Chapter 23 #2
But the simple fact is, I like having Darcy all to myself. I like seeing her face light up the way it's doing right now. I simply like being with her.
Maybe someone should call a doctor, because whatever is happening to me is starting to feel like a permanent condition.
One I'm not sure how to handle when in the back of my mind I know there's a deal in Colorado that's waiting for my answer, and an entire life and billion-dollar enterprise back in the city that's waiting for my return.
I shove all of that back to the darkest corners of my brain as I scoot Darcy's chair in, then walk around the table to take my seat across from her.
The food is simple and perfect and the wine is excellent. For a while it's just this—her across a small table in candlelight, telling me about her day and her students, her hands moving animatedly as she speaks, the candle flames dancing when she laughs. I could watch it for a living.
Somewhere after we've finished the superb braised lamb and I've poured our second glasses of wine, she looks past me, out the window toward the main house, its kitchen light still burning up the hill.
"What was it like?" she asks. "Growing up here. The real version, not the tour."
"The real version." I turn my glass by the stem. "The real version is that everything you can see from this window has a Bardot chore attached to it. I could prune before I could ride a bike. Colton loved it. Evan charmed his way out of it. I was the one in the middle who kept doing it wrong."
"Doing what wrong?"
"Everything, if you asked my father." It comes out easier than it used to.
"I'd swap rows because I lost count. Mislabel lots.
My father ran this place off a chalkboard of codes and lists.
I wasn't any good with lists, and there was only one explanation on offer in that house for a boy whose brain couldn't process or retain the lists.
" I shrug, my shoulders feeling heavy. "You know the word he used. You've known since the barn."
Her hand comes across the white cloth and rests on mine. It stays there.
"He was wrong, Finn."
"He was working with the information he had." I turn my hand over under hers, lace our fingers. "That's the generous version. I only got to the generous version a few years after his funeral, so don't grade me on that."
"I'd never." The candlelight catches the gold in her eyes. "You hated it here that much?"
"No, I hated who I was here. Different thing.
Took me a couple of decades and a broken-legged brother to work out the difference.
" I look at her hand in mine, her thumb moving slow along my knuckles like it's thinking.
Maybe it's the wine, or the way she's listening with her whole face, or the fact that I've spent today holding one secret so hard my teeth hurt, but the smaller one just walks out on its own.
"I went to see your mother yesterday. At the library."
Her thumb goes still. She doesn't say anything.
I make myself keep looking at her. "I asked her about help.
Reading help. Programs, whatever exists around here for...
" The sentence wants to duck and I don't let it.
"For someone like me. I told her it was for one of the guys at the vineyard.
I think she knew I was lying. Your mom sat there and helped me anyway. "
She smiles softly, her eyes gone shiny, and she doesn't let go of my hand.
"She'd tell you the lie doesn't matter," she says.
"You walked in and asked for help. That's big.
Finn, do you know how many adults never ask?
I've taught for eight years. I've watched grown men at parent conferences hold their kid's reading list upside down and bluff.
Asking is the whole mountain. Everything after it is just walking. "
"That's a very kind reframe of me lying to sweet Clara Gable. She's a national treasure around here."
"Take the kind reframe." Darcy's voice is tender and patient, and feeling all her compassion trained on me is nearly overwhelming. "Was she able to help you?"
"Yeah. She told me about a program two towns over. Evening sessions." I clear my throat, which needs it. "Some other things. Homework, basically. I haven't decided anything."
"You don't have to decide anything right away.
" She says it like she's putting something down carefully.
"But just between you and me, the man who built a company out of being fearless and providing gear for others to do things that might scare them doesn't need the fake vineyard guy.
A man like that, like you, is impressive enough standing on his own. "
I have been complimented by magazine covers and keynote stages. None of it has ever landed anywhere near where that lands.
"Okay," I say, roughly, and refill her glass to have something to do with my hands. "What about you? Since we're talking about things that scare us, things we should do anyway, tell me some more about your comic book literacy idea."
Her mouth curves, and I know she's remembering our stolen moments in the vineyard loft. "There's not much to tell yet. It's just a dream."
"I want to hear about all of it. The program. Your plans for it." I point the bottle at her before setting it down. "Two years of quiet planning, one impatient promised backer. Where's my number, Darcy?"
"You're really not going to let that go."
"I told you I'd be irritating about it. I'm a man of my word almost exclusively when it's convenient, and this is convenient."
She shakes her head, laughing, but then she actually answers, and the answer has scaffolding in it, not just a shapeless dream.
She's got ideas for a classroom she could rent at the community center, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
A dozen or so kids to start. Comics and graphic novels chosen so the pictures carry the students over the hard words.
She quotes it back to me without knowing she's doing it, my own barn logic wearing her lesson plans, and something in my chest goes quiet and sure, like a knot finally seating.
"The crate," I say.
She stops. "What?"
"My old comics. They're still in the barn, in the milk crate.
I must have more than a hundred of them, not counting the ones I ruined.
" I watch her understand it before I finish, watch her eyes fill up for the second time tonight.
"Founding library. If your program will take a donation from a struggling reader. "
Darcy sets down her glass. She looks at me for a long moment across the candles, both of us very still, and the air in the room changes pressure. She gets up, comes around the small table, takes my face in both hands, and kisses me.
I find her waist and pull her down into my lap and she comes willingly, knees bracketing mine, the kiss going from thank you to something with a much longer syllabus. Her fingers slide into my hair, and when we finally break for air she stays close, forehead against mine, breathing my breath.
"Finn."
"Yeah."
"Take me to bed."
I stand up with her in my arms because carrying her is faster than convincing my legs to do anything else.
She laughs against my neck as I navigate the short hallway.
Then we're in the bedroom and I set her down slowly, letting her body drag the length of mine on the way to the floor, and the laughing stops.
"Yesterday," I say, finding the zipper hidden at her side, "you kissed me in front of your whole town in broad daylight.
I wanted you so much I was hard the rest of the day.
" The zipper is a long, slow line and I let her feel every inch of it, watching her eyes.
"Tonight I'm going to take my time savoring this gorgeous body, all of these beautiful curves.
The pussy that's been driving me crazy with need ever since I first tasted it.
We're going to go slow, Darcy. All night, if I want. "
"Okay." Barely a word.
"Anything that isn't a yes tonight, you tell me."
Her arms come up around my neck. "It's all yes. It's been yes since the sidewalk. Longer than that."
The dress goes, poured off her shoulders into a dark pool on the floor.
She's bare underneath except for a scrap of lace at her hips, and I stop and look at her because she's the loveliest thing I've ever seen.
Dark hair falling past her shoulders in glossy waves, candlelight from the hall warm on her skin, full breasts, nipples already tight, her chin tilted up like she's decided to let me see all of it.
Every inch of her is an argument for staying, and I let myself lose it.
Then I put my mouth on her, because looking was never going to be enough.
Her jaw, her throat, the line of her collarbone, down.
I take one nipple into my mouth, slow, working it with my tongue until her head drops back and her fingers dig into my shoulders.
Then the other, unhurried, learning what tonight's version of her wants and giving it to her the second I learn it.
She tastes like warm skin and faintly of the wine on my tongue, and her hips have started a slow roll against me that I'm certain both of us feel everywhere.
She pulls my shirt off over my head. Flattens her palms on my chest, slides them down, and when she reaches my belt she looks up at me from under her lashes.
"My turn," she says.
She puts me on the edge of the bed and takes her time about my belt, my zipper, all of it, and then she kneels between my knees, wraps her hand around my cock, and takes me into her mouth like we have all night, because we do.