11. Tyler #2
Then I flip the next card and feel the room shift before I’ve even said the words.
“Never have I ever been married.”
She looks down at the card and lets out a slow breath.
“Engaged,” she says.
Me and Mack both go still.
“I was twenty-four. Three years together. Everyone thought it made sense.”
The fire cracks softly behind her.
“The wedding was six months out.”
Neither of us interrupts.
“He didn’t cheat,” she says after a moment, staring into the flames. “Which almost made it worse. On paper he was great.”
I already don’t like where this story is going.
“But every time I wanted something bigger than what we already had, I became the problem.”
“How?” I ask my voice lower than usual.
She laughs once.
“The city. My job. A candle I bought because I liked how it smelled.”
“He was mad about a candle?”
Mack raises a brow.
“It wasn’t about the candle.”
I lean back, barely resisting the urge to reach for her so she has something steady to hold onto that isn’t a story about a guy who didn’t deserve her
“Sounds like he was an insecure asshole.”
I mean it. The more she talks, the clearer it gets—she wanted more, he wanted her to want less. Darcy’s expression shifts when I say it out loud, like she’d been bracing for one of us to make a case for the guy.
Across from me, Mack’s grip tightens briefly against the arm of the chair before he speaks.
“Wanting more doesn’t make you difficult,” he says, voice low and steady. “It makes you honest.”
I’ve seen him talk people through bad calls, breakups, family disasters, every kind of day a person hopes they never have. I still can’t remember the last time I heard him say something like that to any female.
Darcy swallows and looks at him for a second longer than she probably means to.
Then I nudge her elbow lightly.
“His loss.”
I watch as some of the tension leaves her shoulders. Enough that when she reaches for her bourbon again, she looks a little less like she’s waiting for someone to disagree with her.
I like that version of her.
I pick up the deck and hold it out.
“Your turn.”
She shuffles, pulls a card, and flips it without giving it too much thought. The grin that spreads across her face before she looks up already tells me this is going to be good.
“Never have I ever had a threesome.”
You can hear a pin drop.
I glance at Darcy, then toss a card into the middle of the table. Her bright eyes snap to mine, smile slightly faltering before she looks at Mack with the question written all over her face. He holds her gaze as he sets his card down.
Darcy goes completely still. I watch her chest expand and not come all the way back down while she tries to remain expressionless.
I can practically see the moment it clicks into place.
Her eyes drop to the cards, then lift back to us like she’s trying to figure out if she somehow misunderstood what just happened.
Watching her figure it out is doing more to me than I’d like to admit out loud. Lips parting, that flush spreading across her neck. I’m half hard watching this woman do the math.
“You don’t get to just do that and move on.”
Her eyes dart between us.
“Ask,” Mack says, leaning forward and planting his elbows on his knees.
Darcy shifts on the rug, tucking one leg underneath herself like she’s preparing for an interview.
“With…each other?”
“Yeah,” I say matter-of-factly.
“How do I know you’re serious?”
I laugh.
“You asked the question and we both put down a card.”
“You could be messing with me.”
“What more proof do you want?”
I watch her tongue trace the inside of her lip before looking to Mack for backup. She shakes her head trying to regain her composure, sending a few strands loose from her messy bun.
“Oh my God.”
“What?”
“This wasn’t a one-time thing.”
I watch the corner of Mack’s mouth curve. Mine answers before I can stop it. We’ve spent all day watching Darcy put pieces together. Turns out she’s just been missing the box.
“No,” Mack confirms.
Darcy lets out a short breath and takes another sip of bourbon, looking between us like she’s half in shock and half entertained.
“So this is, what, exactly?”
Her hand makes a vague gesture between us.
“A recurring…hobby?”
I scrub a hand over my jaw while Mack drops his head and huffs out a laugh.
“That’s not exactly how I’d describe it,” he says.
“So then how does it—”
She cuts herself off.
“Work?” Mack smirks.
She takes a drink instead of answering. The problem is she’s been curious about everything since breakfast, and neither of us is buying the sudden act.
I lean back against the couch, my knee brushing hers where she’s sitting on the floor.
“It’s not a system, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“It kind of sounds like a system.”
“It’s trust,” Mack says. “If we’re both with someone, it’s because she wants both of us. We’re both in it. Nobody gets left out.”
“And the woman you date—”
“We don’t date the women we share.” I shrug. “It’s just casual. Fun.”
“A one-time thing. Usually.”
“Huh.”
I watch Darcy go quiet at that, her grip shifting slightly on the glass as her eyes find Mack’s. Whatever joke she’d been lining up never arrives, and I hadn’t realized how badly I wanted her to hear that until she did.
“It’s not weird for us,” I say with a shrug. “We’ve shared everything our whole lives. Space, grief, food, fights. This just happened one night years ago and made more sense than it should’ve.”
The fire pops softly between us while the storm keeps rattling the windows, and for a minute nobody seems in a hurry to fill the silence. Darcy sits cross-legged on the floor in my sweatshirt, bourbon cradled between both hands, turning everything over in her head while Mack and I watch her do it.
She wets her lip again, Mack shifting in his chair at almost the same second, and I have to look away before the corner of my mouth gives me away. We’ve always noticed the same things. Lately, most of those things seem to be Darcy.
She still hasn’t said whatever she’s thinking, but I can see it working through her anyway. Every time her eyes drift to one of us, they inevitably find the other a second later, and each pass seems to leave her a little more distracted than the last.
The funny thing is, I think she’s looking for a reason this should bother her or feel strange. Instead, Darcy just sits there in my sweatshirt with her bourbon forgotten in her hands, looking between me and Mack like the answer to something is sitting somewhere in the middle.
I don’t know what that means, but I like the fact that she’s still looking.
Still, watching her like this, patience is starting to feel a lot less effortless than it used to.