Chapter 3
Daisy
My fiancé was leaving me at the altar.
The thud of my heart pounded against my chest. It wanted to escape. I wanted to escape.
I was a cliché. A pregnant cliché.
My mind whirred. No. No. No.
More than my mind whirred.
“Whoa, Daze.” Firm hands gripped my arms, his steadiness making me aware that I’d started to sway.
“Breathe,” Max ordered, and my lungs inflated.
“That’s it. Now, let it out.” Oxygen sped through my lips, following the coarse rumble of his voice.
He sounded different. Thicker and more commanding than normal as he continued to instruct me, “Deep breath in.” The whirring started to settle. “And out.”
Why didn’t he sound normal? Why did it make me feel good?
I shuddered and forced my tear-clogged vision to focus. First on his chest. His dark gray suit jacket. Then the buttons on his shirt. He’d forgotten the top one, I vaguely noticed as my gaze moved higher, finally settling on Max’s handsome face.
“Did you know?” I demanded again in a harsh whisper.
How could he not know? He always knew.
“I know a lot about the things I care about.”
I’d never forgotten those first minutes when I’d known Max Hamilton before I’d learned who he was to Todd. I’d never forgotten the things he’d said or the way he’d looked at me, no matter how hard I tried.
“Sit. Please.” Max’s firm hands didn’t give me much of a choice, guiding me onto the edge of the bed before letting me go.
My head swayed, the whirring starting up again. Max cared about both of us. Todd and me. He’d just left Todd—spoke to him not even thirty minutes ago. How could he not know? Not sense something was wrong?
“I have to call him,” I blurted out, frantically feeling over the bed for my phone. “I have to talk to Todd. I can’t—he can’t—”
“It’s already ringing.” Max held up his phone, Todd’s name lit on the screen.
“Let me—” I reached for it.
“Daze—” Max pursed his lips, a growl-like sound caged inside his chest as I wrenched his phone from him.
No wonder he was trying to hang on to it. I shook so badly, it took two hands to hold it with only marginal success to my ear.
As it rang and rang, Max’s stare bored into mine.
Burrowed straight down to where I was sure he could see how all the caution tape wrapped around my heart was starting to fray and tear with every unanswered second.
I tried to look away, but the room was too small or he was too big—there was no not looking at him.
Tall and broad. Strong but not overly muscular. Thick hair that looked like warmed whiskey and green eyes like grass after a fresh rain. Even frustrated, Max Hamilton was gorgeous.
The thought wasn’t unfamiliar to me. Max had been frustrated a lot over the last five months, and always with Todd.
In four years, I’d never seen Max angry.
I’d never heard him raise his voice or lose his cool.
While Todd was easily irritable, especially if he’d had a drink…
or a few…Max was always his steadying hand.
And now, he was having to be mine.
“Daze,” Max pleaded with me for his phone, but I couldn’t. It felt like a lifeline—a life raft I held to my face. If I could just talk to Todd, it would be okay. He would be okay. We would be okay.
The line rang and rang, each chime sounding less like a pleasant tone and more like the sequential firing of a machine gun straight to the center of my chest.
How could this be happening? How had I not seen this coming?
“Hi, you’ve reached Todd McCormick. I’m unavailable at the moment…”
The phone slid from my hands, thudding onto the carpeted floor as my arms collapsed around my middle. “I don’t understand.”
I knew Todd was struggling. He had been struggling before the pregnancy. His parents’ expectations of him—and of the woman he was dating—created a giant wedge in our relationship. And then we’d found out about the baby.
It wasn’t planned—she wasn’t planned. But I was determined to give my baby girl the kind of family I never had, and I thought Todd would feel the same. Maybe for her, he’d start caring less about his parents, who only saw their son as one more piece to fit into their ever-growing political puzzle.
My hope never gained any steam.
The baby…the wedding…it made his parents more demanding and drove Todd in the opposite direction, no matter what I did or said. No matter what Max did or said.
Hate was a strong word, but after four years of watching how Todd and Mary McCormick emotionally manipulated their son, I lost my qualms when saying I hated them.
Todd was a good person. He had a good heart.
But he was raised with a silver spoon—a silver spoon that dug him into a hole, into a lifestyle that he didn’t know how to climb out of.
“I’m going to go back over there. God, I was just there. How—” Max caught himself. “I’m going to find him, Daze. I’m going to find out what’s going on.”
I stared out the window, frozen in place like if I didn’t move, the nightmare couldn’t continue. Everything inside me was held hostage. Tortured by the knowledge that I’d just become my worst fear: dependent.
“You see what your asshole father left us with? You never depend on a man, ever. They’re all rotten at the core.
You hear me, Daisy?” My mother was a broken record, a heartbroken record that repeated the same song every day for the span of my childhood.
When she died, I swore I wouldn’t end up like her—bitter because she’d trusted the wrong man and resentful of her own daughter because I reminded her of her mistake.
“Daisy.” Again, that unfamiliar deep tenor bled into his voice, drawing my gaze back to his.
His stare raked over my face, drawing goosebumps to my skin because, for a second, it was the only thing that felt warm.
“I had no idea,” he continued in that low, unbroken tone. “I swear to you, Daisy. I had no idea he was going to do this.”
I saw the pain that ravaged his face, a mirror for the wreckage in my chest. Maybe he hadn’t known, but then why had he been so absent the last five months? Ever since Todd had told him about the baby, about getting married, Max had been distant.
“Hold on,” Max growled. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard that sound from him before. Releasing me, he yanked open the door and called into the hall. “Lou!”
I rose and went to the window, like I could see where Todd had gone, like I could spot him on the horizon and direct someone to go get him. My runaway groom.
The whirring brought a wave of nausea this time.
This couldn’t be happening. We were going to have a baby.
I’d pulled out of school. Moved out of my apartment a week ago.
Moved my stuff into a house Todd’s parents had gifted us.
We were going to work through this. We were going to get married and figure everything out. We were—
“Hey, what’s up?”
I turned to the gentle-eyed innkeeper, who’d graciously allowed us to plan a wedding here that was now falling apart.
“I’m going back to get Todd. Can you stay—”
“Todd’s gone.” There was no hiding it, no point in hiding it.
“What? Where?” Lou pushed up her glasses and looked to Max. “Why?”
“Todd…he sent Daisy a note saying he wasn’t coming,” Max replied gruffly. “I’m sure it’s just cold feet. He wasn’t feeling well this morning. I just…I need to talk to him.”
He wasn’t feeling well? I didn’t know whether I wanted to laugh or scream.
I was the one who was pregnant. I was the one who’d tried to be gentle with Todd since we found out about the baby.
I was the one who’d given him plenty of outs when his drinking seemed to get worse, when he was the one more likely to be found nauseous in the morning than I was.
He was the one who insisted he wanted this—wanted marriage.
Who wanted me to drop out of my program.
To move into one of his parents’ numerous homes.
At every turn, I asked if this was what he wanted or what his parents wanted. Maybe I was to blame for believing his answer. Now, I felt like a fool for not seeing what was right in front of me. The drinking. The distance. Spending so much time with his friends. With Max. With Scott.
“Don’t you ever depend on a man, Daisy. Ever.”
As intensely as devastation had come over me, anger swept through and took its place.
“I’m coming with you.”
Max’s eyes bulged. “Daze—”
“He’s my fiancé. I’m not—” I let out a weak laugh. “I’m not letting you go alone, Max.” My hands went to my stomach. This wasn’t about the wedding. I didn’t care about the wedding. I cared about our daughter. “It’s not just me he’s choosing to walk away from.”
Max’s mouth drew firm, turmoil charring his irises from green to mossy gold. “All right.”
I moved between them into the hallway, my eyes averted. I needed to get outside. I needed fresh air.
“Daze,” Max called after me, but I kept moving, the vise around my throat so tight I felt like I was being held underwater.
I made it to the front walkway, gulping in the warm, sea salt air, when Max finally caught up.
“Daisy.”
I spun, finding Max right in front of me. He was gorgeous when he was frustrated and now sexy when his expression was stern. After four years, I already knew there was no emotion that didn’t look good on this man. This was just the first time I’d let myself admit it.
“You need shoes.”
I looked down, my bare toes peeking out from under my dress…and my stomach. In a few more weeks, I wouldn’t be able to see them at all.
“Oh.” I shook my head, thinking if Cinderella were missing her prince, that glass slipper would be the least of her problems too. “My sandals—”
Max lifted up my pair of purple slides in one hand. “Lou pointed me in the right direction.”
“Thank you.” This time it wasn’t my voice that raised an octave, but my heart as Max went down on one knee in front of me.
For a single moment, time didn’t just stop. It rewound back five and a half months.