CHAPTER 40
Daisy
“Edward,” I stutter, the air knocked out of me.
He doesn’t move.
He just stands there—still, immovable. Six foot three and carved out of something colder than stone.
His tuxedo hangs effortlessly off his frame, accentuating the broad sweep of his shoulders with the polished ease of a Hollywood star gracing the red carpet.
How handsome he looks sends a sharp pang of sadness through my chest.
His gaze moves from me to Mike, lingering just long enough to make my insides twist. “Would you care to introduce me to your friend, Daisy?”
His voice is calm.
Too calm.
Lucia steps in, her hand landing on Edward’s bicep. “What’s going on?” she asks, voice filled with concern. “Is everything okay?”
Edward doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even look at her. His stare remains fixed on me, unwavering. When he finally speaks, his tone is clipped, and utterly terrifying in its restraint.
“Lucia, this is Daisy. My girlfriend.”
I flinch. The first time he’s ever called me that in public, and it sounds wrong . Ominous. Like he resents the word.
“And this,” he continues, “is the gentleman who just shoved his tongue down her throat.”
Mike—the godforsaken idiot—sticks out his hand like we’re at a bloody LinkedIn mixer. “Mike Stevens,” he says, chipper as ever. “Producer at BritShop.”
Edward just stares at the offered hand. Like Mike has just presented him with a dead rat.
With agonizing slowness, Edward lifts his gaze, pinning Mike in place with a stare that could set him on fire.
Mike isn’t small, but next to Edward, he shrinks.
Because Edward?
Edward is still. And that lethal stillness sucks the oxygen from the space between them.
Mike’s bravado wobbles. His hand hovers in midair for a beat before he lets it drop, rubbing the back of his neck like he can scrub the awkwardness off. He mutters something under his breath.
Edward doesn’t react. No clenched jaw, no sharp comeback, no explosion. Just that eerie, unshakable calm.
It’s so much worse than if he’d yelled.
I hate this—hate how his stillness shrinks me, how it twists my panic into something sharp.
“You don’t get to be the victim here,” I choke out, “You don’t get to leave me at home, go to your fancy events, live in your fancy world, and then suddenly act possessive when it suits you.”
Something raw flickers in his eyes—there and gone, swallowed up by that mask of etiquette. But his knuckles tighten. The only tell that he’s not as unaffected as he wants to be.
“Perhaps,” he says with a grimace, “we should discuss the finer points of our relationship when you’re sober and we don’t have an audience enjoying the spectacle.”
The cameras are still flashing.
I’d tuned it out, but there’s no escaping it now.
Edward’s nostrils flare as his gaze sweeps the area.
“You didn’t tell me you still had a boyfriend,” Mike pipes up, sounding all wounded.
“Oh, shut up, Mike,” I snap, but it comes out husky because the tears are right there, clawing at my throat.
Edward can stand there, all noble and untouchable, but he’s here with her , proving every suffocating fear I’ve been swallowing all night. And yeah, maybe I’m proving him right too—I’m the loud, sloppy disaster he’d never parade around, the girl who ends up half-soaked and yelling on a red carpet. My hands curl into fists, nails biting into my palms, and I’m so fucking exhausted from trying to be enough for him when I’m clearly just . . . this.
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I bite out, my voice shaking as I glare at him. “I have a fuck buddy who claims I’m everything he wants in a girlfriend—until we’re anywhere near his family or, god forbid, in public.”
The tears spill over now, hot and messy, mascara streaking into my eyes and stinging. I swipe at them viciously.
“Daisy,” Edward says, low. A warning laced with restraint.
But fuck him.
“You know what’s actually hilarious, Mike?” I say, locking eyes with Edward, because this isn’t about Mike. He’s just the poor sod caught in the blast radius. “I already went through this with his brother. The Cavendishes have a type—they’ll screw you in secret, treat you like a dirty little sidepiece, but they won’t even leave a hundred quid on the counter to make it honest.”
Mike clears his throat, shifting awkwardly.
“Enough,” Edward growls, and there it is—his jaw tightens, those slate-blue eyes flash, the first real crack in his ice-king routine.
He turns to walk away, but I grab his arm—my sticky fingers digging into his perfect tux—and yank him back.
“Oh no you don’t,” I cry. How dare he? He’s the one lying, parading around with Lucia. He does not get to walk away like this. “I’ll say when it’s enough.”
I know I sound like a screaming kid throwing a tantrum, and it’s worse because he’s so damn calm about it. No cracks, no heat—just cold, blank detachment. And the calmer he is, the more unhinged I feel.
It makes me want to claw at him, grab him by the lapels and shake him, anything to get a reaction, because I’m falling apart here and he doesn’t even care.
Then—god help me—he laughs .
Not a real laugh. Just a dry, humorless exhale. His head tilts slightly, the faintest shake, slow and deliberate. The kind of movement you make when you’re writing something off.
I can feel it—he’s cutting me off, snipping the last thread of whatever this was.
“And there lies the problem,” he says coolly. “You’re a grown woman with the self-regulation of a toddler.”
My heart twists.
“Oh, what’s this—suddenly not fun for you anymore, Daddy ?” I fling it at him, loud and biting.
The crowd titters. Actual giggles ripple through the onlookers because yeah, they are eating this up.
I can feel their eyes, their phones, their judgment, and I don’t care. I’m a performer. I live for the spotlight, even when it’s burning me alive. Let them watch. Let them judge.
He loathes this—the chaos, the staring eyes, the fact that I’ve dragged his pristine world into the muck. I can see it in the way his shoulders stiffen, the way he’s fighting to keep that mask of control from cracking.
I’m baiting him now, practically begging him to snap—drop the gentleman act and admit this was doomed from the start. Come on, Edward, say it. Tell me I was never good enough for your gilded fucking life.
But he doesn’t. He pulls himself up, spine ramrod straight, and gives me this curt, ridiculous bow. Then he turns to Lucia, offering her the same clipped nod.
“I have an early morning,” he says, voice flat and final. “Good night.”
I want to scream. To rage. To tell him how unfair this is. That I was never the one who kept us a secret.
But he won’t give me that. He’ll always retreat behind that wall—years of good breeding, of swallowing anything messy or real, locking it all down until he’s just this polished, untouchable shell.
“Don’t you walk away from me, Edward Cavendish!” I shout after his back.
But that’s exactly what he does.
I can’t stop myself. Something inside me has fucking shattered .
“You and me?” I yell. “The posh surgeon and the shopping channel girl? It’s a joke. We’re a fucking joke .”
He doesn’t falter. He cuts through the crowd, his dark tux slicing past a figure I didn’t even clock until now.
Sophia, gripping Giles’s arm, looking like she’s just witnessed a zombie apocalypse.