Darcy would have to wait. She was not late. He had no reason to panic yet. And she was not in the mood to talk to anyone right now, least of all someone who would ask questionsshe did not have the capacity to answer standing on a pavement in the cold.
At least Mia was at Priya's for a sleepover. That was one thing. She would not have to walk in the door and arrange her face into something that explained nothing.
She opened her Lyft app and booked a car and stood under the streetlight with her bag over her shoulder and her hands still not entirely steady, her mind turning over what had happened with the particular restless energy of someone who had not yet decided what to do with it.
What the bloody hell did Daniel take her for.
The car pulled up. She got in, gave the address, and looked out of the window the whole way home and did not think about anything she was not ready to think about.
***
The lights in the living room were on.
Elizabeth had not messaged ahead. She opened the front door and Darcy was in the hallway, phone in hand, clearly about to call.
"I have been trying to reach you," he said. "You were not —"
He stopped, his expression tightening into a frown as his gaze settled on her face.
"Elizabeth." His voice changed, dropping to something quieter and more careful. "What happened?"
She had intended to say something efficient. Something that covered the facts without requiring her to stand in the hallway and feel them. She found she did not have it.
"Lizzy." He had never called her that since they started living together. Not since she had broken up with him. "Talk to me. What happened?"
She told him. All of it. The second date, why she had agreed to it, the drive, his hand, telling him to pull over, the streetlight, the car home. She told it in the scattered way things came out when you had not yet had time to arrange them.
She was not going to cry about it. She was angry, mostly, in the quiet specific way she was angry when something should not have happened and the anger had nowhere useful to go.
Darcy listened without interrupting. When she finished he was still for a moment.
"Where were you when you got out?" he said.
"Darcy —"
"Which street."
"I do not want to —"
"You do not have to do anything you do not want to do," he said. "But what he did has a name and there are people you can report it to and I will help you with that if you want to. Tonight, tomorrow, whenever you decide. Entirely your choice." He looked at her. "I just want you to know it is an option."
"All right," she said.
"All right you will, or all right you hear me?"
"All right I hear you. I do not know yet about the rest."
"That is fine. You do not need to decide tonight."
He turned toward the kitchen. "Come and sit down."
She followed him. He put the kettle on. The good tea, from the back of the shelf, the one Charlotte had kept for difficult evenings. He set a mug in front of her and then stood back and looked at her properly.
"Have you eaten?"
"We had dinner."
"A full meal?"
