Chapter 16 #2
They got quiet again, but then Bane started to talk to no one in particular.
“You know, she’s a grown woman. She can do whatever she wants to do.
But she’s innocent, and she’s trusting. And he fucking took advantage of that.
He’s a goddamn teacher that’s supposed to keep his fucking hands off the students!
Then for his wife to stalk her and harass her that way.
There’s no excuse. You don’t get to be a fucking professor who seduces your students with multiple complaints, without your wife knowing it.
She knew. And she was sick of it which is why she targeted Daisy.
Had Daisy been Emmalyn, or Hellen, the whole fucking college would have known and they’d have been begging her to back off.
Instead, they found a sweet, vulnerable innocent in Daisy, and they broke her.
She never even had a fucking boyfriend before she went off to college. That fucker took advantage of her.”
“Which is why they’re gator meat,” Lucien said.
Bane lifted his hand and held it over his head.
Lucien slapped his hand against Bane’s.
“Alrighty, then,” Havoc said. The conversation died down again, but only for moment before Havoc started singing at the top of his lungs sung to the tune of The Farmer in the Dell.
“Aaaaaa, hunting we will go, a hunting we will go.
Professor’s a molester, he can’t keep it in his pants.
He’ll learn to stay away, from girls with angry ‘rents.
He has a psycho wife. The wife will cry tonight.
Castration hurts, we’ll cut off his nuts.
Revenge is really fun, maybe we should have brought a gun!”
“Rents?” Bane asked.
“Parents!” Havoc shouted, then went right back into the impromptu song again.
Then Lucien joined in, and they sang all the way across the Causeway Bridge. All 23 miles of it.
~~~
Bam pulled his beloved cherry-red, antique pickup truck into the parking lot at Daisy’s Art Studio.
He got out of his truck, with his head still bobbing in rhythm to the last song he was listening to.
He took a deep breath, his eyes closed, his face tilted toward the warmth of the sun, and smiled — life was good.
Both of his girls had found their mates, he had a precocious, too smart for her own good granddaughter, and a new grandbaby on the way.
He whistled a little tune as he continued bobbing his head as he approached the art studio, reached out to turn the knob and walk inside, but instead, walked right into the door — because it was locked.
Bam stood back and looked at the door, then over to where Daisy always parked her jeep just to be sure he did actually see it, then knocked on the door.
He leaned over a little and pressed his eye to the peephole like he could actually see through it from the outside, then grinned when he wasn’t able to.
He knocked on the door again, and waited.
Nothing. No answer, no noise from inside.
For just a split second he considered worrying, then decided that Daisy just forgot to unlock the door.
But just to be sure, he walked over to her jeep and laid his hand on its hood.
Ice cold. Which meant that it had been here a while.
Bam went back over to the building and made his way around the building, peeking into every window he passed.
Eventually, he found her, sitting in her office with her head on her desk.
He tapped gently on the window, smiling brightly as he waited for her to lift her head and look at him.
But she didn’t lift her head. She continued to rest with her head on her desk. “Daisy!” he called.
She didn’t answer.
Getting worried now, he took a deep breath and bellowed her name while knocking on the window so hard, he stopped just short of breaking it. “Daisy!”
Daisy startled, her body jumping as she raised her head and pushed herself up in her chair suddenly. She blinked a few times and looked around the room, obviously disoriented.
When she finally noticed Bam, he smiled at her and pointed toward the front door.
Daisy didn’t smile. She didn’t even pretend, she just nodded, got up and started for the door.
Bam’s brows furrowed as he watched her. It was obvious to him that something was wrong. He hurried around the exterior of the studio until he got to the door, which Daisy had unlocked, and walked away from. He turned the knob, stepping inside, and looked around. “Daisy?” he called.
“I’m going to my office. I have some work I need to finish,” she answered, but didn’t come back into the main room of the studio.
Bam started toward her office, not even stopping at her door, but instead walking right in and taking one of the chairs for when people came to see her about lessons and moving it around so he could sit right beside her behind her desk.
She looked at the chair, then at him. “What?” she asked.
“I don’t know. You tell me,” Bam said.
“I’m just busy, Uncle Bam. I promise,” Daisy said.
“Lie!” he shouted. “You have never lied to me. And now you have. I don’t know if I should cry or be angry!”
“It’s not a lie, exactly. I just don’t want to get into it,” Daisy said. “And it’s not that big of a deal anyway. I should have known better, it’s on me.”
Bam dropped his big body back into the chair and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs. “I’m not going away. So, you might as well tell me. I won’t tell anybody. I promise.”
“Yes, you will. Then I’ll end up with you and Daddy, and everybody else from your generation, and mine, terrorizing some poor guy because I read more into it than there really was.”
“You have to do better than that, Daisy. I’m not as quick as your Daddy,” he said, pointing to his temple.
“Yes, you are. And you know it. You just let people think you’re not.”
“Come on, tell Uncle Bam what the problem is.”
“I’m an idiot, that’s what the problem is,” she grumbled.
Bam chuckled. “If there’s one thing you’ve never been, it’s an idiot.”
“What else would you call a female who has found two mates and they both lied to her and made a fool out of her?”
Bam thought about it for a second. “I don’t understand, Daisy. You have to give me more information.”
She huffed an irritated grumble and shook her head. “I thought I found my mate. He told me everything I wanted to hear, including that he was not married.”
“And he was…” Bam said, completely straight-faced with all traces of humor completely gone.
“Yes, he was. And I believed every single word he told me. Including when his wife started stalking me! I figured out real quick that he was lying to me, but why didn’t I know that the minute he started lying?
Why didn’t I know? I’m a shifter, I’m supposed to know!
And then the worst part is just when I’m starting to feel okay again, starting my studio, looking forward to waking up in the mornings, I do it again. ”
“The same male?” Bam exclaimed, his forehead wrinkled as he tried his best to be understanding.
“No. But with a different one. I not only fell in love with him, I fell in love with his son! And now I find out he’s lying to me, too!”
“Hold on, is this guy the one with the little boy that’s been hanging out with Bane? Wait, I know his name…”
“Carson,” Daisy said.
“Yes! Carson! I like that little guy. He’s brutally honest, and so smart!” Bam said.
“Yes, he is,” Daisy said, turning away from Bam.
“No, now, don’t do that. Tell me why you think he’s lying, too,” Bam encouraged, pulling her chair back to face him.
“It’s stupid.”
“No, it’s not. It’s got you torn up. Tell me.”
“I woke up happy today. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that. I made my breakfast, because I have late days, then I made Charlie lunch.”
“Charlie is Carson’s daddy?”
“Yes. And I took it to him. He’d told me he’d be working today and had a meeting so might not have time to call me, which is fine.
But when I got there, I told the receptionist I was dropping off lunch for Charlie, and she said, ‘Oh, he’s not here.
He didn’t come in today’. Then she explains that he asked for personal time off today, something to do with his girlfriend, and did I want to leave a message. ”
“That doesn’t mean anything, Daisy. She’s just a receptionist. She doesn’t know.”
“I asked if she’d ever seen his girlfriend and she said no, but she heard some of the guys talking about how pretty she was, so they must have.”
“How do you know they didn’t see you?”
“Where? We haven’t been dating all that long.
And I have the same problem with him that I did with my professor.
I can’t read him. I can read everybody else.
I can see their auras. I can feel what they’re feeling before they even begin to tell me what they’re experiencing.
But I couldn’t with the first one, and I can’t with Charlie.
What’s wrong with me, Uncle Bam? Why can’t I tell when the men I’m interested in are lying to me?
Why can I see everyone else’s happily ever after, and not my own? ”
“Okay, let’s take these two one at a time, okay?” Bam asked.
“I’m done after these two. I can’t trust myself to not walk right into a lying narcissist again.”
“Let’s look at Charlie, alright?”
“I don’t want to look at Charlie.”
“Let’s look at Charlie!” Bam insisted. “I couldn’t read Everly.
Couldn’t pick up on what she was feeling.
Couldn’t see her aura at all. I was drawn to her just like a mate, but couldn’t see the gold aura when we met, or at anytime since.
And honestly, if it wasn’t for me telling everybody, they probably wouldn’t know they’d found their mates either.
Only a healer can see the auras. I can see gold when mates meet. Just like you can.”
“Here’s the thing, though, Daisy. We can’t see the gold aura of ourselves, or of our own mates.”
“I remember hearing that, but why?”