Page 35 of My Vows Are Sealed

“You really have no idea?” she bit out.

“Naomi, if you know something, please tell me,” I begged. “I swear to God, I have no idea what I did to upset her. We were fine on Wednesday afternoon, and by the time I saw her on Wednesday night, she was giving me the silent treatment.”

“Yeah. After you asked Heather to this dance as your date and thenoh so generouslyoffered to give us a ride too, like the annoying kid sisters your mom forced you to let tag along. What did youthinkwould happen? Youknowhow she feels about you,” she spat.

“You didwhat?” Kate growled.

“Oh, my God, Brendan,” Heather gasped, turning to look at me with daggers coming out of her eyes. “You didn’t tell her? You actually let her think that you asked me as your date and then offered her and Naomi a ride as third wheels? Itoldyou the only way I was doing this was if you made it clear to her that thiswasn’ta date.Dickmove, my friend!”

My head spun as I tried to catch up with what they were saying.

I’dnevertold Darla that I asked Heather here as my date. I mean, I hadn’t spelled out that we were just coming here as friends, but I didn’t think I had to. Because what kind of asshole asked a girl to homecoming as a date and then offered to have two other girls who were going stag ride with them?

Actually, when I thought back on it, she’d never even given me a chance to do that. I’d asked her if she wanted to come with us, and then she’d said no and walked away and refused to talk to me before Icouldexplain that Heather and I were just coming as friends.

Shit. Heather was right. Thatwasa dick move, and I owed Darla the world’s biggest apology. Like, a bigger one than I could actually give her, because the kind of apology she deserved involved stuff like flowers and chocolate, but then she’d have to figure out how to explain to her dad where it came from.

“I never had a chance to tell her,” I explained. I could at least smooth things over with our friends right now, because I had a feeling I’d be spending the rest of the night making this up to Darla. “I was an idiot, and I didn’t lead with the part where you and I were just coming as friends, Heather. I guess I didn’t think I had to tell her, because I figured she knew I wouldn’t offer her a ride here if I was coming with you as a date.”

“Oh, my God,” Naomi gasped. “She said your mom told her that you guys were coming here together when she came into the kids’ room to drop Nate off. Before you came in. She thought it was a date before you said a word to her.”

God damn it all to Hell. I was going tokillmy mother. Okay, not literally, but she was definitely staying on my shit list. Apparently, she didn’t think telling me to stay away from Darla was working well enough, so instead, she’d tried to break Darla’s heart to makeherstay away fromme.

“Shit,” I growled, taking off for the gym doors.

“Go get her, tiger!” Ashton called after me.

God, I hoped so. But somehow, I had the feeling it wouldn’t be that simple. Not with Darla. She had the biggest heart of anyone I knew and she couldn’t hold a grudge to save her life, but she was fragile. Her parents didn’t want to think about the fact that their daughter was becoming a woman, so they just ignored it and hoped it would go away. She was dealing with an onslaught of new emotions and experiences right now, and her parents hadn’t given her the tools to cope with any of it. Just from the look on Darla’s face before she ran out of the gym, I knew that my colossal screw-up had broken her, and she had absolutely no idea how to process it.

The second I opened the door, I heard Darla’s sobbing, and it tore my heart into a million pieces. Ineverwanted to be the reason she was this upset. Ever. I wanted to be the one whodriedher tears, not the one who produced them.

I jogged over to stand in front of her, and her tear-streaked face with eyeshadow, foundation, and mascara smudged all over it made me want to cry all over again. I tried to pull her into my arms, but she shoved me off.

“Leave me alone, Brendan!” she wailed.

Choking down the lump in my throat, I took a deep breath. “Nope. Not until we talk.”

“There’s nothing totalk about,” she sniffled. “I know I don’t have a right to be upset, but you made your choice. The least you can do is not rub it in my face.”

Was it wrong that a little bit of hope started to bubble inside me? Because she wouldn’t have beenthisupset if my feelings were one-sided, would she?

“Dar, it’s not—”

“Don’t call me that!” she spat. “You don’tgetto call me that anymore! You don’t get to act like nothing’s changed. Not when you didn’t even respect me enough to even tellme. You let me find outthrough your mom! Youknewhow I felt, Brendan. Even if you didn’t feel the same way, even if you just liked me as a friend, you knew. Afriendwould have paid me the common courtesy of telling me the truth. But you were too much of a coward. You made your choice. Now you get to deal with the consequences.”

Those million pieces that my heart was in? Well, now they’d been ground into dust.

I knew it was stupid to be upset over her not wanting me to call her “Dar” anymore. It wasn’t even a particularly original nickname, but it was ours. I was the only person she’deverlet call her that. But now I’d screwed up so spectacularly that she didn’t even consider me afriendanymore.

And, realistically,Iwas the one who didn’t have a right to be upset here. Because my heart might have been dust right now, but hers was obviously dissolved down to the molecular level, thanks to my idiocy.

Before I even realized what I was doing, my hand was on Darla’s cheek and my lips were on hers. For a second, she stiffened, and then she tried to push me off again, but I just slid my other arm around her waist and held her tighter, refusing to let her go. Because the thing was, I knew she didn’t really hate me. And I knew she didn’t really want me to stop. What she really wanted right now was for me to fight for her. Like I should have been doing all along. Like I’d spend the rest of my life doing.

Finally, she gave in, letting out a whimper as she wrapped her arms around my neck and started to move her lips with mine.

This wasn’t even close to how I’d wanted my first kiss –ourfirst kiss – to happen. I was supposed to take her out on a date somewhere. I was supposed to pull out all the stops and treat her like the queen she was, and then find a reason to kiss her at the end of the night. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, in a moment of desperation, trying to make her understand the depth of my feelings for her.

But I wouldn’t have changed this moment for the world. She tasted like a combination of fake strawberry – probably from the lip gloss she was wearing – and the watered-down fruit punch they were serving tonight, but underneath that, she just tasted like…home. I poured everything I was feeling, all of the pain, heartache, and regret, accompanied by more love than I ever knew I could feel for another person, into it. As she parted her lips and let me slip my tongue into her mouth and stroke against hers, I swore I saw stars. Ifelther soft moans down to the very fiber of my being, and I swallowed each and every one of them like a starving man at a banquet.

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