Quinn put down her fork and grimaced in sympathy. “Darcy…” The pity in her voice trailed off, and it killed Darcy.
“I’ve invested so much of my life in him, and he doesn’t even know it. But the worst is he hasn’t done the same for me even on a small scale. I bet you he doesn’t know my birthday or know what my favorite color is. That I can’t sit through a horror movie preview at the theater without getting scared. That my parents were horrible fucks who would rather spend what little money we had to get high than feed their daughter. You would think in all the years that we were BFFs, he would have fucking asked. I think that’s what finally made me break.”
Quinn nodded in understanding. “I know it doesn’t feel like it now, but I think it’s a good thing you finally got it out.”
She was right. It didn’t feel remotely like a good thing. Not even close. Instead it felt like Darcy had just ruined her friendship with Sean beyond repair.
“How am I going to face him again? What the hell do I say to him? I’m going to have to work with him. It’s not like I can avoid this forever.”
“Has he called since last night?”
Darcy shook her head. “I told him not to call or text.” She’d worked up the nerve to check her phone after she got out of the shower, and there had been no missed calls or texts. Even though she’d told him not to, she’d still kind of hoped he would have tried.
“Sean is probably just as anxious about all this as you are. You’re really important to him. A blind man could see that. He knows your heart is involved. All we can do is hope he does the right thing, and he’s careful with it.”
Chapter 11
It was dark by the time Quinn and Darcy left the bistro. This time of year, it didn’t stay light very long. And as soon as the sun set, twilight turned nippy.
Darcy angled the car’s heating vent upwards. The surge of warm air felt nice against her face. She was worn out even though she’d just woken up a few hours before. Emotional shit storms had a way of doing that to a girl.
Quinn had suggested honesty was the best policy and that when Darcy got a chance to talk with Sean again, she could always approach it with the truth. That was so much easier said than done. Luckily, she’d have some time to think of what to say to him.
“I hope he just ignores it,” Darcy said. “Forgets everything I said and acts like it didn’t happen.”
Quinn pulled onto their street. “And then you would wonder every time you looked at him whether or not he was remembering what you said. The best thing to do is have it out with him. You need to talk about this.”
“You say it like it’s as simple as … I don’t know, breathing or something.”
“I’m not saying it’s simple. Depending on how he reacts to all this, it could be awkward. But I can’t see Sean making this hard on you. I’m sure he’s sitting at home right now trying to wrap his brain around this.”
“Right,” Darcy scoffed. “More like wrapping some blonde’s legs around his waist.”
“Why do you always say stuff like that about him? I’ve never seen him act that way.”
“I’ve known him longer than you,” Darcy muttered. Wasn’t the friend code to always agree with what the other friend said in times of crisis?
“And your judgment is clouded.”
“No, it’s not.”
Yes, it actually was. But she wasn’t gonna tell Quinn that.
Darcy closed her eyes and leaned her head against the passenger-side window. The night air chilled the glass, and it felt good against her forehead that was all of a sudden too warm. Quinn slowed down to make the turn into their apartment’s side lot.
She had to admit she felt slightly better than she had since waking up and being faced with the dreadful recollection of the night before. She wasn’t used to this talking-about-her-feelings thing, but she had to admit that her roommate was pretty good at it. Even if she defended Sean a little too much for Darcy’s liking.
“It looks like we both were wrong,” Quinn said softly.
Darcy kept her eyes closed, slowly drifting closer to sleep. “Wrong about what?”
“About what Sean is doing tonight.”
Darcy looked over at her roommate, following Quinn’s gaze out the front windshield. She froze when she saw Sean sitting on the front step in the building’s dimly lit entryway, his arms hanging off his knees as he watched them pull in.
“Oh, God, no,” she whispered. Her heart rate instantly woke her from any ideas of slumber. “I’m not ready. Quinn, I’m not ready!”
“What do you want me to do? Drive away? He’s looking right at you.”
Jesus Christ. She hadn’t prepared what she wanted to say… how she wanted to say it. If it were possible to fuck up this situation even more than it already was, she would undoubtedly find a way to do it.
“Shit,” she moaned, looking helplessly down at her lap.
“He obviously has something he wants to say to you, Darcy. And he’s come all this way to say it.”
She’d told him not to call or text her. She hadn’t said not to come visit. She highly preferred a phone call to a surprise meeting.
Since when did Sean fucking follow instructions?
“Just talk to him,” Quinn urged. “I’ll go hang out at Jessi’s until you call and give me the okay to come home.”
Shadows hid his painfully handsome face, but she could feel his eyes on her. With one final desperate look at her roommate, Darcy opened the door and slipped out of the car.
She walked the short distance across the parking lot, feeling like she balanced precariously on a tight rope that hung between them. She watched the tips of her shoes, keeping her gaze averted but feeling his eyes on her the whole time. Darcy heard Quinn’s car pull out of the parking lot, the engine winding up, then fading away as it turned onto the main street behind her.
Her entire body pulsed with anxiety, her blood creating friction as it raced through her veins. Her body temperature must have risen by a few degrees.
Sean unfolded his tall, lean frame to his full height, pulling her eyes to him. He wasn’t dressed for the cooler night temperature in his threadbare long-sleeve black Henley and jeans. He arched his back in a slight stretch. Sitting on that cold cement step had likely stiffened his back, not to mention cramped his long legs.
He silently watched her stop in front of him, not giving away any clues to how this conversation was going to go. She smelled a hint of something clean and woodsy, although she knew it wasn’t his aftershave, since she could see the faint texture of a five-o’clock shadow on his jaw.
The cool air against her flushed skin made her shiver, and Darcy pulled the sides of her jacket tighter around her middle. She wanted to be anywhere other than where she stood.
Time stretched on for what seemed like years. If one of them didn’t break the silence soon, they were never going to get this goddamn conversation over with.
“Are we just gonna stare at each other all night?” she asked without lifting her gaze from her feet.
Sean tightened his fingers, causing the key ring wrapped around his thumb to sway. The motion caught her attention and held it.
“We could if you would actually look at me.”
She slowly raised her gaze to his face. Even serious or pissed off or whatever he was, he still made her heart skip a beat. Even without the boyish grin and the dancing eyes, Sean still was devastatingly handsome.
God, life wasn’t fair.
His hair fell over his forehead in golden disarray as if he’d run his fingers through it several times. His eyes focused on her, and it made her so itchy she wanted to crawl out of her skin.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped around him toward the door. “Let’s go upstairs. You must be freezing.”
He followed her silently all the way up the stairs. Their heavy footsteps on the unpolished wooden steps echoed inside the dim and murky stairway.
Darcy kept her eyes trained directly in front of her, thanking
her lucky stars that her button-down shirt was long enough to cover her ass under her much shorter leather jacket. She felt stupid for being presumptuous that Sean would be looking anywhere near her ass, but it was a long way up to the top floor, and it was directly at his eye level.
When they’d finally made it inside her apartment, he closed the door behind them. She threw her keys on the foyer table and her jacket over the back of an armchair. She leaned over to turn on a lamp, which cast a dim golden hue throughout the room.
“You want something to drink?” she offered, hoping to postpone the conversation.
“No, I’m good.”
Sean stood halfway into the living room. In her periphery, she could see he still watched her closely. Fuck, she was at a loss for words. When words failed, sarcasm and snarkiness usually came to the rescue. But not now. Picking the right words seemed pretty goddamn important at the moment. Sean beat her to the punch.
“So given that I couldn’t get my mouth to work last night after you hurled insults, accusations, and other shocking things at me, I’m sure it’s probably not a big surprise that I have quite a few things to say to you.”
Darcy nodded, smoothing out the folds in her jacket over the chair.
His voice was low and steady. His calmness made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Even when Sean was angry, which wasn’t very often, he was animated and loud. Darcy had no idea what his lack of emotion meant, but she didn’t like it.
“I went to your hotel last night,” he began. “I asked the guy behind the front desk if he would give me your room number. When he turned as white as a ghost at the mention of your name, I had the sneaking suspicion he’d run into you earlier. Just to be sure, I described you. About yay high,” he said, leveling his hand at just above his shoulder. “Dark hair, pale white skin. Looks like she could lay siege to an entire Viking village. Imagine my surprise when the guy told me you’d checked out.”
Still pretending her jacket was the most interesting thing she’d seen in days, she heard him shift as he walked a few steps closer to her. She was aware of his position like a tracking beacon.
“I figured you had maybe forty-five minutes on me, but with the way you drive, there was no way I’d catch up. You’re already a menace to society when you get behind the wheel, but as pissed off as you were last night, you were probably nearly home.”
She would have rebutted his smartass comment about her driving, but he was getting closer, and her heart crawled farther and farther up her throat, making speech impossible.
“So I left the hotel and went to my townhouse. I thought to myself that you wouldn’t be stupid enough to drive all the way to Providence with it being so late, and you would probably stop at your grandmother’s house. When I woke up this morning, I called Ewan to ask if he’d seen you. Again, imagine my surprise when he told me that your fair-haired roommate, whom he’s given his testicles to, mentioned that you had stumbled in here around two a.m.”
For the first time that night, his voice carried a hint of anger.
She hadn’t really planned out her hasty escape from Boston the night before. She’d wanted to put as much distance between herself and Sean as possible. It might not have been the smartest idea to drive all the way through to Providence, but what did he care that she got in so late?
He stopped a couple feet from her, and she risked a sidelong glance. He studied her like a science experiment.
“We have some things to talk about.”
She sighed. “Yeah, I guess we do. Listen—”
Sean held up his hand. “You had your turn. You’ve said your piece. You launched a grenade at me and ran away. Now it’s my turn.” His matter-of-fact tone hadn’t changed, but it was laced with just enough irritation she knew that she had better shut her mouth.
“What happened on that stage last night? Why were you terrified?”
She blinked in surprise. She would have thought he’d have started with her confession of undying love. For a split second, hope blossomed that maybe he hadn’t heard that part.
“It’s a long story,” she said, sitting in the armchair.
She motioned to the sofa for him to sit. He settled himself on the couch with the grace of a big cat and leaned back into the cushions. But there was nothing about his posture that was relaxed.
She hated talking about this part of her life. She used to be embarrassed by her dismal childhood situation, but now it just made her angry. Angry that two adults could be so incredibly irresponsible. Angry that she’d let things get so bad before she’d left.
One might think that ten years old was too young to make a solo Greyhound bus trip. Darcy would argue that she’d had to grow up a lot faster than other kids her age. She’d gladly have kept this story from Sean for as long as possible, but she’d rather talk about it than her declaration of love.
“The short of it is my parents were alcoholics and drug addicts. They made me sing on street corners for money.”
Sean’s jaw tightened.
She’d started singing when she was three. Darcy hadn’t minded much until she got to be old enough to realize that singing to tourists and having druggie parents weren’t normal things. The other kids at school weren’t skipping meals or eating canned tuna every night. They didn’t even have a goddamn can opener. She had to carve a hole in the top of the can with a broken piece of rod iron she found in their building’s hallway.
Sean just stared at her, straight into her eyes. His were clouded with so many different emotions she didn’t want to see. Surprise, pity, anger. She pushed out of the chair and scooped up her jacket to hang in the closet, but Sean grasped her wrist gently.
“If I would have known, I never would have signed you up for that contest.”
Regret swirled in his eyes. And guilt.
“I know you wouldn’t have. Getting up on stage and singing stirred up a lot of shit. I said a lot of things I didn’t mean. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have yelled at you like I did.”
His grip tightened slightly. “What things didn’t you mean?”
Fuck.
“A lot of things,” she murmured, tugging her wrist from his grasp. “Like I said, my mind was all fucked up. You know how I get.”
As she hurried to the closet to find a hanger, he stood and moved around the side of the couch.
“You said a lot of things last night. Are you telling me you didn’t mean any of them?”
She had her back to him, but she could hear the aggravation in his question. “Mostly.”
Silence met her answer, and she couldn’t help but look over her shoulder to make sure he was still there. He was. And he stared at her through narrowed eyes.
“What about the part where you said you love me?”
Fuck.
She quickly turned her back to him again as she shut the closet door, hoping she was able to keep the panic from her face. She had no idea why he was pushing the matter.
“Oh. That part?”
“Yes, that part. Did you mean that part?” he asked dryly.
Hoping to ignore the giant white woolly mammoth in the room wasn’t going to work. She debated telling him the truth, which Quinn advised was the best policy. Instead, Darcy decided to take the easy way out. She’d stretch the truth as far as possible without actually telling the truth.
Facing him, she said, “Of course I love you, Sean. You’re one of my best friends.”
His eyes turned to slits. “Are we really gonna play this game?”
She put her hands up in the air as if he were holding her at gun point. “What do you want me to say?”
He crossed his arms in front of him, the motion pulling his shirt tighter across his chest. “I want you to tell me the truth.”
Okay, so she had stretched the truth as far as she could. It threatened to snap from the pressure, like a rubber band pulled to its max. Now she had no other choice: lie through her teeth.
“I told you I was upset last night. I shouldn’t have said
that. I didn’t mean it.”
A muscle twitched in the side of his jaw as his blue eyes darkened and pierced into her like shards of glass. “You’re seriously going to stand there and tell me you didn’t mean any of it?”
She closed her eyes, wishing he’d just drop the subject. Her heart squeezed at his angry, disbelieving tone.
Half of her wanted to tell him the truth. Let it be out in the open. But the other half wanted to say anything to get him to stop looking at her with his knowing, accusing stare. She wanted everything to go back to the way things used to be between them.
She had a horrible feeling that things would never be the same.
“I don’t believe you,” he growled.
Darcy’s head shot up to meet his dark glare as he started toward her. The tightness in his expression made her swallow involuntarily.
“Just forget I said anything,” she tried to demand, but her voice sounded more like a plea.
She backed up a fraction of an inch until her ass came in contact with the closet door.
“How can I just forget something like that?” he asked, his voice rising.
He stood directly in front of her, frustration marring his beautiful face. She bit her lip and dropped her chin, hoping her courage to finish this conversation wouldn’t completely desert her if she wasn’t looking directly at him.
“What if I don’t want to forget it?” he asked. Her eyes flew up to his so fast she couldn’t focus. He moved a step closer, the tips of their shoes touching. “Would you still say you didn’t mean it?”
What?
Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place. She was pinned between Sean’s long, lean body and a doorknob pressing into the small of her back.
Her heartbeat pounded in her ears as he braced his arms against the closet door on either side of her head. She pulled in a breath and held it. He watched her as he moved farther into her space, his nose stopping mere inches from her forehead.
Not In My Wildest Dreams (McKenna Series Book 2) Page 14