40. Daisy
Chapter 40
Daisy
"Good news," Penn says, when I answer my front door. His faded blue jeans fit him snugly, and his gray T-shirt, printed with NAVY across the front, has a worn-out neck. A handful of paint droplets dot the hem, and there's something about this I love.
"What's that?" I ask, stepping back to allow him inside.
He reaches into his pocket, pulling something out with a flourish. "I got these cool new glasses." He slides them on. The lenses are dark brown, the frames a cheap looking plastic tan. "They are magic."
"How so?"
"When I have them on, I can't see you, but I can still see everything else. This means I can tile your bathroom, and be impervious to your feminine wiles."
I laugh so hard, I'm dangerously close to snorting. Reaching over, I pluck them from his face and break them in half. They snap in a way only the cheapest of sunglasses can.
His mouth drops open and I hold them up for his inspection. Then I tuck each half into the pockets of my lemon yellow maxi skirt.
"Wicked," Penn comments.
To which I say, "I really hope that's not your A game."
"Invisible force fields were my backup plan," he responds, and it makes me laugh.
"You are so bad at this."
He runs a hand through his perpetually unruly hair. "I've never had to fend off a woman I'm desperate for."
Pleasure ripples through me at the word desperate . "I've never had to work this hard to make a man want me."
"Daisy," Penn says through clenched teeth. "You donned a wearable blanket the other night, and all I wanted to do was duck my head under it. Please believe me when I say your very existence makes me want you."
That stops me short. Sends desire racing through me, but not the physical kind. Desire for an emotional connection. Something I won't have with Duke. We'll have friendship, sure, something good and solid and time-tested, but we won't lie in bed at night and recount our day. The realization is distressing.
And then I look at Penn, and the secondary realization I have is far more of a bombshell.
I would have that with Penn. With someone I loved.
Dammit. What am I thinking?
I'm marrying Duke in less than two weeks. My mother's dress has already been altered to fit me. The cake is chosen, the venue is booked, Vivi has picked her dress. I can't go back now. And my mother…
Pushing those crazy thoughts aside, I tap Penn's chest, right above the NAVY lettering. "Sailor, you don't have to talk your way into my thong. I'm a sure thing."
But Penn knows, doesn't he? He sees deep down into me, and he knows I'm deflecting, using sex to keep us from tumbling down the rabbit hole, to keep me from throwing away everything Duke and I have worked for, the deal we designed to satisfy familial responsibilities.
Penn lets me slide, yielding to my cover-up, knowing I cannot yet face what I'm really doing with my life. That maybe, I never will.
"Let's get that bathroom re-tiled." Penn inclines his head toward my room. "Did you get everything from that list I sent you?"
"It's all back there." I thumb behind myself.
We work, and we work. From what I've read, tiling a wall doesn't take a great deal of knowledge or special talent, but it does require precision and patience. I am low on both, but luckily, Penn has it in spades.
Following instructions from a video, we use a trowel to apply a coat of thin set. Penn pushes a tile into place, and I hand over spacers. He applies them to the four corners of the tile, and we keep on like that, placing tile and spacers until we're done.
Penn works hard, barely stopping for the water I bring him. His eyes flash to the front of my shirt as I hand him the cup, but I put my hands up and promise no more wet T-shirts until he tells me he wants one. "The ball is in your court, Sailor."
He frowns at this, but gets back to work applying the grout. Taunting and teasing Penn is fun, but I want him to be a part of it, too. I understand where he's coming from about not wanting to touch me while I'm engaged, and I respect that, so if he wants me to make it hard for him to say no, he's going to have to tell me.
Penn and I finish up the grout, and he applies a waterproof protecting agent to the tile while I start cleanup.
"Whoa," I say, waving a hand in front of my nose. "The smell of that stuff is not pleasant. And it's really strong."
Penn's making a face too, increasing his pace so he can finish faster. "Wait for me in the living room, Daisy. You don't need to be in here smelling this." He looks down at the debris I'm sweeping. "None of that is going anywhere."
He's right. I hustle from the room, and Penn follows five minutes later.
"I turned on the ceiling fan in your bedroom," he says, heading for the fridge. He grabs the pitcher of filtered water and refills his cup. "I was starting to get a headache from that stuff. Do you have anywhere you can go for a few hours? I don't think it's toxic, but it probably won't be fun to sit around and smell it."
"Duke is working, and so is Vivi. I have quarterly taxes to work on, so I can go into the office for a little while."
Penn's lips twist like he's considering something. "Or, you could go for a drive with me."
"A drive? Like we're eighty and it's a Sunday afternoon?"
He laughs. "More like we're almost thirty and I have to be back in two hours for a play rehearsal I am still vehemently opposed to."
I grab my purse. "When you can't change your circumstances, change how you feel about your circumstances."
"Is that one of those bland inspirational quotes you have up in your office?"
I gasp and punch him in the arm. "How dare you?"
He keeps going. "When life hands you lemons?—"
"Add vodka," I interject, pushing him out the front door.
"That is definitely not what the sign in your conference room says."
"This is beautiful," I say, looking around in wonder.
The scenic vista provides an unadulterated view of the Sonoran Desert, nearly all the way south to Tucson. Mountain after mountain juts up in the distance, majestic peaks and orange and red hued valley walls. To the west is the olive mill, to the east, nothing but desert, on and on until New Mexico.
"I would've brought you here," Penn says, smiling from where he sits beside me on the hood of his truck. The air temperature is a perfect seventy-two degrees, the breeze just enough to lift my hair from my shoulders every so often. "If I lived in Olive Township when I was sixteen," he amends. "And if I had a vehicle. I would've asked you on a date, and I would've brought you here."
"I would've said yes," I tell him. "I would've spent hours picking out my outfit, and making Vivi curl my hair."
"In another life," he murmurs, and I know what he's thinking.
If I weren't marrying Duke. If my mom weren't dying. If I didn't feel like it was my responsibility to make sure she sees her daughter get married.
"How did you find out about this place?" I ask, looking out. It's stunning, the way the bright mid afternoon sun pierces the mountains. Sunset is probably even more beautiful.
"My mom used to bring me out here. Before she got bad."
I remember a time when Penn's mom was simply Ms. Bellamy with the kind eyes and infectious laugh. Penn loved watching baseball games, but she didn't have the money to take him to Phoenix to catch a game. When it came time to watch the World Series, she drew us both tickets to the game, plus a handful of fake money, and sent us to stand in their front yard. She opened the front door like a seating attendant, hollering "Peanuts, popcorn, CrackerJacks!" We filed in, handing her our tickets, and 'paying' for a soda and snacks.
I never forgot that day. Never forgot the love she showed Penn, how she made a way for him to get the feel of a ballpark when there wasn't money to attend a game.
If she'd always been a bad mom, it would've been easier to write off her behavior when she fell so deeply in a dark depression. Penn's dad had returned for a year, and when he left again, Ms. Bellamy was never the same. She stopped smiling. Stopped shopping for groceries. Penn went to the grocery store, but with Ms. Bellamy rarely getting off the couch to go to her house cleaning jobs, the money eventually ran out. Penn never told me, but I knew he was trying to make it to her biggest job, the house where she earned the most money.
The Hampton home.
It's another piece to a puzzle that still won't fit together. Penn admitted he hates Duke. Duke showed animosity toward Penn, and I still don't know why. Something lies in their history, something Penn doesn't want to talk about. I'm torn between demanding answers, and letting sleeping dogs lie. If I'm being honest with myself, I'm scared of the answer. Scared that whatever it is may have the power to alter the present. And even, the near future.
"She was a really good mom, Penn." I reach over, give his shoulder a squeeze.
"She was," he agrees. "And she got better, too. After we moved. She found a place where she could heal. She got on the right dose of meds. Learned ways of coping. And it helped that my dad didn't know where we'd went. I think it would've always been impossible for her to get away from him. He was toxic, you know? She was incapable of escaping his web."
"So you leaving was good for you? For her?" My voice wobbles. I'd always wished for Penn to be happy, wherever he was, but I hadn't thought about what it would take for him to reach that point. The healing that would be required of both him, and his mother.
"Yeah, it was. She needed a fresh start, and an awakening. She called it a 'Come to Jesus.'" He rubs a hand over his face. "Our relationship was never quite the same after the bad years, but we tried. Some things are just"—he shrugs—"not fixable. It's hard to come back from what her illness put me through."
"Do you think you've grieved her?"
He sighs. "Probably not. Have you already begun grieving your mom?"
I look at my hands, folded in my lap. My nails are painted carnation pink. My mother's favorite color. "I think that's why I'm doing something so crazy. Marrying Duke, when I'm not in love with him. I keep telling myself it's about making her dream come true, and in some sense it is, but it's also about making sure I was the best daughter I could be for her. She wanted a big family, and they were only able to have me. In a way, I guess it's really about control. This is my attempt to control how sad I'm going to feel." My voice cracks. Did I know I felt this way? I didn't. These thoughts, these emotions, they've been buried so deep. "If I go out of my way to make her happy, if I marry somebody I don't love just so she can see me walk down the aisle in her dress, then I'll know I did my best to make her happy. I won't have to feel guilt, or resentment, or other emotions I'm really fucking scared of feeling." A plump tear rolls down my cheek.
Penn leans over, reaches for me. He pulls me in close, until we're almost nose to nose. I look into those blue eyes flecked with gray, fringed in dark blond lashes, and see how torn he is. For all my salacious teasing of him the past few days, I'm not usually forward. And because he said he wouldn't touch me while I wear the ring that is still very much on my finger, I will not be the one who makes a move right now.
"Ball's in your court, Sailor," I remind him on a whisper. The very last thing I want is for him to regret our first kiss as adults. If he's going to kiss me right now, I want him to know what it is he's going back on.
He's quiet. Still. Sucks his lower lip in between his teeth, where he bites down gently. I moan at the sight of it, a sound I did not mean to make.
This is what breaks him.
His hands extend, gripping my hips, turning me to face him. I push up on my knees, gathering the fabric of my skirt to mid-thigh, and swing one leg on the other side of him. I'm straddling him now, and his thumbs dig into the skin around my hip bones.
"So beautiful," he says, his eyes an angry storm roaming my face.
My legs open wider, knees sliding on the hood, until I'm fully seated on his lap. A lusty exhale steals up my throat.
He groans, and I move over him. Grinding.
"Sunshine," he groans, fingers flexing over my hip bones because he still hasn't moved his hands.
"Is that apology I hear in your tone?" I should go still, but I don't. My hips no longer belong to me. My vagina is in charge now, and that bitch is bossy.
"I said"—he groans again, sounding pained—"I wouldn't touch you."
"Congratulations. Your superhuman strength is self-control. But mine is not."
He gazes up at me, eyes feverish. Famished. "The sun is lighting up your face. Your hair. You look so pretty."
"You don't look so bad yourself, Sailor." I give my hips a little shimmy, and he grips my hip bones harder, his fingers ass-adjacent. I wouldn't mind if his hands drifted a little lower and dug into that round flesh.
"You're making this hard, Daisy."
I lean back, bracing myself on his legs, rubbing back and forth. "I can feel exactly how hard I'm making it."
He hisses. An honest to goodness, rush of breath between his teeth.
I'm dying to reach out, run my hands over his ridiculously muscled shoulders. Let my touch fall down, climb back up inside his shirt, fingernails tracing his abs.
My tongue darts out, tip pressing against the center of my upper lip as I wait for him to guide whatever happens next.
His eyes on my mouth, he says, "I said I wouldn't touch you, but maybe you could touch yourself. For me."
My core tightens, from nerves or excitement I can't tell, but I'm feeling them both. "I've never done that in front of anyone."
"You don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with. And?—"
"I want to." The words rush out of me. My pulse, already quickened, races now. My heart thunders in my chest.
I lift myself upright, freeing my hands, sliding back so I'm straddling him lower, almost mid-thigh. My right hand slides up my chest, slipping under the strap on my left shoulder. Smile shy, I push until the fabric lies against my arm. I do it again to the strap on my right shoulder.
"I'd kiss your collarbone," he says, strained. "Bite it. Gently, I promise."
"I'd like that," I respond, getting into it a little more. I'm feeling more and more comfortable with every passing second. I run my fingers over the top swell of my breasts, watching as his breathing turns shallow. "Should I pull down my shirt?"
"Please," he coughs out.
Satisfaction rises up inside me. The power I feel at having this effect over him is akin to being buzzed.
Gripping the fabric in my hands, I slowly pull it down, dragging it out. Lucky for him, this top has a built-in bra. My breasts spill out, the balmy air instantly hardening my nipples.
"When I tell you..." he trails off, looking like he's about to propel himself off the hood of the truck with an animalistic roar.
"Tell me what?" I ask innocently. My fingertips lightly trace over my skin.
"What I would do to those," he answers, teeth clenched. "Lick, suck, fuck."
I close my eyes, and pinch my nipples. "I want you to do all of that," I groan, opening my eyes. The front of his jeans is swollen, like he's dying to get out from the straining fabric. "You can do it, too, you know."
He shakes his head slowly back-and-forth. "My self-control is good, but it's not that good."
"Shame," I say, pouting.
I let go of my nipples, my hands drifting lower. Collecting the fabric of my skirt, I lift it and gather it behind me. Today, I wore my pretty underwear, an emerald green lace.
"Sexy, right?" I ask, running my fingers horizontally across my lower stomach.
"I might die, Sunshine. I'm not even sure how much I'm joking right now."
I chuckle lightly, rubbing my hand over myself. My head lolls back, enjoying not only my own ministrations, but his blatant appreciation.
Dipping lower, I hook a finger on the side of my panties, pretending to tug. Teasing him. "Would you like to see me, Sailor?"
"Fuck," he whispers, breathing harder.
"What do you say we test that self-control?" The fabric slides away smoothly.
"Perfect," Penn grunts, jaw tight, eyes feasting on the most private part of me. "Pretty and pink and perfect."
"For you," I answer, and I don't know where that came from, but it doesn't feel wrong. I feel made for him.
"For me," he echoes possessively. And I love it. I really, really do.
I slip a finger inside myself. He reaches for his zipper. "If I don't, I'm going to finish in my pants like a teenager," he admits.
"Take it out," I instruct.
He does, and it's long and thick, something I desperately want to feel inside me.
He fists himself, and I moan. "You look like a feral fucking caveman, and I love it."
"You look like my dream, legs wide and hand working yourself. Hair blowing in the breeze." He pants, breathing labored. "Lips parted, eyes hooded. You're the most beautiful thing I've ever seen, and I want to get between your thighs and never come up for air."
"Ohhh." The idea of reaching down, scratching my nails over Penn's scalp while he drives me wild, is otherworldly. Pleasure builds low in my belly. "I want you to do that."
"I know," he says, arrogant now, pumping harder. Stormy eyes locked on my center. "Puffy lips. Pouty and wet. I would make you scream."
Penn's hand works in a relentless and punishing rhythm, eyes hot and steady, focused on me. The sight of him spurs me on, taking me there, pushing me to the edge. And I fall.
"Yes," I whisper, knees shaking, head tipping back. My eyes close as fireworks detonate, body trembling as I shatter.
Penn moans, a sound deep and delicious, and something warm and wet hits my breasts.
I look down, then at him. He still has a hold of himself, and my hand is in place as I recover from my high. The faintest blush creeps onto his cheeks.
"No blushing, Sailor. I do believe I volunteered to be your canvas."
I take my hand from between my legs, swipe a finger through the mess on my chest, then place it on my tongue. The taste is absolutely disgusting, but his wide eyes, his slack jaw?
So worth it.
And me? I feel good. Confident. Sexy. And happy. Deliriously happy to have done something, anything , intimate with Penn.
I blow him a kiss.
He laughs softly, almost disbelievingly. "I don't know what to say right now. My brain isn't working yet."
He puts himself back in his jeans, and I situate my skirt before returning back to the seated position I'd been in prior to our shenanigans.
"Don't move," he tells me, glancing at my breasts that are still free, bearing the evidence of his climax.
"Not going anywhere," I quip, gathering my breasts and holding them together to keep Penn's release from getting on my top.
He slides off the hood, opening his passenger door and digging in the glove compartment. He returns with a handful of napkins, printed with the name of a restaurant unfamiliar to me. Bracing his foot on the front tire, he settles in front of me. "May I?" he asks.
I smirk. "Sure, but remember, no touching."
He huffs a laugh. "Right. No touching."
Gently, dare I say lovingly, he wipes his release from my skin. I affix my top, and he tosses the napkins on the other side of the hood, but he doesn't go anywhere. He sits back, gazing at me.
"Daisy, that was?—"
"Hot."
"That too, but I was going to say special. The way you were comfortable enough with me to do that, to let me see you that way, that's not lost on me." He takes my hand, traces the tip of one finger over my fingernail. "I wish things were different."
"Me, too." The regret, the longing, is strident in my tone.
"I wish I'd come back earlier."
"Me, too."
We stare at each other, a chasm between us. We know we care for each other, but at the end of the day, that can only take us so far.
Hard truths:
I'm marrying Duke.
Penn isn't here to stay.
I don't know why he left, and he still refuses to tell me.
Penn climbs down, turning back and offering his hand to help me. I take it, and when I get settled on my feet, he reaches out. Tucks a lock of hair behind my ear, one finger straying to trace the shell. "Are you ready to go?" he asks.
"No."
"Me neither."
He opens the passenger door for me, watching me climb inside. Instead of closing the door right away, he leans against the frame, regarding me with a warmth in his eyes.
"Hi," I say softly.
"Hey," he responds, his voice a low rumble.
"What we just did," I pause, trying to gather my thoughts, but it's nearly impossible.
"Just say it, Sunshine," he urges. "Say whatever it is you're thinking."
"I loved doing that with you."
"So did I."
"Then why do I feel"—I search for the best fitting word to describe the odd emotion tumbling through me—"bereft?"
"Because you're realizing we are not one and done. This won't be enough for us." His hand reaches out, fixing the twisted strap of my top. "And, maybe, you're starting to see what you got yourself into." Regret blooms in his eyes. "What I set into motion a long time ago."
"You couldn't have known. Besides, the choice was mine."
He nods. "I'm feeling all that too, you know. I'm starting to realize how messy this is."
He closes the door, and I watch him walk around the front of the truck.
We're quiet on the drive back, and at some point, Penn reaches for my hand. His fingers weave through mine, and they don't leave.
The emotions inside me swirl, cresting high like a rogue wave.
I want the physical connection.
I want the emotional connection.
I sneak a peek at Penn's profile as he drives.
This is dangerous.
We are dangerous.
He's making me rethink everything. The consequence, the fallout, I'm considering it all.
More than anything, I'm rethinking my stance on true love.
Does it exist, after all?
Penn drops me at my house, squeezing my hand in a silent farewell before heading out to the play rehearsal.
I go inside, and call Vivi. It's time to be honest with my best friend.