Chapter Six

Isadora’s Pov

Finally, Darren leaned back on the old couch, one arm draped across the top, his green eyes fixed on a point in the distance through the barn window. “I used to sit here for hours,” he murmured. “The world outside could be falling apart, and I’d be here pretending I had control.”

I looked at him. “Why did you stop coming?”

He exhaled slowly, eyes still distant. “When my mom died… this place became too loud. Every board creaked like her voice. Every gust of wind sounded like her humming. I couldn’t take it.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

So I reached down and picked up a dusty book from the stack beside the couch. The Old Man and The Sea.

“You really weren’t lying,” I said, flipping it open and revealing handwritten notes in the margins. His handwriting — sharp and deliberate. “You actually read these.”

He gave me a sideways glance. “You sound surprised.”

“I am. You just… don’t seem like the kind of guy who reads Hemingway.”

“What kind of guy do I seem like?” he asked, voice calm, but something sharpened beneath it.

I met his gaze, biting the inside of my cheek. “The kind who’s good at hiding.”

That stopped him.

He blinked once, and the mask slipped — just for a second. Not gone. Just cracked.

“You’re not wrong,” he said after a pause.

The air changed.

And before I could catch myself, I asked the question that had haunted me since I’d first seen him, since I’d heard the whispers, since I flinched at his touch like everyone else.

“What happened to your hand?”

His posture shifted subtly, like I’d struck a nerve. I almost regretted asking.

Almost.

He stared down at his lap, the tension rolling him off in slow, deep waves. “There was an accident.”

I waited.

He didn’t elaborate.

“Your face, too?” I asked gently.

He gave a short nod.

“Was it recent?”

“It was years back,” he replied. “Right after I took over my father’s company. We had a production plant in Arizona. Faulty machinery. One of the workers was trapped under a collapsed beam.”

My eyes widened.

“You saved him?”

He nodded again, slower this time. “I got him out. But the machine caught me before I could get clear.”

I felt the breath leave my chest.

“You lost your hand because you saved someone else?”

His jaw tensed. “It wasn’t noble. I didn’t think. I just moved. And it cost me.”

“But it saved him,” I whispered.

He looked at me finally. “He died a month later from internal injuries.”

“Oh,” I breathed.

“He had three daughters,” Darren added. “I still send them money every month.”

I stared at him. This man, the same one I’d spent years resenting from a distance, wasn’t the monster I’d painted in my mind.

He was a man who’d risked everything without hesitation — and paid for it in ways I couldn’t begin to understand.

And he carried that weight silently, without asking for credit or sympathy.

Just silence.

And scars.

“I didn’t know,” I said softly, swallowing the lump in my throat.

“Of course not. People only see what they want.” He smiled, but it was bitter. “It’s easier to hate the disfigured billionaire than ask how he got that way.”

Silence settled again, thick and heavy.

Then, in a voice that barely rose above a whisper, I asked, “Does it still hurt?”

“The scar?” he asked, brushing a hand over his face.

“Everything.”

He didn’t answer right away. Instead, he reached down and gently pulled off his shoe, then the sock on his left foot.

I blinked. “What are you—?”

Then I saw it.

A burn scar — pale and twisted — climbed halfway up his ankle.

“The blast reached my leg too,” he said quietly. “Most people don’t notice.”

I stared, speechless.

“How did no one know this? The media—”

“I paid them off,” he interrupted. “All they saw was the face and the missing hand. That was enough to spin their story. I let them.”

“Why?”

He hesitated. “Because I didn’t want pity. I didn’t want people to look at me and feel sorry. I’d rather be feared than pitied.”

I didn’t know whether to cry or scream.

Instead, I did something I never thought I’d do.

I reached over and slowly, deliberately, took his scarred hand in mine — the partial one.

His body stiffened. His eyes widened. He looked at me like I’d just slapped him, like my touch burned.

But he didn’t pull away.

He let me hold it.

Let me see him.

“It’s not weak,” I said softly. “You’re not weak.”

His eyes darkened, jaw clenched.

“I flinched before,” I whispered. “When you caught me at the mayor’s party. I pulled away. I let everyone see it. And I’m sorry.”

He shook his head once, eyes dropping to our hands. “You were scared.”

“No,” I said firmly. “I wasn’t scared of you. I was scared of what people saw. What they’d say. How I’d look standing next to you.”

A long pause.

“That makes me worse than them,” I whispered.

Darren’s hand tightened around mine. Just a little. Barely there.

“No,” he said after a long beat. “It makes you honest.”

I looked up and found him staring at me with something new in his eyes.

Not anger.

Not pain.

But recognition.

“You’re not the girl I married,” he said.

“I’m not sure who I am anymore,” I admitted.

“Good,” he said. “Because neither am I.”

We sat there for a long time, two broken people in a quiet barn filled with echoes of the past.

No performance.

No masks.

No contracts.

Just… us.

We left the ranch just after sunset.

The sky was streaked in purples and oranges, and a warm wind rustled the tall grass as Darren pulled the car out onto the road again.

Neither of us spoke much on the ride back.

I watched the way his hands rested on the wheel — one whole, one not — and didn’t flinch.

Didn’t look away.

When we pulled back into the estate and the car came to a stop in front of the marble steps, I turned to him.

“Thank you,” I said softly.

He raised an eyebrow. “For what?”

“For today.”

He didn’t reply.

But his eyes softened.

And for Darren Barlowe… that was more than enough.

I didn’t sleep that night.

Not because I was afraid.

But because for the first time, I didn’t want the day to end.

I lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling, heart beating with a rhythm I couldn’t name.

And all I could think was this:

Maybe the monster wasn’t him.

Maybe it was the way the world had treated him.

And maybe — just maybe — it wasn’t too late to learn the truth.

To stay.

To feel something real.

Even if it scared me.

Especially if it scared me.

The days after our trip to the ranch moved in strange, unspoken rhythms.