Pay the Price: A Dark New Adult Romance

15. Daisy

Iwas half-asleep when I rolled onto my side and opened my eyes. At first I thought I was imagining the shadow in the chair against the wall. But as I lay there, my brain still fuzzy with sleep, the image coalesced into something solid.

A man.

He moved fast and panic reared in my body like a wild horse as he clamped a hand over my mouth. It was him, my stalker, the man who’d sent me the broken vase.

Not Calvin after all, but someone else.

I opened my mouth to scream but the man was on me before I could get the sound out.

“Stop! It’s me.”

I looked up at him, his features visible now that he was practically on top of me in bed. “Otis?”

It came out muffled behind his hand, still covering my mouth.

“Don’t scream,” he said. “I’m just checking on you.”

My panic hardened into anger. I bit down on his hand.

“Ow, fuck,” he hissed, removing his hand and flipping it in the air. “I guess I deserved that.”

“You guess? What are you doing in my room — in Cassie’s apartment — in the middle of the night?” I reached over to tap my phone for the time. “It’s three in the morning! Fucking asshole!”

“I’ll explain,” he said. “But maybe, uh, keep your voice down? I’m not looking to get my ass kicked by Bram.”

I scooted back against the headboard and crossed my arms over my chest. “Maybe I’m looking for you to get your ass kicked by Bram. Start talking.”

My eyes had adjusted to the dark. His features were clearer now — blond hair falling over his face, dark eyes warm — and the longing I’d been fighting over the two weeks came back with a vengeance.

“I don’t like that you’re here,” he said. “I mean, obviously I don’t like that you’re here, away from me, away from us. But there’s no security here either. We’re worried about you.”

“Bram is Cassie’s security.” Blackwell Falls had a lot of factions — the MCs and the street gangs and the rich assholes from Aventine — but Bram lorded over them all.

“It’s not enough,” Otis said.

I rolled my eyes. “It’s Bram.”

“You think those guys at the dam would care about Bram?” he asked. “Think about it.”

I swallowed hard, because the truth was, I had thought about it. Not here at Cassie’s, but on the street walking from work to the gym, and especially walking from the gym to Cassie’s, when the summer sun had dropped behind the ridge, the light fading.

“My dad was just trying to teach me a lesson,” I said. I still hadn’t called or texted him back, still hadn’t figured out what to say to him, if anything, because never speaking to him again was definitely on the table. “And I’m not even living with you, Wolf, and Jace anymore, which I’m sure he knows.”

My dad had rats all over town. It probably hadn’t taken an hour for him to hear that I’d moved out of the house.

Otis hesitated. “What if you’re wrong? What if you don’t know him as well as you think you do?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious I don’t.” My dad was an arrogant asshole. He was controlling and demanding, someone who demanded total allegiance, but never in a million years would I have thought he’d kidnap me and hold me prisoner in such squalid conditions just to bring me back under his control.

“No, I mean what if you really don’t know him?” Otis asked.

I glared at him through the dark. “So, what? I should move back in with you and Wolf and Jace?” I shook my head and let out a soft bitter laugh. “Like I know you any better.”

“I wish you would move back in with us. I don’t trust anyone else to keep you safe,” he said.

“It’s not like you kept me safe last time.” It was a low blow. I’d felt safer with the Beasts than I’d ever felt in my life. But we’d been looking for a psycho stalker, someone lurking in the shadows. There was no way any of us could have seen my dad coming.

It wasn’t their fault he was a psychopath.

Still, putting my kidnapping on them was easier than talking about the real reason I couldn’t come back to the house: the fact that they’d killed Blake.

And it was definitely easier than talking about the fact that I still wanted them. That even now, it was all I could do to focus on what Otis was saying, to ignore his scent — an intoxicating mix of male body spray, motor oil, and a hint of sweat — and the magnetic pull of his body.

It would be way too easy to pull him into bed, lift his T-shirt over his head, forget all about what he’d done to Blake as his hands and mouth roamed my body.

I couldn’t let that happen.

A pained expression passed over his face. “You’re right. We fucked up, didn’t realize your dad was still a threat.”

One word jumped out at me. “Still?”

He shook his head, like he’d said something he shouldn’t have. “There are things you should know. About your dad. About what happened to Blake.”

“Convenient that now you want to tell me everything,” I said. “You had weeks to tell me before Calvin stuffed me in his car. Wolf made it clear the subject was off-limits.”

Otis nodded, and I saw the regret written in his eyes. “That was a mistake. Obviously.” I was confused, having trouble connecting the dots. Blake had been my dad’s golden boy. What did he have to do with Blake’s murder? “Come home so we can talk. So we can keep you safe.”

“You don’t get it, do you? I don’t trust you, Otis. I don’t trust any of you.” I wanted to say I’d never trusted them, but that had been my real crime: I had trusted them.

I shouldn’t have, but I had.

His shoulders dropped a little. “I can’t say that I blame you, doll.” He stood and walked back to the chair against the wall, then lowered himself into it. “But if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stay awhile.”

I wanted to tell him to leave, that it absolutely wasn’t okay that my brother’s murderer was watching me sleep.

Except now that he was here, I wanted him to stay.

“Suit yourself,” I said. “Just don’t let Cassie catch you in here. She’s not going to like that you broke into her house.”

“Technically I didn’t have to break in,” he said, sinking lower in the chair. “Window was open in the living room. Right over the fire escape too.”

He said it with a hint of sadness, like Cassie’s lax security was cause for mourning.

I sank into my pillow, my eyes on Otis a few feet away in the chair.

It should have been weird, letting someone watch me sleep. But it didn’t feel weird. In fact it was the closest I’d felt to home since I’d left the house at the top of the falls.

I tried not to think about what that meant. Tried not to think about what kind of person it made me.

Because the truth was, the Beasts had killed my brother — and I still wanted them.