Chapter 18 Daisy
EIGHTEEN
DAISY
“I need you, Cash.”
His bare back went rigid at my words.
In the muted light, I couldn’t fully make out the designs that he had tattooed over the expanse. Couldn’t fully make out the distorted horrors he had written there.
But what I could see was the bulky muscle flexing and undulating beneath the shapes.
He only had on light gray sweats, a meager covering for the magnitude of his enormous body.
His thighs were thick, and his ass was round, as if he spent half his life doing dead lifts in the gym, though I was pretty sure he hadn’t stepped foot in one in years.
His shoulders were so freaking wide he nearly took up the entire expanse of the window that he stood in front of.
Every inch of him was a coiled canvas of rippling strength.
Did it make me a horrible human that I couldn’t do anything but stare? It wasn’t like I was sleeping this time.
I was lucid.
Aware of every choice I was making.
But God. I’d missed him. Missed him like crazy, even though I tried to convince myself that I was over him.
But the fantasies always infiltrated.
And those fantasies hadn’t come close to doing him justice.
How many times had I tried to picture what he would be like now?
Years gone.
Clearly my imagination was lacking.
Sorely.
My notions were boring and dull since this man was a depiction of dark perfection. All glowering brutality and surly viciousness.
That was the part that I hadn’t expected, but I guess I should have been prepared after what he had been through.
Cash seemed to war as he remained facing away before he finally inched around.
There was no stopping my eyes from traveling down his front, as beautiful as the back. Maybe more so because those hazel eyes I would never forget stared back at me through the dim light of the room.
“I told you I was going to take care of you, Daisy. Whatever it takes. I’m going to find that motherfucker and put an end to him. You don’t have to be afraid.”
My gaze flashed down him again. Over the scars that I could barely make out in the dusky light. Some that I was sure he had sustained that night, but there were innumerable others that had to have been inflicted later.
He looked like a warrior who had fought a thousand battles.
Heartbreaker.
I definitely felt mine splintering apart right then.
“You say it like you’re going to…kill him or something.” I let go of a tittering laugh, trying to make light of it. Brush it off. Because there was no way he actually meant what he seemed to imply.
He only darkened further, a crash of that ferocity filling the space between us.
In discomfort, I fiddled with the hem of my sweatshirt and shifted my bare feet.
“That’s exactly what I mean.” His words were shards. Broken fragments that toppled out onto the floor.
A ball of razors suddenly formed in my throat.
Shock and confusion filling up my thoughts while my spirit settled on the truth.
He wasn’t the same person I knew.
“Should…?” I looked away before I forced myself to meet his gaze. “Should I be afraid of you?”
He’d warned me he was a bad man, but I’d refused to believe it.
Haunted, yes.
But I was having a hard time wrapping my head around what he was insinuating. Around what he’d become.
Questions swirled through my mind every time he left the house on his motorcycle or locked himself behind the door at the end of the hall.
A door he never allowed any of us to peek behind.
“I would never harm you.” A strike of severity flashed through the air. “But I would kill for you.”
His words impaled me like blades.
Or maybe he was the one who was being carved out by them. Cut wide open and revealing the secrets that hovered around his being.
The man just…laying it out.
Plain.
An offering.
“Have you…done it before?” I couldn’t believe this was the first real conversation we were having after what I asked him the first night we came here.
For the last two weeks, I’d been tiptoeing.
Trying to feel him out.
Attempting to understand a man I once knew better than anyone else.
Waiting for the right moment to broach the subject of my children again.
But the more I waited, the more I came to realize he was different. I’d been so reluctant to come here. To ask this of him. Not wanting to put him at risk but not knowing where else I could go.
But now I was recognizing he might be the most dangerous one of all.
Grimness covered his expression, and the veins in his muscled arms and chest seemed to crawl beneath his flesh.
“You really want to know?” It left him a challenge.
My heart stuttered in my chest.
When I first came here, I told him that I’d gone to the police with information on my ex. The things I uncovered on Ethan were just…unimaginable. His world fueled by greed and selfishness. Willing to steal life and peace in order for him to have more than he already did.
Was Cash involved in the same sort of thing?
My spirit flailed, unable to accept it.
Those hazel eyes speared me.
Waiting.
Was he asking me for his trust in this?
Frantic, I searched around inside myself for an answer. It wasn’t hard to find. I truly believed that he wouldn’t hurt someone out of greed or cruelty. If he’d done something, he had a reason.
He had to have.
I lifted my trembling chin. “Yes.”
“Many times over, but I’ve never once touched an innocent.” His words were blunt.
His admission blew me back three feet, and I fumbled on a gasp, nearly tripping and falling to the floor. My hands shot out, and I gripped onto the back of a dining room chair.
Many times over.
What was he saying?
It took me a moment to gather myself before I lifted my head.
Both terrified…but…unafraid.
I blinked at him through the bleary darkness. “Who are you? I really don’t know you anymore, do I?”
Rage and grief clouded his eyes. Torment so distinct in the pools that sucked me down into his nothingness. “The man you knew died that night with the rest of them.”
Emotion burned in my throat, and my stomach flopped and flipped as I tried to find solid ground.
Would we be better off if I ran? If I packed our things and fought this out on my own? Would he chase me down the same way Ethan was doing? Harm me because of what I knew?
My eyes squeezed closed, and I knew the answer to every single one of those questions was no. “I feel that man, though. I always have. And I feel him now.”
“You’re only wishing he was real.” When he did actually talk, his voice was always hard and low. But this? This was a grinding of stone.
My head barely shook as I opened my gaze to him. Taking in the monster that lurked in the night. So cruelly beautiful that my heart ached just looking at him. “He’s still there. I know he is. He’s just hardened with the loss.”
Cash scoffed. “If you knew the things I’ve done, you wouldn’t be here, Daisy. And you sure as hell wouldn’t be asking me to take care of your kids.”
“How?” It whispered off my lips on a plea. “What are you involved in?”
Something I couldn’t read flashed through his expression. “I can’t let you go there, Daisy. What I already let you in on is so far outside of what I should be giving you. You should go.”
Pain slashed between my eyes, and I moved around the end of the island, steps both bold and feeble as I edged toward him.
I sucked down every reservation and asked him the only thing that mattered.
It might be my only chance.
“Would you hurt them?”
Cash reared back like I struck him. “Never. I would die for them, too.”
“Then that’s all I need to know.” Tears blurred, and I swallowed around the turmoil that had chased me for months. “I know you hate what I’m asking of you, Cash, but you are the only person I trust. The second I was in trouble, you were the one my heart immediately told me to find.”
“And maybe the reason for that is because of who I became. Because somewhere inside you, you knew that I am the one who will wipe his stain from the earth so you and those kids can live the life you deserve.”
A shiver rocked down my spine. The threat in his voice was a pact.
“And what if he gets to me first?”
“He won’t.” It was a growl.
I took another fumbled step toward him. “Then do this for me. If you’re so sure that it won’t come to that, why do you care about pretending with me for a little while? It won’t make any difference in the long run.”
I realized I was begging. So close to dropping onto my knees.
Surprise blanched his face, before he angled his head. Vitriol spilled out. “That’s right, it won’t make any difference.”
“Then give me this peace,” I pleaded as I took another step toward him.
It brought us so close that I could smell him.
Leather and pine and the faintest trace of sweat. Something that wasn’t unpleasant in the least. Nothing but pure, unmitigated man.
Energy ricocheted between us. So hot that I could almost see the snaps of electricity blister through the night.
Sorrow pulsed through his expression, and he brushed his fingers over the tattoo on my wrist.
In Silence We Must Endure.
As if he were giving voice to the fact that I’d been so alone. That I’d been left behind by every single person I loved.
“I’m all wrong for what you need,” he said, bleeding regret.
My hand trembled as I lifted it, a fool who reached out and placed it over the thunder of his heart. Over the hard, packed muscle and the bristling, tattooed flesh. “I think you’re exactly what I need. Exactly what they need.”
“Daisy.” Pain leached into my name.
A burn lit me through when he covered my hand with his and pulled it closer to his heart.
My pulse raced and rushed, and my stomach twisted in a way it shouldn’t.
God, I’d missed him. Missed him so badly that sometimes I thought I wouldn’t survive. That old love wasn’t what this was about, but it was hard to ignore the relief at being with him like this.
Even though what we’d shared was mangled and torn.
“I’m not the same person, either, Cash. Every single person I’ve loved has left me. I’ve lost so much, but what hurt the most was when I lost you.”