the back door and ran out the side gate did she not?'

'I thought you would have the decency to obey the men's code of conduct and at least warn me she knew,' Tom seethed, tilting his head towards the window.

Sherlock nodded. 'Indeed, it seems perhaps this was not the best way to reveal your liaison. But, I will tell you something…'

Sherlock paused and took a small step towards him, before lowering his voice to such a low pitch that Molly could not hear a word. All she could see was the stiff nod of Tom's head and with that, he turned up the path and back towards Lucy.

Molly watched silently as they quickly got into the car and drove away into the night.

'Molly…'

She turned around to see Sherlock in the doorway.

'I'm sorry.'

'What for exactly?' She shrugged weakly. 'For the fact my fiancé is a cheating bastard? Or are you sorry because I'm such a naive fool? There could be the slightest chance your sorry for slapping this in my face in such a…horrible…horrible…'

Her voice broke and she looked down at the floor.

'I never meant to hurt you,' Sherlock answered, taking a small step into the room.

Molly held up her hand. 'Don't come any closer. This is not what friends do Sherlock. Do you hear me? This is not what friends do.'

'You didn't love him Molly and I needed you to see that and feel it. Me telling you about his affair – you wouldn't have believed me, and Tom would have pulled you back into his trap. He has blinded you.'

'Oh really,' she laughed sarcastically. 'Well aren't you my saviour.'

'I did not intend for it to happen quite like this. I came tonight with the mere intention of seeking refuge…a bolt-hole like you and I had agreed previously.'

Molly looked up from the floor. 'How did you know?'

Sherlock, encouraged, took another tentative step forward. ' First I saw the…'

'Thong?' she offered.

'Is that what they call them?' Sherlock looked wide-eyed. 'Most uncomfortable looking if you ask me-'

'Sherlock,' Molly interrupted.

'Ah yes,' he continued, 'well I saw the…red piece of lace material escaping from behind the couch on the way to the kitchen. That was my first clue.'

Molly fidgeted with the pull on her dressing gown.

'They could have been mine.'

'Highly unlikely. Apart from the fact that the offending item was clearly placed in an attempt at concealment, you find lace irritating on your sensitive skin and it would have been especially so if down…'

'Yes, yes,' Molly interrupted, waving her hand in the air. 'I get the picture. But why didn't you just show me them?'

'He has a sister, friends that stay over regularly. He could have covered it up easily. And you, always so understanding and willing to see the best of people…'

Molly nodded for him to continue.

'So,' Sherlock continued, taking another small step towards her, 'there was then the matter of his phone.'

'I never saw you with his phone.'

'You were filling the kettle at the time. It was on the table and all too simple not to resist. It only took me a few seconds to file through his text messages and calls, thus making a conclusion that yes, in fact, Tom was having an affair with a woman named Lucy.'

'But…you knew the colour of her car?'

Sherlock smiled. 'Bright and alert as always, and to answer your question, it was in one of her messages; she had described her car so that he might find her parked at the Royal Doleway Hotel.'

Molly pulled at a thread on her gown. 'He only took me to the Holiday Inn, the cheap bastard,' she muttered.

'Indeed,' Sherlock agreed. 'So now you see how I knew. I'm sorry it happened this way and that his infidelity has caused you such visible pain-'

'It's not that,' she interrupted. 'He hasn't caused me pain. In fact,' she breathed, 'I hate to admit it…but I don't feel anything for him. You were right in that respect…I was blinded.' She paused. 'But then again, my options have always been somewhat limited and I thought he was my best chance at…well…' she drifted off, to glance at her left hand, now with no ring upon it.

'The ring. It was no more than £25 at best-'

Molly stopped him with one look.

'Not the right moment? No,' he agreed. 'But I think it may be the right moment for another discussion.'

'I'm not in the mood Sherlock,' she sighed. 'I'm still angry at you for playing with me all evening.'

The words struck Sherlock like daggers.

'I wasn't playing I assure…'

'The teasing? The oh so innocent remarks about wanting to touch me?' She laughed. 'It wasn't fair Sherlock; pretending to flirt with me. You know I find, I mean found, it difficult to get over you. Using that to make me see the truth behind my relationship wasn't right.'

'Pretend?'

'Yes,' Molly rolled her eyes in frustration. 'Don't act like you don't know what I'm taking about.'

'I do not actually,' Sherlock answered, something in his voice forcing Molly to look at him the eye.

Molly shook her head. 'I don't understand.'

'I see why you would, I am not exactly the simplest of human beings, or so I have been told.'

'Understatement of the year,' Molly mumbled to the ceiling.

Sherlock waited for her eyes to reach him again before he took a deep breath.

'I may have came here with the intention of seeking refuge and this intention may have altered when I first caught sight of that sofa, but what I haven't told you is that my intentions had already changed before that very moment; upon my journey here, at exactly five seconds before I arrived at Swiss Cottage tube station; I Sherlock Holmes, had an epiphany.'

He dared to take another small step closer; their eyes now searching one another for answers that only the other could provide.

'And so it is time to tell you, Molly Hooper, the person who matters most, what exactly I meant by a proposal.'