Chapter 8 #3
‘Yes?’
‘Sign the NDA. Then the equations need checking. I’m guessing you know how given all those classes you took.’
He puts ‘classes’ in air quotes and my eyes narrow. ‘I’ll start right away.’
‘Good. Each line needs to be checked thoroughly and corrected tonight.’
I nod and begin to move away from him when he grabs my waist, pulling me back. I tense and, for a second, his face softens.
He’s really quite nice to look at when he isn’t frowning, I realize. His eyes are dark and his black lashes long. The tattoos I glimpse sometimes peek out from his black shirt collar and I think I’d enjoy tracing the straight lines with my fingers.
His fingers caress my cheek and I look down, seeing red on his knuckles. They’re injured and freshly scabbed over, I realize.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
His eyes soften on me. ‘Jesus, the way you talk sometimes. It’s almost like you really care,’ he says quietly. ‘Wrestling.’
‘Oh. Do you like it? Wrestling?’
He shrugs. ‘Doesn’t matter if I do, or not. I’m good at it and it’s the only reason I’m here.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Scholarship,’ he murmurs as if he’s not really paying attention to our exchange. ‘We don’t all have a Daddy Novelle to give us money.’
I stare at Blake. He’s right. John is a sonofabitch, but he’s still paying for me to go to school. In true Daisy style, I’ve taken that and the future it’ll give me, if I graduate , for granted. If he hadn’t been so awful to me when I was a kid, I might even give him a thank you. Though as I think about it now, the truth is, rightly or wrongly, in my mind, he owes me for the way he treated me, for The Heath, for not keeping my mom safe. Cause and effect. Checks and balances. My education is the price he’ll pay for us to be square.
‘Stay still,’ Blake instructs, drawing me back to the present.
I watch him. My heart is beating hard. My palms are hot and clammy. I hide my hands behind my back in case they do anything weird while I wait to see what he’s doing.
Like grab him and pull him closer.
No, like flail about and accidentally smack him in the balls.
I did that to Crewes once. He was not happy.
Focus.
He smells like peppermint.
Blake’s lips descend to mine slowly. His eyes are open, watching me, and I try to keep my eyes the same, but they drift closed as I feel his warm skin on mine.
I’m transported for a second to when Shade did the same.
Shade was more forceful, his fingers and lips bruising. But Blake’s hands flutter over my skin. He doesn’t hold me in place as his lips begin to caress mine. I open on a small intake of breath and his tongue slips through the gap. It’s cajoling and gently questing. I copy him and the kiss deepens.
He pulls away abruptly and I just stop myself from trying to follow his lips.
‘You’ve done that before,’ he murmurs.
I nod a little shyly.
‘How many times?’
‘Like that? Once.’
Not all that long ago.
But I don’t say that part.
His eyebrows rise. ‘Come on. You knew what to do. ’
I look away, feeling a little sad all of a sudden. ‘Only the things you did first. It’s mimicry. That’s all.’
He doesn’t say anything for a few seconds. ‘Do you feel things? Emotions, I mean. Shade wasn’t sure, and your face doesn’t show much.’
‘You’ve talked about me?’ I ask, not liking that much.
He shrugs unapologetically. ‘Well?’
‘Yes,’ I say quietly. ‘I feel things.’
He regards me silently for a few seconds, as if he’s trying to figure something out.
‘When you get back to the house, come to my room,’ he says finally.
‘Tonight? But?—’
‘It’s not a request. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it. Besides, there’s a price to pay for this morning. Or did you think we were just gonna let the Pop Tarts burning in the toaster thing go? The kitchen was flooded to shit.’
And then he’s gone and I’m alone in the lab.
I stare at the door for a moment, the ghost of his touch making me shiver.
A price to pay? That sounds ominous.
But I walk across the room and I sit in front of the papers that are on the table. I sign the NDA as ordered and I begin to look at the rest of them, putting everything else out of my head for now. This is what’s important. When the memory of Blake’s kiss makes me touch my lips absently, I banish it ruthlessly and focus on the numbers, the things I understand. The patterns that relax me. Whatever Blake wants from me will be a blip, and whatever this price is that I have to pay won’t be anything deadly . If it keeps John from knowing that I’m circumventing whatever plans he has for me, then I’ll do what Blake wants until he inevitably gets bored.
I can control this. I have to.
Blake
I’m going through lab data and doing my regular classwork until well past dark. When it gets to ten, I sit back and wonder if the pretty little idiot I’ve got on my string will actually come to me like I told her to.
I chuckle aloud. She’s probably still sitting in the lab trying to make heads or tails of the data and realizing how in over her head she is ... and how well and truly fucked.
I’m almost sympathetic. Almost. But this is all her own fault. She got out of that clinic and had a cushy thing going with the Novelles. But she got cocky and tried to fly too close to the sun. I just hope she comes in here trying to hide that she couldn’t do what we told her to and follows through with our deal before we send her packing.
My stomach rumbles and I send a message to the pledges to grab me a burger. Five minutes later, not one of the assholes has replied to me. The message hasn’t even been read.
‘Fuck my life.’
With a long-suffering sigh, I get up and leave my room. Neither Mav nor Shade are here. I assume Mav is in the gym, or maybe at the lab still, making sure the shut-in isn’t slacking. Shade is probably at the club. He likes to go there at night to unwind, I’ve noticed. More often now that his sister is around.
I don’t get their relationship at all. She looks at him with something in her eyes sometimes, but I can’t work out what. And he definitely doesn’t look at her the way a brother is supposed to look at a sister.
I get down to the kitchen and see Rob and a couple of the other juniors playing cards.
‘Where the pledges at?’ I ask .
‘We dropped them all in the woods three miles out about an hour ago and told them to make their way back.’
They laugh and I roll my eyes. ‘That wasn’t on the plan. We literally have a schedule for this shit.’
‘What’s the big deal?’
I hold up my phone. ‘None of them are answering.’
Rob points to a pile of phones on the counter and I shake my head as I open the fridge. There’s nothing in there that I want to eat.
‘There’s some pizza left,’ one of them supplies helpfully and I grumble, but I open the lid. There’s almost a whole one inside, so I grab the box.
The doorbell rings.
One of the guys pulls out his phone and smirks. ‘It’s the retard again. How long do you want to leave her out there this time?’
I frown. I hadn’t realized she still couldn’t get in the house without one of us letting her in.
‘Is it raining yet?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I didn’t hear the door.’
‘Me either.’
They all laugh.
‘Let her in,’ I mutter, going back into the fridge for a beer.
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’
I don’t bother to turn around, but I hear the screech of a chair and the door a second later.
Daisy’s small ‘thank you’ is met with a ‘whatever, retard’.
My fists clench. What am I getting pissed off for? I make myself relax as I close the fridge and go to grab the pizza box again.
She comes into the kitchen and freezes at the sight of me.
She doesn’t look upset or as if she’s figured out chemistry is hard. She actually just looks tired. And wet. Her hair is plastered to her head and her clothes are sticking to her. I swallow hard. I can see her nipples poking out through her thin shirt.
‘You know it’s October, right? Might want to start wearing a jacket.’
She nods.
‘Go to my room.’ I make a show of looking her up and down. ‘I’ll be up in a minute.’
She glances at the table of boys and I’m sure I see a little color creeping up her neck. She’s embarrassed, but she does what I say, climbing the stairs. I grin at the guys, giving them a wink.
They’re silent. They look more than a little surprised.
‘Didn’t think you were into retarded girls,’ Rob says with a snigger.
I bark a laugh. ‘You guys actually think she is?’ I roll my eyes.
‘Fucking morons,’ I mutter. ‘She’s not mentally challenged. She’s just dumb.’
Then, I remember the doorbell. ‘How long was she out there?’
A couple shrug.
‘Don’t make me check.’
‘A few minutes.’
I heft my pizza box into one hand and grab a second beer from the door of the fridge, ignoring the guys who have mostly gone back to playing cards, though I feel a couple of sets of eyes track my movements until I’m out of sight.
I go upstairs and step into my room, putting the pizza on my bed and setting the two beer bottles on my desk.
She’s standing in the middle of my room, looking like I’m about to eat her alive.
Maybe I will .
Deciding not to waste any time, mostly because I probably won’t have much of it before Mav gets back and tells her to get the fuck out, I draw closer.
‘Are you ready?’
She doesn’t look at me. Her arms are at her sides. Her breathing is quick.
‘Are you scared?’
She nods a little.
‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ I say softly, not really liking that she’s so apprehensive.
The realization that I want to put her at ease is new. I don’t usually give a shit so long as they give me what I want.
My fingers glide up her arms and my hands settle on her upper arms. I’m trying to calm her, but all she does is startle. I feel how cold her skin is. Her body is shaking.
Suspicion twists through my gut. The guys downstairs weren’t straight with me.
‘How many times did you ring the doorbell?’ I ask softly.
My question throws her.
‘Three,’ she answers immediately.
‘I’ll be right back.’
I leave the room, pulling out my phone and bringing up the app. I look at the history and see the exact moment she rang the bell tonight for the first time. Nine-thirty. And the third time was at ten fifteen. The fuckers left her standing out in the rain for forty-five minutes and she doesn’t even have a jacket on.
I grab a fresh towel from the closet and go back to my room. She’s still standing in the same spot.
‘Take off your wet clothes.’
She looks at me and then at the floor. She hesitates, but her fingers begin to work the buttons of the sweater and she shrugs it off, revealing a maroon camisole underneath. I watch her as she undoes her jeans and sits down on my bed to peel the damp fabric down over her knees. My eyes follow the lines of her long legs.
If I was hoping for a racy strip-tease like I’d get from Jolie, or one of the other girls I’ve messed around with before, I’d be disappointed. Her movements are wooden and she doesn’t give me even one sultry glance.
But I’m not. I’m actually a little worried about her. Between the other day’s river dunking and today’s soaking, she’s going to end up getting sick. It’s weird that I give a shit, but I can’t help it. I also can’t help but watch as she takes each item of clothing off. Turns out I might be a nicer guy than I gave myself credit for, but I’m not a fucking saint.
Her fingers grasp the lower hem of the cami and I watch with bated breath as she pulls it up and over her head in one swift motion. She lets it fall to the ground with her other clothes and sits silently on the bed, facing forward with her back straight and her hands in her lap. Her legs are together and her ankles are crossed, I realize with some amusement. She’s sitting like she’s in a suit at a job interview.
‘Stand up.’
Another hesitation, but then she gets up jerkily.
‘Turn around.’
I step closer, intending to unclasp her ill-fitting gray bra, when I see the bruises.
Mottled. Black and purple. There’s a massive one on her shoulder and several others in a line down her back over her vertebrae.
‘What the fuck happened?’ I explode, louder than I wanted to.
She whirls around, her hands going over her ears, looking shocked at my outburst.
‘What?’ she asks, eyes wide.
‘Your back. ’
She shakes her head and moves a little so she can see herself in my long mirror.
‘Oh,’ she says, studying the injuries with a puzzled look on her face. ‘The fall in the river?’
‘Jesus, Daisy.’ I reach out and touch one gently and she hisses and pulls away. ‘What did you hit?’
She shrugs. ‘It happened so fast. I remember hitting the water ... maybe something else afterward, but I can’t be sure.’
A rock or submerged tree, I muse. Could be any number of things. Hell, I even found a ’79 Chevy bumper close to where we put the boat in one time.
I look closer, making sure the skin isn’t broken anywhere, otherwise I’ll have to take her to the medical center for a Tetanus shot.
‘Then I grabbed for the raft and got the handle,’ she continues.
‘You could have died, you idiot,’ I mutter.
‘So I was told,’ she says stiffly.
I drape the towel over her shoulders and she looks surprised. ‘You aren’t going to ...’
‘Let’s just have some pizza,’ I suggest, not sure why I’m turning into Blake, the gentleman, with this girl.
She brightens at once. ‘Okay.’
It’s such a sudden change in her demeanor that the grin I give her is real for once. ‘It’s a good thing I’m not sensitive.’
She just gives me a blank look as I open the box.
‘Ooh,’ she says, her eyes lighting up as she grabs a slice.
We munch in silence for a few minutes and I watch her. Now that she’s not thinking about why I told her to come in here, she’s much more relaxed.
‘Those bruises are pretty bad.’ I say, gauging her reaction as I talk. ‘You didn’t notice? Don’t they hurt?’
She considers my words and moves around a little under the towel. ‘Yeah, I guess they do.’ She shrugs. ‘Sometimes I don’t notice stuff like that, and that day ...’
She trails off.
‘That day what?’ I prompt.
‘Well,’ her voice gets quieter. ‘There were a lot of things ... I was cold, hungry, tired. I had a headache. It was just another thing, so I didn’t really ... my back hurt, but I didn’t really think of it.’ She shrugs again. ‘What does it matter anyway? Nothing’s broken. They’ll fade in a few days.’
I don’t say anything more. I let her have the last slice of pizza and I crack open the beers. She looks at it dubiously as I hand it to her, sniffing it.
‘It’s just beer. I’m not trying to drug you. Jesus. You watched me open it.’
She looks up at me, surprised, and I realize that’s not what her reaction was about. She’s probably never had beer before either.
She takes a few gulps and her eyes widen as she swallows and then coughs. ‘It’s fizzy!’ Then she makes a face. ‘And bitter.’
‘Do you want something else?’
She shakes her head and takes another drink. She finishes the bottle and puts it down on the side.
‘I don’t think I like beer,’ she announces.
She gets up with the towel still around her and I think she’s going to leave. I’ve already decided I won’t stop her if she wants to go, even if I never get another chance like this.
But she doesn’t leave. She walks around my room and looks at my things; the award I got for first place at the high school science fair, the models of elements and compounds that I 3D printed at the lab because I thought they looked cool. The many hated wrestling trophies I only leave out because girls are impressed by them. She skims over those though. Instead she slides her fingers down the faux velvet drapes, and then does it again. She feels the polished wood of my desk and touches the blanket I have draped over my chair.
‘There’s a buzzing in here,’ she murmurs, looking in the direction of my desk.
I listen. ‘I don’t hear anything.’
‘It’s really faint. But it’s there.’ She shakes her head a little, looking at my desk as if she’s annoyed at it.
‘Come here,’ I say.
The change in her is immediate. She forgets the noise she hears and her whole body stiffens. I grimace, though I don’t blame her for her reaction to me. It’s insane that she’s even in here after all the nasty shit I’ve said and done. She shouldn’t trust me anyway.
‘Please,’ I say as an afterthought, but she’s already making her way slowly over like she’s walking to her own grave.
When she gets to me, I hold out my hand, and I wait. A few seconds later, she takes it and I stroke her palm gently, giving her what I hope is a relaxed smile. She blinks at me and gives me a small one back.
‘Sit with me?’
She moves to plant herself next to me on the bed, but I shuffle back and pull her gently into my lap.
Like in the car yesterday, she’s tense and tries to sit up as straight as possible, keeping her body away from mine. I sigh and pull her into my chest, wrapping my arms around her.
‘Relax,’ I murmur into her damp hair. ‘I’m not going to do anything you don’t want.’
She melts into me a tiny bit and I congratulate myself for the small win even though I don’t know why I’m doing this. There’s no point in getting her used to being so close to me. She’ll be gone soon and I’m not going to force her into anything tonight, despite the deal I made with her in the lab .
I’m not the Devil, though there are plenty who would disagree.
‘You said there was a price.’
‘A price?’ I ask, too busy feeling her against me to think properly.
‘For the Pop Tart.’
I snort. ‘Oh, that.’ Now that I’m not trudging barefoot down the gravel path outside after evacuating, I don’t much care about what she did this morning. It’s actually kinda funny. The pledges cleaned everything up anyway once the fire department was gone. But I already spoke to the others and Shade in particular wanted to punish her after we saw the footage of what she did. I’m not sure exactly what he’s planning but, knowing that she’s leaving anyway and what my friend is into, I have a pretty good guess. I know why , too, although I know he’ll deny it.
‘Later. But it’s going to sting,’ I murmur lightly, giving her an inkling.
Her body locks up at the words, and I glance at her face in the mirror across the room. Her eyes are closed tight.
‘A shock?’ she whispers.
‘A shock? Like an electric shock?’
Her tiny nod has my blood running cold. Why would that be her first thought?
What the fuck?
‘No,’ I say, my mind turning over everything I know about her. ‘Of course not.’
That place she was in? No way. Shade said it was basically a rich person clinic, practically a spa. Did John Novelle do something to her? When would he have had a chance? Or maybe it was when she was a kid. Shade said his dad didn’t have much patience for her bullshit. Maybe he did more than put her in time out .
‘What happened to you?’ I ask, wondering if she’ll give me anything else.
Silence.
‘Daisy?’
I look at our reflection in the mirror. She’s asleep.
Not examining my feelings too closely, I cradle her close and shuffle us further up the bed carefully so as not to wake her. But she never stirs, not even when I move the pillows at my back to get more comfortable.
‘It’s too bad you won’t be here a little longer,’ I whisper.
She’s different than I thought she was, than Shade described. She’s kind of playful in an off-kilter sort of way. I’ve never met a girl quite like her. If things were different, maybe we could have had some fun together.
With her curled up on me, I open my laptop and do some more work. I should get some sleep, but I’m enjoying the feel of her so close to me, and I don’t want to waste the time unconscious.
My door creaking has my eyes open in an instant and I realize I must have drifted off. Daisy is still asleep in my arms and the clock says it’s just shy of midnight. I yawn, looking over to see what woke me to find Mav standing in my doorway wearing a shocked expression.
‘What the fuck is this?’
‘Shh!’ I give him an angry look as I jerk my head down towards Daisy and mouth ‘what the fuck?’ at him
His mouth is hanging open and he just stares for another thirty seconds at least.
‘Did you fuck Shade’s sister?’ He angry-whispers at me.
‘No, actually,’ I whisper back. ‘What do you want?’
When he doesn’t answer immediately, I let out a small huff. Here it comes. ‘How long is it gonna take us to check the formulas. Does it have to be tonight? ’
His eyes fall to her and then find me again. He comes in, closing the door softly.
‘I already did them,’ he murmurs.
I stroke her shoulder gently with my thumb in a silent, ‘Sorry, sweetheart. I like you, but you’re gone.’
‘Did you tell Applegate she couldn’t do the job?’
‘No.’
I frown at Mav. ‘He wasn’t there?’
No way. Applegate practically lives at the Novelle Center.
‘He was there.’
‘Spit it out. You know I hate it when you’re all dramatic and?—’
I freeze as Daisy shifts, not uttering a sound as she presses against me with a small noise of contentment that goes right to my dick.
I wait until she settles before my eyes find Mav again. ‘And cryptic,’ I finish in a whisper.
‘See for yourself.’
He hands me the papers he’s carrying and I scan them. Red corrections mar at least two of the equations on each page. My brows rise. ‘So many errors? No wonder we weren’t getting the results we were expecting. Good job finding all these.’
‘This isn’t my copy.’ He looks pointedly at Daisy. ‘It’s hers, Blake.’
‘That’s impossible,’ I breathe. ‘She couldn’t have faked?—?’
‘Faked what?’ Mav hisses. ‘Being smart as hell?’
He paces the room. ‘She got a few that I missed while I was doing the exact same thing in the other lab, too. I don’t know what Shade’s issue is with her, what his dad’s issue is with her, but there’s no problem with her IQ. She did these in half the time it took me. Applegate was right. She’ll be an asset to us and the project if she keeps it up.’
I nod, but my mind is reeling. I really bought into everything Shade said about Daisy and because of that, we’ve lost a lot of ground with a potential resource. How can I turn this to our advantage? Daisy cuddles closer to me in her sleep and I try to hide my sudden grin from Mav.
‘I don’t like that look,’ Mav mutters, his sharp eyes noticing it anyway.
I roll my eyes at him, surveying the results he gave me.
‘Who did the original formulas?’ I ask, annoyance welling up in me. ‘The fucker has delayed us by two weeks at least.’
‘Marcus.’
‘Thought so. Boot him off the roster. I’m sick of his shit. He’s done in our lab.’
‘Already spoke to Applegate about it. His father owns half of Main Street, gave some cash to the program. Might be a problem to get rid of him completely.’
I make a sound of discontent. ‘Fucking rich assholes.’
The irony isn’t lost on me that Shade is the same ... Daisy too. After all, John Novelle is footing the bill for our extracurricular lab activities, though he doesn’t know it. But the difference is Shade, and I guess Daisy, are both hella smart and can do the work. Marcus is clearly useless, and always has been if I’m honest, but we didn’t have anyone else before this who was a part of the frat, and they need to be. We need the loyalty if they figure out what we’re doing, as we found out last year.
The plan I had for Daisy that I’d dismissed before rises from the ashes of Shade’s idiocy. But now I have a new goal. Well, two goals. Getting her into bed and gaining her allegiance. It won’t go as quickly as I’d originally planned, and we’ll have to make sure she doesn’t find out too much too soon. But I’ll have what I need. Time. Daisy will be mine sooner or later, and she’ll remain that way until we don’t need her anymore .
I focus back on Mav. ‘We’ll just have to make sure everything Marcus does is checked. Daisy can do it.’
Mav’s frown as he looks down at Daisy is thoughtful. ‘Who is this girl?’
I smirk. ‘I have a better question. Which one of us is gonna tell Shade his sister is going fucking nowhere?’
‘I vote one of the pledges,’ Mav snorts and turns to leave.
‘You going to put her in her room?’ he asks, looking back with more than a little suspicion in his expression.
‘When I’m ready.’
‘You shouldn’t get involved with her,’ he mutters. ‘You have a knack for pissing girls off and she could really fuck us over if she has access to the lab and decides she’s angry.’
I give him a grin. ‘You heard her before. She wants to be here. She wants a chance.’
‘So?’
‘So I’m thinking she doesn’t want to go back to that clinic, right? Maybe we don’t tell her that she’s as important as she is. Maybe if she’s under the impression that she can be sent back at any moment, she’ll do what she’s told without question.’
I look down at her and decide to tell Mav the rest. ‘The problem is that we need her loyalty, too.’
‘And how do you propose we get that?’ Mav asks.
I grin darkly. ‘Easy. We foster feelings in her. If she cares about us, she’ll do whatever we want.’
Mav shakes his head a little. ‘You’re a sick fuck, Blake.’
My answering smile is self-deprecating and has him rubbing his temples with a sigh as he turns away.
‘This is a bad idea.’