18. Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Eighteen
Will
“Why are you here with my sister if you were supposed to marry Caroline?” Janet asks me, her eyebrows raised.
I hadn’t met Lizzie’s oldest sister yet. I’d heard of her, but when Lizzie mentioned her and her husband, she never said their last name.
I had no idea Charlie Bingley was her sister’s husband at first until we talked about it that night at the cafe.
Then I remember the text I got from Caroline and how she warned me.
I guess you can’t stay hidden, not even in a small town. I learned that the hard way.
“How did you know I was here?” I ask, sheepishly.
“People talk in this town. I’ve been too busy to listen to most of the gossip, but I started paying attention when I heard about a Will Darcy hanging around my sister-in-law. I told my sister, and she probably told people back home, like your parents.”
I space out, feeling numb. My new life, in its once safe little bubble, is now bursting right before my eyes.
“Will?” Lizzie calls me, pulling me back to my terrible new reality.
I look at her. Then I look around at her sisters and their partners. At my friends. Edward. Jay. Nic. Jane.
They’re all staring at me with the same bewildered expression. That’s when I realize I’m no longer just the guy who moved to a small town with big dreams of starting over and becoming someone new.
I’m still Will Darcy. The rich kid. The one with the complicated family. The one with the almost marriage.
The drama I came here hoping to leave behind found me. Turns out it isn’t something I can outrun. Luke 8:17 comes to mind: For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad.
Secrets. I have one too many secrets.
My family is wealthy. I’m at risk of being disinherited. My boss is now my fake girlfriend and my real business partner, all because we’re trying to help each other change our lives.
Secrets. Lies. Guilt. I swallow the lump forming in my dry throat.
I want to tell them everything. Why I’m here. Why I left Chicago. Why I should probably just go back home, work for my family’s company, and marry Caroline Bingley.
But I can’t find the words. It’ll all come to light soon enough. But lying isn’t right. Am I lying? Or am I just not telling them the whole truth yet?
I clear my throat, unsure where to begin. My heart already knows this is wrong. I know lying isn’t the answer. I just don’t think I realized how much I’d been hiding until this moment.
Everyone is watching me. Waiting. Expecting me to explain. I open my mouth. Then close it again. My throat has never felt so dry.
I’m usually not someone who struggles to find the right words. Especially when I’ve already made up my mind. But that’s just it. I haven’t. I can’t force myself to form a single sentence.
I’ve been living inside this bubble for so long, keeping pieces of myself hidden, trying to become this new version of Will that I thought was finally free. But I left an entire life behind and pretended it didn’t exist anymore.
I’ve been so afraid of letting people see who I really am. Where I come from. Who my family is. So I hid those parts of myself.
I came here to build a business and a new life. But I forgot that my past came with me. You can’t outrun who you are. Or where you come from.
Maybe if I’d come here and been honest from the beginning, things would’ve been different. I don’t even think I realized I was hiding parts of myself at first. But now I see it as clearly as the firelight dancing across Lizzie’s backyard.
My eyes find hers again. I see her mouth moving. She’s talking to me, but I can’t hear her.
Everything sounds muffled as I blink her back into focus. At first she looks confused. Now her expression softens.
She’s the fixer. Always the one trying to make things right or pretending everything’s okay, even when it isn’t.
Not in a fake way. In a way that makes me feel safe. Instinctively, I move toward her.
She reaches out, and we hold hands. To everyone else, we probably look like a real couple.
I look down at her. She rearranges her face into an easy smile. She’s saying something to her sister and brother-in-law, but I don’t hear any of it.
I’m just looking at her. Trying to breathe. Trying to process. Trying to figure out how the version of me I thought was dead, gone, and buried somehow showed up here.
And somehow I’m still me. But I’m not the same me anymore.
Because as I look down at her with my hand in hers, I realize this may be a fake relationship and a business deal designed to help us both get what we want. But my feelings are real. And I don’t even know how I got here.
I don’t know when Lizzie Bennet started feeling like my safe place. But she is. It’s as simple as that.
I hold her hand without even thinking about it. It feels so easy. So natural. Like it’s always been this way. Like we fit perfectly together.
The way she smiles up at me makes me feel like all of this could be real. And another secret I don’t know if I’ll ever tell anyone is that someday...I hope it really could be.
“Will?” Lizzie says my name, pulling me out of my silent spiral.
I clear my throat and smile at her, trying to figure out what she just asked me.
She nudges me gently. “I was going to go inside to get some extra drinks and snacks for everyone. Do you want to come with me?”
“Yes,” I say, desperately happy to leave this tense greeting with Charlie to be alone with her for a moment.
But Janet stops us, saying, “Sure, go and get drinks and snacks, Liz. But that doesn’t change the fact that all of this is crazy. Will needs to start talking. Why isn’t he owning up to his mistakes? Why isn’t he talking about his connection to the Bingleys?”
Lizzie chimes in, coming to my rescue. “Connection? Well, Will told me that their families work together in the real estate business in Chicago, right Will?”
“Yeah, they do,” I admit.
“And we grew up together,” Charlie adds.
It’s true. Charlie and I grew up together. But not as friends, which I think is important to point out, though I don’t. He never paid me much attention back then, so I don’t know why he’s acting so upset now.
Maybe he cares because of his sister. But she never really paid much attention to me either.
We were around each other because of our parents, and even that changed as we got older.
Especially when our families started doing more business together and decided, without my permission or Caroline’s, that we were going to get married someday.
It became an expectation. Something everyone else accepted before either of us had a choice. Whatever friendliness we may have had growing up disappeared after that. I don’t blame either of us for that.
We were kids. But now, holding on to the expectations of our parents when the relationships I had with both him and his sister barely existed seems like insanity to me.
And I don’t have any ill will toward the Bingleys.
That’s the sad part. I just don’t want to pretend to be happy in a fake marriage. Yet here I am in a fake relationship.
What is wrong with me? That is up for debate. But, standing here, what’s wrong with me could be answered by at least one of the people here. One of them being Charlie, who glares at me.
I’d like to think that maybe Charlie and I could’ve been friends if things had gone differently back then. He always seemed like a good guy to me. I doubt he thinks I’m such a good guy anymore.
Not with how he is looking at me. Not after I told my parents I couldn’t marry Caroline.
And with the way Caroline has been reaching out, trying to convince me I’m making a mistake while making it clear she knows exactly where I am, I can’t help but think the only reason she knows is because she and my family are keeping tabs on me.
Mom and Dad probably know more than they’re letting on too.
That would explain why Mom and Georgiana are texting me so much about how Dad wants to take my aunt’s house away from me.
Little do they know I haven’t even tried to visit the house yet. I haven’t visited it once since I got to Selah Falls. I’ve been staying at the inn on the West Side of town while the house sits empty on the East Side until I figure things out.
Besides, who would I even live in that big house with? Honestly, I should probably let my parents take it. Let them keep the inheritance too. I’m already here. I’ve already started over.
Maybe I really can use what money I have left to build my bakery food truck, keep renting my room at the inn, and live out the rest of my days here in Selah Falls. Maybe that would be easier than trying to explain myself to my family. To Lizzie. To all my friends.
But I know I owe them an explanation someday. Whether I ever go back home or not.
As I look at Charlie, I realize that if I went back home, I’d probably get the same look he’s giving me now. Good guy or not, he sees me as someone who didn’t measure up.
I didn’t become the man my father wanted me to be. I didn’t follow in his footsteps. I didn’t take over the family business. I didn’t obey him.
It doesn’t matter that I wanted to be a baker instead of a realtor. It doesn’t matter that I didn’t want to marry a woman I wasn’t in love with. All that matters is that I didn’t do things his way.
And because of that, in his eyes, and in the eyes of the wealthy circle he surrounds himself with, I’m a disappointment. The pride I used to feel in carrying the Darcy name has slowly faded over the years. Not just since moving to Selah Falls. Long before that.
Now I look at Charlie. At the way he and Janet are dressed. At how effortlessly polished they look, even in casual clothes. He may not work with his family anymore, but the traces of wealth are still there.
He and Janet remind me of home. Of my parents. Of the people who measure worth by wealth and appearances.
Then I look down at myself. Sneakers. Jeans. A T-shirt. Standing in a backyard. Working at a cafe. Trying to build a life I actually love.