She looks up at me, her brow furrowed with a tenderness that makes her look ten years younger. “You and Reed, always with your secrets.” She shakes her head. “Our family needs a new trade.”
“As though you don’t keep things to yourself. When were you going to mention being sick?”
“It was nothing, a simple cold. And I didn’t mention specifically because I know how you get.”
She’s right. She’s impossible, but she’s right. God, I love her.
“You need to tell me next time, Darcy. I mean it. I don’t care what it is. An earache, a sprained ankle, anything. I can’t help if I don’t know.”
I can’t be in the dark again. Not after last time.
“I promise to tell you if it’s serious,” she says. That’s probably the best I can hope for. “And you better promise not to propose without warning me first. I need time to plan.”
I pull her into a hug. Darcy still fits under my arm, still prefers shampoo that smells like Fruit Roll-Ups, and still clears her throat obnoxiously loudly when she’s trying to be conspicuous.
It killed me to be on the other side of the ocean when we almost lost her. Darcy might be able to wave off a burst appendix, but I will never forget the bone-chilling terror of almost losing her and being an ocean away. Every painstaking second waiting for updates from Reed as she went through surgery. The fucking gall he had to tell me to focus on exams while our sister lay cut open on some operating table. As if Uni mattered more than her life.
But she’s here and she’s healthy, and that’s all I care about.
If I cling to her a little too much, she doesn’t mention it.
“You’re still satisfied with all this?” I ask. “No regret about turning down the Vox job?”
Darcy nods against my chest. “There are more important things than money,” she says, repeating something I’ve said too many times to count. “I’m exactly where I want to be.”
I should let it be, even if I don’t understand it.
Eventually, Darcy steps back, raising the camera again and ignoring my eye roll as she prods me to stand beside an assembly line. It smells of glue and throws me back about two decades.
“Ivy isn’t like the others,” she says, mid-shot. It isn’t a question, and I’m not surprised that she can see through me.
“I’m out of my depth,” I admit, rubbing the back of my neck.
She stops and looks up. “Of course you are, but you haven’t messed it up yet. She wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
Christ, I hope so. “I want to do this right. Ivy deserves that.”
“So do you,” Darcy says, firmly. “As long as you don’t go overboard, it’ll be fine.”
As though it’s a crime to want to take care of someone. To spoil them. Well, if it is, I’m surely fucked. “When have I ever gone overboard?”
She raises a single brow, and okay, fair point.
“You’ll get wrinkles if you keep frowning like that,” she teases. “Besides, you’ve always been good at winging it.”
“Some would call that a character flaw,” I say, following her past a row of stations where filament is being hand sorted. We both know who that someone would be.
Darcy bumps our shoulders together. “Don’t start.”
It’s been decades since I was last here. It’s remained the same, while I am leagues from who I used to be. Now I feel stretched thin, torn between two separate worlds. Never knowing where I fit.
I’ve never regretted choosing Dad. It was the right decision, even though I hated not being able to watch over Darcy. I couldn’t have it both ways, but it’s never stopped me from wanting it.
“How is he?”
Darcy’s my only hope of getting the true answer, but it seems she’s done playing middle woman. “Now that you’re here, you could ask him yourself. You have to learn to talk to each other eventually.”
“Debatable,” I say.
