Chapter 3
MIKE
Of all the reasons why Darcy broke up with me, I never could have imagined this.
Frustration and anger and shock and sorrow come at me in punishing waves.
Why didn’t she tell me? After eight years, didn’t she trust me with everything? How could this have happened?
And the worst—imagining my Darcy scared and hurting and alone. Without me there to support her, like I would have done if only I’d known.
And again, anger, this time at myself.
Why didn’t I push harder after Darcy broke up with me? Why didn’t I come to Sleepy Hollow, insist on finding out where she was? Why did I believe her so readily when she told me she wanted to date other people?
As I look at Darcy’s miserable expression, the tears welling in her eyes, the urge to hold her is so intense it’s a physical pain.
“I didn’t think to check right away,” Darcy continues, then pauses for a sniff. “About your wedding. Not for months. I couldn’t bring myself to.”
“Wait.” My posture stiffens. “When did you call?”
She gnaws on her lip again. “I guess… It would have been right after my twenty-third birthday. I remember finding an old gift you gave me and—” Her voice cracks. “I missed you so badly.”
“But I wasn’t married then.” I would have been twenty-five then, still half a year short of my impetuous and ill-thought-out marriage to Heidi. Thinking back, I would have just started dating Heidi—my foolish attempt to get over Darcy once and for all.
“She said you were,” Darcy replies. “I mean, she had your phone. And she knew all these things about you. Things a fiancee would know.”
“She wasn’t.” Twisting around on the couch cushion, I turn to face Darcy. “I was dating Heidi, yes. But we weren’t married. Not until…”
Not until that night in Vegas five months later when my drunken self decided that marriage was a good idea.
Her brows draw into a confused V. “But you married her. I saw some old photos…”
My jaw clenches at the realization of yet another betrayal from my ex-wife.
“I did. But I wasn’t then. She was jealous, and…
she lied to you. I never knew you called.
I would have talked to you if I had.” I stop.
“I never should have married her, Darce. I tried to convince myself I could be happy with someone else. But her and I… we were never a good match.”
Darcy glances at the fire, sighing. The flames cast a golden glow across her features. “I’m sorry, Mike. For everything. For not telling you. Not giving you a chance. And for waiting too long to try to fix things.”
It feels like a giant hand is wrapped around my heart, squeezing. “I was going to reach out to you. After my divorce. Not as a rebound thing. But because I missed you. It had been two years since we talked, and dammit, I still missed you.”
Darcy’s eyes go wide. “You never called.”
“Because then you were married. It was time for me to accept that we weren’t meant to be. Talking to you would have just made it harder to move on.”
Her hand goes stiff and cold in mine. Her shoulders tense in as she hunches into herself.
Something cold and malevolent worms its way into my chest. A sense of foreboding of something I don’t want to know.
“It wasn’t a good marriage,” she says after a long pause. “Alex… He seemed nice in the beginning. And he accepted me. Told me I was pretty even though I was missing part of my leg.”
“Even though?” My voice rises. “What difference does it make—”
“I thought it did. I still felt ugly back then. My confidence was nonexistent. And I was lonely.” Darcy looks up at me, giving me a thin, rueful smile. “It was easy for him to manipulate me, even though I didn’t realize until much later that’s what he was doing.”
“Darce.”
“I spent almost ten years with him,” she continues, her tone flattening. “Ten years of being told I was lucky to have found someone who would accept me. Ten years of subtle digs and reminders that I wasn’t normal. That no other man would ever consider being with me.”
Rage surges, and I spit, “That’s bullshit, Darcy. You’re just as normal as anyone else. And any man—”
Shit. Maybe I shouldn’t say that.
“I realized he was wrong. Eventually.” Her smile turns sad.
“It took a while to work through everything, but I finally got a divorce two years ago. At first, I thought I’d stay in California; I had friends, my job…
but he wouldn’t leave me alone. And my mom’s house was just sitting here, vacant.
So I decided to move here. Start over again. ”
The hand in my chest gives another painful wrench. So many miscommunications. So many missed chances. So much time lost.
“I’m so sorry, Mike.” Tears escape, trickling down her cheeks. “I screwed it all up. It was all me. And I have to live with that.”
As I look into the eyes of the only woman I’ve ever truly loved, I feel as if I’m perched on a precipice.
One choice takes me back down to solid ground; to a cordial relationship with Darcy where we wave hi in town and exchange meaningly conversation about the weather how each others’ jobs are going.
The other is a leap into an uncertain future, where I could end up hurt by Darcy all over again.
Or.
Just maybe, we could come back together again.
Maybe we could get a second chance.
“I wonder if the tow truck is here,” Darcy says. She jumps up from the couch, wobbling only a little. “I’ll just go check—”
“Darce.” Standing, I catch her hand again. “Wait.”
“What?”
“We were both so young back then. We both made mistakes. I could have tried harder to get you to explain. To talk to you face-to-face instead of over the phone. But I was embarrassed. Hurt. So I didn’t. And that’s on me.”
“Still. If I’d only told you…”
“Maybe. But we’re here now. And—”
Of course, as it always seems to do at the most inopportune moments, my phone rings.
Darcy startles. Drops my hand. Her gaze flickers towards the window. “It’s probably the tow truck.”
And after a ten second conversation, her guess is affirmed. “Yeah. They’re outside now. I should probably get out there.”
“Do you want me to come help? Bring a flashlight? Or…”
The thought of Darcy struggling through the snow again, her features etched with pain, has me saying quickly, “No, no. Stay inside. I’ll take care of it.”
She nods. “Okay. Are you going to get a ride with the tow truck driver? Or… I could try to clear the driveway and give you a ride home later? If you wanted to stay and talk?”
The hope in her eyes is almost my undoing. And before I can rethink it, I pull Darcy into my arms.
And oh.
Holding her feels like coming home.
“I’ll come back,” I tell her. “Maybe we can have that coffee?”
“I have cookies, too.” Her lips curve up. “You still like peanut butter chocolate chip, right?”
Oh.
She remembered.
“I do.” Pressing my lips to the top of her head—which I know I shouldn’t do, but I couldn’t stop myself—I add, “I’d really like that, Darce.”
And I keep thinking about it the entire way to my car.
Not the coffee and cookies, but coming back to her house.
Talking. Maybe even holding hands again.
Which, as a forty-year-old man, sounds like such a small thing.
But with Darcy? It means more than any of the meaningless hookups I’ve had over the years.
Once I reach the tow truck, I click into problem-solving mode, just as I always do when I’m at work. Setting my turbulent emotions to the side, I focus on insurance details and where to bring my damaged car and then the obligatory small talk with the tow truck driver.
As he’s towing my SUV up onto the flatbed, the flashing lights from his truck illuminate the road behind it, picking up the shadow of a car maybe a hundred yards back on the road.
Worried it might contain a stranded passenger, I walk close enough to determine it’s unoccupied and evidently undamaged, so I shoot off a quick text to the dispatcher, asking her to make sure someone comes to get the car off the road before the plows go by in the morning.
By the time I make it back to the tow truck driver—Derrick, he tells me—I’m coated with snow and and my feet are starting to go numb again. “Do you want a ride into town?” he asks. “I can drop you at the station, if you’d like.”
“Nah.” I lift my chin at him. “I’m going to head back up to my friend’s place. I can get a ride home later. But thanks for the offer.”
On the way back to Darcy’s house, my mind is spinning with the revelations of the evening.
Darcy in a terrible accident, losing her leg.
Heidi lying and scaring her away. Then Darcy’s marriage—which sounds much worse than mine.
And finally the two of us, talking again.
Not just talking, but touching. Hugging. Holding hands.
Logic tells me to practice caution. To guard my heart so she can’t break it again.
But. There’s just this feeling. This magnetism. Electricity. And the bone-deep certainty that I’ll never meet another woman like Darcy. That if I don’t take this chance, I’ll forever regret it.
As I approach her front door, I stamp my snowy boots on the front mat, idly noting that she really needs one of those boot cleaners so she doesn’t get the floor inside wet with snow and possibly slip on it.
I could order one on and bring it over, if she agrees to see me again.
Maybe bring over a better shovel than the cracked plastic one leaning against the railing.
Am I already picturing my life with Darcy back in it? Maybe.
Is it a risk? Yes. But my heart is telling me to take it.
Stepping inside the house, my gaze goes directly to the living room, expecting to see Darcy still on the couch, waiting for me. Possibly reading a book or petting her little marmalade cat or checking the weather on her phone.
But she’s not there.