we’d only been together a few months. After we got married and Clint came along, I loved her.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” Ryder sighed. “I wouldn’t have married her.”
Padraig leaned back on the couch and took a sip of beer, letting that response sink in. “You’re putting the pieces together wrong.”
Ryder frowned. “What?”
“You’re envisioning your future with Darcy based on old information. You’re setting her up with the old Ryder in your mind. You need to start looking at Darcy’s relationship with this new Ryder. Ryder 2.0.”
He laughed. “Ryder 2.0?”
“Yeah. The upgrade. You’ve got a decade’s worth of experience—and what looks a hell of a lot like regret—under your belt. You’re not the same guy Denise married. Not even close. Take what you know about yourself now and put that man with Darcy. Let’s say you start dating, that you and Darcy get married. Does Ryder 2.0 still work all the damn time?”
Ryder shook his head. “No. I…wouldn’t be able to wait to get home to her. Which is crazy when you consider we work in the same office.”
“That’s right. You do. What’s work look like?”
Ryder grinned. “We’d take our lunch break together every day. I’d stop by her desk a couple dozen times a day to steal a quick kiss or just to see her.”
“And when you’re home? You zoned out?”
“It’s hard to be zoned out around Darcy. She’s got the Collins gift for gab.”
Padraig chuckled. “Yeah. But that’s her talking. What about you? You distant?”
“No. I tell Darcy everything. Can’t seem to stop myself.”
“Are you in love with my cousin?” Padraig asked.
Ryder’s answer was instantaneous. “So much I can’t fucking see straight.”
“Do you trust her?”
Again, Ryder didn’t hesitate to respond. He nodded, realizing that trust was the bigger-ticket item in his mind. Loving Darcy was easy. Hell, he’d probably fallen for her on that damn elevator at Halloween.
It was the trust that had been hard to give, to acknowledge because there was a lot of fear attached to that. Fear of setting himself up for heartache, of being hurt again, of losing Darcy.
Then he realized those fears weren’t there anymore because he did trust her. Darcy wasn’t Denise and she would never cheat, lie…leave.
“Yeah. I do. Completely.”
“You and that Ron guy… You aren’t strangers.”
One of the reasons Padraig was a great bartender was because he was observant, a quick study when it came to people. Ryder had already noticed that about the other man, but it had also been pointed out by Yvonne and Leo and Darcy over the years.
“I know him. His daughter and my son, Clint, are in the same grade. They’ve been in classes together for years.”
“Why did you punch him?”
Ryder swallowed heavily. For four years, he’d carried around this secret, and it had eaten away at him like cancer. Telling Darcy had started him on the road to recovery. He didn’t want to go back to the man he’d been before that power outage.
“Ron and Denise had an affair. The day she was killed, she was leaving me to run off with him.”
Padraig was quiet for a long moment. “Fuck. Didn’t see that coming. I thought maybe he just owed you money.”
Ryder laughed, grateful for Padraig’s joke, for his attempt at lightening the tension with humor, even though his chest ached. “I found out she was leaving me the day she died. I didn’t realize the other man was Ron until a few months after that.”
“And you never confronted him? Not until last night?”
“Ryder 1.0 wasn’t exactly the type to wear his heart on his sleeve. He played his cards close to his chest, never let anyone get too close. Safer that way.”
“Safer. But a lot lonelier.”
Ryder lifted one shoulder casually. “Yeah. It is. I loved Denise, but I wasn’t in love with her. It wasn’t the sort of passionate, all-consuming love that makes men compose symphonies, fight wars, or…punch out the other man. Besides, once I had the name… Oliver was right. Ron’s a good guy.”
Padraig scowled. “Good guys don’t sleep with other men’s wives.”
Ryder held his hand up. “Fair enough. You’re right. You’re absolutely right. They don’t. But…I think he made her happy. I didn’t.” Ryder had seen a lightness in Denise those last few months before she’d died. Heard her singing in the kitchen, noticed she smiled more. He hadn’t been the one to make her feel that way. Ron had.
“So you didn’t punch him because of Denise?”
“No. I didn’t. I saw him standing next to Darcy and…” Ryder ran his