Chapter 23
TWENTY-THREE
DAISY
I’m slipping my laptop off the kitchen counter and into my bag when the sound of the front door closing has me tensing. I glance at the clock on the oven—I didn’t think he would be home so soon.
After spending most of the day staring at my cursor and trying to will words into existence instead of thinking about my utter humiliation this morning, I had every intension of being long gone by the time he came home.
I’m slipping my bag onto my shoulder when he rounds the corner to the kitchen. He startles when he finds me there. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“I didn’t think you would be home.”
“I’m on my way out.” I shrug. “How was practice?”
He winces at the question.
“Coach let us go early,” he says, dropping his keys on the counter. He’s staring at me like he’s afraid I might disappear any minute. It’s not a far-off bet. “We should talk.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I really don’t need a replay of this morning.
“I need to apologize,” he says, but I’m already moving around him, heading for the hallway.
“You don’t need to do anything,” I say, bending to slip my boots on.
He follows behind me and when I glance up at him, he’s frowning, looking confused. “Yes, I do. Yesterday—”
“We were drunk. We had fun. That’s it,” I say before he can continue.
“Yes, but this morning—”
“Can we not talk about it?” I sigh, turning toward him while I grab my keys off the hook next to the front door.
“Why?”
“Because there’s nothing to talk about.”
“I disagree,” he argues, taking a step toward me. I take one back, closer to the door.
“I have to go.”
“You can’t just run from me, Daisy.”
“But you can?” I snap before I can stop myself, then instantly soften when his expression turns stricken. “It’s fine, Connor. Let’s just pretend it never happened and move on.”
“I don’t want to pretend,” he says as I step out into the hallway.
“Well, you’re going to have to,” I tell him, before I bolt down the hallway, leaving him to stare at me through the open door.
Tarah is looking at me from across her desk with narrowed eyes. I squirm under her stare, the leather seat catching against my blue jeans. My latest draft lies on the table between us, red pen edits darted all around the first page.
“What do you want to write?” she asks, catching me off guard.
“I don’t understand.”
“You told me you were writing a romance.”
“I am.”
“I don’t buy it,” she says, making my heart fall straight out of my chest and into my stomach.
“You don’t like it.”
“I never said that. It’s rough, but all good writing starts that way.”
“Then I don’t understand.”
“I’m not feeling the spark between the characters. I don’t buy that they belong together.”
“She loves him.”
She tilts her head, looking at me like she’s seeing something I don’t. “Does she?”
“Mm,” she hums. I want to ask her what that means. Want to pour over all of her annotations until I see what she sees.
“You don’t think so.”
“I think there’s no chemistry here. No reason for her to want him.”
“He’s her best friend. They’ve known each other forever.” I defend, feeling her observation cut a little too deep, considering we’re discussing words on a page.
“That all sounds platonic to me. I’m missing the heat, the chemistry, the type of desire that’s a wrecking ball force to your life.” She picks up the pages and tosses them across to me. “This feels like you’re holding back. You want to write a romance? Make me believe it.”
I blink at her trying to process what she’s saying.
By the time her office door closes behind me, I’m realizing that I’ve only felt the kind of heat Tarah described once. And considering how that ended there’s no way I’m going back there again.