Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

10. Daisy

Islept through the day, crashing in Cassie’s guest room while she worked at the coffee shop downstairs.

It was dark by the time I woke up, and I shuffled into Cassie’s cute little kitchen and told her everything over her signature lavender chamomile tea and an assortment of baked goods from the shop that tasted like buttery heaven after all the health food I’d been forced to eat over the past ten days.

When I was done talking, Cassie just stared at me, her mouth practically hanging open. I was still in my tracksuit, but she was wearing matching pajamas in forest green that made her eyes look more green than blue.

She looked young with her copper hair pulled up into a messy bun, her face free of makeup, and I realized she was young.

We both were.

Too young for all this drama and trauma.

“Wow,” she said. “That’s… that’s a lot, Daze. I’m not even going to ask if you’re okay, because it’s crazy to think anyone could be okay after what you’ve been through.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I could even answer that question right now.” It had been harder to walk away from the Beasts than I’d expected.

Harder than it should have been.

“You didn’t want it to be true,” Cassie said, like she could read my mind.

“I guess not.”

I hadn’t realized exactly how much I’d wanted it not to be true until I’d found out it was. There were things you could come back from and things you couldn’t, and knowing the men you were falling for had murdered your brother seemed pretty solidly in the can’t come back from column.

“They had to have a reason, right?” Cassie asked.

I looked at her in surprise. “What reason could they have for murder? For murdering Blake?”

I wasn’t oblivious enough to think Blake had been perfect. We’d had our differences — when we were young and he hated the way I wanted to tag along, and later, when he got broody and secretive — but he hadn’t been a rabid dog that needed to be put down.

I saw his body, the way it had looked on the riverbank, the glint of his ring in the moonlight, the blood seeping through his shirt.

The Beasts had been his best friends. How could they do that to him?

“I’m not saying any reason is a good enough reason for murder,” Cassie said. “I’m just saying…” She trailed off like she was trying to find the right words.

“What?”

She sighed. “I don’t know. Jace, Wolf, and Otis have always been obnoxiously sure of themselves, and okay, they’re brawlers, but I’ve never bought them as psychopaths, not even right after they confessed to killing Blake.”

I couldn’t argue with her perception because I’d had the same one. It was why I’d concocted the plan to invite the Beasts to work with me on the house. Even after they’d spent five years in prison for killing Blake, I hadn’t been sure. It just hadn’t felt right.

Except now I knew it was right. On a moonless night five years earlier, while everyone else had been partying inside Troy Morton’s house, the Blackwell Beasts had stabbed my brother to death.

What was more psychopathic than that?

“Except now we know they did it,” I said.

“True, but think about it like a court case, like an episode of Law Order.” Cassie loved Law Order.

I shook my head. “What does Law Order have to do with the Beasts?”

“Well, there are the people who commit murder in cold blood and the people who commit murder for some other reason — maybe they have an insanity defense or they were actually defending themselves — and the court sees them differently,” she said, warming to the topic.

“Yeah, but the Beasts aren’t crazy and there’s no way Blake posed a threat to all three of them, so that eliminates the whole self-defense thing too,” I said.

She chewed her lower lip. “True, but maybe there’s something else. Some other reason.”

I tried to think of one and came up empty. “Nothing can change the fact that they killed him.”

She nodded. “I’m sorry, Daze. What will you do?”

I drew in a breath. “Honestly? I have no idea. I need to deal with my dad and figure out what to do about the house and talk to my boss at Cantwell. Everything is just… a mess.”

I didn’t even know what to say to my dad (what did you say to someone after they had you kidnapped and held prisoner just for displeasing them?), work on the house would be at a standstill until I moved back into it (I needed to finish it, needed to find a way to monetize it, especially now that I’d have to cut ties with my dad), and I’d probably lost my job at Cantwell Holdings because who didn’t get fired after not showing up for almost two whole weeks?

“And Ruth,” Cassie said. “You need to check in with Ruth. She came into the shop a couple days ago to see if Sarai or I had heard from you.”

“Right. Ruth too.” I was tired just thinking about it all.

Cassie’s gaze was sympathetic. “Maybe just give yourself a couple days? You need sleep and food after what you’ve been through. You can text Ruth to let her know you’re okay and then stay here while you figure things out.”

“You’re probably right,” I said. “Thanks.”

I was lucky to have a friend like Cassie, a place to regroup. I knew that. But it didn’t change the fact that my life was a shit storm.

And even now, I couldn’t stop thinking about the three men at the center it.