Page 78 of Rising Heat

I don’t do much better.

Mack rubs a hand across his jaw.

“I was ambushed.”

She laughs harder.

I watch him watch her do it and feel that familiar pull low in my chest. I know exactly what he’s looking at because I’ve spent most of the day looking at the same thing. The way Darcy throws her whole body into a laugh when she’s caught off guard. The way she stops trying to manage every reaction for a second and just lets herself have it.

I can’t stop wondering what she’d look like if she stopped holding herself together altogether. What she’d sound like. I want to feel her shallow breaths under my palms as I hold her down and watch Mack take her thoroughly, all that composure she works so hard to maintain gone.

I take a drink before that particular fantasy gets any further.

The cards go a few more rounds after that.

Darcy’s good at this. She gives away just enough to keep the game moving and somehow keeps the interesting parts tucked away until you forget they’re there. Then she’ll drop a detail that sends you right back to wondering what else she’s not saying.

Then I flip the next card and feel the room shift before I’ve even said the words.

“Never have I ever been married.”

She looks down at the card and lets out a slow breath.

“Engaged,” she says.

Me and Mack both go still.

“I was twenty-four. Three years together. Everyone thought it made sense.”

The fire cracks softly behind her.

“The wedding was six months out.”

Neither of us interrupts.

“He didn’t cheat,” she says after a moment, staring into the flames. “Which almost made it worse. On paper he was great.”

I already don’t like where this story is going.

“But every time I wanted something bigger than what we already had, I became the problem.”

“How?” I ask my voice lower than usual.

She laughs once.

“The city. My job. A candle I bought because I liked how it smelled.”

“He was mad about a candle?”

Mack raises a brow.

“It wasn’t about the candle.”

I lean back, barely resisting the urge to reach for her so she has something steady to hold onto that isn’t a story about a guy who didn’t deserve her

“Sounds like he was an insecure asshole.”

I mean it. The more she talks, the clearer it gets—she wanted more, he wanted her to want less. Darcy’s expression shifts when I say it out loud, like she’d been bracing for one of us to make a case for the guy.