Page 87 of One Secret

Darcy had said her bartender compatriot was just a friend. And I trust it to be true.

'I may be bad at it... Working together, I mean.' Darcy warns.

It's my turn to snort with a little derision.

'I can't imagine there's much you're bad at.'

'Oh, because I'm so perfect?' she challenges.

'No...'

I've followed her lead with my scars, trailing my fingerprints around her temple, down into the hollows of her neck, to her shoulder, and around to her ribs. I count absent-mindedly as the tips of my fingers trail over the gentle swells of each bone. One rib, two ribs...

'Because you're smart and tenacious.' I explain. 'I figure you're stubborn enough not to back down from an obstacle. And clever enough to always find a way around it. It's a deadly combination for efficacy.'

Clearly, I'm still horrendous at giving compliments because Darcy is frowning in the darkness.

'Hmmm...' she murmurs noncommittally.

Unable to read her as well as I'd like, I reach over Darcy's head to switch on the bedside lamp.

'You don't sound like you believe me,' I accuse her, as we both blink in the sudden brightness. I settle an elbow into the cushions and brace my temple on my palm.

'I believe that you mean it. Which I like, by the way.' She smiles, but then gives a more subdued half shrug. 'But it's hard to think of as actual truth,' she explains. 'My mom was smart and driven. It never got her very far.'

Five ribs... six ribs... I count as my other hand follows the valleys of her chest until my palm falls to her hip...

'Why not?' I prod gently.

Darcy groans and rolls her eyes. Her hair is matted and tangled over the pillow. Wild and unruly. Like her.

'She had a fundamental flaw, my mom. The complete and utter inability to be alone.'

'Bad boyfriends?' I guess.

She nods.

'A string of them. And she was an international dater too. Always loved the exotic. And she dreamed of romance in far-flung places. By the time I was ten, her chain of broken relationships had led me halfway around Europe.'

'That must have been rough,' I empathize quietly. 'So, you didn't grow up in Sweden?'

'Nope. Just born there. Have the passport to prove it but little else. No culture, no sense of identity.'

No home.

She doesn't speak the words but I can see them in her eyes.

I can relate to that, at least.

'I went back there when I was seventeen, trying to find something of myself but...' Darcy purses her lips in an awkward pout and shrugs. 'It didn't really work out how I imagined.'

'You had to leave?'

She nods.

I wonder for a moment if the music she's worried about facing back north is tied to her reason for leaving in the first place.

'I came back to Italy. My mom's last husband—the one she changed my surname for—had left her. She was alone again.'

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