Page 76 of Second Chances
“No! No… she didn’t do anything. She doesn’t know; she doesn’t know that I know.”
He stared at her for a moment, his eyes boring into hers, assessing whether or not she was telling the truth.
“Then how do you know?”
“At Jane’s party, I went into her bedroom and I saw,” Beth began, her voice cracking partway through the sentence, “I saw a drawing on her wall… a drawing of you. No, anakeddrawing of you on her wall.” A small, bitter laugh accompanied her last statement, as if she couldn’t believe that the words were even coming out of her mouth, couldn’t believe that the words were true.
“God dammit,”he spat, standing up and stalking away from her, hands clenching at his sides, unable to watch the pain he had caused play over her beautifully sad face.
Beth watched helplessly as he stalked over to one of the still life canvases propped up against the wall and put his fist right through the middle of it; the tearing and cracking of the canvas dissolved her paralysis.
“Darcy, stop!” she yelled, standing up from the couch.
Her sudden outburst surprised him. He turned around to be confronted by her tear struck and emotionally stricken face, self-loathing quickly overpowering his rage.
“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
He began to walk back towards her but stopped himself short, paralyzed with the thought that anything he did was only going to hurt her worse. Beth watched as he sat down on the stool in front of the drawing he had started of her, dropping his head into his hands.
“Why are you here?” he groaned. “Shouldn’t you have left me by now?”
“I’m not leaving you!” she yelled, frustrated by how little faith he continually showed in her. “God, I’m just in shock and upset thatyoudidn’t tell me.”
“God, I wanted to,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I even tried, but then I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. First, I know she’s your client and I know how important your job is to you; what would you have done, Beth? Continue to work with her, knowing who she was?”
He paused here, looked at her pointedly, waiting for her response. It was a response that she didn’t want to admit to. Beth bit her lip, looking down at the floor. All she had thought of was Jane; she hadn’t even thought of herself and her job.
“I don’t know what I would have done,” she murmured.
“No? Because the other option would be to refuse to work with her and what would Phil have said when you told him that you had to drop another client for personal reasons? Because it would have either been that, or you would have worked with her, helped her succeed, all the while having to pretend that you were ok with her. I know things were rough at work after you fired Cathy, ahh, Mrs. DeBourgh and that Phil was excited to have you take on Caroline’s exhibit. If I told you who she was,what choice would I have left you with?Either force you to work miserably with someone whom you hate or risk everything that you’ve worked towards with your job.How do you think I could do that to you?”he fired out, angrily.
“I don’t. I mean, I didn’t. I didn’t think about that…” Beth said, bringing her hand to her temple, processing his point.
I hadn’t even thought about work. How could I have continued to work with her knowing… And Phil, after everything that had happened, there was no way that he could allow her to drop another client without a serious reprimand.
All she had thought about was how knowing this information had affected her, but now she was finally starting to see the terrible position that Darcy had been stuck in for weeks - not wanting to hurt her by not telling her, yet knowing that telling her would probably hurt her worse, in so many areas.
His position had been somewhere between a rock and a hard place…
“And more than that, your sister is marrying her brother; how could I further put you in that position? Hating her, never wanting to be in the same room as her, yet being forced to because of her tie to Jane. How would you even explain it to Jane?I thought I could handle it.”
He paused, catching his breath and his overwhelming emotions that had started to make his voice shake.
“I know,” he began again, “how much your sister means to you. I can’t… I won’t come between that. At least, I tried not to. I swore to myself that this wasn’t your problem, this wasn’t your fight, and you shouldn’t have to suffer anymore because of it. It’s bad enough that you have to suffer the effects it has left on me. I couldn’t let it strain your relationship with Jane…”
Her heart broke at the pain in his voice. He had tried too hard to spare her from it, from the situation they were now in. Maybe it was the wrong thing to do, but she couldn’t fault his reasoning; this would put a strain on her relationship with Jane no matter what happened, no matter what they chose to do about Caroline.
“I know. I’m not…” she started, softly, “I’m not mad that you didn’t tell me initially; I shouldn’t have said that. I can understand why you didn’t when she wasn’t in your life, in our lives, but once she was… I know thatwhoshe is complicates this, complicates how we handle this, but maybe you should have told me when I showed you that she was stalking and harassing me?”
“God,Beth, I tried. I just never fucking expected her to take it this far, this fast. Every day, I expected her to approach me, to contact me,to harass me; I put so many things in place and then after that one day at the office, there was nothing. I should have known she would jump to something more drastic,” Darcy growled. “I’d hoped she wouldn’t know about you, but I couldn’t ask Charles specifically not to tell her, without raising questions about why. Maybe I would have done that had I known she was going to so aggressively pursue you to get to me. I just wanted to keep you out of this for as long as possible,I just wanted to protect you.”
“I don’t need a protector!I need a partner!” Beth yelled, exasperated.
His eyes shot to hers, fire raging inside of them, his instinct to dominate freed along with his anger. Locking onto her gaze, he stood and walked over to her, stopping to tower in front of her, his face just inches from hers.
Beth didn’t back down; she kept his gaze, feeling the heat radiating off of his body. She knew he was aroused, angry, but aroused. Her own anger and frustration had flared but been quickly consumed by the blaze of desire that burned through her with his proximity.
“This is crazy,” he whispered harshly before his lips crashed down onto hers.
