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Silence. Absolute, stunned silence.

My father stared at me like he’d never seen me before. Maybe he hadn’t. This was the first time he was meeting the real Darcy. This version of me had been buried under layers of expectations and obligations and desperate attempts to please.

I didn’t wait for his response. Didn’t give him a chance to talk me down or remind me of everything I’d be throwing away. I turned on my heel and walked out of his office, leaving him standing there speechless.

The hallway stretched before me, familiar and foreign all at once. I’d walked these halls thousands of times, but today they felt different, like I was seeing them through new eyes.

I passed Maya from marketing, who started to say something before apparently thinking better of it. The conference room where I’d sat through countless meetings, nodding along while men twice my age judged me, was on my right.

I kept walking. The elevator doors closed behind me. My shoulders drooped. I finally let myself breathe. My heart raced and it felt like someone had put a vise on my lungs. But surprisingly, underneath the panic and the anger and the bone-deep exhaustion, I felt something else.

Freedom.

Figure out who you are.

I didn’t know the answer yet. But for the first time in my life, I was ready to find out.

The elevator reached the ground floor. The doors opened. I stepped out into the afternoon sun, blinking against the brightness.

I didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t have a plan or a destination or any idea what came next. But that was okay. I’d find out who Darcy Corwin really was.

33

BEAU

Icanceled all my appointments, which my receptionist just loved. I told her it was an emergency. I didn’t say family emergency because that was too easy to disprove. And if a client heard there was something wrong with a Blackwell, it could set off an international incident. Maybe not international but pretty close.

Emergency was just vague enough to work.

I got home, closed all the blinds, and put my phone on Do Not Disturb. I needed to settle in for a good sulking session. I changed into shorts and a tee, no socks and definitely no shoes.

I went to my bar, searched for the bottle I had yet to open. I’d been saving it for something special. Today was especially shitty, so it worked.

I sat on the wooden steps leading down to the beach. I opened the bottle of whiskey and took a drink. It burned. But not enough. I watched the waves roll in and out like they didn’t give a damn about anything. The waves usually calmed me. I tried to get into that mindset. Remind myself I was just a small cog in a massive wheel.

Unfortunately, all I could think about was how she’d looked at me in that hotel room.

Like I was the problem.

I took another long pull from the bottle, letting the burn settle in my chest. It didn’t help. Nothing helped. The ocean kept doing its thing, waves crashing and retreating. I kept sitting there like an idiot, replaying every word she’d said.

What the fuck had I been thinking? I had let myself get caught up. She never really said the words. She agreed with me but didn’t really say it. I was the guy that made her look soft. Normal. I melted the ice queen. That was the illusion that even I bought for a while.

I was a fucking fool.

The whiskey went down easier after the first few swallows. By the time the stars came out, I’d stopped feeling much of anything. That was the goal, right? Numb the pain until it didn’t exist anymore.

Except it still existed. It just got a little fuzzy, but it still ached. Sat in my gut and made me nauseated. It had nothing to do with the whiskey. It was a different kind of sickness. I climbed back up the steps, leaning heavily on the railing.

I stumbled into the house and debated making a sandwich to soak up some of the whiskey but decided it wasn’t worth the effort.

The second day, it was the same. No work. Another bottle of whiskey on the beach. I woke up the next morning on the beach with the sun trying to kill me. I had sand in places sand had no business being. My head pounded like someone had taken a hammer to my skull. The bottle lay empty beside me, half-buried in the sand. I stared at it for a long moment, trying to remember how I’d gotten here.

Right. Darcy.

I dragged myself up the steps and into the house, every muscle protesting. I was hungry and sick. Sick because I was hungry. I hauled my ass into the shower. I had to support my weight against the tile wall.

The shower helped a little. But when I caught sight of my reflection in the bathroom mirror, I barely recognized the man staring back at me. Bloodshot eyes. Two days of stubble. The hollow look of someone who’d had their heart ripped out and stomped on.