Page 29 of Suddenly Tempted
“I hate how like him I am,” he said eventually. “I hate that I can see him in me every single day — that arrogance, that selfishness.”
“Why are you like it, then?” Darcy replied. “Why not change?”
“Because I saw what happens when you don’t keep people at arm’s length” he said. “I’m not going to be at the mercy of someone just because I fall in love with them. If I start letting them in, I might lose everything.”
“You might gain a lot more,” said Darcy.
“That’s a risk I’m not going to take,” he snapped back.
She could feel the anger pulsing off him in waves, but there was something else — a flicker of regret, as if he were lost in a moment from his past. Sensing the shift, she kept quiet, giving him space. They both trudged up the steep slope in silence. It was a few minutes before he started speaking again.
“Mum was kind and loving all her life,” he said. “She could never stand up to dad, because he would use his physical strength against her. Except once. I still remember it so clearly. I was twelve, I’d just had a growth spurt, and I was in the wrestling club at school. All my life I’d been afraid of Dad, but for the first time I was bigger than him, stronger. He was just out of prison, and I think he wanted to show me that he was still the man of the family. One night, drunk and angry, he raised his fist to me and Mum . . .”
He took a deep breath, a cloud of it billowing out of his pursed lips.
“Mum changed. In that instant, she became something else. There was a sudden strength in her, a fury. It was like a storm was raging behind her eyes, and she ran in front of me and pushed Dad as hard as she could. He went down like a ton of bricks, and she just stood over him and ordered him never to touch me, never to even lift his fist to me again. And he never did, not once. For all Dad’s meanness, his anger, for all the times he made my mum feel like garbage, he never once threatened me again.”
“A storm,” Darcy said. “That’s where your name came from?”
Devlin nodded.
“I took that piece of her, that strength, that storm I saw in her eyes, and I made it part of me, for ever. She’s with me. She’s always with me.”
“I’m sorry you lost her,” said Darcy.
“Thank you. It still doesn’t feel real, you know? I still think I can just pick up the phone and . . .”
Whatever he was about to say became stuck in his throat and Darcy’s heart melted like snow in the sun. She reached out and touched his arm, as tenderly as she could, pulling him to a halt. He stood there, facing away from her, and when she finally coaxed his head around, she saw that his amazing, green eyes were swimming with tears.
“Come here,” she said, and he shook his head. She opened her arms. “Just for a moment. I promise I won’t tell anyone.”
He let her embrace him, and she pulled his head onto her shoulder, putting her other arm around his waist and hugging him as hard as she was able to in her layers of clothes. She felt his body shudder, but whatever sadness was there must have been quickly locked away because after a moment, his body tensed and he pulled back.
“It’s the air,” he croaked, clearing his throat. “It’s too thin. Makes my eyes water.”
“It’s okay, Devlin,” she replied. “There’s nothing wrong with being human. There’s nothing wrong with needing help or with asking for some compassion. Your mum saved you that day because she acted out of love for you. If you want to be like her and to keep a bit of her with you, like you say you do, then maybe you need to open your heart to receiving it to. I bet you’ve never truly been in love, have you? Never fought for someone who meant the whole world to you?”
He scrunched up his nose.
“We need to keep going,” he said, hefting up his case. “All talking does is slow us down. All it does is make us vulnerable to the mountain.”
Darcy felt foolish for trying to get him to open up. All too often she’d read that men like Devlin didn’t share their feelings. They were solitary, and closed, because they believed that any attempt to open up would be a chink in their armour.
But the thing was, she hadn’t tried to get him to talk. He’d done it all himself. Sure, she’d asked a few questions, but it was him who’d steered the conversation into the past, and towards his parents. She got the feeling that Devlin’s emotions were like a core of ice, buried deep inside him and kept guarded at all times. But that ice water heated up sometimes, it came to a boil, and he just couldn’t stop it from bubbling over.
The world knew Devlin Storm as a cold, uncaring, emotionless man, but in the short time she’d spent with him, Darcy was starting to understand just how fragile he actually was.
But she had no desire to be shouted at again, so she stayed where she was, walking beside Devlin as they marched up the slope. She rubbed her hands together, trying to flex her numb fingers. They’d made good progress, climbing the mountain faster than she’d thought. If the weather held, and there were no catastrophes, then they’d reach the ranger station in another two hours or so.
They had reached a small rocky outcrop and Devlin went first, scrambling up it. Darcy waited until he was at the top then took her turn, heaving her exhausted body up over the rocks until her arms and legs screamed at her to stop. But she made it, and despite her heart rate soaring through her hat, Darcy was proud of her climb. She looked to Devlin for recognition of her hard work, but he simply started walking again.
She followed a little behind, watching Devlin as he strode on ahead with a sense of determination. As she walked, she thought about everything that Devlin had said to her — his poor childhood, his drunken father who had been in and out of prison, his loving mum. It was so different to the Devlin Storm she’d read about in the papers, so different to the picture of himself he presented to the world.
That Devlin was the very definition of a spoilt brat. That Devlin had claimed to come from a long line of wealthy people, the crème de la crème of British life. That Devlin had driven a new sports car every week, had lived in a new penthouse or mansion every month, and had spent millions of pounds every year on parties for him and his friends. The Devlin with her here today was a different man entirely. But which one was real?
She would never know. In a few hours they would be flown off the mountain. Darcy would be taken to the local hospital, and Devlin would no doubt be transported to a private clinic somewhere. Their worlds were so far apart that they would never see each other again.
Good, she said to herself.I’ll never have to be at the wrong end of a Devlin Storm piercing glare again.
