Darren nodded, fully serious. “Indeed. Max insists on drivers when I’m away, but whenever I’m home, I like to take my old Mini out for a spin in the countryside, just roaming around. There are few things that can compete with driving to make you feel absolutely, totally free.”
Emma hummed. “Sounds nice. Except for the part about you driving. In my experience, people who claim to be excellent drivers areusually road-raging maniacs who think traffic rules are for the elderly and the peasants.”
“I beg to differ,” Darren protested. “They are reasonable suggestions that may be disregarded if deemed superfluous.”
“Yeah.” She clicked her tongue. “Seems my theory holds.”
The banter came easy—just as easy as telling him about her somber family history yesterday. Talking with him was light-years away from what she’d have expected before they met. Her bar had pretty much been set at “not fainting.”
Still, he had those brief moments where she felt something else behind his eyes. Easy conversation or not, she barely knew him. Leah wasn’t wrong. It was probably smart to be cautious.
Silence fell for a moment. Darren seemed to sense that her mind was somewhere else.
“You said yesterday you’re getting tired of the dark antagonist roles,” Emma finally said, keeping her voice light. “What drew you to them in the first place?”
Darren didn’t answer directly. He glanced sideways at her as if assessing. Emma looked back, lifting her chin a fraction.
“I have a feeling you’ve already heard me answer that,” he said.
An cooler note crept into his voice. But she’d shared much more personal things than that with him, hadn’t she?
“I’ve heard your public answer,” she countered. “And nothing about how it started.”
He sighed, taking another sip of his coffee. Then he leaned an arm on the seat in front of him and stared out through the windshield.
“Well, this isn’t the public answer. But I wasn’t in a great place whenMidnight Dominioncame up for casting. I’d been through a...pretty rough breakup, and everything in my life felt out of my hands. Sebastian Vale was a character who was always strong, always in control. And I guess I was drawn to that, since I had so little of it in my real life. Maybe I even thought it felt...right, to play the villain. Like it was fitting.”
Guilt prickled under Emma’s skin.Midnight Dominionwas nearly a decade old, yet fans were still wild for the mesmeric, relentless power he’d poured into Sebastian. She should know—she was one of them.
She’d impatiently awaited each dark, dangerous role he took on after that. Hell, she even enduredDarkreachto watch him as Kael.
It landed differently, knowing that his performance had come from a place of hurt. It must have been the Alana breakup he was talking about.
“So yeah, I kind of liked it,” Darren said, his expression tightening. “Until I didn’t. But by then, it was already what everybody wanted from me. The fans, the casting people—I realized too late that I’d boxed myself into a corner.”
Emma clutched the cup a little harder. She wanted to ask what it meant for Lucen, but before she could find the courage, the car swung around a corner. The convention center loomed into view, steel and glass catching the sun.
Darren shifted in his seat. “Alright, Emma,” he said lightly. “Let’s see what this Con has to offer.”
But she caught it—his jaw still a shade too tight, a shadow lingering in his eyes. And she couldn’t tell if he’d just let her closer, or was pushing her farther away.
Chapter 25
Geek-mode is coming.
It was still over an hour until the Con would open, but the sun had already risen high enough to clear the marine layer. A soft and golden light kissed the promenade that stretched in front of the building. People moved at an easy pace, as if the day itself was doing its morning stretch.
Darren guided her toward a staff entrance near the west flank of the building, away from where the day’s line was already taking shape. Security guards were posted by the glass doors, scanning staff badges.
Emma reached into her bag for her lanyard, but Darren leaned in, all traces of tension gone from his face.
“You won’t need that, love.”
Her skin warmed at the last word. She knew Brits tossed it around casually, but from him, it felt nothing of the sort. She huffed, trying to conceal her reaction.
“Are you trying to say your face is some kind of all-access pass?”
He tipped his head. “Guess we’re about to find out.”
