Chapter 58
Chapter Fifty-Eight
Darcy
I walked into the reception office at the travel agency where I worked, excited to get the notes for the client who’d booked me for a half-day private dive excursion. These were my favorite types of dives; without having a large group of people, I could focus solely on one or two clients, and sometimes the dives went so well that I managed to slip in a few bonus sites for them to check out and take pictures if they wanted.
I’d been living and working in Mexico for four months, and it had only taken two months for the company to entrust me with their VIP tours. That was an exciting validation of my hard work paying off and a constant reminder of how much I loved this job.
“Hey, Maria,” I said, greeting the office manager. “Is my guy here yet?”
“Right here,” I heard a voice that shook me to my core, taking me far too long to process what was happening.
Maria’s smile broadened with a flirty grin as I closed my eyes, being crushed under a wave of dread that I’d have to turn around eventually and face him.
There is no way this is happening, I thought, in equal parts fear and sudden frustration, not after all the work I’ve done to get over this man.
“Darcy?” I heard him say, confirming with his concerned voice that it was really Sebastian, the ghost of my haunted past.
Instead of succumbing to the emotions I felt bubbling to the surface, I steadied my mind and turned to embrace what may come once I saw his face again for the first time in eight months.
“What are you doing here?” I questioned, trying and failing to rein in my disgust and my fury that he had the audacity—the fucking nerve —to show up in my life again.
“I needed to talk to you,” he said, his face just as handsome—if not more—than I remembered.
He had a youthful glow of happiness I’d never seen before, and it was highly attractive, but God only knew what’d given it to him.
And who fucking cared?
“Lo siento, Maria,” I said to the woman whose mouth was agape, staring at what might well have been the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen. I couldn’t blame her for that; he really was a vision…one I wanted to kick in the nuts. “I need a minute to speak to Mr. Aster before the dive.” I turned to address Sebastian, “If you don’t mind, I’d rather go outside.”
I don’t know what possessed me to give this man five seconds of my time, let alone go outside to discuss anything with him, but here I was leading the fucking way.
“I’m looking forward to our dive excursion,” he said, and strangely enough, I caught a hint of nervousness in his voice.
“What do you want?” I asked, unsure what to say after all these months of deafening silence.
“Well, I paid for a dive?—”
“Knock it off, Sebastian,” I said. “Fine, you paid for a private dive with me. Good for you? Why are you here? Oh…” my eyes widened, realizing why most men booked solo dives while on vacation. “I’m sorry. It should’ve been more obvious. You’re booking a solo dive because your new bride is afraid to?—”
“I’m not married,” he said, confused.
“Then what are you doing here?”
“What do you think I’m doing here, Darcy?” he said, more agitated this time.
“Projecting your bullshit onto me,” I returned with just as much irritation as he’d used on me. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, which is why I’ve asked the question multiple times. What I do know is that it took me close to four months to stop waiting for you to pop back into my life and apologize for rudely vanishing on me?—”
“Darcy, I?—”
“I’m not finished,” I said. “So, don’t interrupt me.”
“You just interrupted me, like you always?—”
“I don’t care,” I said, seeing a glint of humor in his eyes that only pissed me off more. “You know what? It doesn’t matter. You can go on a private dive with Juan. He’s got the day off, but he loves extra hours, and I’m sure you’ll tip him well. Goodbye,” I said before the stabbing sensation in my chest could hurt any more than it already did.
“Darcy.”
He called, but I didn’t turn back to him.
“Darcy, please,” he said again, but I ignored the sadness in his voice.
“Darcel Kapok Burke,” he said with the same authority my mother would speak my name when I was in trouble and stomping off like a two-year-old.
My mouth dropped open, but I clamped it shut before I turned to face him. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction that I was planning to murder my mother for giving him my middle name, which was the only name more forbidden than my first name, both being words he should’ve never known.
“How the fuck do you know my?—”
“I find it fascinating that you didn’t tell me your mother gave you your second name after Darcel’s sibling. So, you are named after not one but two orphaned monkeys?”
“Cute,” I said, folding my arms. “My middle name is a tree native to Thailand. It’s called the Tree of Life because it keeps the local ecosystem alive. Nice try, though.”
“Are you sure?” he answered. “Tina told me it was Darcel’s sister.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I shrugged. “Whether it’s a sister monkey or a damn tree, my mom was high out of her mind when she named me, much like she must’ve been when she felt the need to tell you about it, of all people.”
“Well, she told me back when we were still a couple,” he said, “so please don’t be upset with her. I think she believed I would propose and wanted me to use your full name.”
“That means nothing to me anymore,” I said.
“I wanted to apologize to you for how I left,” he said, getting right to his point.
“Apologize?”
“Yes, I’m sorry. I’m so desperately sorry, Darcy. I wasn’t thinking. I think I was just scared that I might?—”
“What, hurt me?” I snapped, cutting him off because I knew he hated it.
He smiled. “Yes,” he said with some relief in his voice.
“Well, how ironic that by attempting to avoid hurting me, you managed to obliterate my heart, you miserable fuck.”
“I know and?—”
“Do you know how many days and nights I wasted waiting for you to get over yourself and at least send me a text to give me some closure?”
“I, I guess—” he stammered. “I know that?—”
“One hundred and fifty-one days,” I said, intentionally cutting him off again, “I woke up and checked my fucking phone for something from you. One hundred and fifty-one days. Before I took a shower, ate lunch, ate dinner, and went to bed, I checked my fucking phone for something from you. I turned into a desperate idiot not just because I fell for you like a fucking glutton for punishment but because I so stupidly trusted that you wouldn’t hurt me. I believed you when you promised not to hurt me. I believed you.”
“I understand your?—”
“Not only did you hurt me, but you did it in one of the worst possible ways by walking out on me without an explanation, basically making me feel like used-up trash in the world of Sebastian Aster.”
“Fuck,” he growled, looking miserable from the inside out. “I’m so fucking sorry, Darcy. I wasn’t thinking.”
“That’s fairly obvious to everyone who knows about our short-lived romance,” I said, feeling no sympathy toward this man. “You weren’t thinking then, and you aren’t thinking now. But who cares? It was just the winery owner’s daughter, right?”
“That’s not true at all,” he said earnestly.
“You know what is true?” I questioned him. “That I’m finally happy. My life is so much better than it was even before you came into it, and now here you are to pull me back in just because you’re sorry? No. Fuck no. I will not hear a goddamn thing you have to say. You carelessly threw away everything we had, and for that, I won’t forgive you.”
That part was highly theatrical, and I knew it, but I was really trying to drive my point home.
“You’ve made your point clear,” he said.
“Good, then we’re done here,” I said, feeling quite happy that I didn’t cave in and take the man back for any reason, especially because he was sorry.
“I see you’re angry with me,” he said.
“I’m done with you,” I answered him. “I’ve been done with you for quite some time.”
“Well, I’m angry with you, too. I’m not done, though, but I’m still angry,” he said, stopping me, yet again, in my tracks.
“You? You are angry with me ?” I said in some weird, screechy tone.
“I am, and for the very same reasons you’re angry with me…or were angry up until you became done with me,” he said in a tone that prompted me to narrow my eyes at him.
“Pray tell, Mr. Aster,” I said, mimicking his stuck-up mom’s bullshit words. “Why could you possibly be angry with me?”
“You never called or texted me, either.”
“ Excuse me ?” I snapped.
“You returned my call and didn’t leave a message. I had no idea what to think,” he said.
“You’re not turning this on me,” I said, although I remembered what a chicken shit I was back then. Okay, fine. He wasn’t wrong. I’d known for a long time that things fell apart for many different reasons, one of them being that I didn’t speak up or stand up for myself and demand answers from him.
“We both did this and ruined a beautiful thing,” he said, echoing my internal sentiments.
“Well—”
“Don’t you dare say that I did it first,” he taunted with a hint of that damn bashful smile I’d missed for the last time four months ago.
“Well, I would be lying if I insisted that I wasn’t going to say that, wouldn’t I?”
“The Darcy I fell in love with would’ve called my ass out for not leaving her a message or returning her missed call. She wouldn’t have waited even half a day to do it, either.” His expression was a mixture of sorrowful repentance and hopeful pleading, like a dog who’d been punished and was slowly creeping up and wanting to be loved again. “I had no idea why you never called me back or texted. I thought you hated me by that time, which was why you left for Los Angeles before the grand reopening of the winery. Because the Darcy I met when I first came to the winery—the one who hated my guts and never wanted to see me again—wouldn’t hesitate to blow me off like that. You were so unhappy before you left, and I didn’t think there was any other way to interpret that.”
“Well, the Darcy you first met turned into a soft-hearted chicken shit who was afraid to lose you. If I’m honest, that alone should be the real reason not to forgive you.”
“That is something I truly have a hard time believing,” he half-smiled.
“Well, believe it because that’s why I never bothered to call back. Instead, I waited for you to realize how important I was to you rather than picking up the fucking phone and giving you hell. I mean, what the hell was I supposed to think? Not even the holidays prompted anything from you,” I said.
“I heard nothing from you?”
“Well, I guess this is just a circle of immature bullshit and detrimental miscommunication, prompting the doom of a relationship that probably never should’ve happened.”
“I don’t believe that,” he said, his brown eyes searching mine, probably looking to see if I still had a soul from the way I was treating him currently. “You saved my life and changed me for the better. I wouldn’t be the father or man I am today without your influence. I’m just sorry it took me hurting you to the point of never forgiving me for me to get that better version of myself.”
I stared quietly as he went on, letting my anger take a backseat as I listened.
“Darcy, I’ve desperately missed you. There were so many times I could not sleep at night, wondering what you were up to, who you were with, or how you were doing. It was like an endless reel running through my mind, knowing that you must’ve been so much happier with someone else than you ever could’ve been with me.”
“Why would you think I would be happy with anyone but you?”
“I just—I know how much I work. I can sometimes seem unreachable because I’ve buried myself in trying to solve a problem. All I could hear was Melissa’s constant criticism of me and how my distraction made her miserable and ruined her life,” he said. “I know it sounds like I’m blaming her, but I’m honestly not trying to. I just learned through this that I’d been projecting Melissa’s discontent with me onto you, assuming that you would feel the same, and I didn’t want to do that to you. You deserved so much more.”
“Don’t you think I would’ve vocalized that loudly to you?” I asked. “If I thought you were ruining my life or whatever, don’t you think I would’ve told you myself?”
“That is what I had to learn the hard way,” he said. “I was deciding things preemptively before you could express your feelings.”
“And what exactly did you decide on my behalf? You know, other than leaving me without an explanation?”
“That you wouldn’t want a life with a man like me,” he said in a way that sounded so sad that it made me want to throw my arms around him. I could almost feel the years of compounded pain that his wife’s comments had caused by insisting that he’d ruined her life.
“I knew who you were from the moment we met, so it’s not like I didn’t know what I was getting into. I used to call you the devil, for Christ’s sake.”
“I know that, but that was before we became serious,” he said.
“So, then tell me what you are terrified of that will ruin my life the way you apparently ruined your wife’s.”
“I’m always working, sometimes for months at a time. I have missed big occasions like birthdays over business transactions I had to be involved in, and I work long hours—” He stopped while I waited for him to finish. “Say something. The look on your face tells me I should just walk away and let you live your life without me.”
“The look on my face has to be one of disbelief,” I answered him, unable to even shake my head at how stupid his logic was. “To think any of those things are enough to ruin my life is ridiculous. Would it suck for you to miss the occasional special occasion? Yes. I can’t say I wouldn’t be disappointed with months’ long business trips and all that, and I know I would miss you like crazy, but it’s your job and who you are. If it’s what you love to do, then who am I to tell you to stop doing it? I’m more dumbfounded that your wife expected things to be different than I am by you assuming I didn’t know things would be that way. I can’t believe you’d think I would expect you to be the architect of my happiness or that I would judge you for continuing to live the way you always had. I wrote articles about you crazy billionaires, so of course I knew what I was signing up for. Why didn’t your late wife?”
“She was raised to support it,” he said, “but she wasn’t fond of putting that into practice. You said you didn’t expect me to be the architect of your happiness, and I suppose that is the crux of the issue. That is what Melissa expected, and I couldn’t deliver. Or maybe I wouldn’t deliver. Either way, the result was her unhappiness.”
“Well, I’m not her,” I said. “I’ve never expected you to bend to my will or change anything about yourself to make me happy. You being yourself is what makes me happy. I fell in love with you, knowing how dark and ugly it could get, and because I already loved myself, I wasn’t looking for that from anyone else. I didn’t need someone to entertain me or be at my side all day to validate my existence, nor would I have wanted that. I’m secure enough to know that, as long as we would’ve been doing what makes us happy, it would’ve only strengthened our relationship. I would’ve supported you in everything. I knew that was part of who you were, and I’m not in the business of changing people to make me selfishly happy.”
“Shit,” he said with remorse. “Titus was right.”
“Titus? Titus Hawk?” I questioned, my brain switching gears. “Is he the reason you’re here?”
“Part of it. Jim gave me your work info so I could hire you,” he smiled and shrugged. “But Titus was the one who knocked me upside my head and told me it was for you to decide whether you wanted a man like me. It wasn’t up to me to decide for you.”
“Funny, I didn’t have him pinned as a relationship expert,” I chuckled. “Funny that he has it more figured out than you do.” I rolled my eyes, knowing now that one of the most powerful men I knew was actually a major chicken shit, and because we were both too cowardly to communicate, we had lost what was most precious…each other.
“He thinks he does,” Sebastian said. “But if he hadn’t snapped me out of my pity party, I believe I would’ve gone the rest of my life believing I’d done you a favor by not putting you through a life with me.”
“Okay, let’s get this straightened out, shall we,” I said. “I will decide whether I want to be with you—wait, I did decide that, and that’s why I was. If—and I mean that if stronger than Titus’s left bicep—you ever feel that you need to protect me from you again, you will run that past me first and allow me to determine whether your fears and insecurities warrant my protection.”
“Titus’s left bicep?” he questioned, and I could only laugh because I honestly had no idea where that dumb analogy came from.
“Stay on point,” I said, snapping my fingers. “I’m serious. Now, I’m not jumping back into a relationship with you. If you and I really want this to work, maybe we can start this on a solid foundation and become friends first. That way, the next time one of us is too afraid to reach out to the other, at least an established friendship will make us both comfortable enough to know that we won’t instantly reject one another over a concern.”
“I agree,” he said with a warm and hopeful look in his eye.
“And no friends with benefits bullshit. The benefits are what started this whole shit show to begin with.”
“I agree with that, too,” he said. “I do have a request, though.”
“Yes, I will take you on your dive excursion. I won’t call Juan,” I said.
“Charlotte is here with me, and I would like her to meet you,” he said, and I looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“Sebastian, I’ve already met her. Granted, it was very brief because she was hiding behind the nanny, terrified of seeing you, but you managed to get her to say hi to me.”
“She doesn’t remember much of her trip to California. In fact,” he pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes, “I tried to make her excited about getting to meet my amazing, special friend, but I think I may have overshot the mark.”
He made a cringy face as I pondered what he was saying.
“So, wait. Is Charlotte speaking to you now? In sentences?”
“She’s three now, and her tutor gives her language lessons, among many things. It’s something Melissa put in place before she passed. It’s been working very well. She even speaks French.”
“So, she talks to you ? She was terrified of you last time.”
“I took your advice on how to form a loving bond with her,” he said with a glint of beautiful happiness and excitement in his eyes. “I took her to Disneyland Paris for her birthday, and we even went to the zoo.”
“This is impressive,” I answered. That behavior was a total turnaround from the man I remembered, who pushed back vehemently about doing those things with his daughter before we split. “And how did she like it? How did you like it?”
His bashful smile returned, and my heart swelled. I never expected this moment to come, but I welcomed it very much. My pain and the hurt from our silence was being replaced by the understanding that we’d both fucked this up. I was grateful we could both recognize our part in where things went wrong so we wouldn’t make the same idiotic mistakes again.
“I loved watching her smile and hearing her laugh. It was worth the price of admission and souvenirs, which is highway robbery, by the way,” he said, raising his eyebrows in disbelief. “How do people afford that?”
“Asks the billionaire?” I laughed.
“I mean, come on. I’m here to see Mickey, not hand over my child’s college tuition, you know what I mean?” His disbelief at the cost of Disneyland was downright adorable, especially because he wasn’t wrong.
“You’re preaching to the choir, pal,” I nodded. “But…it is The Happiest Place on Earth.”
“The charm is undeniable, I’ll give you that,” he smiled. “I would love to introduce you to Charlotte again. I just desperately hope you will let me prove that I’ll love you for the rest of my life if you allow me the chance.”
“Proposing marriage now, too?” I teased.
“You know what I mean,” he said.
And in one swift move, I was in his strong arms.
The taste of his powerful and desperate kiss was filled with a hunger I’d never experienced from him before, and I instantly knew I’d missed him even more than I realized. His strong arms held me tightly against his chest, sealing up each damaged and wounded part of my heart the longer we absorbed each other.
It was almost too fairytale-like to allow myself to trust, and I wanted to fight it. It felt wise to fight it, but my heart wouldn’t allow me to.
Instead, everything within me urged me to return the love I felt pouring from him into my soul, reuniting our broken hearts after wasting eight precious months hiding from each other. We were hiding from the truth our hearts already knew. An unseen force had brought us together, and that same force had brought us to this harmonic reunion after we’d gone out alone and learned some hard lessons, healing ourselves to make this work out the beautiful way it was intended.
All these thoughts flooded into me like long overdue answers while he kissed me powerfully and passionately, making the whole friends with benefit idea sound extremely enticing right about now. God, I’d missed this man down to my bone marrow, and now that the pain of that awful separation was behind us, I was excited for the future.
I allowed every part of my being to become lost in every part of the man who held me so tightly that I knew he would never let me go again. Who knew a couple could go from hating to loving each other, not just once, but twice? This was us, though; it was our fairytale ending, and I wouldn’t trade for anything.