Chapter 77: Darcy’s Comfort

He shows up with exactly the right words at exactly the right time.

And somehow, that’s what finally bothers me.

Mandi is gone by the time Darcy knocks. The sound is soft and careful, nothing like her usual entrance, and I almost don’t recognize it as a knock at all. I tell him to come in without bothering to sit up straighter. I’m too tired tonight to pretend I’m doing better than I am, too worn down to perform wellness for one more visitor.

Mandi’s soup container is still on my nightstand, half empty. The spoon is balanced across the lid, exactly where she left it.

"Hey," Darcy says gently as he steps inside.

His expression changes when he sees me. His eyes soften immediately, concern settling across his face like he’s rehearsed the reaction, though I know that’s an unfair thought the moment I have it.

"I heard the doctors still aren’t giving you a real timeline," he says quietly. "That’s rough."

"Yeah." I shift against the pillows and make room beside me without thinking, an old reflex from easier days. "Nobody wants to commit to anything. It’s either career-ending or it isn’t, and apparently that’s too complicated for anyone to say out loud."

"That’s not fair to you," he murmurs.

He takes the chair Mandi had been sitting in earlier, pulling it a little closer before settling into it. Not too close. Not too far away. He has a way of finding the exact right distance, I notice, though I push the thought aside before it can take root.

"I mean, you worked your ass off for that program. Everyone could see it. The whole arena could see it right up until..." He trails off.

His jaw tightens.

Then he smooths his expression again, so quickly I almost miss it.

"I’m sorry," he says, quieter. "It isn’t fair."

"No." My voice comes out barely above a whisper. "It isn’t."

"The scouts will wait for you, you know."

I look at him, searching his face for the doubt that usually lives behind other people’s reassurances. I don’t find it.

He says it so easily. So confidently.

"Talent like yours doesn’t disappear because of one bad break. They’ll remember what you did before you went down. That first minute was incredible. Nobody forgets a program like that."

I want to believe him.

God, I want to.

For once, someone is giving me an answer that doesn’t come with a warning attached. No *we’ll have to see*. No *it’s too early to tell*. No carefully chosen medical language that somehow makes everything sound worse. The relief of it is almost dizzying, a warmth spreading through my chest that I haven’t felt in days.

Just confidence.

"Thank you," I murmur, letting my head fall back against the pillow. "That actually helps."

"I mean it." His voice warms. "You’re going to come back from this stronger than ever. I have no doubt."

I give him a small smile. It feels good.

It should feel good.

We talk for a while after that. Nothing heavy at first. He asks about physical therapy and listens while I complain about how much I hate the exercises, the way my knee locks up every morning, the way the resistance bands have become the enemy of my existence. He nods at the right moments and doesn’t try to give me advice I didn’t ask for, doesn’t tell me about some miracle stretch his cousin’s friend swears by.

Then he tells me about a sports injury he had years ago, a torn ligament in his ankle during a summer camp scrimmage.

"Three weeks in a walking boot," he says with a low laugh. "I thought my life was over."

I almost laugh.

"Three weeks?" I ask, giving him a look.

"Hey, I was young."

"You were dramatic."

"I prefer passionate."

That actually gets a quiet laugh out of me, the first real one in what feels like a long time.

He smiles, pleased, and leans back in the chair, looking satisfied with himself in a way that would normally annoy me and somehow doesn’t.

"Turns out my life wasn’t over," he adds.

"No," I say. "I guess not."

For a little while, it’s easy. Easier than it has any right to be, given everything sitting unspoken between us, given everything sitting unspoken inside me.

That’s what makes the uneasiness so hard to pin down.

There’s nothing obviously wrong with him being here. He’s kind. He listens. He doesn’t stare at my brace or act uncomfortable when I wince getting settled, doesn’t flinch the way some visitors do when they catch sight of the bruising still yellowing along my leg.

But he knows too much.

I notice it slowly, the way you notice a draft in a room before you find the open window.

He knew before I told him that the doctors still hadn’t given me a timeline.

He knew about the arena.

Not just that I got hurt there. He knew about the silence after the first minute of my program. The moment when everything stopped, when three thousand people held their breath at once.

Maybe he watched the footage.

Of course he could have watched the footage.

People saw it. It’s probably been shared a hundred times by now, clipped and captioned and picked apart by strangers who don’t know what it felt like from the inside.

But still.

Every time I mention something, he seems to have exactly the right response waiting for me. He never fumbles for words. Never says the wrong thing. Never gives me one of those awkward looks people have been giving me lately when they don’t know whether to talk about my injury or pretend it never happened, that particular flinch-and-recover expression I’ve grown to dread.

He always knows what to say.

And the more I notice it, the less comforting it becomes.

He’s too smooth.

I watch him while he talks, taking in the relaxed way he sits, his hands open in his lap, his shoulders loose, his whole body arranged like he’s been coached on how to look harmless.

Nobody is this smooth by accident.

I immediately feel stupid for thinking it. This is Darcy. Sweet, easygoing Darcy, who has never once given me a reason to doubt him.

He’s being nice.

That’s all.

Maybe I’m just tired. Maybe I’m looking for problems because everything else in my life feels out of control, because paranoia has become the only language I know how to think in anymore.

Still, the feeling stays, quiet and persistent, curling low in my stomach like something waiting.

I can’t name it.

I just know I don’t like it.

Eventually, Darcy glances at the time.

"I should let you sleep," he says, rising from the chair. His voice softens again. "You need rest more than you need company tonight."

"Thanks for coming by."

I mean it, even now, even with the static building under my skin.

Even with the weird feeling sitting low in my chest, I’m grateful he came. The visit gave me something close to normalcy, and I hadn’t realized how badly I needed that until it was almost over.

He reaches the door, then pauses.

His hand settles against the frame, fingers spread against the wood like he’s bracing himself for something.

He looks back at me with that same sympathetic smile, the one that has, until this exact moment, seemed entirely genuine.

"For what it’s worth," he says casually, "whoever handled that blade mount review really screwed up."

My brows pull together.

He keeps talking, oblivious or indifferent to the way the air in the room has changed.

"Irregular wear on the mount like that, right at the pivot point, isn’t something that just happens from normal training. Somebody should’ve caught it before you ever competed."

Everything inside me stops.

My fingers go still against the blanket.

For a second, I don’t even breathe.

The room feels suddenly too quiet, but there’s a roar building inside my ears that drowns out everything else, a rushing static that makes his next words sound very far away.

The pivot point.

The wear.

He knows.

I never told him.

I never told Mandi. I never told Coach Ferreira. I didn’t tell anyone. I have gone out of my way, in fact, to tell no one, to keep that detail locked so tightly inside myself that even thinking about it out loud felt dangerous.

Not about the wear pattern.

Not about where it was.

Not even the technician I called after seeing the email, the one whose voice had gone tight and careful right before the line went dead.

That email wasn’t supposed to be in my hands in the first place.

And the technician’s number doesn’t even exist anymore, disconnected like it was never real to begin with.

Darcy is still standing in the doorway.

Still calm.

Still smiling, that same easy, untroubled smile that now looks like a mask I hadn’t noticed before.

"I should go," he says lightly.

Like he hasn’t just dropped a match into a room full of gasoline. Like the words cost him nothing at all.

"Feel better, Georgia."

The door clicks shut.

I don’t move.

I stare at it, at the space where he stood, my mind racing too fast to land on any single thought.

One second passes.

Then another.

My soup sits untouched on the nightstand, forgotten, the spoon still balanced exactly where Mandi left it.

My fingers curl into the blanket.

My heart starts pounding so hard I can hear it, a frantic drumbeat that makes the quiet room feel suddenly enormous.

And all I can think is one thing.

How the hell does Darcy know that?