“Easier said than done, though, right?” Brendon stole the words right from her head. “I know. Don’t let it get to you. Darcy knows what she feels. I’m serious. Darcy’s crazy about you, you know that, right?”
“You think so?”
He looked at her like she was crazy. “Elle. Come on.”
Elle bit the corner of her lip.
“I’m serious. Darcy keeps her cards close to the chest, but you’d have to be blind not to see how she looks at you.”
Elle knew how it felt when Darcy looked at her. How it made her stomach swoop with an intensity that stole her breath, made her flush from head to toe, turned her inside out.
“How does she look at me?” she asked, out of curiosity’s sake, mostly. “Humor me.”
“Darcy looks at you like . . .” Brendon’s lips tugged to the side, his brow furrowing. A smile inched its way across his face, both his dimples gleaming. “She looks at you like you hung the moon.”
If that wasn’t the greatest, most beautiful, cheesiest thing Elle had ever heard, she didn’t know what was. Cheeks aching from the spectacular grin she had no hope of controlling, Elle ducked her chin. “You think?”
Brendon chuckled and when Elle lifted her head, he was staring off over her shoulder with a faraway look in his eyes. “I’d kill to have someone look at me like that, you know?”
Brendon had made his entire life about helping everyone else find their happily-ever-after and he deserved one of his own. If it could happen for her, it could totally happen for him. Should happen for him.
“Your dream girl is out there somewhere.” She cuffed him lightly on the arm. “She probably has no idea you’re out here, a total catch who’s just waiting for her to stumble into your open arms.”
Brendon barked out a laugh. “I’ll take your word for it. Though I’m beginning to worry she lives on the opposite side of the world or something. Opposite side of the country, at least.”
“That’s easy. Take a road trip.”
“I’d search every city if I had—” Something over her shoulder caught Brendon’s attention, his eyes widening. “Shoot. One of our investors just walked in. Do you mind if I . . . ?”
She stepped back, waving him off with a smile. “Go. I should go find your sister.”
Brendon looked grateful. “I think I saw her talking to Mom by the chocolate fountain.”
So the chocolate fountain was where Elle headed, because nothing about heading in that direction sounded like a bad idea. If Darcy wasn’t there, there’d still be chocolate. Win-win.
As luck would have it, Darcy was by the fondue, and so was her mother. Brushing her fingers against the edge of her dress, Elle approached. But just as she was almost close enough to announce herself, a group of three women whose giraffish height was only exaggerated by the stilettos on their feet stepped in front of her, cutting her off. She edged around them, approaching Darcy and her mom from behind instead.
“That was when I thought that’s all it was.” Darcy’s mom finished her champagne and set the glass aside, swaying slightly. “Then Brendon’s telling me you’re crazy about Elle and you’re telling me it’s complicated. She seems a little flighty, is all I’m saying.”
Darcy scoffed. “That’s rich, coming from you.”
“I know I wasn’t always there, but I’m trying.”
“You know nothing, Mom. And you definitely don’t know her.”
“And you do? How long have you known her? You thought you knew Natasha, didn’t you?”
Darcy’s shoulders curled forward. “I know Elle.”
“God, I—” Her mom grabbed another glass of champagne.
“What, Mom? Just say it.”
“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were in love.”
Elle’s heart stopped. Eavesdropping was wrong, but she was weak.
Darcy’s scoff came out strangled. “You’re drunk.”
“I said I’m not.” Gillian teetered on her heels. “Not really.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“You’re saying you’re not in love with her?” her mom asked.
Regret hastened through Elle’s veins like poison. She should’ve walked away. She shouldn’t have eavesdropped. She didn’t want to hear anything more but she couldn’t move. Anchored to the floor like cinder blocks, her feet wouldn’t budge.
“We’ve been dating a month and a half, if you can even call it that.” Darcy shook her head. “I’m just having fun. Of course I’m not in love with her. Don’t . . . don’t be absurd.”
Elle pressed a hand to her stomach as if that gesture alone could hold her together.
Just having fun.
Darcy didn’t love her.
Darcy didn’t.
Because that would . . . that would be absurd.
Fuck, her eyes stung. She wouldn’t cry, she refused. She needed fresh air, a moment alone, a moment to process, to set her world to rights and fix this dissonance, believing one thing, feeling it in her gut, feeling it down to her bones only to hear that it wasn’t true.
Elle stepped back, footsteps faltering as Darcy turned. Their eyes met and Elle’s chest went tight, shrink-wrap around her heart, squeezing until she couldn’t breathe.
A flicker of something Elle had no name for passed over Darcy’s butterscotch brown eyes. Realization? Regret? Concern? Pity? “Elle—”
“Found you!” Elle’s laugh sounded fake even to her own ears. Fake and forced and flimsy, a paper-thin front to cover what she was feeling. “I wanted to let you know I’m going to get some fresh air. I’ll be back.”
She turned before her face could do something terrible like crumble beneath Darcy’s mother’s scrutinizing stare. It made Elle want to shrink in on herself so she kept walking, kept moving in the direction of the ballroom exit, even when Darcy called out after her.
Chapter Nineteen
Darcy’s lungs burned as she quickened her steps, one heel catching on a crack in the pavement in front of the hotel. Thankfully Elle drew to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk. Darcy wasn’t made for running in shoes like these.
“Elle.” Her breath crystalized in the air, turning to fog in front of her. “It’s cold out here.”
Understatement of the century. It was freezing, the sort of cold that cramped your muscles and made your bones ache. Darcy hugged her arms across her body, skin prickling with gooseflesh as she waited for Elle to say something.
“’m fine,” Elle mumbled, back still to Darcy. Light from the streetlamp caught on the glitter that had rained down her shoulders, her arms, her bare upper back. Darcy’s vision went fractal again, all that glitter turning to crushed diamonds on Elle’s skin. Stardust.
Darcy’s teeth chattered when she tried to speak. “At least . . . at least get your coat or something if you’re going to stand out here. It’s—”
“I said I’m fine,” Elle bit out, voice wavering around her words, whittling them into something thin and sharp that pierced Darcy right through the chest.
She took a step forward, knees knocking as she shivered. “You don’t . . . you don’t sound fine.”
She sounded anything but. What the hell had happened? Everything had been wonderful, perfect, and sure, Mom had been brusque, but that wasn’t worth getting upset over. It certainly wasn’t worth dashing off into the cold without a coat. Yet Darcy had followed. Chasing after Elle had been instinctive, something she hadn’t thought about. Elle had looked upset, her smile forced, and she’d taken off and Darcy had been halfway out the ballroom before it had even occurred to her that she hadn’t said anything to Mom. She’d left their conversation, that stupid, worthless conversation hanging and had followed Elle out into the night.
Above them, the sky was dark, not a star in sight, not even the moon. Elle was, by far, the brightest thing Darcy could see, brighter than the streetlights and the lamps, a beacon in the darkness.
Elle’s shoulders curled forward, the curve of her spine enticing. Keep
ing one arm around herself, Darcy reached out to stroke the skin of Elle’s back, to run her fingers down that arch until skin met sparkling fabric. Elle turned before Darcy could make contact and something about her hand hovering in the space between them left Darcy feeling so vulnerable that she dropped her arm like she’d been burned.
Nothing about Elle’s expression looked fine. A furrow had formed between her brows, her eyes damp and narrowed. She’d licked the gloss from her lips, worried them red, and the cold air chapped them further, making her pout more pronounced.
“I’m . . .” With a shrug, Elle crossed her arms. One strap slipped down her shoulder and she slid it back into place absently, sniffing softly, because it was cold or because of something else, Darcy had no idea. Elle cleared her throat and lifted her chin. The look in her glossy blue eyes rooted Darcy where she stood. “I heard. What you said to your mom. I overheard.”
What she’d said to her mom . . . Darcy’s heart stuttered inside her chest. “What part?”
Elle scoffed gently and hugged herself tighter, elbows squeezing in, making the curl of her shoulders and the jut of her collarbone sharper, more pronounced. “All of it?”
All of it . . . okay. That was why Elle was not fine. Why she’d taken off, run out into the cold. Something about what she’d heard, she hadn’t liked.
Nothing about that conversation had sat well with Darcy. Not Mom’s prying, not her demeaning Elle, not her assumptions, and definitely not the part where she tried to force Darcy to reckon with her feelings. As if that were her place. As if Darcy needed that. Mom had no idea what Darcy needed.
Darcy shoved the heel of her hand into her breastbone and stared down the sidewalk. Empty. No one was crazy enough to be standing outside when it was this cold. No one except for her and Elle.
“Okay.” She turned, facing Elle once more.
Elle shook her head, lashes fluttering as she blinked, lights catching on the glitter. “Okay? That’s—” She blew out her breath, shivering softly.
“Let’s . . . let’s go back inside.” Darcy gestured over her shoulder. It was warm in the hotel and Darcy desperately wanted to head back inside just like she desperately wanted to not have this conversation. She wanted to step this whole night back, return to the dance floor, back to when everything had been far less confusing, the thoughts inside her head less of a jumble. The fear of what she felt would’ve still been there, but it wouldn’t have been so suffocating, bearing down on her with an intensity that made it difficult to do something as basic as stand there and act like she was okay. It had lingered in her periphery, but if she kept her eyes on Elle, kept looking ahead—not too far ahead— it was okay.
Elle’s chin wobbled gently before she clenched her jaw and lifted her head, staring up at Darcy, the blue of her eyes as dark and glassy as the lake at night. “That’s it? I said I overheard and you don’t have anything . . . anything to say?”
Darcy bit the inside of her lip. “What do you want me to say?”
Elle stared for a heartbeat, then two, three, and Darcy’s heart quickened. The air around them crackled, cold and electric and quiet. Elle’s chin jerked in a barely there shake. “Something. I want you to say something.” Her tongue swept out, wetting her bottom lip. “Is this— What is this to you?” she whispered.
Darcy’s heart clenched, the back of her throat narrowing.
She’d told Mom that she was having fun with Elle, and that was true, but it was more than that. It was fun and frightening and more than anything Darcy had felt in a long, long time.
“It’s . . . it’s complicated,” she admitted, feeling like that was the right word, the only one that could do her quagmire of feelings any justice.
Elle’s jaw dropped, a little gasp tearing from between her lips before she laughed, low and dry, humorless. “That’s— Could you uncomplicate it for me?”
If only it were that easy. “It’s not that simple, Elle.”
Elle stared, eyes narrowing before she pressed her lips together and gave a tiny shrug. “Isn’t it? Or shouldn’t it be? It is for me.”
The back of Darcy’s throat burned. “You wouldn’t understand—”
“Why not?” Elle glared. “I might be flighty, but I’m not stupid, Darcy.”
Darcy hugged herself tighter until her ribs ached. “I never said you were. I never called you flighty.”
“Your mom did.” Elle’s jaw clenched tighter as she stared down and to the side where a crack in the pavement spread like branching veins all the way to the curb.
Darcy’s chest went cold. “I am not my mother.”
Elle was quiet and as much as Darcy didn’t want to have this conversation there was something unsettling in this silence, alarming in the stillness of Elle’s body, her posture. She was a force, always in movement. Twitching, shifting, vibrant. This wasn’t like her, wasn’t normal. It wasn’t like how some of their silences were comfortable. Those contained breath in every space between their words. This was deprivation, asphyxiation in the grim absence of Elle’s voice, her laugh, the sound she made when she sighed softly and she was simply there. Touchable.
The distance between them now felt vast and Darcy didn’t have the slightest clue how to traverse it. If she could.
With another barely perceptible jerk of her chin, Elle frowned. “I’m not asking for . . . for a proposal, Darcy.”
Bile crept up her esophagus, her heart tripping, flailing, faltering.
“I’m not asking you to promise me forever.” Elle sniffed hard. “It’s only been a few weeks, but you’re all I can think about and I just want to know what this is. We were fake and now we’re not, but what are we? What am I? Am I your girlfriend? Is this— How do you feel?”
Like she was going to throw up.
Outside of the immediate moment, Darcy had never felt like this, not this soon, not this fast, not this deep, not this much, none of it. Not for anyone, not even Natasha. And like Mom had said, Darcy had been ready to spend the rest of her life with Natasha, had loved her, and as a result, finding her in bed with a mutual friend had broken Darcy. Had shattered her heart into a million pieces and it had taken nearly two years and a cross-country move to glue herself back together and even then, until recently, she sometimes wondered if she’d put herself back together wrong.
If she was more like Mom than she wanted to believe.
What she felt for Elle was immense and it made what she’d felt for Natasha seem trivial. She’d loved Natasha but she’d never forgotten how to breathe when Natasha stared at her and remembered how when Natasha smiled. Darcy had never lost her mind over Natasha’s laugh. She’d never stared at her phone waiting for Natasha to text. She’d never counted the minutes until she’d see Natasha again. She’d never felt so helpless and powerful at the same time when they kissed, like she was holding the entire magnificent, fragile universe inside her hands when they touched. Her feelings for Natasha had been . . . steady. Steady and secure with both feet firmly planted on the ground at all times. A comfortable sort of love. Sensible.
Natasha had been safe and she’d still cut Darcy to the quick.
If she felt this much for Elle, as much as she did, a scary amount, it only stood to reason that with more time, her feelings would continue to grow. Like one of those stars Elle had told her about, the ones that grew bigger and bigger and burned brighter and hotter, until one day, inevitably, they exploded, drowning out the light of all the stars around them. Like a supernova, the resulting heartbreak would drown out the memory of all those other brokenhearted moments, make them pale by comparison.
It was inevitable—sparks either fizzled or they caught fire and burned you. It had happened to Mom after twenty-five years and it had happened to Darcy, too.
No place on Earth would be far enough to run to escape that sort of pain, to start over. Not as long as there were stars in the sky and a moon over her head. She and Elle would look up at that same sky every night and no amount of distance would ever be enough to m
ake her forget what the moon looked like reflecting off Elle’s features. How it made Darcy feel like anything was possible.
Darcy curled her arms tighter around herself, going numb and not just from the cold. “I don’t know. I’ve got my FSA exam—”
“In a couple weeks. What about after that?”
After that. Next month and the next—long-term plans. One day she’d find herself so wrapped up in Elle that when the inevitable happened, there’d be no such thing as a clean break. When she lost Elle, she’d lose part of herself, too. Something she’d sworn never to do.
“I don’t know, Elle. I don’t . . . I didn’t plan for any of this, I wasn’t looking for this. I didn’t want this.”
Elle’s expression soured, lips folding in, chin quivering before she rolled her shoulders back and stood a little straighter. “Sorry to wreck your perfect plans by having feelings.”
Apparently she was not numb enough because Elle’s words stung like a paper cut, not deep but unexpected. A jagged ambush that sliced open the surface of her skin, proving how easy it was for Elle to hurt her without much effort. Darcy wasn’t a robot, she wasn’t unfeeling, not like Elle made it sound. She felt . . . God, she felt and sometimes she wished she didn’t. Wished she could turn it all off because she felt too much.
She gulped down a breath of cold air and watched as her ragged exhale fogged in front of her face. “That’s not fair.”
Elle’s eyes squeezed shut. Her front teeth sank into her lower lip and her nails bit into the skin of her upper arms. She sniffed hard and opened her eyes. Glassy and damp, moisture clung to her lashes.
Darcy’s chest panged. She’d put that look on Elle’s face and it wasn’t what she wanted. None of this was going the way she’d wanted.
“Not fair?” A watery laugh spilled from Elle’s lips as a single tear slipped from the corner of her eyes, tracking down her cheek, and with it, glitter. One sparkling tear track. “What’s not fair is that you had me going. For a minute there, I hoped”—Elle’s throat bobbed and her voice cracked—“we could have something real.”
Written in the Stars Page 25