Rising Heat (Hearts on Fire #1)

Prologue

DARCY

Bex answers on the second ring, her hair set in heatless curlers, under-eye patches and the silk robe she’s had since freshman year of college and will apparently be buried in.

“How’s wedding planning hell? Did your mom finally decide if cream and ivory are morally different shades or—”

I watch the exact second her face changes, her eyes going from laughing to wide with realization, in less time than it takes me to breathe. She leans closer to the screen.

“Oh my God.”

I look at the tiny frame of myself in the corner of the screen and take stock.

Mascara running half an inch beneath both eyes.

A strand of wet hair stuck to my cheek. The claw clip I shoved in this morning barely hanging on for its life, fulfilling its duties with what can only be described as reluctant commitment.

I look like I could be a casting extra for Girl, Interrupted.

Instead, I’m propped against the cream tufted headboard of the bed I’ve shared with Brett for three years, my chest feeling strange and hollow, like someone cracked a window open somewhere inside me and forgot to close it.

“Darce…” Bex’s voice drops. “Those better be tears of happiness.”

I drag a crooked finger beneath one eye and let out a breath.

“Oddly?”

“That was not a full sentence…”

A laugh slips out before I can stop it—thin and cracked around the edges, like my body doesn’t know what sound to make first. I shift back against the headboard and let my eyes move around the room.

The throw pillows are stacked too neatly because Brett likes them arranged a certain way.

The blue ones I bought are still in the hall closet, tags on, because they were apparently “too busy.” The framed print above the dresser is all muted beige brushstrokes because the bright abstract I loved was “a lot” for a bedroom.

Even now the whole space feels staged, like if I breathe too deeply something expensive will tip over.

My fingers knot in the comforter.

“I ended it.”

Bex goes still like she’s bracing. Like some part of her has been waiting for this phone call for longer than I realized.

“What?” Her eyebrows jump.

I let out another laugh. This one turns wet halfway through.

“Yeah.”

“You ended your engagement?”

I nod once. My throat squeezes around the movement.

Bex stares at me for a moment, then squints.

“Okay. Question—”

She pulls her comforter up like she’s settling in for war. “Are we in an emotional spiral? Or weirdly vibing?”

Something between a laugh and a sob punches out of me.

“We’re… weirdly vibing.”

Bex gasps so loudly I have to pull the phone away from my ear.

“Oh my God.”

“I know.”

“No, like—” She points at the screen. “Do you understand how insane this is? You have cried harder over a bad balayage.”

“That woman butchered me.”

“She gave you caramel tiger stripes, Darcy! But that’s beside the point—”

A cabinet slams somewhere in the apartment.

My shoulders jump before I can stop them. Bex catches it, and I watch her face empty of humor so quickly it almost steals my breath.

“Was that him?” she says lower.

My eyes go to the bedroom door.

“Yeah.”

Bex goes the kind of quiet that says, I’m here. Take your time.

I swallow and my tongue feels thick in my mouth.

“Do you need me?” she asks.

Three words. And suddenly all I can think about is the first time Brett met Bex and called her “a lot” in the car afterward.

How I laughed like it was funny, because the alternative was sitting in the sharp quietness that followed whenever I pushed back.

Bex has never once made me feel like loving her came with a cost.

No sighs or scorekeeping or subtle punishments that stretched for days until I apologized just to make the room breathable again.

My chin wobbles once. I bite down on the inside of my cheek until the sting steadies me.

“No,” I say, voice scraping a little on the way out. “I think…I’m okay.”

The words hang there. True enough.

Rain beats softly at the windows, and I listen to it like I’ve never heard weather before. Outside, a car passes, tires hissing through wet pavement.

Bex studies me.

“You look weird.”

“That feels rude.”

“No, like…” She squints. “You look like someone just set down a suitcase she forgot she was carrying.”

My eyes sting again. I tip my head back against the wall and stare at the crown molding. There’s a hairline crack along the corner that I pointed out once, standing in this exact room in socks and leggings with a coffee in my hand. Brett had sighed without even looking up from his laptop.

“It’s cosmetic, Darce. Stop making problems out of nothing.”

That was the thing, wasn’t it? Nothing was ever big enough to count.

The joke that landed a little too sharp.

The dinner where he corrected my story in front of his friends and squeezed my knee under the table when I got quiet.

My “phases” becoming the punchline anytime I wanted something inconvenient.

The slow, steady way I stopped bringing things home to him—excitement, ideas, myself—because the return on that investment had dropped to zero.

Three weeks ago, I came home with a grin I couldn’t hide.

The email was still open on my phone

WE’RE THRILLED TO WORK WITH YOU!

A graphic design contract for a healthcare facility. My biggest freelance client yet. I let myself be excited for exactly four blocks on the drive home before spending the last two tamping it down, reminding myself not to come in too loud in case Brett’s had a long day.

I can’t help it anyway.

I had dropped my bag by the door as I half floated past the living room. Brett’s on the couch, laptop open, Eagles game muted in the background. One ankle crossed over his knee, not looking up.

“I got it.”

He frowned at the screen.

“What?”

“The healthcare client. The rebranding project I told you about?”

His eyes flicked to me for half a second.

“Oh. Nice.”

He didn’t mean anything by that. He’s just distracted.

I had hovered there, smile still caught halfway on my face.

So, I tried again, rounding the couch and dropping onto the cushion beside him while I tucked one leg beneath me. I remember leaning in and pressing a kiss to his jaw.

“Come celebrate with me,” I had offered, keeping my voice light. “We can order sushi. Open wine. Pretend we’re fun…”

What I hadn’t said was what I had been dancing around for months. That I missed him. That I missed us. That somewhere in the last year the distance between us on this couch became architectural, permanent—a thing neither of us acknowledges out loud.

Brett just exhaled through his nose, the inconvenience of it all palpable.

“Darce.”

There it was. That one word that always made my shoulders pull back before I could even stop them. Like my body was bracing for the inevitable disappointment.

He had half-shut the laptop and looked at me like I’ve missed something obvious.

“I’ve got an early meeting.”

“It’s just dinner.”

“You know how slammed I am.”

I can still feel the heat crawling up my neck so fast it makes me dizzy. The embarrassment had hit me just like muscle memory, shifting me back an inch.

“Right. Sorry. I just thought—”

He sighed the way he always had, the way that makes me feel ten years old and wrong for wanting something simple.

“You always do this.”

I had gone still.

“Do what?”

“Make everything into a thing.”

He rubbed his hand through his hair.

“It’s a freelance job, Darce. It’s great. I said congratulations. Why does everything need a production?”

The room had gone so still I could hear the refrigerator hum from the kitchen. I looked down at my hands folded in my lap, noticing that my nails were bitten to the nub again. I hadn’t even realized I’d started doing that.

“Nothing,” I breathed, having felt defeated for the last time. “Forget it.”

His shoulders had loosened immediately, relief softening his face.

“That’s all I’m saying.”

He turned back to the laptop with that.

He didn’t reach for me, but why would he?

He hadn’t reached for me in longer than I wanted to think about.

At some point, I stopped noticing the distance between us on the couch because I always knew exactly where it would be.

I stopped reaching first months ago because being met with a sigh and a laptop and an early meeting had become its own kind of routine.

Bex’s voice softens.

“Hey, still with me?”

I blink as the ceiling swims back into focus.

I’m still in the bedroom. Still holding the navy mug with the nicked handle and the hairline crack in the glaze that Brett hates because it makes the kitchen look cluttered.

I reach for it now without thinking, my thumb absentmindedly tracing the crack as I think.

Nausea creeps up my throat. I can’t remember the last time I held onto something just because I wanted to.

“I thought…” I clear my voice. “I thought I’d feel worse.”

Three years. A ring. A seating chart. A hundred tiny ways to become digestible. A future everyone approved of. My mother already has opinions about linens. My aunt booked a hotel block before I even picked flowers. Women at brunch touch my arm and say

you’re so lucky. The word sits in my stomach now like spoiled milk.

My laugh comes out thin and humorless.

“I can already hear my mom.”

Bex groans.

“Oh no.”

My mother’s voice arrives with brutal clarity

you don’t throw away something good because you’re restless. Marriage is work. Everyone compromises.

“I think everyone’s going to look at me like I set my own life on fire for no reason.”

Bex leans toward the screen.

“And so what if you did?”

“Huh?”

“So what if you lit the match? Sometimes that’s what it takes to see what’s left when the smoke clears.”

I let out a breath that shakes on the way out and my gaze lands on my running shoes shoved in the back of the closet beneath storage bins and an old steamer.

White once. Grey with dust now.

I used to run four mornings a week. Before emails and expectations and conversations I was already rehearsing in my head. Just cold air and quiet and the sting in my lungs because at least that part was honest.

I look around the room.

At the bench at the foot of the bed that nobody sits on because it’s for decoration. At the art I never chose. At my dresses shoved neatly behind Brett’s suits like they’re trying not to take up too much space.

My lower lip trembles once.

“I keep looking around this place,” I say, “and it feels like I’m standing in somebody else’s life.”

Bex doesn’t rush to fill the silence. My attention drifts to the laptop still open on the nightstand. The apartment listing is waiting right where I left it.

South End.

Boston.

A top floor apartment that’s been freshly renovated. The rent isn’t too bad for what you’d expect in the city, either. The listing reads MacAllister Properties.

I found it three weeks ago at two in the morning after a fight that was supposedly about paint colors but somehow ended the way they always did—with Brett laughing softly and telling me I was making something bigger than it needed to be.

I remember lying awake beside him afterward, staring at the ceiling while he slept before I pulled out my phone and did a quick search. I remember looking at the photos of the exposed brick and French doors and tall windows overlooking the skyline.

Bex must see my face change before I say a word.

“Oh no.”

“What?”

“That look. The one that says you’re about to make an impulsive, slightly unhinged decision.”

I look back at the listing. My pulse thumps hard enough that I can feel it in my wrists and my fingers loosen around the mug. For the first time all day, my shoulders drop an inch.

The room around me doesn’t feel smaller; it feels temporary.

I look back at my best friend. My mouth curves before I can stop it—small at first, then wider, wild enough that Bex’s eyes light up in recognition.

“What if,” I say, voice harsh with something that feels dangerously close to courage, “I did something insane?”

Bex sits up so fast her curlers visibly loosen.

“Oh, babe.” She points at the screen like she’s delivering a verdict.

“Tell me we’re ruining your life in a fun way.”