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“Hmm,” I said. “Right here and right now doesn’t seem so bad, does it?”
“No,” he agreed. “If only this could last.”
His words hung between us, echoing into a growing silence that stretched out as drowsiness overtook me. I’d woken up insanely early to attempt my second run at Dominic’s park, and I think Dominic just fucked the ever-living sense out of me. A nap sounded absolutely divine, and I felt my eyes getting heavy.
23
DOMINIC
Irolled over and saw Darcy asleep beside me. The misty cold morning had turned to sputtering light rain. It pattered on the windows and ran down in rivulets, obscuring everything outside until it felt like this room was the whole world. I wished it was. I found myself smiling at the thought of simply living out our days here–of leaving work behind and all the complications that came with it. It was still Saturday and I wondered if I could keep her to myself all weekend.
Her brown hair was covering most of her face, so I gently pushed it away to look at her. She stirred and moaned softly in her sleep, but didn’t wake.
Darcy fucking McClain. She was my dirty little addiction. My smart-mouthed drug. My little forbidden vixen. She was everything I should have been avoiding, but all I wanted to do was keep her close.
I rolled to my back, listening to the sounds of the rain pattering outside as my thoughts ran wild. What the hellwasmy plan, though? As much as I might want to pretend, the real world was going to come knocking sooner or later.
The worst case scenario was my dad figured us out. He’d move me off the project and most likely try to assign me to another business halfway across the country. It would be a pure power play. He’d want to show me that I couldn’t have Darcy, and he’d do anything in his power to take her from me. It wouldn’t have anything to do with Darcy herself. He didn’t even know her. He’d just want me to see that only he could blatantly abuse his power that way–to ignore the rules and fuck around with an employee. He wanted me to play by his rules because it stroked his ego when he had me under his thumb, and that was all there was to it.
Just the thought of my dad trying to split me from Darcy made dangerous feelings well in my chest. I needed to be careful.Verycareful. I needed to remember this was likely only infatuation. We were just chasing chemicals, and once the high faded, I’d still have to pick up my life from where it was and move on. I didn’t want life after Darcy to be one where I’d shit all over my dreams just for a fun ride. Even if that ride might have very well been the best of my life by far.
Darcy rolled toward me and took in a deep, sleepy breath. Her eyes fluttered open and she smiled. “I love the sound of rain.”
“Yeah,” I said. I was on my back with my hands on my stomach and Darcy had put her head on my shoulder, closing her eyes again. “You know I used to have a brother. He died when I was fourteen. His name was Percy.”
Darcy’s eyes opened but she just frowned, concern plain on her face. I had no fucking idea where this was coming from or why it was coming out of my mouth. I hadn’t talked about Percy in years. It was like picking at an old, unhealed wound. But words kept spilling out.
“He was seventeen,” I said. “We used to ride our bikes down to the docks almost every day. Our favorite days were the rainy ones. We’d slam the brakes and try to skid our way around corners when the streets were wet enough. The two of us didn’t always get along and he could be a real shit to me, but every summer it was kind of like we called a truce. We’d get out of the house as often as we could, mostly to escape dad.
“I remember one time he gave us a thousand dollars in cash and told us to go buy some nice clothes for this internship he was trying to make us do. We took our bikes out on a rainy day like this. We ended up finding a wedding cake shop. We bought one for like seven hundred dollars with the money, just for the hell of it. We couldn’t fit the thing on our bikes so we took it behind the shop and had a cake fight.” I smiled as the memory played in my head. “That was just a couple months before his accident. That’s probably my favorite memory of Percy, though.”
“I’m so sorry, Dominic,” she said, putting her arm around me and squeezing. I was surprised to see her eyes were glassy with tears. “But it’s awesome you have a memory like that. I don’t even know what I’d do if I ever lost Eloise.”
“Yeah, it’s alright. He got a motorcycle when he turned sixteen and he always drove it too fast. Way too fast. Sometimes I wondered if he wanted to crash. Our dad put so much on his shoulders, and Percy was different than me. I always did alright with the pressure, because pleasing my dad has never been what was important. I just wanted to prove I didn’t need him. But Percy wanted to live up to my dad’s expectations. He wanted to make him happy, and that was always going to be an impossible task.” I shook my head and felt stupid when my eyes started to sting. “But what the hell do I know? It was just an accident. He’s gone now and I’ll never get the chance to ask.”
Darcy didn’t say anything for a while. When she finally spoke, her voice was soft. “Why can’t parents just be normal? Let their kids figure out their own dreams for once, you know?”
I chuckled. “That would be too easy, wouldn’t it?”
“Yeah,” she said. Darcy nuzzled closer to me and held me tighter. She didn’t say anything, but I could sense the comfort there. It had been so long since I’d confided in anyone about anything. Marcus and Tristan knew about Percy, of course, but they’d been my friends when it happened. They only knew what they thought they knew about how I handled it all. The shit I told Darcy had never left my lips before, and it felt strange. In a way, it was like a weight had been lifted from me, but I also felt an odd connection to her–like knowing that she knew changed something.
I closed my eyes and tried to fall back asleep, but my brain was buzzing. Where was this leading?
I had no clue, but I knew the two of us were headed for a collision with my dad on Monday. All I could do now was enjoy the weekend and hope we found some way to keep my dad from sniffing out the truth.
24
DARCY
Dominic let me borrow one of his work shirts, which basically served as a dress for me. It was comfy and it smelled like him. I had every intention of stealing it and keeping it, no matter what he said.
I was sitting at a table in his kitchen beside a huge wall of windows. Dominic was rustling around in the fridge, putting together sandwiches for us. It was a sort of late lunch slash early dinner slash hungry after sex meal, and I frankly didn’t care what I ate. I was starving.
I watched him and let my thoughts run over the last few weeks. I wished I knew how much of my feelings for Dominic were tied up in the physical chemistry. It was impossible to know. Every time I was near him, it was like my brain dumped every single chemical on hand into my system and sent me into some kind of horny berserker state of mind.
I’d always imagined when I met “the one” it would be so obvious. It’d be like the stories that ended in Happily Ever After. There’d be sparks and flames and certainty. I’d go to bed the night after we met with nothing but dreams of our life together. I’d be gushing about him to all my friends and family at every opportunity. It’d just beobvious.So what was this? I was keeping him a secret, and it was confusing and up and down.
Every guy I’d been with before Dominic felt different. Sure, I’d been attracted to them at the start and even wondered about what the future would hold for us. But those early feelings always faded fast, or the guys would start showing their faults as soon as they got tired of being on good behavior. There’d been the one guy in college who tried to make me listen to an Andrew Tate podcast for the whole ride, all while pausing to make sure I understood every insanely sexist point the guy made. Or there was the one who refused to give oral for religious reasons, but wouldn’t stop begging me to go down on him. “A man shouldn’t be on his knees, especially not in front of a woman,” he’d say. That one had ended quickly.
