Page 28 of Surrender
He didn’t move, just tilted his head slightly, his dark eyes hard to read. “Since when were you justpeople?”
A bitter laugh bubbled up before I could stop it. “Since the day you left.”
He clenched his jaw, the muscles twitching. “I didn’t come here to argue with you, Darcy. I came to see how you are.”
“How I am?” I leaned back against the counter, shaking my head. “No, you don’t get to walk back in here after all this time, like ‘Hey, how’s the last ten years of your life been?’ If you’d chosen to be a part of it, you would know how I’ve been. You’d know what I’ve done with my life.”
His hands flexed at his sides, and he took a step closer—the old floorboards creaking under the weight of his body. “And what makes you think I don’t know?”
The space between us quickly shrank, and I couldn’t help but notice the larger-than-life feeling I had in that moment. Nate had always been a little taller, his shoulders broader, his jaw peppered with the stubble teen boys liked to claim was a beard.
But this? This was different.
There was something about this Nate that wasn’t just bigger. He was stronger. More masculine. Not just in his body but in his eyes.
“I know you came third in your graduating class from Juilliard, and when you were given your award, you sneezed on the dean as he handed you your bouquet.” My pulse hammeredagainst my ribs as he took another step forward, his voice low and unwavering. “I know you read those sexy romance books, but you keep them in your room because you think people will judge you. I know you spent your last birthday alone because you had a show that night and didn’t want to distract everyone from their preparations or make them think you were trying to make it all about you.”
My lips parted, but no words came out.
“Or maybe we should talk about the teddy bear that you get every single Christmas with a card signed by your brother.”
“Stop it,” I hissed, tears burning at the back of my throat.
But he didn’t.
“What about the flowers that would come from him before the closing night of every show you were in?”
They were there, every single time, without fail.
Always with some ridiculous football-esque words of encouragement.
Fourth quarter, give ’em hell!
Leave it all on the field!
Take it to the end zone!
My brain felt like it was glitching, trying to piece together exactly how he knew these things, who could have told him.
“How did you—”
“Because I never really fucking left, Darce.”
I shook my head before I even realized what I was doing, a couple of stray tears dripping onto my cheeks. “No,” I whispered, clearing my throat. “You did.”
Nate’s jaw ticked, and his nostrils flared. “Physically—”
“Mentally, emotionally, fucking spiritually,” I spat, shoving my hands onto his chest and forcing him to take a step back. I needed that space to breathe. “You don’t get to walk back in here, talking like you were some guardian angel watching over me like that changes everything!”
It didn’t.
It changed nothing.
And I refused to let him walk in here after this long, and rewrite history to make it sound like he was some saint sprinkling fairy dust on me while I mourned the loss of two people I loved. I stomped across the old linoleum floor, almost reaching the living room before I turned and stomped back again.
Nate leaned back against the kitchen counter, gripping the edge tightly as he watched me get more and more worked up—the anger of ten damn years swirling in a storm around us, sucking the air from the room.
“You gotta fucking breathe, Darce,” he urged, a fiercely narrowed stare analyzing me. “Find me in the room.”
