Chapter 15
FINN
Evan gives me a thumbs-up so subtle that the entire bar sees it.
Then the pub door swings shut behind Darcy and me, and it's just us on a quiet sidewalk, two blocks from her apartment over the bookshop.
We walk for a while, saying nothing. Which feels strange as hell, because normally I hate silence almost as much as I hate staying still. I have talked my way onto unfriendly boards of directors, off of deadly mountains, and out of at least one foreign jail.
Two blocks alone with Darcy Gable and I've got nothing.
Not a line, not an opener, nothing. In spite of what happened Sunday afternoon in the library parking lot—or maybe because of it—the silence between us isn't awkward.
It's loaded. There's a difference, and my whole body knows which one this is.
"Go ahead," she finally says. "Gloat. You've been holding it in for half an hour and I'd hate for you to strain anything."
I grin. "I don't need to gloat. The scoreboard speaks for itself."
She rolls her eyes. "You won by one question."
"A dynasty fell tonight, Gable. History doesn't care about the margin."
"It was trivia night. The prize was just a bar tab."
"And the title. I'm having jackets made. Satin. 'Long Shots, Champions' across the back. I'll send one to the school. They can hang it next to my old lacrosse trophy from senior year."
Her mouth twitches. She's fighting it and losing, and watching Darcy Gable lose a fight with her own mouth is my new favorite spectator sport.
She tucks her dark, wavy hair behind her ear and the streetlight catches the line of her neck.
I want my mouth on that soft patch of pale skin.
That's not a complicated thought. It doesn't come with a plan or an angle.
I just look at the curve of her neck where it disappears into that cardigan and I want.
The same way I've been wanting all night, every time she leaned over the answer sheet, every time she laughed.
The cardigan is modest, even matronly. Or rather, it would be on any other woman.
Whoever designed it never watched Darcy Gable walk.
It moves when she moves, and underneath it she is all soft curves and warm skin, and I have spent the past few hours not staring with a failure rate I'd fire an employee over.
"So," she says. "Manhattan's trivia scene is soft, huh?"
"Nope. I lied. It's brutal. They use apps there. Nobody makes eye contact."
She laughs. Hearing it on a dark sidewalk, aimed at me, beats reaching the summit of anything I've ever climbed.
When she turns her head to glance at me it's all I can do to keep my hands at my sides. What I want to do is slide my palm around the soft looking skin of her nape and pull her against me.
"So, you came to the pub just for eye contact?" She's staring at me as she says it, and I decide then and there that eye contact is the sexiest thing I've ever seen.
"I came because Evan insisted I had to. The eye contact was a bonus."
Her smile widens, making those amazing gold-flecked, hazel eyes of hers crinkle a little in the corners. She glances down for a beat. "I think Evan and Annie conspired a bit tonight. She insisted I had to come too."
I raise my brows like I'm surprised, but I saw how my brother could barely take his eyes off Darcy's friend. Even though I didn't want to be social tonight, I have to admit it's been a long time since I had so much fun. All because of the woman walking next to me right now.
As for my own state of fixation, I spent half the night noticing things about Darcy I had no business noticing.
The way she chews the end of her pencil when she's sure of an answer or sets it down with a tap of the eraser when she's not.
The way that cardigan slid off one shoulder every time she leaned over the answer sheet.
The way she laughed at Evan's worst joke with her head tipped all the way back, and the bar light caught her throat, and I lost whatever Colton was saying to me mid-sentence.
Normally, I'd have something smartass to say right about now but walking on the quiet sidewalk next to Darcy with the streetlights casting dim yellow circles on the cracked concrete makes all my jokes and charming quips dry up.
I want to slow our pace, make the remaining block last as long as possible.
What I really want to do is kiss her. The thought is a physical thing, one I feel with every aching inch of my body. The girl I used to tease and torment ages ago is now the one woman I can't seem to stop thinking about. The one I want in spite of the fact that she can't stand me. Deservedly so.
Our hands keep almost brushing as we walk. Every near-touch registers like a small explosion in my veins. I didn't set out tonight to spend the evening eye-fucking Darcy in the pub, or to end up walking her home in the dark, but I make a mental note to thank Evan for conniving to get me here.
The night is cool and quiet, the kind of quiet Manhattan can't sell at any price. Stars overhead. Trees lining the narrow main drag through town. Quaint storefronts with old-fashioned "Sorry, we're closed!" signs hanging on the doors.
Darcy's arms are crossed loosely over her chest. She's got a loose strand of hair hanging along the side of her cheek that's been driving me insane since the second round of trivia, and I have spent the whole night not reaching for it.
I'm not reaching for it now, no matter how much I want to. I deserve a damn medal for not reaching for it.
Then the sidewalk gets her. The slab in front of the bakery has been buckled since before either of us was born, and her shoe catches the lip of it. She pitches forward with a startled sound.
I have her in my arms before I know I've moved. My hand closes on her elbow, my other arm circling her back, and for one second her weight comes into me, her shoulder against my chest, the soft press of her body along my side, warm through every layer between us.
She catches her balance almost as quickly. She's fine.
I don't let go.
And she doesn't ask me to.
"Careful," I say, the word thick in my mouth. My pulse is speeding like the time I barely outran a grizzly in the Alaskan outback. "That slab's a menace."
"I know." Darcy nods, still holding onto me. Her eyes flick from mine to my mouth, then back up again. "That buckle's been there forever. I just wasn't paying attention. Sorry."
I'm about to tell her that I don't mind at all, but then she pulls away and those arms go right back across her cardigan. She starts walking again, and I fall in beside her.
Her building comes up too fast. The dark bookshop, the stairs along the side, one bare bulb burning at the top of them like the world's smallest lighthouse. She stops at the bottom step and turns, and I slide my hands into the pockets of my jeans to keep them under control.
We've reached the end of our walk together too soon, and I feel the loss in my teeth.
"Finn." She's got her keys in one hand and her chin up, and the streetlight is making the gold in her eyes glitter against the mossy green.
Light always does that to her eyes, a fact about her I have known since I was sixteen and never once said out loud.
She licks her lips. "I owe you an apology.
For the auction. For everything I made you do, and then Sunday with the kids and the whole—"
I shake my head. "You're going to have to get in line."
She stops. "What?"
"Behind me. In the line. For apologies." What's wrong with my mouth?
Seems like every time I'm near this woman my tongue gets tangled up in knots.
Somewhere, the version of me that charms his way out of any situation is watching this whole night through his fingers.
I push my hand through my hair and start over.
"I've been trying to find a way to say this for four days, Darcy.
Every time I rehearse it in my head, it comes out as a joke or a speech, and you deserve neither.
So here's the no-draft version, and it's going to be ugly, and I'd appreciate it if you let me get through it. "
She goes very still. Teacher-still. The whole street holds its breath with her.
"I made your life hell," I say. "Back in school.
The whole Dictionary Darcy thing. I didn't mean for it to get out of hand like it did.
Shit... I don't know what I was thinking back then, and I want to be really clear that I'm not about to hand you a reason that makes it okay, because there isn't one.
But there is a why, and if nothing else, I owe you that. "
"Finn—"
"You were the smartest person in that school.
" My voice comes out low and level, one true word at a time.
"You sat two rows in front of me and devoured books like they were nothing.
Five hundred pages, gone by Friday. You'd raise your hand and use some word I couldn't have read off the page with a gun to my head—and you weren't even showing off, that's the part that killed me.
It was just how your brain worked. And every single time, I sat in the back row feeling like the dumbest animal in the building.
" I make myself hold her eyes. "I couldn't stand it. I don’t mean you.
I couldn't stand myself, not around you.
So I did the math like a twelve-year-old does.
If the room's laughing at her, nobody's looking at me. "
The words hang there in the dark. She's not moving. Her keys have gone quiet in her hand.