Chapter 46
FORTY-SIX
CASH
How the hell was this possible?
Couldn’t wrap my head around it as I stared down at Daisy beneath me.
My cock still buried in the clutch of her pussy, aftershocks rolling through her and zinging up my spine.
Motherfucking bliss.
That’s what she was.
Plain and simple.
Except there wasn’t one thing simple or plain about my Wallflower.
Her beauty was so shocking that looking at her felt like witnessing a miracle.
Her trust so full it was mind-blowing.
“You okay?” I finally managed.
I rolled to my side and took her with me so we were facing each other.
She chewed at the inside of her cheek, and those cornflower eyes flitted all over my face like she couldn’t fully process what had happened between us, either.
“I’m shattered, Cash,” she finally said. “Shattered in the best way. I…”
She blinked, and confusion dented that little wrinkle between her brow. “I never dared hope for this, and after last night…”
There were a million questions wrapped in the statement. Every rejection I’d meted since she came here glaring between us.
I set my palm on her cheek, my thumb stroking slow and sure as I gazed over at this woman who had changed everything. One who had stood before me and made me recognize that maybe I wasn’t just purposed for the brutality.
Maybe I was more than living in the shadows and succumbing to the grief.
Maybe…maybe I could stand for something so much more.
“Guess I didn’t expect it, either.”
“What happened?” she asked.
A sigh pilfered free. “Suppose we need to talk.”
I needed to find a way to tell her.
Would she forgive me? Would she understand?
She let go of a soft, throaty laugh. “That would probably be a good idea.”
“Think we’d better clean you up first.”
Maybe I was only delaying. Terrified that she might finally look at me for who I truly was.
So, I scooped her up and carried her into the bathroom, never putting her down as I reached into the shower and turned it on.
I swayed with her in my arms, trying to keep my shit together and not pin her to the wall because the only thing I wanted to do was live in that body, and I had every intention of doing so as often as I could.
When it warmed, I stepped with us into the spray, tilting her head to wet that cinnamon-kissed fall of hair. Those eyes remained pinned on me like she didn’t want to look anywhere else.
Emotion clotted my throat, and I set her onto her feet so I could lather shampoo into her hair.
I washed it thoroughly.
Doting on my girl.
My wife.
Then I turned and did the same to her body.
She moaned as I ran a loofah all over her slicked, shimmery flesh.
Taking my time to quietly worship her.
To show her no matter what, I was always going to take care of her.
When she was rinsed, I reached out and grabbed a towel, enfolded her in it, then wrapped one around my waist.
Then I took her hand and guided her out into the bathroom.
There was something about the shelter of that small room that had me sitting on the floor with my back leaned against the tub and pulling her down onto my lap.
My arms curled around her while I listened to the steady rhythm of her breaths. Letting it calm me because I was about to delve into hazardous territory.
Our hearts thundered in the dusky light of the bathroom. Both of us clearly trying to catch up to the flip that had been made. Silence echoed through the enclosed room, but in it, the understanding was acute.
Daisy tapped the fingers of her left hand over my chest. My mother’s ring a circle of significance.
“What happened between last night and today?” she finally whispered, those fingertips traipsing tenderly over my chest.
I hugged her a little tighter, and I pressed my mouth to her crown. “You. You happened, Little Wallflower. Because only you have the power to change everything.”
I inhaled a steadying breath. “I spent last night out on that couch, lying there wide awake. Thinking about you on the other side of the door. At war with how much I loved you and feeling like I could never be worthy of you. Caught in the shame of the things I’ve done, all while knowing I was meant to stand for you… ”
I wound a lock of her hair around my finger. Blood charging through my body. Spirit moaning.
I needed to tell her. Admit everything. Lay myself bare.
Fear skittered free and fast. What would she do? What would she think? Would she leave me after I just got her?
The confession pushed up my throat, but I couldn’t find a way to expel it. One day. One day soon.
I forced out, “I figured after the way I treated you last night, you wouldn’t show. You’d come to your senses and decide I wasn’t worth the pain that I inflicted. But then you came through those courtroom doors…”
My chest tightened. “And fuck, Daisy, I knew I was looking at my entire life, and if I was ever going to live it in any way, it was time to claim it, that was if you’d have me.”
Her soft floral scent drifted around me. An embrace. Her hair in my face and her spirit wrapping me whole. “Did you think I’d actually deny you, Cash Cunningham?”
“You should.” There was almost a grin that hitched at the edge of my mouth.
“Never,” she whispered back. “Because you were meant for me, just like I was meant for you.”
Silence drifted around us for a long moment before she finally pushed into the darkness that hovered in the periphery. “You left because you blamed yourself.”
She didn’t even phrase it a question, taking us back to the fight we had last night. What she so clearly heard when I made the admission.
My mind flashed through what happened that day so long ago. Blipped through the memories of who I became on the flip of a dime. The viciousness that I had become.
“If I made a different decision, I could have stopped it. But I chose pride over circumstance.”
I could feel Daisy hesitating before she pressed into the past. “Matthew was really in trouble?”
Grief gripped hold. “Yeah. I thought he was full of shit. Trying to manipulate me. Turned out he was involved in horrible things.”
He wasn’t the only one.
I could feel the furrow of her brow, her hesitation to even utter it. “It wasn’t an accident?”
I knew for all these years that’s what she thought. It’s what everyone in that town would have believed.
Rage flitted through my insides. “No, Daisy. It wasn’t an accident.”
Ancient sorrows wound through her being. “Cash…but the news said…” I could feel it when the sinking realization hit the pit of her stomach. “You didn’t go to the police with what you knew.”
“Wasn’t necessary because I took care of it.”
She took a moment to grapple with that statement.
The fact that I was the one who meted justice. Horror clawed through my conscience. But had I taken it too far?
“And then…you ran.” She didn’t need to state the part where I left her behind doing it.
Pain gripped my soul. “My hands were tainted. I knew what I did. I chose my path.”
“You still had your scholarship.”
“There was no fucking chance I was playing football again. I was no longer that Cash Cunningham. I’d become me.”
“No, Cash.” Her delicate fingers traipsed over the tattoos on my chest as she peeked up at me. “Your heart was broken.”
“I didn’t deserve for it to be broken. Not when I was responsible for it.”
Her head barely shook, and her voice turned the softest it’d ever been. “Matthew is the one who was responsible, Cash.”
“I made the conscious choice.”
“You couldn’t have known. Couldn’t have known what Matthew got himself into. Couldn’t have imagined what would happen.”
“But it did.”
“And you left me.” The words tremored off her tongue.
It hit me like a blunt force trauma.
The fact that I was responsible for that, too.
“Guess I broke both of our hearts.”
“You saved me, Cash. And you almost gave your life trying to save the rest of your family.”
“But I wasn’t enough.”
She tucked herself closer.
“You are enough, Cash. Because you’re good and full of love, even though you somehow think that you’re a bad person. But to me, that person you see doesn’t exist. You said I’m blinded, but I think it’s you who can’t see clearly. You who can’t see clearly when it comes to yourself.”
For the first time, I thought maybe she was right. Thought maybe I could see beyond the mistakes that had been committed.
My stomach twisted as I peered down at her gorgeous face. At those trusting, beautiful eyes. The cut of her jaw and the plush of her lips.
“Something you need to know about me, Daisy. Something you need to know about our family.”
She flinched, though her expression was open wide.
I reached out and set my hand on the sharp angle of her cheek, my thumb stroking slowly. “You can never repeat this or share it with anyone else. I’m trusting you with the ones I love most, just like you’ve trusted me with the ones you love most.”
Her nod was jerky. “You can trust me.”
Dread clamored through my being. The confines where I kept everything trapped creaking under the pressure. This was something I never thought I’d give another soul, but it was true that every part of me belonged to Daisy.
This part included.
“You know about LA. About us joining the MC and some of the things we did there.”
She barely dipped her chin, urging me to continue.
“The guys…told you our hearts were all fucked up. Each of us traumatized in our own way. Scared and alone. The MC was an easy affiliation to make when the only thing we were worried about was our own survival. But I don’t think it ever truly sat right for any of us…”
My mind traveled to those days. Disgust eating me up from the inside to think of myself out there on those streets, making them worse than they were before us. Our reign greedy and sick. Proliferating the crimes we’d been so afraid of falling prey to.
“You’re all so…intimidating…” She rolled her lips together as she contemplated. “Scary, even. And it’s really difficult to imagine you…involved in those things.”
She stammered through it, clearly not wanting to say it aloud. Maybe then, it would finally make it too real.