Frozen - Page 28

He chuckled. “I surprised myself with that one too.”

“I’m not sure what to think. This is the weirdest conversation we’ve ever had.”

Darcy chortled. “It’s called being civil to one another.”

I pretended to be disgusted. “I don’t like it.”

He pulled a face at me and pinched my side, making me squeal and him laugh.

“Do you think being stuck here together will change us?” I asked, trying to change the subject.

It was a question that had been sitting in the back of my mind since Darcy had told me what he’d done for me when we were teenagers.

He thought about it for a moment, then nodded. “I do. I mean, it has. Look how different we are with one another and it’s only been a few days. Sure, we’ve still had spats here and there, but we’re both alive, which speaks volumes . . . I mean, do you even remember why we acted the way we did for all those years?

Was that a serious question?

“Yes, I do. You picked Laura Stoke over me. I remember everything about that day, Darcy.”

He blinked down at me. “You remember that day?”

I nodded my head. “It was the first time someone had ever broken my heart; of course I remember it.”

Darcy widened his eyes as he stared at me, and I mirrored his expression, because I had not meant to say that out loud.

“I broke your heart?” he asked.

I shrugged, but didn’t respond.

His fingers touched my chin as he turned my face in his direction.

“I broke your heart?” he repeated.

I swallowed, and slowly nodded.

He blinked his big brown eyes and opened his mouth to speak, but quickly closed it.

After a few moments of silence I smiled weakly. “It’s okay.” I lied. “It was a long time ago.”

Darcy frowned at me. “It’s not okay. I shouldn’t have let my crush on Laura blind me from the truth that day.”

“Then why did you?” I asked.

He sighed. “I showed up just as you punched her. I got a fright because you were never in a fight before, and I liked Laura. I did a shitty thing: I chose a girl over my best friend.”

I stared at Darcy with wide eyes.

He caught my expression and gave me a sad smile. “I loved you, Neala Girl. You were my best friend. No one else’s. Mine. I didn’t like myself after I sided with Laura, and it’s why I became so angry. You said you hated me. You wouldn’t talk to me; you were just done with me and I felt thrown under the bus at that, but it doesn’t excuse what I did. If I’d sided with you in the first place, like I should have, then our stupid feud wouldn’t have happened. Is it too late for me to apologise?”

What. The. Hell?

What was happening right now?

Darcy was apologising to me?

This was too much to take in.

“You look like you’re about to freak out,” Darcy mused.

“I am,” I replied honestly.

Darcy chuckled and hugged me to his warm body. “It appears to be honesty hour. We may never get another chance like this, so I want everything between us to be out in the open. Okay?”

I nodded.

“Does my honesty scare you?” Darcy asked.

Scare me?

No.

Thrill me?

Yes.

“No, I’m just a little . . . shocked? I don’t really know. I never expected you to say anything like this to me, Darcy.”

He nodded. “Trust me, I never planned on it, but it just feels right. I don’t know why, but it does.”

I gnawed on my inner cheek, then said, “Maybe you have cabin fever and the isolation is starting to drive you mad.”

Darcy looked at me and burst out laughing.

The tension that had built up in the room fled within that moment, and I was very grateful for it.

“Be serious.” He chuckled and nudged me.

I cleared my throat. “Deadly serious?”

Darcy nodded.

“Okay, it does feel right. I think because it’s just us here together and we don’t have our families around us trying to force us to be nice. We’re being nice on our own terms, which is sort of a miracle in itself. I mean, did you ever imagine us ever being even remotely friendly to one another?”

He grinned. “No, but I hope today is the first day of many we’re friendly.”

I turned in Darcy’s arm and raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you suggesting an indefinite truce between us?”

“Would that be so terrible?” he asked.

I thought about it and could come up with only one answer.

I smiled. “No.”

“Then yes.” Darcy beamed. “That is what I’m suggesting.”

“Say it.” I chuckled.

He playfully sighed. “Neala Clarke, can we live out the remainder of our lives in peace?”

I pretended to think about it, and Darcy shoved me, making me laugh.

“Yeah.” I giggled. “We can be friends.”

“Friends.” He nodded.

Wow.

Talk about a strange turn of events. Father Christmas himself couldn’t have predicted this.

“So we’re friends . . . What do we do now?” I asked.

Darcy slumped down a little and said, “I’ve no idea.”

I looked at him at the same time he looked at me and we both laughed.

“I shouldn’t have been so pig-headed and childish. I should have let you explain yourself instead of acting out. I shouldn’t have said the things I did, knowing they would hurt you. I’m sorry, too,” I said and watched him smile at me.

I wanted to burst with excitement, but I somehow kept my cool.

“Our mas are going to be so happy,” I said, amused.

Darcy snorted. “I’d bet money they’ll cry.”

I nodded in agreement. “That’s an easy win; they’ll sob for weeks.”

He snickered. “Our brothers will be delighted; they won’t have to break up our fights anymore.”

I grinned. “They were getting too old for it anyway.”

Darcy shook his head. “And our das? I don’t even think they’ll notice.”

I gnawed on my lip. “They’ll at least high-five; it means they don’t have to listen to our mas go on about us anymore.”

His mouth curved in a grin. “I think the entire village will rejoice. Birds will sing, mothers will weep, cripples will walk—”

I cut him off with my laughter.

He hugged me tightly to him. “Does touching my penis creep you out so much now?”

Really?

Did he have to bring that back up?

“Darcy!” I whined, and covered my face with both of my hands.

He cackled. “I’m only teasing.”

“Well, don’t. I’ve never been so mortified in me entire life as I was this morning.”

He had both his eyebrows raised when I looked at him.

“Really?” he asked. “Touching me hard-on was worse than walking home naked from the Elite Swimming Pool after we graduated from school?”

I felt heat rush up my neck to my cheeks.

“Oh, my God. That day was all kinds of horrible, and you . . . you caused that!”

Darcy winced. “That prank did go a little too far. When I realised how insensitive it was, considering what almost happened to you the year before, I tried to stop Emmet, but I was too late.”

I growled at Darcy.

The horrible incident he was referring to was the day I graduated from secondary school. It was the year after the situation with Trevor. I wasn’t into drinking or acting a fool, so I’d tagged along with a few lads and girls from my graduating class.

We all decided to go to the local swimming pool – one of the lads in class got keys to it because his father was a lifeguard there. We had the pool all to ourselves, and it was a brilliant night – that was until Darcy, my brother, Justin, and some of Darcy’s stupid friends showed up.

Once I saw Darcy at the pool in his trunks I knew I had to leave. I couldn’t make him leave, because he’d just graduated too, so he had as much right to be there as me. I wanted to leave because he would probably try to drown me, but if I was honest with myself, the main reason I wanted to leave was because it was the first time I had seen Darcy in a new light, and it freaked me out.

Usually the sight of him turned my stomach, but I’d never forget the moment I realized that looking at Darcy made me feel something other than ill. He made me feel . . . hot. I put this down to being shocked at seeing his body in his swimming trunks. We both would be turning eighteen in the summer of that year and it was around that time Darcy stopped being skinny; he’d started to fill out and I noticed.

Every girl noticed.

I tried to discreetly leave the pool, but it was never that easy with Darcy. The dickhead gave one of his friends ten Euros to follow me into the girls’ changing rooms, and whilst I was showering, he’d stolen my clothes and swimsuit. The stupid lad tossed them into the pool, and laughed his head off when I went out to the pool wrapped in a towel with a furious look about me.

I remember Darcy being in Emmet’s face, and that he said he was very sorry, but I was too wrapped up in my thoughts to process it.

“You and Sean flanked me the entire walk home and threatened death upon anyone who looked at me twice,” I mused.

Darcy leaned his head back and laughed. “That was a bad day. I felt like crap when I saw your clothes in the pool; then I saw your endless legs in that tiny towel. God. I wanted to kill everyone who looked at you – even your brother, which is saying something, because he socked me one when he found out what I did.”

I smiled to myself as I asked, “Why did you want to hit people for looking at me?”

He looked at me and rolled his eyes. “You know why.”

Tags: L.A. Casey Romance
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