“Darcy.” It’s rough. “I would have come to see you. It didn’t matter?—”
“Iknow. But I was so stupid. And by the time I realized, it had been almost a year. I tried to call you, but…”
“But what?”
Pain slashes through my chest at the memory. “It was too late. You were already married. What right did I have to intrude on your life after I’d treated you so badly?”
CHAPTER 3
MIKE
Of all the reasons why Darcy broke up with me, I never could have imagined this.
Frustration and anger and shock and sorrow come at me in punishing waves.
Why didn’t she tell me? After eight years, didn’t she trust me with everything? How could this have happened?
And the worst—imagining my Darcy scared and hurting and alone. Without me there to support her, like I would have done if only I’d known.
And again, anger, this time at myself.
Why didn’t I push harder after Darcy broke up with me? Why didn’t I come to Sleepy Hollow, insist on finding out where she was? Why did I believe her so readily when she told me she wanted to date other people?
As I look at Darcy’s miserable expression, the tears welling in her eyes, the urge to hold her is so intense it’s a physical pain.
“I didn’t think to check right away,” Darcy continues, then pauses for a sniff. “About your wedding. Not for months. I couldn’t bring myself to.”
“Wait.” My posture stiffens. “When did you call?”
She gnaws on her lip again. “I guess… It would have been right after my twenty-third birthday. I remember finding an old gift you gave me and—” Her voice cracks. “I missed you so badly.”
“But I wasn’t married then.” I would have been twenty-five then, still half a year short of my impetuous and ill-thought-out marriage to Heidi. Thinking back, I would have just started dating Heidi—my foolish attempt to get over Darcy once and for all.
“She said you were,” Darcy replies. “I mean, she had your phone. And she knew all these things about you. Things a fiancee would know.”
“She wasn’t.” Twisting around on the couch cushion, I turn to face Darcy. “I was dating Heidi, yes. But we weren’t married. Not until…”
Not until that night in Vegas five months later when my drunken self decided that marriage was a good idea.
Her brows draw into a confused V. “But you married her. I saw some old photos…”
My jaw clenches at the realization of yet another betrayal from my ex-wife. “I did. But I wasn’t then. She was jealous, and… she lied to you. I never knew you called. I would have talked to you if I had.” I stop. “I never should have married her, Darce. I tried to convince myself I could be happy with someone else. But her and I… we were never a good match.”
Darcy glances at the fire, sighing. The flames cast a golden glow across her features. “I’m sorry, Mike. For everything. For not telling you. Not giving you a chance. And for waiting too long to try to fix things.”
It feels like a giant hand is wrapped around my heart, squeezing. “I was going to reach out to you. After my divorce. Not as a rebound thing. But because I missed you. It had been two years since we talked, and dammit, I still missed you.”
Darcy’s eyes go wide. “You never called.”
“Because thenyouwere married. It was time for me to accept that we weren’t meant to be. Talking to you would have just made it harder to move on.”
Her hand goes stiff and cold in mine. Her shoulders tense in as she hunches into herself.
Something cold and malevolent worms its way into my chest. A sense of foreboding of something I don’t want to know.
“It wasn’t a good marriage,” she says after a long pause. “Alex… He seemed nice in the beginning. And he accepted me. Told me I was pretty even though I was missing part of my leg.”
“Eventhough?” My voice rises. “What difference does it make?—”
