Page 57 of Surrender
So small that if I didn’t know her well, I might have missed it.
But I did know her well.
I knew her tells—how she looked when she was confident or when she was faking it—like right now, by refusing to look at me.
But she couldn’t hide the slight flush creeping up her neck.
She felt this too. That same electric charge that had been buzzing around us for years, crackling in the air before a lightning strike. It was there when Darcy would clean my cuts or ice my bruises after one of my dad’s drunken attacks. It was there when I’d find her up late, worried about a test, or a show, and I’d sit at the end of her bed, forcing her to list things that were the color blue until she fell asleep.
We’d been there for each other in a way that was only ours.
What we had been slowly building, waiting for a spark to ignite it.
Then James got sick.
Darcy got offered the opportunity of a lifetime.
And I knew that if we’d lit that fire at that moment, we wouldnever have survived the explosion. It would have consumed us.
Now though?
Now was different.
Wewere different.
Wewere ready.
Darcy clapped her hands. “All right, gentlemen.”
The boys cracked their necks, stretching like they were preparing for a fight. They had no idea they were about to get their asses handed to them by a five-foot-four ballerina in sweatpants.
“Let’s begin!”
Chapter Twenty
DARCY
Sitting cross-legged at the edge of Nate’s bed, my fingers absently twisted at the hem of his shirt I’d been sleeping in. It was oversized, well-worn, and soft as hell.
From where I sat, I could see him through the open bathroom door, standing at the sink doing his nightly things.
Shirtless.
Muscular.
Tattooed.
Who gave him the right to look like that while brushing his teeth?
Warmth rose from my stomach, moving through my chest, up my neck, and into my cheeks.
But I still couldn’t stop watching him rinse his toothbrush, shake out his hands, then reach for the small towel he kept hanging on the rack by the mirror.
He hadn’t noticed me staring yet.
Or maybe he had, and he was giving me the time and space to figure out what it was I wanted to say. The words had been stuck in my throat since that ballet class with him and the boys yesterday, but they were words that needed to be said.
I cleared my throat quietly. “Nate?”
