Bad Bachelor

by Stefanie London

“Look, you said before you wanted to create something to help women be informed. I get that. But this thing has taken on a life of its own.” He curled his hands over the edge of his knees. “Don’t you see how this kind of thing is ripe for abuse? An algorithm can only do so much. I know that I haven’t slept with all the women who’ve put a review on my profile. That isn’t giving people the truth.”

  “It’s better than nothing,” she said earnestly. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to pin your hopes on someone only to find out they’ve been going behind your back?”

  “I do.” He nodded. “Not in a romantic sense, but I know what it’s like to love someone and have them walk out on you without warning.”

  She drew her bottom lip between her teeth and worried it back and forth. For a moment he thought she might cave, that perhaps his appeal had hit its mark.

  “I can’t, Reed. I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “This whole thing is too important to take down. I see comments on the app every day of women thanking me for giving them a fighting chance to protect their hearts. I can’t let that go.”

  “Originally I came here to tell you to take down my profile and all the articles about me.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I was going to threaten to release your identity to the public. People are very interested to know who’s behind Bad Bachelors.”

  She stared at him, eyes wide. “You wouldn’t.”

  He wanted to. God, how he wanted to. But doing that would be the final nail in the coffin of him ever having a chance with Darcy.

  You sent her away. You ended it. This should be the perfect solution to make sure it stays ended.

  But the truth was, he didn’t know if he could go on like this. The night after their chat, he’d gone home and drowned his sorrows in a bottle of tequila Gabriel would not have endorsed. It’d burned a fiery path down the back of his throat on the first shot. But each subsequent glass had made it easier, and eventually, he’d stopped feeling anything at all. Since then, food had lost its taste and he hadn’t left the office before midnight to avoid being home alone. Correction—to avoid a pathetic drive past her house to see if she was okay.

  If he turned on Annie now, he wouldn’t have a hope in hell of getting her back.

  Why the hell would she take you back? You have nothing to offer her—there’s no white picket fence, no big, soppy declaration of love.

  Love. It was something he’d feared like a monster under his bed. Ever present. Waiting for the moment to strike. In his mind, love equaled vulnerability, which equaled pain. Abandonment. Hopelessness.

  “If you ever really cared about Darcy, you wouldn’t do that.” Annie’s nostrils flared, panic glimmering in her eyes.

  “I do care about her. Present tense.” There it was, cards on the table. She’d won; he’d lost. “I care about her very much.”

  He was about to pass up the one possible solution to his problem—without being able to expose Annie, he had nothing. No way of erasing the reviews, no way of getting anything else but Bad Bachelors to come up when people searched for his name. No way to redeem himself with his clients.

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Then how could you have said what you did?”

  He wanted a hole to open up under his feet and suck him down into the bowels of hell. It was all he deserved for the way he’d behaved. His father’s situation wasn’t an excuse. The stress with his job wasn’t an excuse. Through it all, she’d been a source of light. The bright spot in his week.

  And he’d thrown it back in her face by telling her that she wasn’t good enough. Asshole.

  “I can’t justify it.” He raked a hand through his hair. “She got too close and I got scared. I lashed out, simple as that.”

  If only it were as simple to reverse. That night after, he’d gone to visit his dad and had screwed up further by spilling the whole stupid incident to the old man. Adam had chewed him out in a way he hadn’t experienced since he was a teenager.

  It dawned on Reed at some point around three o’clock in the morning that ending things with Darcy had been a unique experience. With her, he’d had to lie about how he felt to break things off. Usually, the truth about his disinterest did the work for him.

  “Well done, you’ve admitted to acting like a man-child. So what?”

  “I want to make it up to her.” He dug his hand into the pocket of his suit pants and pulled out the crumpled piece of paper. “I sat there”—he pointed to the stools along the edge of the café’s countertop—“and wrote this before I had any idea you were connected. I can’t control what you believe, but I swear I regret hurting her more than I regret any of the other stupid things I’ve done in my life.”

  He waited for the pain and embarrassment to rise up, for some recognition of the risk he’d taken in baring himself to someone who had the power to use it against him. But it didn’t come. In fact, the imaginary weight around his neck lightened, allowing him to drag more air into his lungs than he’d been able to in days.

  Annie took the paper from him, her expression hesitant. As she scanned the letter, her lips quirked. “This is terrible. You know that, right?”

  “I’m aware it’s not Pulitzer-worthy,” he ground out. “But it’s honest.”

  She stared at him for a long moment, the pause stretching out until he felt compelled to break the silence. But when he opened his mouth, she held up a hand. “You came here to threaten me today. Are you still planning on going through with that?”

  He pictured Darcy’s sweet face, her sharp, blue-eyed gaze, and that snarky, perfect mouth.

  “No,” he said. If there was any chance at all Darcy might forgive him, he wasn’t going to ruin it by feeding her friend to the wolves…no matter how much satisfaction it would give him personally. He would have to fix things at work the old-fashioned way—by putting his head down and hoping his work would speak for itself. “I’m not.”

  “I’m still not going to help you,” she said. “I won’t take your profile down or the articles. They bring in huge traffic for my site.”

  “Fine.” He stood and grabbed the letter from her hands, shoving it into his pocket. “Don’t remove anything. But I am going to apologize to Darcy, and if by some small miracle she decides to give me a second chance, you’d better not interfere. I’m sure you’re going to tell her Bad Bachelors is your site at some point in the future.”

  Annie’s lips tightened. “Of course I’m going to tell her…in the future.”

  “Do the right thing,” he said. “And so will I.”

  * * *

  Darcy walked the length of the table displaying the silent auction lots. Reed had outdone himself. They’d secured the garden pavilion at the Bryant Park Grill, right next to the New York Public Library, which was fitting. The outdoor area had been decorated with fairy lights that mimicked the glow of the city towering around them. It was glamorous but cozy. There was an air of romance about it with the majestic, old building behind them and Bryant Park stretched out in front.

  Of course, it was still bigger than Ben-Hur and packed to the brim with important-looking people in expensive-looking outfits. At one point, Remi and Annie—who’d come along for moral support—had declared they were going to sit on the floor and “shoe watch” for the rest of the night. But there was an intimacy here that made her realize that, despite his faults, Reed was very good at his job.

  There was a dessert table set up with small cakes in the shape of books, all iced in different colors with classic titles piped in precision frosting text. They’d covered all the big names—Hardy, Poe, Twain, Tolkien, Shelley. But they paled in insignificance to the centerpieces on each table, which were small stacks of color-coordinated books flanked by vases of flowers and tea-light candles in matching hues. Each place setting had personalized nameplates with a famous literary quote, including one that made her throat clench.

 
In the end, we all become stories.

  As much as she’d wanted to hate how he’d turned her small idea into something big and fancy, she had to admit it was breathtaking. The menu they’d selected together had been perfect—delicious and impressive, without being hard to eat. And she’d heard nothing but praise from her branch manager, who appeared to be having the time of her life.

  The lots for the auction were lined up along a table covered in a white cloth, with a piece of paper sitting in front of each one. They had a few beautiful pieces of jewelry from local artists, vouchers to a fancy hair salon, and tickets to a Broadway show. Plus, Reed had convinced Dave Bretton to auction off a personalized critique for any budding writers in the room, as well as a few advanced copies of his next book with the opportunity to have Dave sign them at the end of the night.

  He must have leaned on the agent as well, because there was a basket of goodies from Dave’s publisher that included some more sought-after advanced releases. Darcy wouldn’t mind getting her hands on that particular lot, though she doubted her wallet could compete with anyone else’s in the room. But she jotted her name and a paltry dollar amount down on the bidding sheet anyway.

  “Got your eye on something?” Reed’s voice startled her and she jumped.

  “Way to sneak up on the guests, creep-o.”

  Damn it. So far she’d managed to avoid him all night, slipping between clusters of people whenever her radar picked him up. Remi had run interference on a few occasions, but now her wing-ladies were nowhere to be seen.

  Just freaking perfect.

  The last thing she needed was to have a meltdown in front of a crowd. And, if the last week was anything to go on, she’d lost her ability to keep the waterworks under control along with any budding hope that perhaps falling for Reed wasn’t the biggest, stupidest mistake of her life.

  Yeah, she fell for him. Hard. The one guy in the city who could only be counted on to walk away. The one guy who was so bad, his Bad Bachelors profile practically said You will get hurt. If that wasn’t proof she had a death wish for her heart…

  “Can’t you even look at me?” he said.

  He was standing close, the shadow of his nearness causing her to both recoil and gravitate toward him. Her mind screamed at her to run, but her heart—her stupid, stupid heart—tugged her closer. This was the limbo created by her poor judgment.

  “What do you want, Reed?” She turned to him, determined to prove she was the bigger person. That she’d moved on.

  God, why did he have to look so damn good in a tuxedo? His hair was mussed just so, his bow tie perfectly knotted at the base of his neck. Her hands itched to smooth over the silky lapels on his jacket, to graze the mother of pearl buttons that formed a line down his chest.

  “This is your event, I wanted to make sure you’re happy with how it turned out.” His dark eyes simmered with things unspoken.

  “This is your event.” She waved her hand, gesturing at the room around them. “Can’t you tell? I don’t really fit this scene, do I?”

  Hurling his words back at him should have been more satisfying. But the tightness in his jaw and the bob of his Adam’s apple only made her want to cry—and maybe scream until her throat was raw.

  “Darcy.” He reached out to touch her, but she flinched and pulled away. “I know you hate me right now, but I want to apologize. Can we talk after this is all over?”

  “You’ve talked enough.” Her voice betrayed her by wobbling, the threat of tears evident in her high, uneven pitch.

  “Please.”

  If she didn’t know him any better, she might have said he looked sincere. His dark, heavy brows were crinkled above worried eyes. His full lips were downturned, his jaw muscles tight and twitching.

  “I need to set things right.” He rocked back on his heels. “It’s been eating me alive, how we ended things.”

  She wanted to correct him, because he’d ended things. “It’s hard to end something that hasn’t started.”

  “You said this wasn’t just sex.” He stepped forward, and she pressed back against the auction table. “That we had something more.”

  “Consider it a moment of delusion and the product of reading too many Jane Austen novels.” She swallowed, her breath stuttering in her throat. “I was mistaken.”

  “No, you weren’t.” He placed his hand on her bare arm, but she brushed it away. “I was an idiot. A frightened, cowardly idiot.”

  “We were both idiots.” The table pressed into her butt, and she curled her hands around the soft, linen-covered edge, squeezing until her fingers ached. She needed to remember the pain he’d caused her. “I knew you were bad news, yet I didn’t listen to that little voice.”

  “What little voice?”

  “The one in the back of my head that told me you’d chew me up and spit me out.” Her throat closed around the words. “I knew you’d hurt me, yet I walked straight into the flames without any protection.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “Darcy, I’m sorry.”

  “Save it.” Her eyes flicked to the front of the room, where her boss had stepped up to a small podium at the front of the room. “I think it’s your time to shine.”

  Chapter 25

  Thank you all for coming. On behalf of the Hawthorne Public Library, I’d like to extend our deepest gratitude for your attendance at this event. Your generosity is going to affect real change for the local community, meaning that kids in the area will have access to important after-school programs, and a wider variety of learning technologies and skill-development initiatives.

  When I took on the task of organizing this fundraiser, I was ignorant about the importance of libraries and the people who work in them. Naively, I assumed that the internet had made them redundant. But I was proven wrong by an incredibly special librarian who, upon first meeting me, told me I was in need of a book on etiquette and manners. Truer words have never been spoken…

  Darcy braced her hands around the edge of the sink, her breath coming in great gasping lungfuls. The reflection in front of her was a sorry state—red-rimmed eyes, smudged mascara, a deep furrow in the center of her forehead. Hardly glamorous enough to be in the restroom of such a place, let alone rubbing elbows with New York’s rich and philanthropic.

  “Are you okay?” Annie and Remi stood on either side of her, Annie rubbing soothing circles on her back.

  “It’s this dress,” Darcy lied. “It’s too tight.”

  The slinky, beaded slip clung to her waist, but it was far from the reason for her hiding in the restroom.

  “So it had nothing to do with Reed’s speech?” Remi said.

  Goddamn Reed. The second her boss had called him forward to make a speech, she should have run. But no, she had to torture herself by watching the whole room swoon at his feet while he told some bullshit story about how organizing this fundraiser had changed him. Made him a better man.

  Why did he have to drag her into it?

  He hadn’t spilled the beans about their nonrelationship, but he had talked about how she’d impacted his life and shown him what community and support was all about. Then he’d deftly linked it back to the library’s values before handing it off to Dave Bretton who’d, thankfully, remained sober enough to deliver a speech that had the audience in peals of laughter. Not that Darcy had stayed. As soon as Reed had made a move to leave the podium, she’d hightailed it to the ladies’ restroom. Remi and Annie had burst in a second later.

  “Why would his speech affect me?” She willed her heart to start beating at its normal rate, instead of trying to punch its way out of her chest. “He’s saying whatever will make people fork over their money.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Remi said. “He seemed sincere.”

  “The man doesn’t have a sincere bone in his body,” Darcy retorted. But instead of sounding tough and strong, her lower lip tremble
d, and she had to fight the urge to throw a fist at her reflection.

  Why do you always pick the wrong men?

  “You should talk to him,” Annie said, almost as if she begrudged giving the advice. “Hear what he has to say.”

  “I was under the impression you thought he was the spawn of Satan.” Darcy looked up, pressing a hand over her stomach to try to soothe the churning there.

  “Maybe there’s more to him than meets the eye,” she said cryptically.

  “I doubt it. I think Bad Bachelors hit the nail on the head, and I was too stupid to listen to what they had to say.” She glanced at her reflection again and cringed. “I look like something the cat dragged in.”

  “No you don’t.” Remi pulled a cotton swab out of her tiny evening bag and swiped it under Darcy’s eyes to clean up her mascara. “You look like an accomplished woman who made her library thirty thousand dollars.”

  Darcy blinked. “Really?”

  “You ran out of the room before they announced that bit.” Annie gave her arm a squeeze. “And that was just from the ticket prices and Dave Bretton’s personal donation.”

  “He donated money as well?”

  “Apparently, Reed twisted his arm,” Remi said with a smile. “By the time they close the silent auction, it could be fifty thousand or more.”

  It was a great outcome, money the library desperately needed, and she’d get to tell Lily they could have her creative writing program back. She should be over the moon.

  “It was all Reed,” Darcy said, shaking her head. “I wanted to have some Podunk-style thing in the library itself. Probably would have scraped in five hundred bucks at most.”

  Okay, so he was good at his job. So what? The guy was still a commitment-phobic jerk.

  Yes, you hate him so much. So why did you run out of that room like some drama llama?

  She didn’t want to see Reed being humble and kind, because that would only make it harder. As it was, each night since she’d fled his office had been increasingly painful. Her body craved his, which was bad enough. But her stupid, stupid heart craved him as well.