this secret with another living soul. But suddenly, he wanted to tell Darcy. He’d revealed more of himself to her in the last two and a half hours than he had with anyone in his entire life. And it bothered him to realize that. He’d blamed Denise’s death for so many things. For the way he didn’t open up to others or let people in. The way he held the people closest to him at arm’s length.
Now, he could see he’d always been a distant bastard, more at ease with casual acquaintances, less comfortable with making a close friend.
He’d had a million buddies in high school and college, but none he would consider a true friend—proven by the fact he hadn’t bothered to stay in touch with a single one of them. Leo was probably the closest he had to a real friend, and even with him, Ryder held huge pieces of himself back.
“The day Denise died…” he began.
Darcy’s eyes widened, and he knew he’d shocked her. His wife’s death was something he never, ever talked about. Darcy would know that—no doubt told by Yvonne and Leo, and probably even Clint.
“The day she died, I had an early meeting at work. Typically, I was still home when she left to take the boys to school, but that day, I left first. She was in the kitchen making them breakfast, packing their lunches. I called out goodbye from the front door and left.”
Darcy nodded slowly. “You regret not kissing her goodbye?” she asked softly.
Ryder huffed out a harsh breath, a cross between an unamused laugh and snort. Of course, the queen of romance would think that was what was bothering him. Guilt over a forgotten goodbye kiss.
He shook his head. “We never kissed goodbye, Darcy.”
“Oh.” She managed to pack a lot of sadness into that single syllable, and it opened Ryder’s eyes to so many—too many—things about his marriage. Things he’d chosen not to see, chosen to bury under a mountain of anger.
“Around lunchtime, two police officers showed up at my office. They told me Denise had been killed in a car accident. She’d run a stop sign and been sideswiped by a truck. The officers said she hadn’t suffered, that she’d been killed instantly.”
“That couldn’t have been easy to hear.”
“Numbness set in the second they said she was gone.”
“You were probably in shock.”
Ryder nodded once, acknowledging that. “I went to the hospital to identify her body and they gave me her personal belongings. Her wedding ring, a necklace, her purse. I called Denise’s parents from the hospital parking lot—they’d moved to St. Louis after her dad was transferred for work—and then I called Leo and met him at your family’s pub to tell him.”
He and Leo hadn’t been friends at the time. Hell, they’d barely been acquaintances, even though Ryder was Vince’s stepdad. Ryder was estranged from his parents. And he wasn’t close to any of his work colleagues, so he hadn’t had anyone else to turn to.
“I can’t imagine how hard all of that must have been,” Darcy said.
“The hardest part was telling Clint and Vince. Leo was there with me. He actually said the words. I couldn’t. Vince wanted his dad with him, so Leo spent the night. He and Vince shared the boys’ room, and I took Clint to my bedroom, held him until he cried himself to sleep in my bed.”
“No little boy should lose his mom at seven years old.”
Ryder agreed with that, but he couldn’t say it, couldn’t even nod. Because his throat was too tight. It was as if his body was rejecting telling the rest of the story.
The secret.
“I got up to…” Ryder tried to take a breath, but it was hard to get air to his lungs.
Darcy must have noticed because she shifted closer, moving until she was sitting right next to him rather than across the elevator. She reached over and took his hand. He squeezed it, taking comfort from it.
“I got up to get ready for bed and I saw…an envelope on the dresser with my name on it. In Denise’s handwriting.”
Darcy turned toward him, her eyes locked on his profile, still holding his hand.
“She’d left me a letter.”
Darcy’s brows lowered in confusion. “I don’t understand.”
“She was leaving me. In the letter, she said she’d met someone else. She’d been having an affair, and she wanted a divorce. I looked around the room then…and realized a lot of her stuff was missing.”
“Oh my God.”
“Her car had been totaled, towed