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While Darby and her parents took the boat out, I stayed back at the cabin. I wanted to give her time to catch up with her family. I sensed they needed that alone space together without me, and I wasn’t offended. I also didn’t envy the grilling Darby probably got from her parents. I had to assure Darby that I was fine, but I did, in all honesty, have a butt-ton of work to catch up on. After logging on to her laptop to check my emails for me, she realized I wasn’t kidding. Before she left, she hovered around, making sure I had everything I needed. Her concern was adorable and far more touching than it would have been to anyone else—or should have been to me. I had to admit to myself that I let things get more than a little bit out of control. The kiss she planted on my lips before she left was far from adorable. No, it was more in the territory of nut-numbing scalding. In a good way if nut numbing and scalding can be good.
I wasn’t sure how much fishing was going on versus how much questioning was happening, but at seven, I heard voices outside the cabin discussing the plans for dinner, so I guess that proves to me that there might have been some heavy multitasking taking place on the boat.
“I think we should bake it. With lemon and dill. That’s the best.” That’s Darby’s mom, from what I can tell.
“Ha. Fried is best. Always. Hands down,” her dad argues.
“Dad. No. Fried is good, but you’re supposed to be watching your cholesterol. The doctor said that—”
“How about half and half?”
Darby’s mom huffs at her husband’s suggestion. “Fine,” she relents. “Alright. You win. But you have to eat something healthy too. Like…like…lettuce or something.”
Darby’s next statement catches me off guard. “Shoot. I might have to make something else. I don’t know if Leon can stomach fish again after…uh…never mind. He’s just had some bad experiences with the swimming chicken.”
“Swimming chicken?” Her dad asks, laughing.
“Well, if tuna is the chicken of the sea, then I think lake fish is swimming chicken.”
“All the more reason to fry it.” There is real affection in her dad’s voice, and I imagine he was the kind of parent who liked to tousle his kids’ hair when they were little or pick them up and swing them around, give them piggyback rides, and the like. He was probably a really great dad.
I shut my laptop down and run my hand over my eyes because they’re grainy from looking at the screen too long, not because they actually hurt, which is an entirely new sensation for me. The closed-up throat thing is also new. Instead of focusing on that, I mentally prepare myself to survive this family dinner.
I have no experience with meeting people’s parents. Less than freaking none. When Darby’s parents got here and we had coffee, I didn’t get any murderous glances. No open hostility. Just some curious looks from her mom and some not-so-friendly looks from her dad, but that was to be expected. He wants to protect his daughter.
We’re of like minds when it comes to that.
I have to clutch the doorframe as I think about that, pausing mid-stride.
The next thought makes my stomach twist, sick and wrenching.She’s not for you. You can’t protect her. You. Look at you.That thought sounds an awful lot like my father’s voice in my head. Except it’s not because if it were his voice, it would be followed up with a string of curses and a flying fist and pain exploding through my body. The only thing I feel now is pain. Pain that’s gut-deep because even though I never believed a word my father said, I do believe the voice in my head.
Darby is nice, and she’s sweet. She’s a good person. She defends me at work and never minds doing shitty jobs, no matter how small. She loves her family enough to support her parents by helping with their mortgage because her dad is on disability. She pays for her sister’s college tuition even though she has student debt of her own. The love she has for her family is obvious. She’s quick to help, and she’s nurturing and caring. Her soft heart is her best asset and most desirable attribute, and I will crush it because I don’t know how to be gentle.
She might think I’m a good and nice person because I let people keep control of their businesses or lend money here or there since I’m not heartless, but that doesn’t make me someone worthy of her. It doesn’t even put me in the same class. She’s got this idea in her head that we can be something other than this fake marriage, and it has to stop. I have to stop kidding myself. I have to stop pretending. Darby was raised cocooned by love and innocence, and I was raised by a monster.
Don’t all monsters end up begetting monsters?
I’m just waiting for it. The day I finally snapped.
Then there’s the shit I haven’t told her—the herculean amount of shit. Like, if I were a Greek god, I’d be the god of shit. The things she’s seen are just the beginning. I’m not just physically maimed, and it’s not just my hand that’s scarred. It’s all of me. My heart, my fucking soul, and literally my brain. I might be able to keep it under wraps most days and get through it now, but what about in the future? The last thing I want to be is a burden. That word scares the hell out of me.
Suddenly, Darby appears right in front of me in the hallway, where I’m frozen. I didn’t hear her coming. I didn’t see her until she was right there. Here she is, her hands cupping my face, looking up at me with her huge, wide eyes. I was so lost in myself that I didn’t come back until right now. She’s scared. Not scared of me, but for me. Concerned. I’m so humbled by the way she looks at me.
“Are you okay?” she whispers so her parents won’t hear. Because this isprivate, not because she’sashamed.
“I’m fine.”
Her hands start to drop, but I grasp her wrists, fixing them in place. She smiles at me so softly, dangerously—like she doesn’t mind the thrill of her mom or dad walking up and seeing us like this—and then arches up on her toes and kisses me. She laughs softly after, a little breathless.
“I smell like fish. I’m sorry.”
I kiss her palm, well aware that this isn’t putting distance between us at all. “I’m not.”
Her eyes flash, and the way she looks at me guts me. It guts me, and it also does something else to me. I can’t remember the last time I was ever turned this inside out because I can’t remember the last time I let someone in. Letting someone in is a weakness, but I didn’t get a choice with Darby. She was already there. She might have snuck underneath my skin over the past year before I even knew what was happening. She’s sneaky and wonderful, and she makes me want to believe good things are possible. I was having an argument with myself just a second ago, telling myself that she isn’t for me because she’s too good for me. I am bound to self destruct sooner or later, and she deserves so much more than to be saddled with someone who is broken and messed up and who will probably only have decent health for a few more years if that—and decent is already stretching it—because my life has been a blur of pain and shit, but looking into her eyes, I want to believe there’smore.
That I can be more.
“Are you sure you’re okay? You look funny.”
