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 toend 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 reasonthat 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.
"That's not the whole why," I say, because what the hell—in for a penny, in for the entire vault. "The whole why is that I used to watch you in the library. Lunch periods. You'd be at the corner table with some book the size of a cinder block, and when you hit a word you loved, you'd mouth it to yourself. Just your lips moving, like you were tasting it. Savoring it. You never knew anyone was watching." My heart is going like I'm in the door of the plane. "I knew. I secretly watched you do that for three years. I was thirteen and stupid and terrified of exactly two things on this earth. The written word, and you. So I torched it. Easier to make you the punchline than to be one."
Her lips part. Nothing comes out. Darcy Gable, out of words, and I did that, and under all the wreckage of this confession some ancient scoreboard in me lights up anyway.
"You watched me read?" she finally says. Barely above a whisper.
"Every chance I got."
"For three years."
I shrug, but it feels forced. "I thought you were cute." The last of the smooth is gone from my voice. There's nothing left in my mouth but the truth, slow and unarmored. "I think you're beautiful now. Same girl. Same words. I just stopped being too stupid to say it. That's the apology, Darcy. No excuse attached. I'm sorry. I've been sorry for half my life and too much of a coward to pick up the phone or drive two hours and say it."
