Chapter 4
four
This is a bad idea.
But what other choice do I have?
She needs a safe place to land until this all blows over, and I’ll be damned if that place isn’t with me.
I slowly move my hand out of her grasp and set it on the steering wheel. I immediately feel the loss of her hand in mine, but I fear that I may crush hers if I keep reacting every time the suggestion of her leaving my side gets brought up.
“Excuse me? With you?” Nick asks, most likely baffled by the change in plans. But if it hadn’t already sunk in that I’m the man driving her away from that doomed marriage, then he hasn’t really been paying attention to the lengths I’d go to for his sister.
“I’ve got a place we can go to.” I hesitate for a moment.
I never intended on telling people where I go in the offseason and where I spent a few years in hiding after I unexpectedly retired from the MLB.
The quiet place I desperately needed when grief consumed me.
But if it means I get to keep Daisy safe and sound, I’ll gladly hand over the information to her loved ones.
“It’s in the Adirondack Mountains. It’s about a five-hour drive.
No one knows I have a home there. It doesn’t even have an official address.
It’s just a large plot of land and a cabin.
I’ve been able to keep a low profile when I go into town, so there’s no way the media will track Daisy up there. She’ll be safe.”
“Five hours? Are you insane? Take the jet. It’ll be faster and—”
“Flight plans are public and can be tracked. All it would take is a long-lensed camera snapping an image of her in a big white dress boarding your plane, and she would be followed. So how about we try not to kill the environment today and stick with my plan?”
“Seriously? You choose now of all times to speak more than a few stunted words and grunts? Unbelievable. Daisy? It’s your call. What do you want to do?”
I chance a glance in her direction, and the sight still takes my breath away.
She’s beautiful.
And she’s sitting in my truck while we put miles between her and that damn wedding.
She’s not marrying him, my mind chants.
I have to remind myself to take deep breaths and focus on the road more times than I care to admit. Especially because with Daisy riding shotgun, I’m carrying precious cargo.
Over the past year, my irresponsible crush on Daisy Stonehaven has remained in a secret compartment in my brain.
But during the days leading up to her impending nuptials, I fear I may have done a shit job of hiding my true feelings for her.
Feelings I had no business having for my boss’s little sister, coworker, and, most of all, my closest friend.
Feelings that took me by surprise when she unexpectedly stirred my dead heart from a deep slumber and awoke protective instincts I never knew I possessed. Instincts so fierce that I found myself nearly growling over her anytime I felt her discomfort.
Feelings that she is clueless about.
I struggle with the selfish part of me that wants her to finally figure it out, then see how she reacts. To learn if those shared lunches at work meant as much to her as they did to me.
Or the time I drove her home after a girls’ night got too rowdy and let her pick the music. Luckily she was too tipsy to notice that I circled midtown twice so she could listen to a song she loved on repeat.
Or Nick’s wedding day, when she convinced me to spend the entire night dancing with her and didn’t pay any mind when my players were most likely recording us with their phones. Something I would never allow because I value my privacy over everything.
Well, almost everything.
But that secret compartment in my mind was shattered to smithereens the second I saw her losing her goddamn mind behind that church. When she told me she didn’t want to go through with the wedding.
She’s not marrying him.
I suppress a groan of frustration. No matter how badly my body is vibrating with the knowledge that Daisy is here, in my truck, and no longer betrothed to that pathetic excuse for a man, I need to keep my head on straight.
Daisy is rattled. She needs stability. A moment to catch her breath.
She doesn’t need an overly eager thirty-one-year-old man stepping up to bat for an opportunity with her when she’s at her most vulnerable.
Unfortunately, when I became protective of Daisy, I knew I would have to include myself in the list of dangers as well.
Daisy deserves more than a man who hides in the woods when the world shatters around him.
She needs time to discover who she is now that she is no longer under her ex-fiancé’s thumb.
And I need to be the bystander who helps her get whatever it is she wants for her future.
Even if that future doesn’t include me standing by her side.
I steal a glance in her direction when I realize she has yet to answer her brother. And my heart does that thing where it overrides my brain and any prior logical thought along with it when I catch her already looking my way.
Her big, expressive brown eyes are incapable of hiding her thoughts, and right now, she’s unsure.
Maybe that’s why my friendship with her has always been easy.
Apart from the fact that she might be the kindest person I’ve ever met, Daisy is an open book.
I can tell when she doesn’t enjoy something she’s eating, even though she’s too polite to say otherwise.
Or when she’s trying to tamp down her excitement with the events she’s helped planned at Monarchs Stadium.
I can sit all day, staring at her, watching the way life blooms behind her irises as her attention shifts from person to person. As she offers everyone genuine smiles along with questions about their day.
Which is how it was easy to spot that something wasn’t right when it came to her fiancé. Ex-fiancé.
Because anytime there was any mention of Damien, the light in her eyes diminished. For a while I told myself I was seeing what I wanted to see. That I selfishly came up with a narrative that fed my preposterous and unrequited crush.
But after meeting the guy and seeing the way he treated her as a pawn rather than the gentle soul that she is, I knew that look in her eye was not something my weak heart had conjured up for the sake of my ego.
I need to stop staring.
He’s here. He’s real. And this should be the final straw to these irrational feelings toward my coworker. My friend? I didn’t think I was capable of having any of those again.
But Daisy is different.
She isn’t a snake. She wouldn’t put me through the hell I just crawled out of.
Although I fear that just her association with me would be enough to taint her pure soul.
Which is why instead of celebrating the end of a successful charity game with the rest of my team, I’m standing in the shadows, watching her with him and convincing myself that this is exactly the way things should be.
Her, with a stuffy but somewhat decent-looking guy. And me alone, with only the company of my demons.
But something is off.
Daisy can light up any room she is in with her sparkling brown eyes.
Instead, I can tell they’re barely holding back tears.
What the fuck is he saying to her?
My fists clench as I force myself to stay put.
Daisy worked tirelessly organizing this event, and I won’t make a scene and ruin it for her. She single-handedly managed to wrangle players from different teams to participate tonight and took care of every detail, even down to the catering. She also roped me into cake testing with her.
As expected, she kept pestering me about which flavors were my favorite. She’s always asking others their preferences and opinions while keeping hers buried.
Little does she know she’s not that hard to read. I saw her going back multiple times to take bites of the dulce de leche cake while she explained the décor for the afterparty.
So as her fiancé not so subtly taps her hips while removing the slice of untouched cake from in front of her and places it on an empty high table as he walks out of the private venue, I overflow with rage.
My body is begging me to follow him out and demand he tell me what he said to her so that I can do my best to scrub whatever hurtful words he used to cause her tears to form.
But my eyes won’t leave Daisy. Haven’t been able to since the moment I first saw her.
Isabella is standing by her side, but she’s still struggling.
She has a good group of friends around her, and for that I’m thankful.
Friends.
The word doesn’t feel right when it comes to Daisy. But nothing has felt right in a long time, so it’s most likely that I’m just broken. After all, that is what everyone says behind my back.
I see one tiny tear escape, and before I’ve given my body permission to leave the shadows I’ve become so accustomed to, I’m on the move.
I don’t break stride when I pick up two slices of dulce de leche cake from the dessert table.
I know it’s her favorite. Which is why I told her it was mine.
I don’t say a word as I place them in front of Daisy.
And I don’t dare look back as I walk out of the room and into the night.
I blink until I find myself back in the present. I need to keep my head on straight, especially at a time like this, when Daisy needs me.
She’s not marrying him. But maybe when she’s ready, we could try and…
I knock the absurd thought from my head. Now isn’t the time to worry about anything besides what Daisy wants. She took the first step, and I’m going to need her to keep being the one to call the shots here. Because if left to me…
“Daisy.” My voice comes out gruffer than expected as I stop at a red light.
I go to pull the tie around my neck only to realize I’ve already taken it off.
Meaning the tight sensation around my throat is the anticipation that comes with waiting for Daisy to decide.
And knowing I’ll do whatever it is she asks of me.
“I-um. I don’t want to get on a plane. Don’t think I need to add my flying anxiety into the mix today.”