The First Rule by Nicole S. Goodin

2

Ryan

Her cheeks aretear-stained and her hair is all messed up, but I swear to God, I’ve still never seen anyone look so beautiful.

Not even the hell my brother just unleashed on her could dull the shine in those crystal blue eyes. They might be bloodshot and puffy, but they’re alive.

She’s still in there, fighting, pushing through, and if I were a better man, I’d leave with that knowledge – the reassurance that she’ll be okay eventually – and let her work through her grief in her own time, but I just can’t.

I can’t walk out of this room while she’s sleeping. I can’t let another Steele man leave her alone today. Just the thought threatens to crush me.

I glance at her sleeping form again as she exhales deeply.

My brother is a complete and utter fucking moron – not that I wasn’t already aware of that fact, but the choice he made this afternoon highlights it now more than ever.

He just gave up the best thing in his entire life. She’s the only thing he had that really mattered.

Women like Darcy aren’t replaceable. She’s one of a kind. I should know, I’ve been trying to find even one that could compare to her for the past five years, and I’ve come up empty.

Worse than empty even – I’ve tortured myself over and over again by comparing her to anyone and everyone I’ve come across.

The only woman that has been a constant in my life, the only woman I can stand to be around, is Rebel – I hate to think what my life might be like if she hadn’t shouldered her way in and then refused to leave.

The thought reminds me – she text me earlier, after she heard the shocking news – and I haven’t had a chance to reply to her.

I watch Darcy as I carefully slide my phone from my pocket, trying not to jostle her head, which is laid in my lap.

Rebel: DUDE, what the hell?! Never a dull moment in the Steele family. What the fuck happened?

I tap out a reply, unsure of what to say. I can’t think of a way to explain this. I don’t even know how she’s heard, but I shouldn’t be surprised; Rebel knows everything about everyone.

Ryan: No idea. I’m with Darcy right now, she’s sleeping. She got drunk, angry, cried… I’ll see how she is when she wakes up.

Her reply comes quickly, as I knew it would – her phone is practically glued to her hand ninety-eight percent of the time.

Rebel: Bad idea, Ryan.

Ryan: I’m just trying to make it easier for her.

Rebel: By making it harder for yourself?

I scrub my hand over my face as the woman in my lap stirs. Rebel’s right. This isn’t smart of me. I, of all people, shouldn’t be here, and not only because my appearance is bound to make it harder for the very person I’m trying to help, but because I’ve secretly been in love with Darcy Shearer since the first day I met her.

Five years ago:

“Oh c’mon, how hard is it to open a couple of beers? Hell, I’ll pay double at this point!” the tiny blonde next to me yells as she glares at the bartender who is favouring the other end of the bar and has been all night.

“I’ll give you a leg up and you can get me a couple while you’re there,” I offer.

She turns around to face me, and my next smart remark gets caught in my throat. She’s hands down the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my whole life.

She raises a brow at me as she looks me up and down, checking out my costume. “If you really were Superman, you’d fly over there and get them for us, you know that, right?”

I shrug. “Maybe I’m just Clark Kent tonight.”

She giggles and her blonde hair falls over one of her eyes. She extends her hand to me. “Nice to meet you, Clark, my name’s Barbie.”

I take her tiny hand in my much bigger one. “The pleasure is all mine, Barbie.”

That wasthe moment my whole life changed forever. Nothing was the same after that night. No matter how much I tried to force it to go back to the way it was before her, everything shifted in the half-second that it took for our eyes to meet.

Darcy rolls over and the familiar scent of her perfume wafts towards me. She might have changed in a lot of ways in the past five years, but her scent has remained the same. It’s not helping me close the door on memory lane in the least.

I watch as her lids slowly flutter open, and her eyes take a moment to focus on my face above her.

“Ryan,” she says, her voice thick with sleep, and I know I shouldn’t feel the pang of satisfaction that it’s my name on her lips and not Jacob’s, but I do.

“I’m here,” I promise.

She drags her hand over her face, smudging her makeup further. “Part of me was really hoping I’d dreamed that you came and saw me like this.”

I know better than to be hurt by her words. There’s been a lot of things that have hurt me over the years where Darcy is concerned, but not a single one of those has been her fault, and this isn’t about me, it’s about her. She’s humiliated.

My leg twitches, and she glances down. “Shit… sorry,” she mutters as the realisation that she’s got her head in my lap hits.

“It’s okay. I’m glad you got some sleep.”

“Why are you here, Ryan? You don’t even like me.”

She’s not wrong. I don’t like her. I love her.

I hate that she thinks I don’t like her, but I did what I had to do all these years. I stayed away. I couldn’t just sit by and watch my brother live happily ever after with the woman of my dreams. I had to go. I had to push that life away. I had to distance myself.

“I told you, I’m here to drink.”

“Fine,” she sighs, “but you’ve got some serious catching up to do.”

She does seem more sober than before her nap, but I have no idea how many drinks she downed before I got into the room.

I nod my head as she sits up and leans back against the huge, elaborate gold headboard. I get up and pour us both a drink, a little heavier handed this time – something tells me we’re both going to need it. I tuck the bottle under my arm and bring that with me too, if this goes the way I expect it to, it will be empty in no time.

She smiles sadly at me as I pass her drink.

“What a mess, huh?” She shrugs.

I settle in next to her, both of us staring ahead, avoiding looking at one another. “It’s not your fault. None of it. My brother is a bastard.”

“I’m starting to think you might be right.”

I’m definitely right, but it’s not really the time for I told you so’s.

“What happened between you two?” she questions. “You were close once.”

You happened,I think to myself. Words that I’ll probably never say aloud.

I shake my head, grimacing. “It’s complicated.”

It’s really not complicated at all. In fact, it’s so, so simple.

Jacob showed his true colours once again, only that particular time, I didn’t take it lying down. I stood up for myself, finally. I became my own man, not the one that I was expected to be – but the one I wanted to be.

“More complicated than your fiancé leaving you at the altar in front of three hundred people?”

I huff out a humourless laugh. “Probably not.”

We each sip our drinks, the silence between us growing. I want to keep her talking, but I’m scared of what else she might say.

“I really wanted to be a mother,” she says quietly after a long few beats.

“You will be.”

“What if I’m not? What if I’ve missed my chance?”

“You’re only twenty-eight years old; you haven’t missed your chance.”

“But I have to start over now, what if it takes me years to trust again, then another year or two to meet someone, I might be forty by the time I’m in a position to be ready for a baby, and that might be too late.”

She’s breathing rapidly, panicking. I refill both our glasses and she downs it all in one go – so I do the same. If she’s going to get written off, the least I can do is meet her there.

I know she’s grieving the loss of her relationship right now, but it’s clearly not just my brother that she considers she’s lost, it’s the entire future she had planned out… children, a family… probably a house with a white picket fence too.

Darcy deserves all that and more. She deserves to have the future she’s always dreamed of. She’s hands down the sweetest person I’ve ever met in my life.

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat, Darcy.”

“What?” She frowns.

I rake my hand over my face. I’m definitely not the man to have this conversation with her, but I can’t seem to stop myself.

“There’s more than one way to become a mother. If it is taking too long – which it won’t, or you never find someone – which you will, it doesn’t mean you can’t still be a mother.”

I still don’t know how much Darcy had to drink before I got here tonight, but even I’m starting to feel the warmth of this tequila in my veins, so she must be well and truly under the influence. She’s about fifty kilos dripping wet, and she’s never been much of a drinker, if she keeps downing her drinks like she’s doing right now, I’ll be holding her hair back while she vomits before this night is through – not that I’d mind – but I’m sure she would.

I pour myself another drink and toss it back, ignoring the empty glass that she’s holding out for me.

She scowls at me when I don’t fill it for her but doesn’t press me on it, so I take another.

“Alright then, Mr. I know everything, how am I meant to get a baby without a boyfriend?”

Yup, she’s well on her way. Her words are slurred, just ever so slightly and she’s started using hand gestures to reinforce her point, plus, the Darcy I know isn’t quite so forward. I prefer this less diplomatic version of her. She’s been moulded over the years into what my brother wanted her to be, so it’s refreshing to know that the real her is still in there.

I lift a shoulder and let it drop. “Sperm donor.”

She laughs, but it’s not because she thinks it’s funny, but because she thinks it’s ridiculous. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

I down another glass of bitter tequila, feeling the effects more by the minute.

“Some random dude I don’t know? What if he tried to come back and get to know the kid one day? What if he tried to get custody? What if he had some kind of illness he didn’t tell me about?”

“They have rules and tests, Darcy.”

She laughs humourlessly again. “You think I could afford to go down the IVF track? You really don’t know me too well, do you? I write a column for a magazine, Ryan, I’m not made of money like Jacob. If I was going to get a sperm donor, it’d be some guy whacking off into a cup and then the old turkey baster method.”

She’s looking up at me with those big blue eyes, deadly serious.

My lip twitches as I bite back a grin. “You’re serious?”

“I’m not serious about any of this, but in a hypothetical situation, sure… it’s been known to be done.”

“That’s not right.” I grimace.

“Exactly,” she says with a roll of her eyes.

She holds her glass out to me again, and this time I half fill it, then watch as she tips her head back, letting the liquid slide down her throat.

“You know… you could just do it the old-fashioned way…”

The words are out of my mouth before I can really think about what I’m saying… about what I’ve just implied.

She raises a brow at me. “You think I should go out and sleep with random guys until I get myself knocked up?”

I shake my head quickly. “No.” God no. Just the thought of that makes my stomach turn.

She looks at me in confusion, her beautiful eyes glassy.

“No… not some random guy.” I run my hand through my hair, hating myself already for what I’m about to suggest, but willing to offer it anyway, because this is her, it’s Darcy, and there isn’t a thing in the world that I wouldn’t do, no line I wouldn’t cross if she asked me to. “Me, Darcy… you could do it with me.”