4. Chapter 3 #2
My last boyfriend, according to my mother, was a “perfect match.” Which basically meant he was boring, predictable, and safe.
Beck is none of those things, and that’s exactly why he’s dangerous.
I increase my pace.
Purely for assessment purposes, and absolutely not to make him sweat more.
“So,” he says, somehow still talking. “I’ve been thinking.”
“That must have been unsettling.”
“It was awful. But I pushed through.” He adjusts his stride until he is running close enough that his arm brushes mine. “If you’re auditing my life, I should be allowed to audit yours. You know, get to know each other a bit better.”
"No, that's absolutely not happening."
“Question one. Who is your emergency contact?”
“I’m not participating in this.”
The boardwalk curves around a row of pastel beach cottages, their balconies dripping with hot-pink flowers while sprinklers splash over tiny strips of green lawn.
“Interesting… Subject has a refusal to cooperate.” Beck raises an imaginary clipboard between us as a cyclist shoots around the corner without warning, bell chiming as he squeezes between us. “Concerning. Possible daddy issues.”
“My mother,” I say, cutting him a look. "She would be my emergency contact."
“Your mom is your emergency contact?”
“Well, yeah. She gave birth to me. It seems appropriate.”
“Does she live nearby?”
“Sort of.”
“How far away?”
“Los Angeles.”
Beck turns his head, staring at me over the rim of his sunglasses. “Your emergency contact lives how many hours drive from here?”
“There are airplanes.”
“If you get hit by a bus, is she supposed to catch the next flight and reverse it?”
“Well lucky I don’t plan on getting hit by a bus.”
“Nobody plans to get hit by a bus, Darcy." He says it while wiping the sweat from his forehead with his forearm. The movement pulls every muscle in his stomach tight. "That’s why buses remain such a popular mode of transport.”
I give him a flat look and push faster, but he stays beside me with irritating ease.
“Question two,” he continues. “Who has a spare key to your apartment?”
“The building manager.”
“That's not a person. That's a policy put in place to protect landlords.”
“He could open the door if I lost my key though, couldn't he?”
“Yeah, but he’s not going to water your plants or hide evidence. Question three… you get arrested, and you get one phone call. Who's picking up?"
"I'm not going to get arrested."
"Again, nobody plans to get arrested, Darcy. That's the entire business model of jail."
I hate that I almost laugh, so I kill it before it reaches my face.
"Question four. Who sends you the best memes? The ones that make you laugh the most?"
"No one. I was raised to believe memes are an inefficient use of one's time."
Beck stops dead. I make it another few steps before realising he is no longer beside me and turn around to find him standing in the centre of the boardwalk, hands planted on his hips, looking genuinely appalled.
"Take that back," he says, without taking his horrified gaze off me. "I sent Mason memes at two in the morning last night. He always responds. It's called connection."
"It's called so that's why you were late this morning?"
He stares at me for another long second, then jogs forward until he catches up.
"This audit is going worse than I expected," he mutters, shaking his head like I'm the one being unreasonable. "Yet somehow, I'm the one being sent to the team psych for therapy sessions."
"That was a team decision. You can't blame me for that."
"A team decision that conveniently happened right after you handed in a report calling me unstable."
"I submitted a data-backed performance evaluation to the coaching staff."
He waves a hand. "Same thing."
By the time we hit the twenty-minute mark, the joke is firmly on me.
Beck’s breathing may be theatrical enough to qualify for community theatre, but his pace never slips.
He matches every increase I throw at him, long strides eating up the boardwalk while the muscles across his back flex beneath a growing layer of sweat.
Even after two sprint intervals I do purely to test him, his heart rate drops faster than yesterday’s data suggests it should.
Which is irritating.
Useful, professionally.
But mostly irritating.
My watch vibrates against my wrist as we round the curve toward a quieter stretch of beach, where the morning sun has turned the sand into crushed diamonds. The ocean looks too blue to be real.
“Recovery walk,” I say, slowing my stride.
“Thank Christ.” Beck presses a hand to his chest. “I was moments away from seeing the light.”
Our breathing gradually settles, and without discussing it, we both drift toward the weathered wooden railing that separates the boardwalk from the stretch of beach below us.
I lean against it, the worn wood smooth beneath my palms.
The beach itself is nearly empty except for a lone jogger in the distance and a couple walking hand-in-hand at the water's edge.
Beck settles beside me at the railing, close enough that I can feel the warmth radiating from his skin. For a moment, we just stand there in silence, watching the world wake up around us, our post-run buzz making everything feel perfectly suspended in time.
Then his voice changes.
“Okay,” he says. “Last question, and I promise, it's the easiest one. Something good happens, like, the best news of the whole year. Who’s the first person you call?”
The waves fill the silence.
And my brain… comes up empty.
"Maybe Josie?" I finally admit, wincing as the image of her face in yesterday's meeting creeps in behind my eyes. "At least… she was becoming that."
Beck's eyebrows climb above his sunglasses. "Was?"
"Yeah. I'm pretty sure she's furious with me." I sigh into the breeze. “She thinks I blindsided everyone with the trade recommendation. And objectively, I suppose she has grounds for that conclusion.”
“Objectively,” Beck repeats. “Is that how the Madden family apologizes? You send people a report?”
“I haven’t apologised.”
There is no grin now, no theatrical outrage. Just Beck, listening.
“I’ve always been taught to keep work and friendships separate,” I continue. “In my family, mixing personal feelings with professional decisions is how mistakes happen.”
“Wow. The Maddens sound fun.”
I give him a look. “Have you met me?”
His mouth twitches.
I tighten my grip on the railing. “When your family name is lit up above luxury hotels, people don’t always want to know you because they like you.
At boarding school, girls wanted invitations to my mother’s events or weekends at one of our resorts.
One of my boyfriends asked whether my family could upgrade his parents’ anniversary suite before he asked what I wanted for my birthday. ”
Beck winces. “Please tell me you dumped him.”
“Nah. I just charged him the standard room rate.”
“That’s my girl.”
I ignore the warmth that slides through me. “Eventually, I learned that friendship usually comes with a catch.”
“But Josie didn’t.”
“No.”
She had simply appeared beside me one afternoon with two coffees and announced that if I was going to glare at Declan’s statistics for another hour, I should at least hydrate properly while doing it.
“She never wanted anything from me,” I say. “She just… liked me.”
“So you had one real friend in Beachside,” he says slowly, “and then you recommended trading her boyfriend's brother?”
“I was doing my job.”
“And so is she.”
I cut him a glare. “Whose side are you on?”
“Mine. Always.” The grin finally returns, sunlight catching in his eyes and making them sparkle. “But my side currently benefits from you being emotionally unstable and desperate enough to keep at least one Morrison-adjacent person in your life.”
“I am not emotionally unstable.”
“Your emergency contact lives miles away, your building manager has your spare key, and nobody sends you memes.” He lifts his invisible clipboard again. “Darcy Madden, your social audit is catastrophic.”
"Gee. Thanks."
He bumps his shoulder against mine, light enough to tease as we turn around to begin stretching before the run back.
“Well, Spreadsheet. At least now you have someone to call if you get arrested.”
I glance over at him. “You?”
“Obviously.”
“I'm fairly sure you're significantly more likely to be arrested with me.”
“Exactly. Then you won’t have to waste that call on anyone.
” His grin is bright, careless and completely impossible to resist. “Now come on.” Beck pushes away from the railing and starts jogging backward in front of me.
“You promised me breakfast, and Goldie’s cinnamon-roll pancakes are an essential part of my recovery plan. ”
“I promised you absolutely nothing.”
“You scheduled me before sunrise. Breakfast is damages.”
He spins around and takes off toward the warm glow of Goldie’s, where trays of delicious cinnamon rolls are no doubt appearing behind the glass.
“Try to keep up, Spreadsheet!”
“I’m the one assessing your speed!”
“Then you should probably stop ogling my ass!”
He looks back at me over one broad, sunlit shoulder, and God help me, he's right. I am. Those joggers are clinging to him in a way that is going to require my own personal review in my office later today.
"For the record," he calls, "you can look. I'm extremely comfortable being objectified before breakfast."
"I was assessing your posture!"
"You were assessing my ass, and I want that on the report."
I chase after him along the boardwalk with the sun coming up over the water, and for the first time since Josie called our friendship a temporary ceasefire, I feel myself smile so wide it aches.
Which is a catastrophe.
Because in seven weeks, I have to stand in a room full of men who already suspect I'm only here because of my surname. I have to tell them the numbers haven't changed.
Because I’m Darcy Madden, and I don’t get to make mistakes.
Especially not one with blue eyes, a filthy mouth, and a habit of making me forget why I’m supposed to say no.