Chapter 9
NINE
DARCY LET HIMSELF INTO THE apartment and shut the door behind him, the quiet of the place settling too quickly, too completely. He loosened his tie as he stepped further in, his mind still half-occupied with numbers, conversations, the residue of a day that had required precision.
Elizabeth was in the living room.
Not sitting. Not moving.
Standing in the middle of it, arms folded tightly across herself, as though holding something in place. Her face was flushed, not with embarrassment, not with anything fleeting, but with the kind of contained anger that had been given time to settle and sharpen.
Darcy slowed without meaning to.
There was a shift in the air, something already waiting for him.
“What did I do now?” he asked, attempting lightness and missing it entirely. “Is this about this morning?”
Elizabeth exhaled once, sharply, like she had been holding the words back and had finally decided not to anymore.
“You promised Mia you would take her to the museum today,” she said. “You didn’t show up.”
There was no accusation in her tone. That made it worse.
For a moment, his mind refused to supply context.
Then it did.
It was not gradual. It was immediate and absolute.
He had forgotten.
The realisation landed all at once, heavy and unforgiving, settling somewhere low in his chest.
Elizabeth saw it too because something in her expression shifted—not softer, not kinder, but more certain.
“Yes,” she said quietly. “Exactly.”
Darcy’s hand dragged down his face, slower this time, as though the movement might buy him a second to rearrange what had already happened.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked, though even as he said it, he knew how it sounded.
Elizabeth looked at him properly then.
“I did.”
Two words. Flat. Unimpressed.
“I called you,” she continued, each word placed carefully now. “Your phone was on do not disturb or whatever you have it set to when the rest of the world apparently becomes optional. I called. She called.”
Her voice held steady until the last part.
“She tried calling you too.”
That one did not land the same.
Darcy felt it, sharp and immediate, cutting through whatever defence he might have reached for.
Elizabeth turned her head slightly, her gaze flicking toward the stairs before returning to him, as though she had not meant to look but could not quite help it.
“You know she cancelled on her friend,” Elizabeth said. “Told her she couldn’t go with them to an hangout because you were taking her out.”
Darcy did not move.
“She kept checking the time,” Elizabeth went on, quieter now, the anger thinning just enough to let something else through. “Thought maybe you were running late. Then she thought she got the time wrong.”
Each possibility sounded worse than the last.
“And then she realised you just weren’t coming.”
The room felt smaller suddenly.
Darcy exhaled, but it did nothing to ease the tightness in his chest.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it was insufficient the moment it left him. “I— I forgot. I didn’t—”
There was nothing to complete that sentence with that did not make it worse.
He stopped.
“Where is she?” he asked.
“Upstairs.”
He turned instinctively, already moving.
“Darcy.”
He stopped.
Elizabeth’s voice had changed again—not softer, not angry, but firm in a way that held him where he stood.
“Don’t go up there and wake her up like that fixes it.”
He did not turn back immediately.
“She cried,” Elizabeth said.
That made him.
He looked at her.
She did not look away this time.
“Not loudly,” she added, almost as an afterthought. “She tried not to. But she did.”
Darcy swallowed.
The image arrived uninvited and would not leave.
“What do I do?” he asked, and there was nothing of his usual control left in the question.
Elizabeth held his gaze.
For a moment, something flickered there—something that might have been sympathy, or understanding—but it passed quickly, replaced by something steadier.
“You said you would take responsibility for her,” she said. “So, I suppose you will have to figure that out.”
“Elizabeth—”
She did not answer him.
Instead, she turned toward the stairs.
“If you are hungry,” she said, not looking back, “there is food in the microwave.”
The words were steady. Ordinary. As though they belonged to a different conversation entirely.
She went upstairs.
Her footsteps were even, measured, each one placed with deliberate control.
A door closed.
Not loudly. Just enough.
Darcy stood where she had left him, his gaze fixed on the staircase.
He had missed meetings before. Missed calls. Forgotten things that mattered in ways that could be corrected with effort, with time, with money.
This did not feel like that.
Upstairs, a door remained closed.
And for the first time since he had walked in, he did not move.
***
Elizabeth closed her bedroom door behind her and remained where she was, her hand still resting against the wood, fingers splayed slightly as though she had not yet decided to let go.
The latch clicked into place.
The sound felt louder than it should have.
She did not turn.
For a moment, all she could hear was the quiet of the room—and then, almost immediately, it was not quiet at all.
Mia’s voice came back to her, clear and immediate.
“I just want to be alone for a bit.”
Elizabeth’s fingers curled slightly against the door.
She had followed her upstairs.
She could see it now as though it were still happening—Mia standing near the desk, one hand gripping the edge of it as though she needed something solid to hold on to.
Her shoulders drawn in. Her face set in that careful, deliberate way, as though she could hold everything together if she just tried hard enough.
The effort of it had been the worst part.
Elizabeth had stepped into the room anyway. Said something—she could not quite remember what now—something meant to soften it, to make it smaller.
It had not worked.
Mia had cried anyway.
Quietly. Stubbornly. Trying, even then, not to make it a bigger thing than it already was.
Elizabeth had stayed. Had not left, even when Mia turned away, even when it was clear she did not want company. She had stayed until the tears slowed, until the room settled into something that looked manageable again.
But even as she had stepped back into the hallway—
Even as she had closed the door—
She had known.
It had not fixed anything.
Elizabeth exhaled, the breath leaving her slower this time, less sharp, but no less heavy.
Her hand dropped from the door.
She crossed the room, not quickly, not with intention, but because standing still had begun to feel like its own kind of pressure. She stopped near the window, though she did not look out of it, her gaze settling somewhere just below the glass, unfocused.
Then her thoughts turned to the man she had just left downstairs.
The one who had not shown up. The one who had made Mia cry.
He had forgotten. That had been clear from his face the moment she accused him.
Elizabeth folded her arm loosely, then tightened it, then loosened it again, the motion unconscious.
He had not argued. He had accepted it, quietly, with a kind of unguarded apology that did not sit easily with what she expected of him.
That was what did not fit.
Elizabeth shifted her weight, one hand coming up briefly to her temple before dropping again.
He should have argued.
He should have explained, deflected, justified—done something to reduce it, to make it sound like an oversight rather than what it was.
He had done none of that.
He had stood there.
Taken it.
And then—
What do I do?
Elizabeth let out a quiet breath through her nose, her gaze dropping to the floor.
That was new.
Unsettlingly so.
She moved away from the window and sat down slowly on the edge of her bed, her hands coming together loosely between her knees, fingers interlacing, then separating again as though they could not quite settle either.
This was not just about him.
The thought came reluctantly.
She did not welcome it.
She let it sit anyway.
She had known.
Not about today. Not about the exact hour or the promise made in that exact form.
But she had known him.
The way he worked. The way he disappeared into things that demanded precision and gave nothing back until he forced himself to step away. The way time, for him, did not always behave the way it did for other people.
She had known that.
Elizabeth looked down at her hands, her thumb pressing lightly against the edge of her palm.
She could have sent a message.
The thought was small. Practical.
And irritating.
She could have.
A single line in the middle of the day.
Hope you remember you are still taking Mia out?
It would have taken seconds.
It might have changed everything.
Her jaw tightened slightly as she tried to argue with herself that it was not her responsibility.
And yet—
She exhaled again, longer this time.
Elizabeth leaned back slightly, her hands shifting behind her for support before she stilled again.
They could not keep doing this.
The thought did not come with anger this time. It came with a kind of quiet clarity that settled in slowly, without resistance.
She could not keep being like this with him.
Always on edge. Always expecting the worst before it happened.
Not in the same house. Not with Mia in the middle of it.
Not if moments like this were going to happen again.
Because they would.
Elizabeth’s gaze lifted, unfocused, settling somewhere across the room.
This distance between them—this constant edge, this habit of stepping around each other rather than through anything—it did not just affect them.
It left gaps.
Gaps that someone else was already falling into.
Her fingers tightened slightly against the mattress before easing again.
She did not have to fall back into his arms or anything like that.
That remained unchanged.
She did not have to pretend that what had happened between them had not happened, or that it could simply be picked up again as though it had never been left unfinished.
That was not something she was willing to do.
But—
Her lips pressed together, then parted again as she exhaled softly.
She could change how she handled him.
That was all.
She could be civil.
Not warm. Not open.
But enough that this—whatever this was—did not keep breaking around them.
It was the reason she had told him about the food.
She had never done that before.
Usually, she left whatever she cooked in the pot and assumed he would find it if he wanted it. That was the extent of it. No mention. No effort beyond that.
This time, she had packed it. Set it aside. Told him where it was.
Elizabeth lay back against the bed, staring at the ceiling.
It was not much.
But it was… something.
Her eyes closed slowly.
Mia came first—still did—and the image of her from earlier settled in again, softer now, less immediate but no less present.
And then, unhelpfully, Darcy followed.
The look on his face when it had landed. The way he had stood there, as though the ground had shifted under him and he had not yet worked out how to steady himself.
Elizabeth turned her head slightly against the pillow.
That was not something she was going to think about.
She closed her eyes properly this time.
Sleep came slowly, carrying with it the quiet echo of a girl trying to be braver than she felt… and a man she understood more than she intended to.