Chapter 2
DARCY
Not for the first time, and definitely not the last, I find myself wishing things were different.
After sixteen years, I should be past it. There’s no reason, at thirty-eight, a ten-year marriage under my belt, to still be pining over my first boyfriend.
I shouldn’t be sitting here, staring out the window at the accumulating snow, running through the same what-ifs and if-onlys I’ve tortured myself with for years.
What if I hadn’t broken up with him?
What if I’d trusted Mike with the truth instead of cutting him off with no explanation?
What if I’d been more mature back then?
What if I hadn’t married asshole Alex on the rebound, allowing him to manipulate me into thinking he was my only option?
If only I’d made different choices, I might have been sitting with Mike and his friends at the Hop-less Horseman instead of with Allison, who I quickly discovered is not the kind of person I want to have as a friend.
It’s not that I blame her for flirting with Mike, although her tactics were a bit over the top for my taste. I’ve never been the shove your boobs in a guy’s face and flip your hair kind of woman, preferring the more subtle approach.
I snort loudly, startling Waffle from her sleep. She eyeballs me, her nose and whiskers twitching before deciding that no, I don’t have a treat and apparently woke her up for no good reason, and curls up into her cozy little ball beside me again.
“Sorry,” I tell her. “Just thinking about the absolute lunacy of me flirting with a guy. Sticking my A cups in his face, no less.”
Yes, I’ve officially become that woman. The one who lives alone and talks to her cat.
With a little scratch on the top of her head, I settle back against the couch cushions and re-tuck my hand-knit throw around my legs. As I stare blankly at the flames licking the logs in the fireplace, I let my mind wander back to the Hop-less Horseman and seeing Mike again.
Moving back to Sleepy Hollow, I knew it was inevitable that I’d run into him. And judging from the few photos he’s been tagged in online, I knew he was still as handsome as he was when we dated.
Dated. That’s too simple of a word. We were together for eight years. He was my first everything. And I thought he was the one I’d spend the rest of my life with.
He might have been, if not for—
No. I don’t want to think about those dark days. Not now.
Closing my eyes, I allow myself the guilty pleasure of conjuring up Mike in my mind again. Not as I saw him in a few group photos, but in person, so close I could have touched him if I wanted.
I wanted to. Badly.
I wanted to touch his angular features, his strong jaw and brow, his nose with the tiny bump from when he broke it playing football in his junior year.
I wanted to run my fingers through his dark brown hair, now dusted with strands of silver, and find out if it was still as soft as I remember.
Oh, and I wanted so badly to hug him. Feel his broad chest against mine, let his furnace-like warmth seep into me, and sink into his embrace as he wrapped his muscular arms—I couldn’t miss the way the fabric of his sweater clung to them—around me.
I don’t blame Allison for flirting with him. But I still wanted to smack her for trying.
“How am I going to deal with seeing him?” I ask Waffle.
Having determined that I am not the harbinger of treats, her only response is a rumbling purr.
How am I? When I decided to leave California and move back here, the practicality of it superceded everything.
I needed to get away from Alex, away from his phone calls and letters and unwelcome visits; from his insults and claims that I should go back to him because I’d never find another man who’d accept me.
“You know I love you,” he liked to say, “but you know you’re not… normal. And most guys, they don’t like that. If you don’t come back to me, you’ll die alone and end up eaten by one of your ten cats.”
I didn’t have ten cats. Just one. And I am normal. Just because—
A loud crash breaks the silence.
My heart stutters.
I know that sound.
It’s one I heard enough times living here, every time a car would take the turn too fast and go flying off the road.
It’s a dangerous curve on the best of days, and tonight, with the snow still falling steadily? An accident could be deadly.
Jumping up, I rush to the window overlooking the front lawn and the road beyond it. At first, I can’t see anything through the billowing clouds of white. But a second later, a flash of tail lights break through it.
Tail lights not on the road, but off it.
Crap.
Heart racing, I leap up from the couch and race over to the closet, yanking out my warmest winter coat and shoving it on. Then over to the front door and the table beside it, where I rummage through the little knick-nack bowl trying to find the flashlight I keep inside it.
At the door, it’s a struggle to get my boots on, made worse by the urgency pulsing through me.
Terrible possibilities come at me, each one worse than the other. Broken bones. Head injuries. Blood everywhere. Death.
Memories I’ve worked hard to shove down come roaring to the surface again. The panic I’ve trained myself to control threatens to take over my body, constricting my lungs and sending gray dots dancing across my vision.
No. Don’t freak out. Someone out there needs help.
Repeating it like a mantra, I make my way out into the storm. Icy wind slaps my face, making my eyes water. My nose prickles as I breathe the bitter air in.
It’s a struggle to plod down the unshoveled path and over to the driveway. My left leg keeps wobbling with every step as the six-inch-deep snow pulls at my boot. But I forge forward, my gaze fixed on the twin red lights by the road.
My gaze flickers to the garage, and I debate trying to drive my car down to the road.
But with the driveway covered in snow, I’m not confident I can make it.
Back when I used to live in Sleepy Hollow, decades ago, I wouldn’t have hesitated.
But now, with the two-wheel-drive hybrid I keep meaning to swap for an SUV, I’m not confident I can make it.
Trudging down the long driveway, I make a mental note to go to the dealership next week. Stupidly, I thought I had more time, since it’s not even December yet. But here we are, a week before Thanksgiving, and we’re already getting our first snowstorm of the season.
By the time I get to the road, My jeans are soaked through and my face is stinging from the cold. Each step is harder than the last, and I make another mental note—get a membership at the gym so I can get back in shape again.
Glancing up and down the darkened road, I hurry across it and over to the SUV sitting cockeyed in the ditch, its exhaust billowing in giant silver clouds behind it. From the back, everything looks almost normal, but the front… That’s what I’m afraid to see.
As I approach the driver’s side door, my heart beats faster. A flash of memory hits me; as vivid and gruesome as if it just happened yesterday.
A man slumped over the steering wheel, blood all over his face, limp and silent and—
The door opens and I shriek in surprise, tripping over my feet and falling backwards into the snow.
Feeling foolish and more than a little guilty—I’m not the one who got into an accident—I scramble to my feet as the person starts to get out.
A beat later, my chest clutches in fear.
Not just a person.
Mike. Bleeding.
“Mike!” I rush towards him, a new kind of panic welling up inside me. “God, Mike. Are you okay? Crap. Of course you’re not okay, you’re hurt. We need to call an ambulance.” Moving on instinct, I grab his arm to steady him. “You should sit down. Crap. No. Not in the snow. The car. I’ll call—”
I know I’m talking much too fast. But I can’t seem to stop. Seeing Mike hurt, bleeding, not knowing how bad it is…
“Darcy.” His voice is low. Rumbly. Calm. “I’m okay.”
“You’re bleeding,” I repeat. “You’re hurt. You might have a head injury.” I aim my flashlight at his face, remarking as he blinks away from the light, “See. Sensitivity to light. One of the symptoms of a concussion. You need to sit down.”
“Darcy.” Mike swipes at his face, wiping the blood onto his sleeve. “It’s just a bloody nose from the airbag. I’m okay. A little banged up and embarrassed—”
“Embarrassed? Why?”
Even though it’s dark, I swear he actually blushes. “I wasn’t paying attention to the road. And I should know better.”
I glance at his car, the hood crumpled where it hit a medium-sized pine. Skeptically, I ask, “Are you sure?”
“Yes.” And then he puts his arm around me. “You’re shaking, Darce. It’s freezing out. You should go inside. I called the tow company, I can wait here.”
“What?” My voice rises. “Leave you out in the cold? When my house is right there? No way.”
He stares at me for a moment, as something unreadable moves in his eyes. Then he asks in an almost hesitant tone, “If you’re sure?”
“I’m sure.” And I loop my arm around his waist, giving him my support if he needs it. “Come on. I can make you some coffee. The fire’s going, so you can sit there to warm up.”
And if I happen to notice his body feels just as hard and muscular as it used to? It’s not like I’m trying to feel the guy up. I’m just helping him back to the house.
Or more like, he helped me.
Because by the time we stumble into the living room, my leg is screaming in pain and I know I’m limping badly. I was trying to hide it at first, but halfway back, I knew it was unavoidable. My leg just isn’t built for that kind of activity anymore.
Once we’re inside, we take a few seconds to brush the snow from our coats before going any further.
Mike yanks off his boots and places them on the mat by the door, then turns to me with worry etched into his forehead.
His hair still has tiny flakes of snow dusted all over it, and bits of blood still remain under his nose and on his chin.
He frowns as he looks at me still standing in my dripping coat and snow-caked books. “Darce. You’re in pain. What’s wrong? Did you hurt yourself out there?”
“I’m fine,” Bending down, I pull the right boot off easily. The left is more of a struggle, especially with my hands half-numb from the cold, and I’m hesitant to do it front of Mike in case my sock ends up getting pulled off, too.
But ever the protector, the kind man I always knew him to be, he drops to his knees and slides my left boot off carefully. As he touches my foot, I flinch, my breath catching as I wait for the inevitable questions.
What’s wrong with your foot? Why doesn’t it feel normal?
Still kneeling, Mike goes still. His shoulders tense.
Then he looks up, understanding in his gaze.
Shame and regret and guilt come at me in waves.
After all this time, the years of hiding, there’s no escaping the truth anymore.
“Darce.” Mike stands and holds out his hand. His expression is so sad it brings tears to my eyes. “You don’t have to tell me. You don’t owe me—”
“I do.” A lump sticks in my throat. “I should have told you a long time ago.”
As we head over to the couch, my hand securely tucked into Mike’s, I nearly chicken out at least half a dozen times.
I don’t have to tell him. I could run—okay, hobble, at this point—into the kitchen to make the coffee I promised.
Or fill the time with meaningless chatter until the tow truck gets here.
Anything other than telling Mike the truth.
But my gut tells me it’s time.
Once we’re seated, I stare at the fireplace as I try to gather my courage to tell Mike something I should have shared sixteen years ago. My heart flutters with nerves and my stomach twists into a knot. Dread settles heavy over my shoulders.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Mike repeats, his tone achingly gentle. Compassion darkens his eyes to a deep, Atlantic blue. I can imagine him talking to victims like this, making them feel comfortable even in the most traumatic of situations.
He would have done the same for me, if I’d let him. But I didn’t see it that way back then. All I could see was the dark, the yawning emptiness that bridged who I used to be to the new, not-normal me.
“I do, though,” I say. “You must have guessed. Touching my foot. You know…”
His brow creases. “Is it a prosthetic, Darce?”
My throat gets thick. Dropping my gaze to my lap, I reply quietly, “Yes. It’s a transtibial prosthesis.
So not just my foot, but everything below my knee.
It doesn’t usually bother me, but walking in the snow…
it’s more challenging. And with the move and the new job, I haven’t been working out as much as I usually do. ”
Mike sucks in a breath. “How long, Darce?”
And there it is.
“Sixteen years.”
I look back at him just in time to see pain flare in his eyes. “Sixteen years?”
“It happened when I was student teaching out in Rochester. I went out with a few of the teachers one night. Not a date,” I add quickly.
“Just to hang out. But I had more to drink than I planned, so I was going to take a cab home. Then Jeff offered to give me a ride. He insisted he was sober, but… I should have paid better attention.”
The fingers still wrapped around mine tighten. “What happened?”
“He lost control of the car. And we crashed. It was… bad.” The memories threaten to intrude again, but I ruthlessly shove them back. “Jeff was killed on impact. I was thrown clear, but my leg… I didn’t realize until I woke up in the hospital and the doctor said they’d have to amputate.
He flinches. “Why didn’t you tell me? You know I would have come.”
“I know.” My voice wobbles. “But back then… I couldn’t bear for you to see me like that. I felt so ugly. Broken. And I was so young. Immature. I should have known better, should have known you wouldn’t judge me, but—” A little sob slips out. “I was stupid.”
“Ah, Darce.” Sorrow drags at his features. “I wish you’d told me.”
“I wish I had, too.” Swallowing hard, I continue, “I couldn’t think straight for months. And… I told myself you were better off without having to deal with my crap. I was at this rehab place out in White Plains, and you had your new job in Albany. A job you needed to give all your attention to.”
“Darcy.” It’s rough. “I would have come to see you. It didn’t matter—”
“I know. But I was so stupid. And by the time I realized, it had been almost a year. I tried to call you, but…”
“But what?”
Pain slashes through my chest at the memory. “It was too late. You were already married. What right did I have to intrude on your life after I’d treated you so badly?”