Chapter 8
Daisy
It was information overload and it was almost too much. Part of me just wanted to flee to my room and make the phone call to Ronan I’d tried to make several times tonight.
But every time my finger had hovered over his name on my contact list, something had held me back.
No, not something.
One moment in particular…
It’d been after Sage had finished cutting all of the vegetables for the salad like Cash had wanted.
Exactly like he’d wanted.
I’d wanted to scream at Cash to leave Sage alone, that what he was doing was degrading and humiliating.
But then I’d seen Cash put his hand on Sage’s neck and hold it there as he told Sage he was his good boy. The relief in Sage’s eyes on its own would have been enough to silence me, but it was the other emotion I’d seen that had made me realize I was seeing something I didn’t truly understand.
Love.
Love as bright as the sun.
All the emptiness in Sage’s eyes, all the bleakness that had called to me like a beacon after he’d cut himself with the knife had been replaced by the love he felt for Cash.
And Cash hadn’t been unaffected either. The way he’d held onto Sage had been proof that what he’d done hadn’t been out of malice or to punish.
I’d seen the fine tremor in Cash’s fingers as he’d stitched Sage up. I’d heard the fear in his voice, even as he’d ordered Sage to his knees.
The whole scene had left me feeling helpless, confused, and terrified. Even hours later, I still ached for Sage.
And that was before Cash had told me about the brutality Sage had been forced to endure as a child.
I understood his helplessness on a bone-deep level.
I’d felt the same way as I’d watched my mother be abused by one man after the next.
But nothing had compared to losing her in such a violent manner.
The rage I’d been feeling had only been outweighed by my inability to do anything about it.
Ronan had given me back some of the sense of power that I’d lost, so I understood a little of what Sage was feeling.
And listening to Cash as he’d explained how it was Sage’s choice to give control over to Cash did make sense to me.
I’d done the same thing when I’d looked at him in the hotel and silently asked him to make the choice to have me come to Arkansas with them.
It’d still been my decision, but I’d given him the power to voice it for me.
I didn’t claim to understand all of it after Cash’s explanation, but some of the uneasiness in my belly had settled.
Well, it had, until Cash had made the comment about nearly killing someone.
“What happened?” I asked.
Cash looked down at Sage for a long time, then began petting him again. It did something funny to my insides. I wanted to do for him what he was doing for Sage.
Touch.
Comfort.
Remind him he wasn’t alone.
I knew I’d hurt him with the comment about Sage needing professional help. It had been a knee-jerk response to what he’d told me and having seen Sage’s behavior for myself. It made me realize how much pressure Cash had to be under all the time to keep Sage together.
“My parents both had a lot of problems. My father suffered from severe depression and my mother was schizophrenic. I spent most of my childhood trying to keep one or both of them going. They were both on disability, so that was where all our money came from. Neither of them could hold an actual job. I’d spend my mornings before school getting them settled for the day…
making sure they took their meds, preparing food for them so they’d have something to eat, assuming they even remembered to eat.
When I got home, I’d do the household chores and pay the bills.
The lady who lived next door to us agreed to do our grocery shopping for us in exchange for me mowing her lawn and stuff.
My entire day was about trying to keep their heads above water… my own too, I guess.”
“How old were you?” I asked.
“I was ten when my dad went downhill for the first time. He’d have a few good stretches now and then, but they never lasted. I was fifteen when he died. He hung himself from one of the rafters in the barn behind our house.”
My heart thumped painfully in my chest. I had a feeling he was leaving something out about his father’s death – namely that he’d been the one to find his body. But I didn’t press him on that.
“After he died, my mom started dating a bunch of different guys. She’d usually meet them while she was on her meds.
She’d start feeling good so she’d go off them.
The guys would knock her around and treat her like shit, but she was too far gone to even care.
Eventually the guys would get fed up and leave her and she’d get depressed and I’d be reminded of my dad… ”
Cash shook his head. “No matter how many times I promised her I’d always take care of her, she’d go out and find another guy and the cycle would repeat itself.
I worked so fucking hard to do everything right…
to give her what she needed and it wasn’t.
..” He fell silent for a moment. “It just wasn’t enough. ”
He sounded so defeated that I couldn’t stop myself from closing my fingers over where his were resting on Sage’s upper arm.
The touch seemed to snap him out of the daze he’d fallen into.
“Anyway, one day I came home from school and this guy she’d been dating was trying to force her to take his gun…
he was telling her she should just kill herself because she was such a freak that no one would ever want her.
I walked in just in time to hear him say that to her.
When she refused to take the gun, he punched her.
Then he was on top of her, calling her names and slapping her.
I just… I lost it. I dragged him away from her and began hitting him.
The cops had to pull me off him. He was in a coma for two weeks.
I was put in juvenile detention because I was still only fifteen.
The prosecutor agreed not to charge me as an adult as long as I took anger management classes and talked to a shrink. I was in there for a year.”
“What happened to your mom?” I asked.
“She moved in with the fucker I nearly killed. They found her body in the river a few months later. Ruled it an accident – said she was drunk and fell into the water or some shit like that. The guy she was with died about a month before I was released – he was driving drunk and ran his car into a tree. When I got out, I was sent here to Arkansas to live with my great-aunt.” He looked around the room.
“This was her house. She left it to me when she passed a couple years later.”
“I’m sorry, Cash,” I whispered.
He shrugged. “I got off easy,” he said quietly as he looked down at Sage.
I wasn’t so sure he had, but I didn’t say that.
“Daisy,” he murmured.
I looked up to find he was looking at me.
“Why us?” he asked gently. “Why did you want to stay with us instead of Ronan?”
I felt my chest constrict as the air seemed to get knocked out of me like it had when he’d landed on top of me during the shooting in my apartment.
I could have lied and spouted some bullshit about how I felt safer with them because they’d saved my life, but doing that would cheapen what Cash had done.
He’d held nothing back. He’d exposed his and Sage’s pasts, even though he’d been under no obligation to do so.
He’d accepted my rush to judgement about his and Sage’s dynamic and had still taken the time to explain something to me that wasn’t any of my business in the first place.
My fingers were resting on Cash’s. When I didn’t respond, he didn’t pressure me, but he did move his thumb so he could brush it back and forth over my knuckles. The move made something that was cold inside of me start to loosen and thaw. With every slide of his rough skin, I began to feel warm.
I began to feel like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
“That,” I whispered as I motioned to his finger. He stilled briefly as his eyes dropped to where we were touching, then resumed the gentle caress.
I forced my eyes up. “Ronan would have made me feel safe, but you and Sage, you make me feel… more. And I haven’t felt much in a really long time.
” I let my eyes skate over the peaceful expression on Sage’s face.
“He makes me smile like no one else can. And you” – I looked Cash directly in the eye – “see me like no one else does. I don’t know how or why, but you do…
you saw it that night in the motel room after the wedding and you didn’t let me run from it.
And you saw it again after the shooting.
You knew what I needed without needing to ask. ”
I realized the way I’d said the words came out like more of a question.
“Yes,” Cash murmured.
“Why?” I asked. “You and Sage are together. I can tell how much you love each other. But that night in the motel, you included me… was it… was it just to get off or something?”
Cash’s finger briefly stopped, then suddenly he was turning my hand over. He began trailing patterns over my palm.
“No,” he finally admitted. “Sage and I have brought other people into our bed on occasion.”
I stilled at that because it was the last thing I’d been expecting to hear.
That warmth inside of me began to fade and I started to pull my hand back, but Cash must have known what I was going to do because he carefully closed his fingers around mine.
“You were different, Daisy. You always have been.”
I stopped trying to escape him and held his gaze as he continued.