“I meant, like, tonight,” Darcy said. “Do you need a ride somewhere? We can drop you off, if you don’t want to talk to her.”
“I don’t have my wallet with me,” Adrian said, face self-mocking. “We’re staying in an Airbnb nearby. I don’t have a key. So I guess I will put a pleasant face on and go home with her.”
Darcy sighed. What a dork.
“You can come home with us,” she said. “We have a lot of bedrooms. No need to play Stella Kowalski tonight.”
She didn’t realize until she spoke that she’d never doubted Teagan would risk annoying Nora by helping her fiancé leave her, if that was what Adrian ultimately decided to do. Her immediate belief had been that Teagan would take care of this too, even if she didn’t add it to her list. Teagan wouldn’t turn the poor guy away just to make his own life easier; Teagan did hardly anything to make his own life easier.
But that was probably an answer in and of itself. Teagan would never quit on her. Even if every disaster she could imagine did come to pass, she was never going to feel like she’d made a mistake in relying on him.
Every time someone had offered her something she desperately wanted, it had been a trap. A bait and switch. But Teagan didn’t even realize he was what she wanted: gentle and serious and sincere, no matter what disasters befell him. Maybe nothing else would be what they expected, but if he was offering himself, she’d take him.
“I wouldn’t want to cause Teagan any problems. He basically works for Nora,” Adrian said, even as relief was beginning to color his face. What a shitty position to be in. He really had nowhere else to go, Darcy supposed.
“Oh come on. If Nora wants that open relationship, for all she knows we’re dragging you home because I ordered a bunch of kink gear and Teagan heard redheads have a higher pain tolerance,” Darcy argued.
He made a horrified face.
“Kidding! I didn’t actually buy any whips or anything like that,” Darcy quickly clarified, though Adrian didn’t seem very reassured.
Maybe she ought to add something scary to the list as abluff, just to flush out Teagan’s hard limits. Oh well, she’d just have to wait and see how he reacted to the stuff shehadordered.
Adrian hesitated, but he eventually agreed. “Yes, okay. Sure. Thank you.”
Darcy offered him an encouraging smile. “We can leave as soon as Teagan makes his speech.”
“It’s very kind of you,” Adrian said, still sounding disgusted to be in the position of accepting favors from her.
“Yes, well, us kept women need to look out for each other,” Darcy said drily, and he chuckled, even if it was pained.
She was aloft on a wave of certitude. Tomorrow, she and Teagan would sit down like adults over a breakfast of peanut butter and bananas. Darcy would lay out her conditions, and Teagan would gracefully accept them. She wasn’t asking him for very much. Just to promise he’d always keep loving her, no matter what mistakes she made, no matter what terrible ideas she had to follow through to their conclusion.
She stopped, a new idea already brewing. He loved her. He’d do this for her, even if she already knew it was a bad idea.
“Hey, one sec,” she told Adrian. “Can we make a quick stop by the otter enclosure?”
twenty-seven
The VIP lounge was decorated around an animal theme. That wasn’t unexpected for a zoo. But most of the decorations were madeofanimals, and Teagan summoned a tiny drop of gratitude that Darcy wouldn’t see the chandelier made of antlers, the zebra-skin rug, and the ostrich-leather seats. It didn’t even register when it fell in the drowning sea of anxiety he was adrift in. Where was she?
“Do you think that when the zoo critters are bad, the keepers bring them in here to scare ’em straight?” Sloane whispered to him.
Teagan managed only a noncommittal grunt.
“I think your mother owned a couple of photographs by Shirin Neshat. That would make a nice bundle with the John Currin,” Nora announced.
Teagan thought about going over to see what she was talking about, but he couldn’t gather the necessary attention. Nora was rewriting his entire speech at the card table at the opposite side of the room. Sloane was crashed next to him on the couch, eating a pile of crustacean parts and flirting with a forty-something capital markets lawyer with a receding hairline and a wedding ring tan line, who kept bringingher drinks from the private bar. Teagan was frozen in place, unable to focus on either of these brewing disasters.
He’d told Darcy he was in love with her, and she couldn’t get away fast enough.
“So where’s Darcy, anyway?” Sloane said, draining her glass and handing it off with a winsome smile to her inappropriate new friend.
Teagan hadn’t seen Darcy in two hours. She hadn’t called. She hadn’t texted. His mind was tearing itself apart, unable to latch onto the smallest thought and follow it to its conclusion.
“I think I fucked up,” Teagan mumbled, more to himself than to his sister, but she startled to hear him swear.
“What happened?” Sloane asked, sitting up straighter.
