Chapter 39 Daisy
THIRTY-NINE
DAISY
The headlights of Cash’s SUV cut through the darkness as we slowly traveled down the narrow lane that led to his cabin. The bare drive carved out by tires that cut a rugged path to the seclusion of his home.
Tension reigned.
The silence so thick and heavy that I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think anything other than, Thank God, thank God, thank God.
I’d been terrified for my children’s safety, horror hurling through me as I threw myself into the backseat to cover them if anyone tried to get inside.
A gut-wrenching panic boomeranging through my being as I listened to the brawl of gunshots and shouts.
Shards of dismay impaling me during the time I was unsure of Cash’s well-being. If he was whole and alive or if he had succumbed.
Knowing if he had, the perpetrators would have then come for us.
But it went deeper than that. The brittle planes inside me moaning at the thought of losing him all over again.
God.
I was a fool.
Setting myself up to get slaughtered like this. My heart already a mangled mess from when he left me behind.
But now…
The connection felt entirely different.
Turbid and muddied.
Thick and coagulated.
As if every breath I attempted had to be forced through the concentration, but the density was only amplified with each crude exhale.
Cash traveled at a harrowing crawl through the impenetrable woods, the SUV rocking back and forth as if it was set off balance by his tumultuous breaths.
Or maybe it was my children’s hearts that still thundered from the backseat that made the atmosphere feel rutted, though their own silence had taken them over.
Their fears still lingering. I’d made the choice to lie to them, which I hated to do, but I didn’t want to alarm them even more when we didn’t know what had happened.
When we didn’t know for sure who was out there.
So we told them that Cash had run over a landslide of rocks in the road, and it almost made us crash, and the men were helping him throw them off the side.
As if that were a sufficient explanation for the terrible sounds that were coming from outside the car.
But it’d given them a sliver of peace. The outright fear that had gripped them so harrowing I couldn’t fathom leaving them in the clutches of it.
Not until I was sure what we were facing.
The forest broke open to the clearing that surrounded Cash’s home. A bare light glowed from the porch, as well as a few from within. The cozy warmth was at odds with the chill that had taken me over.
Cash put the SUV into park, but he waited, his eyes scanning before he looked at his phone.
“They’re almost here.” The words were stones.
A moment later, the distinct rumble of motorcycles came up the lane.
Three of them.
Their single headlights filed into the clearing one by one, coming to a stop behind the SUV, each separated by about five feet to create a barrier at its back.
A hedge of protection.
My spirit trembled and squeezed.
Cash shared a few texts back and forth, and he looked around again, before he glanced at me. “It’s safe.”
It’s safe.
It’s safe.
I wanted to crumble into the promise. Let him hold me within the net of it. In those arms and those eyes and that beautiful, hardened heart.
Gulping, I unbuckled myself, clicked open my door, and slipped out. My legs almost gave, the adrenaline that had pumped through me now draining into weakness.
I paused at the back door of the SUV, gaping back at the intimidating men swinging off their bikes.
Cloaked in menace and mayhem. Violence radiating from their flesh.
River.
Otto.
Another man I didn’t recognize, one who wore a black leather cut like the others who often watched over us while Cash was away.
As if they were a part of some vicious motorcycle gang.
I could barely swallow around the knot in my throat.
Forcing myself to look away, I opened the back passenger door.
Eva peered up at me, and from the middle seat, Addy’s eyes were wide and uncertain.
I was sure of all the children, she was the one who would recognize the fabrication that had come from my mouth. Sure that she could feel the alarm and affliction that oozed from both Cash and me.
The man a ferocious beast who had lumbered back to the SUV. Wounded and still looking like he was about to go on a murder spree.
He would have.
He would have.
I knew it.
Memories of what he told me spiraled through my disordered mind.
“I would never harm you.” He growled it, and a strike of severity flashed through the air. “But I would kill for you.”
He was no stranger to duplicity. I knew it all the way into my soul that he was as dangerous as he looked. As dangerous as the veiled warnings he’d given.
Unquestionably, all these men were.
And somehow, standing there surrounded by them, I hadn’t felt more secure in my life.
For the first time, knowing without question that someone would stand for us, no matter what it cost.
“It’s okay, sweetheart,” I promised Addy, reaching out and brushing away the tear that trailed down her cheek.
“Is Mr. Cash hurt?” she whispered after he got out and moved to the back.
“No. He’s fine.”
Quiet, concealed words reverberated from the men. Anger and fury dripped from them like sieves.
A torrent that rushed and nearly knocked me from my feet.
“Are you sure, Mommy?” It was a plea.
My chest tightened. She only called me mommy when she felt insecure.
I brushed trembling fingers through her hair. “Yeah, I’m sure.”
At least for now.
“Mr. Cash is like a race car driver,” Colin rushed from the far side of the backseat. His fear squashed the moment Cash had climbed back into the SUV.
“He went like this and like this and then we went like this!” He jerked his hands one direction then another like he had hold of the steering wheel before he flattened his hand and twisted his wrist to show off the spin the SUV had taken.
Awe in my son’s little face.
I felt it, too.
Awe.
But mine was horrified and confused.
“Did you see it, Mommy?” he asked, the tears on his face dried, a toothy smile in their place.
“I saw it.”
“It was really cool, right?”
A shiver rolled down my spine. “He did a really good job taking care of us.”
“That’s because he’s our Big Giant and he can do everything like lift a boulder on his shoulders,” Colin claimed.
The weight of the world.
That’s what this felt like.
The door jerked open on Colin’s side, and Cash popped his head in.
His brutally beautiful face contorted, the gash he sustained last night busted wide open again.
Blood dribbled down his face, though it was smeared from where he’d lifted his shirt to wipe it.
Yellow flames burned in his hazel eyes. His jaw set and his posture hard, though his movements were tender as he unbuckled Colin’s straps. His gaze flicked to me every few seconds to gauge how I was feeling.
I didn’t know how to process exactly what that was.
“Everyone okay?” he asked, his voice gravel.
“Yep!” Colin peeped.
He barely ducked his chin. “Out you go,” he told Colin.
The air heaved out of me, trying to process, to grasp what was happening. Cash led Colin around to our side, then he nudged me out of the way so he could get to Eva.
She remained quiet as he pulled her into the sanctuary of his massive arms, and she curled herself against him. I could almost feel her relief. The comfort the vicious man exuded.
Addy crawled out behind them, and I took both her and Colin’s hands.
With his free hand, Colin waved at Otto and River. “Hi, Uncle River and Uncle Otto! Did you come to visit us?”
Tension gripped them, though Otto forced a big grin. “Yep. We just wanted to stop by to say good night. You’d better get inside and get some rest.”
“Okay,” Colin peeped. I cut both men a glance before I turned and ushered my children up the porch steps. With Eva tucked in his arms, Cash slowly climbed them behind us.
Duke barked wildly from the other side of the door, and Cash pulled out his phone and punched in the code before he stepped around me to undo the locks.
He pushed open the door and Duke came blazing out. Wagging his tail and licking Colin’s face.
Colin giggled and fisted the fur on the sides of his head. Softly and with so much joy and ease that my knees wobbled.
“Come on, it’s late,” Cash grumbled. Addy and Colin complied, heading through the main room and down the hall with Duke on their heels.
Cash worked back through all the locks then reengaged the alarm.
A shiver rolled through me when he keyed into a different screen and metal began to roll over the windows.
He turned back to me. “Told you that no one was going to get to you here.”
“I trust you,” I whispered.
Grimness filled his features, and he came my way. He brushed his lips across my cheek, his murmur darkened to coal. “You shouldn’t.”
He pushed away and continued into the children’s room.
An earthquake trembled beneath his feet.
It sent a tremor rolling through me, and I stood facing away for a moment, trying to gather my bearings, before I turned and inched down the hall. I stalled out in the doorway, watching as he tucked them into their beds.
Swells of protectiveness rushed from him as his intent gaze searched to make sure they were whole and unharmed before he pulled their covers to their chins.
Intensity billowed and bashed.
Every movement he made was inscribed with the ferocity he wore since the moment he noticed the headlights trailing us in the distance.
He finally straightened, every inch of him bristling and bunched.
“Good night, Mommy,” Colin called.
It broke me from the trance, and I tiptoed in, winding around Cash so I could get to Colin’s bed. I leaned over and brushed a kiss to his temple before I whispered, “Good night, my sweet boy.”
I moved to do the same to Addy and Eva.
My heart pressing full and running wild.
Questions came at me from every direction.
Cash hovered near the doorway.
A tower of darkness.
A cover of steel.
Forcing myself upright, I slowly turned and shuffled across the room.
That tension ballooned.
Energy crackling.
Lashes that struck like lightning through the dense, suffocating air.
Cash only watched me as I tiptoed out, his presence a squall that swarmed as I stepped out into the hall.
He pulled the children’s door closed, leaving it open an inch.
His big body vibrated as he lingered there, his head downturned and his hand tremoring on the knob.
Finally, he shifted in my direction, and he slowly edged my way.
A shockwave of severity slammed me.
My breaths turned shallow.
Ragged pants that curled between us like a call.
His palm slipped to my cheek.
So at odds with the brutality that emanated from him.
“You should leave, Daisy. You should pack up your children and get as far away from me as you can.”
Hurt stabbed into my heart, and I could barely speak. “Is that what you want? You want me to leave?”
A hot stream of incredulity puffed out of him. Anger ridging every bulging muscle of his body. His words were gruff and hard. “You think I want you to leave? You think I want you to be anywhere else than right here with me? At my side?”
My stomach tumbled, and my mouth grew dry. “I…”
“My life has been nothing, Daisy. Fucking empty until you and those kids came into it. But I don’t deserve to have you here. Shouldn’t have you here. Not with who I am, and tonight was proof of that.”
“You walked right into a gunfight to protect us.”
Misery twisted into his expression. “That gunfight was because of me. I could have gotten you all killed.”
The last word hitched. Like it was almost impossible for him to expel it.
I knew in it was the old grief that had come back to haunt him.
I touched his face. “You protected us.”
Those hazel eyes jumped all over my face, no question unable to accept what I was telling him.
That I trusted him.
That I didn’t want to be anywhere else, either.
“Do you want me to walk out the door right now, Cash? Do you want me to pack my children’s things and load them in my car and drive away? Where would I go? Do you think we’d be safer out on our own?”
A growl rolled up his throat, and his other hand curled around my elbow and rode up my forearm to my wrist as I continued to let my fingertips trace the stubble on his cheek. This mercilessly callous man who had come to mean everything.
But he always had, hadn’t he? He was the capstone of that secret place I’d kept shored away for him. Hidden in a locked box that was bent and broken inside me.
His hand cinched down around my wrist.
“No. Because I’m a selfish prick who wants to keep you. You should know better than to let me.”
“You don’t think I’ve always been yours? Through time and space and distance, you think this ever stopped beating for you?” I grabbed his hand and forced it over the thunder that ravaged my chest.
“You should hate me,” he ground out.
“Hate you? I l—”
He had my back pressed to the wall across the hall so fast that I hadn’t processed the movement.
His big hand splayed across my chest and pinning me to the unforgiving surface.
I almost had it out that time before he gritted, “Don’t say it.”
Desire spiraled and coiled with the lingering fear.
With the confusion and the doubt.
Visions of what I’d made out through the haze of fog and smoke and gunfire clogging my mind.
The way the gentle boy I once knew had become a beast.
A battle-torn warrior with his tee ripped and blood smeared across the side of his face.
I should be terrified.
Packing my bags exactly the way he suggested I do.
But I was hooked.
Impaled.
Staked to the spot as he glowered down at me as if I were the source of every pain he’d suffered.
As if I were the picture of his regret and the culmination of his sorrow.
“Don’t fuckin’ say it,” he repeated, his voice going haggard.
I tilted my face up at him. “That doesn’t mean I don’t feel it.”
His eyes sparked—flared with greed—and his hand trembled where he had it pressed against my chest.
Every harsh muscle in his body flexed and bowed.
Our breaths hemorrhaged from our lungs and our hearts pounded in the murky darkness of the hall.
Energy lashed, and the restraint he struggled to maintain wound him into a quivering ball of lust.
My knees trembled as I stared up at him.
The last man I should want.
The broker of my destruction.
His wide, wide shoulders juddered up and down as the oxygen raked from his lungs.
Maybe a wise person would end this.
But I didn’t want to.
I couldn’t imagine being anywhere else than right there with him.
So I lifted my chin and begged him, “I need you to touch me. I need you to take the fear away.”