It became obvious as soon as they exited the building that Teagan did not have a destination in mind, so Darcy set off for his condo. She’d mapped the route but had yet to go inside. His face was distant and remote as they walked, but he evidenced no surprise as Darcy brought them to the front entrance. He pulled out his keys and let them in without speaking about it.
The building was old and not tall, and Teagan’s unit was on the third floor. Darcy hadn’t really pictured what it would be like, but the smallness of it was shocking to her. It couldn’t even be five hundred square feet, and it looked smaller in light of Sloane’s luggage and boxes piled in the middle of the floor.
“Jesus, this is grim,” she said, peering out the sole window, which opened into an air shaft. If she craned her head with her nose to the glass, she could just see a rhombus-shaped wedge of sky off to the left. “I thought you were rich?”
“Manhattan real estate,” Teagan briefly explained. “I bought this place with my own money.” He stripped off his shirt and undershirt and dropped them next to the neatly made full-sized bed at one end of the room. He had a futon, a coffee table, and an entertainment console with a large TV. No other furniture besides the bed and nightstand. There were a few framed color photographs on the wall in IKEA frames: other people’s weddings, a picture of him and a teenaged Sloane smiling on a beach together.
As a place for a human to live, it obviously sucked.
She wished she had somewhere better to take him. Her own apartment, some secret spot in the woods. Now that they had reached their destination, she almost wanted to take him by the arm and start moving again.
Teagan sat down on the bed to remove his shoes. Once stripped to his trousers, he too seemed to run out of ideas for what to do. Like a tree falling in the forest, he toppled over onto his bed, then rolled on his stomach. He turned his face to the mattress.
Darcy eyed his abject figure sprawled on the bed, then went to sit next to him. Sober Sam had not covered this. She had not been briefed on this mission. She was only a petty officer third class, only a handyman, and her own family had not provided good instruction on how to love someone who was hurting.
“Do you want me to rub your back?” she asked.
“No, I’m okay,” Teagan mumbled into the plain navy duvet.
“Are you lying?” Darcy said skeptically. Who didn’t want a back rub?
Teagan’s shoulders tensed.
“Yes,” he admitted.
So Darcy stroked the palm of her hand up and down his bare back, feeling the tension run out of him by degrees. When they went to the gym, he usually swam laps, and most of the muscle in his wiry body lay across his shoulders. Darcy liked to press her cheek there when he rolled on his stomach to sleep.
She wondered whether she could ever be good at this part. She’d never really gotten this far. She understood how things started, when she met someone at work or at a bar, and how they got going, when they went to get dinner and a movie or they went home together. She also knew how things ended, when someone stopped calling or cheated or moved away. But this part? Darcy didn’t know about this part, where someone had a bad day or a series of bad days but then things got better, instead of worse. Where someone brought you a soda and rubbed your back.
She didn’t know if she could be good at this part. She’d never had the chance to try.
After a few minutes, Teagan turned to his side and caught her hand between his own. He brought her knuckles to his lips and kissed them, breath playing out over her fingers. He looked up at her from the bed, and his expression was such a mix of sadness and care that it made her stomach flip over. She had that tiptoeing-over-the-edge-of-the-cliff feeling again.
“Thank you,” he said. “I feel better.”
It was as quiet as it ever was in the city. No footsteps from the hall or the neighbors above, and the street below was empty.
Teagan looked at her expectantly. I’m in charge, Darcy reminded herself. She was supposed to know what to do now.
“Do you have any alcohol in here?” Darcy asked, squashing her impulse to give him real estate advice or to demand answers about what had happened back at his office. First things first.
“I don’t know,” Teagan said. “I don’t remember.”
While Teagan went into the bathroom to rub his face with a wet washcloth, Darcy opened cabinets and the refrigerator. The refrigerator was full of science experiments, but none of the substances therein had begun as alcoholic beverages. The cabinets had little of interest either, but she found a bottle of Macallan 30 still in its box under the sink. It hadn’t even been opened yet.
Teagan reemerged in a new shirt, his color improved.
He winced when he saw her standing next to the sink with the bottle.
“Sorry,” she said. “I gotta.”
“My boss gave me that with my bonus three years ago,” he said. “Back when I was a bond trader. At least try it first.”
“Is it good?” she asked, eyeing the bottle. “I’ve never drunk anything older than I am.”
In lieu of answering, Teagan pulled a glass from the cabinet next to the refrigerator, then filled it with ice. He kept his head tilted in her direction, as though waiting for her to stop him. Darcy watched him like a hawk as he cut the seal off the scotch and unscrewed the bottle before pouring an inch into the glass.
“I don’t know if I should,” Darcy said reluctantly. She wasn’t sure she ought to be drinking in front of him.
“Were you planning to never drink again either?” he asked, and his tone was very casual, but his eyes flashed with a stronger emotion that made her parse out what he might really be asking. No, Darcy had assumed that she’d occasionally have a drink. What he meant was, would he be in a position to see it? Would they still know each other? She didn’t know if they would.
Teagan didn’t own a kitchen table and chairs, so she hopped onto the counter to take the glass from him. She took a small, thoughtful sip from the glass. Jesus, it was good. She wondered if she dared finish it.
“It’s not that great,” she lied. “It just tastes like wood chips.”
“Hmm,” he said. “Seems unlikely.” Moving very slowly and deliberately, he stepped between her knees. He framed her face with his hands as he leaned down to kiss her. “I bet it’s pretty good, actually,” he murmured against the corner of her mouth. Keeping his hands cupped around her cheeks, he teased her lips open until they were pressed hot and slick against his. Together, they savored the taste of apples and peat that still clung to her tongue.
Darcy had now kissed him dozens of times, and she did it with no more thought than it took to pop a lemon candy in her mouth. She loved the little burst of sweetness she got from seizing Teagan by the arm and tugging him down to her. She loved the flash of surprise and pleasure on his face when he realized what she wanted, and she loved the moment it always took him to decide what to do with his hands. She couldn’t recall him ever kissing her, even on a morning where they woke up curled against each other. She thought this might be the first time.
There was an edge of salt when she sucked on his bottom lip, and it had to have come from sweat or tears. That reminded her that only a little while ago, she’d been afraid she needed to call an ambulance. She needed to figure that out.
Darcy slid the glass further down the counter and curled her fingers into his shirt.
“Okay, Teagan, okay,” she said soothingly, even as he continued to press kisses along her jaw line. “Um. We should talk, if you’re feeling better.”
Teagan pulled far enough back to give her a brief nod before busying himself with her lips again. His hands dropped from her cheeks and pressed against her waist only to fall further and grip her hips.
Darcy was beginning to feel affected by his closeness and the warmth of his skin radiating through his thin shirt. She also began to suspect that was a deliberate effort on Teagan’s part. It occurred to her that in all those times she’d kissed him or pulled him onto the couch or into the shower, he hadn’t simply been happy to do whatever she liked. He’d been paying attention to what she liked. And now, when she was trying to keep her wits about her so they could calmly discuss his crisis at the office—when he knew that calmly discussing was not one of her greatest skills!—he was giving her back everything she liked. He was asking her to want him.
He pulled her forward until her hips were spread around his thighs, and she had to hang onto his chest for balance. He licked into her mouth until she was breathless and distracted.
“Teagan,” Darcy insisted, turning her head away. “Don’t you think we should talk?”
“We can talk,” Teagan said. His tongue traced a hot line up her neck to her earlobe as his thumbs brushed her inner thighs just beyond the frayed hem of her shorts.
“This doesn’t feel like talking,” Darcy said dizzily. “This feels like sex.”
“It could also be that,” Teagan agreed. He leaned back to give her a little more room to think, but he left his hands on her body, his fingers hot and tense where they rested on her bare legs.
She could tell him to stop, she supposed. And they could rewind the discussion to an hour previous, when Teagan had been a vulnerable shape on the floor. Or she could let Teagan change the subject. Let him seduce her, pretend that she was so swept away by the promise implicit in his hands on her thighs that she could forget how scared she’d been for him.
She felt like she ought to know by now. Someone had probably figured it out and written it down somewhere, what she was supposed to do for someone who didn’t want to be the person she’d already observed him to be.
But if all she had was her intuition, it told her that if Teagan was chasing her, she ought to let herself be caught. He felt like he’d lost some part of himself; she’d give it back to him.
He’d done the reading, and it said if someone’s holding on to you, hold on harder.
So she twined her arms around his neck and turned her face up to his.
“If this is talking, I can’t wait to see you argue,” she said.
Teagan’s exhale seemed to release all the remaining stiffness in his shoulders. His hands moved over her body more confidently, gathering the fabric of her shirt so he could pull it over her head. He took off his own and paused with his gaze on her body, fingers trailing down her arm.
Seeming to come to some determination, he took his wallet out of his back pocket, retrieved a condom from it, and set both on the counter next to her.
“Oh wow,” Darcy said. “We’re having that kind of a conversation, huh?”
Teagan nodded in agreement, head dipping to suck at the point of her collarbone.
“So it’s going to be slow missionary with lots of eye contact?” she confirmed, joking to cover up her sudden nerves. They hadn’t actually done that yet, even though she thought that was what sex had meant to Teagan before he met her. She wasn’t sure whether this was a step forward or backward.
“Are there other positions?” Teagan asked, playing along and rounding his eyes.
“I’m not sure. Maybe we can experiment on my birthday,” she said with mock seriousness, shucking the rest of her clothing.
The stone of Teagan’s counter was cold underneath her, but his mouth was scorching wherever it landed on her skin. His mouth carefully curled around a breast, pulling only to the edge of intensity before it moved on. His fingers were just as restless, stroking her thighs then sweeping around her calves before rising almost but not quite to her core.
“We can pretend it’s your birthday today,” Teagan said in a low voice. “This can go however you want it to go. I just”—he knelt down so that when he spoke, his breath played out on soft, bare skin—“I want to feel you. I want to be inside you. I want to get something right today.”
He spread her legs with his shoulders and leaned in just enough to let his lower lip graze her. Darcy sighed and planted her hands on the counter to hold herself up. Teagan’s mouth was always magic, and she felt a familiar rush of desire at the sight of him on his knees in front of her. But the expected relief of his tongue on her body didn’t come.
“Do you want me to bend you over this counter?” Teagan asked, tone still soft and smooth. “I could hold on to your hair and make you guess when you’ll feel me inside you.”
Darcy restlessly shifted her hips, chasing his mouth, and resisted the urge to grab him by the ears to control his movements. Her pulse had begun to quicken at the featherlight touches he was alternating with his words, but it wasn’t nearly enough to address the ache of building tension.
“O-okay,” she agreed. Sounded good to her.
“Or you could sit on my lap and wrap your legs around me. I’d try to make you come by sucking on your breasts while you squirmed and begged me to move.”
That also sounded just fine as an option. Teagan ran one careful fingertip in a delicate figure eight through her folds, using it to make a small wet circle around her clit.
“Yeah, let’s do that,” she said.
“Or you can get on top. I’d love to watch your face. I want to memorize the expression you make when you come,” he said, fingers still stroking too slowly to do anything but slick his hand and her body both. “I like the sounds you make when you know you’re on the brink but you want to draw it out just a little longer.”
He was trying so hard to seduce her that she almost told him he really didn’t need to try. She was seduced! She’d make this easy on him! He could have her any way he wanted her, just please, have her already. But the sweetness of serious-faced Teagan doing his best efforts at dirty talk while his fingers moved in and out of her body made her heart ache in a way she wanted to savor.
“I, um,” she said. It was hard to think under the slow roll of Teagan’s thumb and knuckle. “You know, I can get on board with the slow missionary. Or whatever it was you were planning. I want to accommodate your interests, for once.”
“Anal it is,” Teagan said in tones of great solemnity.
Darcy yelped with astonished laughter, tossing her head back and cackling so hard that Teagan stilled his hand and smirked at her.
Darcy put a hand on top of his to urge him to keep up with what he’d been doing and gave him a petulant look. “If you play that card, we’re pretending it’s your birthday, and then you have to wait a year.”
Teagan raised his eyebrows significantly, then slid two fingers through much more favorable territory. He crooked them to make her keen, then followed them with a third. He studied her face as he slowly pumped them in and out. The stretch was welcome, but not nearly as good as what she was still anticipating. Darcy was about to whine that he was being cruel and withholding when he stood, slipped his fingers from between her thighs, and scooped her up off the counter.
The size of the apartment was such that he only had to carry her three steps before dropping her on her back on the bed. She still didn’t know exactly what he was planning until he pulled her forward so that her legs dangled off the bed and he stood between her spread legs.
“My birthday is in two weeks,” he announced, smile crooked. “I’ll consider my options at that time.”
All his big words aside, Teagan’s face was vulnerable as he undid his slacks and kicked them off his legs, then peeled himself out of his boxer briefs. Darcy pushed up on her elbows to watch him, because Teagan was beautiful like this: his lower lip pulling inward with concentration, blonde eyelashes lowered in contemplation of her body spread out before him. The lean muscles of his chest and stomach were tight as he rolled the condom on.
It seemed to Darcy they both held their breath as he notched the head against her. They watched together as it disappeared inside her, the slow penetration pressing the air from her lungs until she gasped as a little twist of his hips drove it all the way home. He pulled back a few inches, checked her face, and slid in more carefully.
Darcy didn’t have any leverage in this position, and she squirmed as she strove to accommodate the stretch between her hips, throwing him off his rhythm. Teagan put a cautioning hand on her stomach, skin nearly scorching against her own.
“I’ve got you,” he said. “Just wrap your legs around me.”
His voice was so peremptory that Darcy snorted and dug her heels into the round swell of his ass. His breath stuttered as the movement carried him infinitesimally deeper inside her. She giggled at him as he struggled to regain his balance.
She savored the imperfections of it. Every gesture that suggested this was a first time, not a last time, that she’d have him like this.
“Darcy, please. I’m trying to look cool here,” Teagan begged, a rueful curl to his lips.
She spread her arms to him and scooted backward on the bed, briefly separating their bodies.
“Come up here, baby,” she said. “I actually love slow missionary with lots of eye contact.”
Teagan’s smile widened as he crawled up the bed after her. He carefully lowered his weight back over her and swept the hair out of her face, hand cradling the side of her face.
“Oh, good,” he said, dipping his head to whisper in her ear as he pressed into her body again. “I was totally lying about knowing how to do anything else.”
Teagan had begun to suspect that Darcy’s willingness to accommodate his allegedly strenuous post-coital cuddling demands was less than totally selfless. The way she was drowsily splayed across his chest suggested that she didn’t find it unpleasant. He scratched the gap between her shoulder blades with an arm that was slowly falling asleep under her weight, imagining that she might even find some corresponding satisfaction with the arrangement. She yawned in a kittenish way.
If he could do exactly what he wanted, he’d stay here all day, order some food, then propose round two. This was the best. This was what he wanted from life.
But it wasn’t even lunchtime yet. He couldn’t stay here all day, and he very rarely did exactly what he wanted to do. He had to go.
Teagan gathered all his resolve and shifted out from under Darcy’s limp weight. He hesitated while looking at his clothes on the floor. He probably needed to shower if he didn’t want to broadcast to everyone in the office that he’d taken a nooner, but getting out of bed and immediately going to clean up was also kind of a dick move, in his book.
“Where are you going?” Darcy asked, rolling over and pressing her cheek against his back. Her fingers slid under his rib cage, urging him back into the bed.
“I have to get back,” he said, hoping his tone adequately conveyed his reluctance to do that.
“Mmm, false. There is literally nobody who will make you. If someone comes to make you, I’ll fight them.”
“I appreciate that. But if for no better reason than our workers’ comp premiums, I’ll spare them the necessity.”
He sat up. Darcy did too, looking beautifully disgruntled with her long hair sliding down over her breasts.
“Spare yourself! It seemed like your office was really”—Darcy groped for a word—“freaking you out today.”
“It’s not the office,” Teagan said, realizing too late that he was opening a door he wanted to leave closed. He sighed. Darcy never let anything go, so he might as well explain it now. “Or even Nora and Guillaume.”
“Guillaume?” she asked.
“The short European guy she brought in. He’s an art broker at Sotheby’s. Nora asked me to work with him to sell off most of the art the foundation owns and to commit to soliciting more in-kind donations in the next quarter.”
“And that was bad because . . .”
It was impossible to explain, because it didn’t make sense. He could say that he disapproved of using a children’s charity as a tax shelter. He could say that he felt incompetent when he tried to understand the art market. He could say that he felt awkward and exposed when he called strangers to ask them for money. But those things didn’t add up to the full-body shock of fear and grief that had crashed into him in the middle of the meeting. He couldn’t explain it. It was as though someone had wired a doorbell to blow up the garage when pressed.
“I just hate it,” he said unsteadily and not very fulsomely. “That part of the job. Asking for donations. Especially when people are only giving for the tax benefit.”
Darcy huffed in derision. “What part of the job do you like? Because as far as I can tell, you also hate the luncheons, the benefit dinners, managing people—”
“I like that it’s a children’s charity,” he said.
“You like kids?” Darcy asked, looking skeptical.
“I like kids,” Teagan said. “I used to coach a middle school softball team at the Y.” Until he could no longer commit to Monday night practices in light of all the benefit dinners he was invited to.
Darcy leaned forward, loose hair dangling over naked shoulders. “Then where are the fucking kids, Teagan? I’ve been here a month, and I know you haven’t seen any kids.”
She looked angry at him, which he couldn’t understand.
“It’s not that kind of a charity,” he began to explain. “We don’t directly run the camp programs. We give out grants, we provide resources—”
“Okay, so you like exactly zero parts of your job,” she said.
“Lots of people don’t like their job.” He stood, turning away to avoid her judgmental look and deciding that he’d just get dressed and take care to stand a few feet away from anyone else for the rest of the day.
“But you don’t do anything else!” Darcy said. “You go to work, you go to these fake parties that you hate, you ride the train, and you go home to either your big empty house or this dinky little apartment. We haven’t seen any of your friends, we’ve barely seen your sister—”
“I’m sorry this is all so shitty for you!” Teagan burst out. He only realized the volume of his voice when Darcy rocked backward in surprise. He wiped his mouth across his forearm as though that would erase the loudness of his voice and tried again. “I keep asking. What you’d rather do. But you won’t tell me.”
He wanted to bring the mountain to her, but he couldn’t even find a restaurant she wanted to visit or a trail she wanted to walk. He was beginning to worry he didn’t have a thing she wanted.
“Yeah, because it doesn’t matter what I’d do,” she said, looking puzzled. “This is your life. I’m here to help you figure out how to live in it without drinking.”
That hit him low in the gut, the reminder that this was all just temporary to her.
He clenched his fists and turned away. None of this probably looked good to her. How’d he ever think he was going to convince her to stay with him in Manhattan when he couldn’t even say that he liked it?
“I could sell this place and the one in Irvington,” he said. “I could live somewhere closer to Peekskill.”
“Okay,” she said, still looking confused. “What’s in Peekskill?”
It was the stop nearest Bear Mountain. But she hadn’t been interested enough to look up the location this morning.
Teagan closed his eyes and pressed his palm against his face.
“At least the sex is pretty decent now, right?” he muttered. That probably couldn’t last. He was going to need to start taking the Lexapro again if he couldn’t make it through a nonconfrontational meeting with two other people without having a panic attack.
For a brief moment, he was uselessly, incandescently angry at his body. That it wouldn’t do what he wanted. That it forced these kinds of choices on him.
“What?” Darcy said, obviously wondering whether she ought to be offended. “When wasn’t the sex good? I’ve been nothing but spectacular.”
“Never mind,” Teagan said, biting into the side of his cheek. He needed to keep it together much better than this. “You are.”
Maybe he could still find Darcy that park ranger job she’d always wanted. It was a slim hope, but he hadn’t been lying when he said he was good at applying to jobs. He hated asking for favors, but he’d do it even if he had to chase his leftover antidepressants with a Xanax kicker to do it.
“Anyway,” he said, moving to change the subject, “you’re right. I was supposed to see my sister more. Where the hell is she? It doesn’t look like she’s been here.”
Darcy blinked a few times at the segue. “Um. I thought she was staying here? Her stuff is here.”
“Sloane’s never made a bed in her life,” Teagan said, gesturing at the navy duvet. “Do you think you could track her down for me this afternoon? I’ll just be in the office.” Making calls to everyone he’d ever met who was even tenuously connected to environmental or animal welfare charities.
“Yeah, okay,” Darcy said, still eyeing him distrustfully. “You sure you want to go back to the office today?”
“I feel better now,” he said, which happened to be true.
Darcy snorted. “You had a soda, a walk, and an orgasm—of course you feel better right now.”
He gave her a tight smile and pretended to open an agenda. “Then I’ll pencil in the same before tonight’s banquet to support the art therapy program at the children’s hospital.”
He knew it wasn’t a nice thing to say when it left his mouth, but he was still smarting from her suggestion that she’d be gone as soon as this job was over for her. He saw her blink in momentary hurt before anger replaced the emotion.
Darcy’s eyes narrowed.
“Fuck you,” she said crisply. “You can pencil a short walk straight into the Hudson River.”
Teagan opened his mouth to apologize, but Darcy grabbed him around the waist and tackled him to the bed. She pinned him on his stomach, twisted his arms behind his back, and rubbed her nose into the side of his neck as he squirmed and struggled to reclaim his dignity.
“Never done it in an office before, so you might get lucky,” she said, and she bit his earlobe hard enough to leave teeth marks. “Shame about your crappy office carpet though. That’s going to be hell on your back.”