Chapter 17
Daisy
“Daisy?” His hands on my shoulders were like a palm over a spinning coin, flattening all my whirling thoughts to the man standing in front of me.
My husband.
And now the world would know it.
“Are you okay?”
I nodded first and then said, “Yeah,” as my nod turned into a slow shake of disbelief. “I can’t believe she came here…”
I couldn’t believe a lot of things right now. That Mrs. McCormick physically showed up to threaten me. That Todd had called her to check on the baby, not me. Not Max. Her.
“She’s not coming back, Daze. I won’t let her near—”
“What did you mean ‘our home’?” I interrupted him, my focus playing Whack-A-Mole in my mind.
Max stared at me, his jaw flexing. Hard.
“I don’t think you should stay here anymore,” he said, his voice sinking into that warm grit that coated it back at the hospital when he’d coached me through my blood draw. “I don’t want you staying here alone.”
I knew what he was going to say because I felt the same way.
I didn’t want to. I wanted to feel like it would be fine and that Todd’s mom got the message to leave me alone.
But people with power rarely understood a message they didn’t agree with, and even less so complied with it.
And even though I was pretty confident that I wasn’t in any physical danger, that almost seemed like less of a concern than the other ways the McCormicks could harm me.
Blinking, Max’s stare collected back into focus. “What did you mean ‘our home’?” I repeated because he’d answered the part of the question I hadn’t asked.
Releasing my shoulders, he reached for his collar and popped the top button. I wondered if he even realized he’d done it.
“I mean, I think we should stay at my house for the time being.”
“The one you’re trying to sell.”
“I’ll take it off the market until we don’t need it anymore. It’s not like the offers were rolling in anyway,” he added, trying to play down what he was offering—what he was doing. For me.
“And we’ll stay there…together.” I couldn’t tell if I was asking him or telling him.
It wasn’t bad enough I spent almost every day with the man I was inappropriately attracted to.
It wasn’t bad enough that I’d married him for access to good health insurance for my baby.
It wasn’t bad enough he’d come with me to my doctor’s appointment earlier, and every time they’d referred to him as the father, I didn’t correct them because I wished it were true.
Apparently, no, it wasn’t bad enough because now I was going to live in the same house as him—sleep in the same house as him.
“I don’t want you staying there alone, Daze,” he replied, even though I hadn’t meant it as a question.
“I know.” I wrapped my arms over my stomach and admitted, “I don’t want to stay there alone either. It’s just…” I’m afraid to be alone with you.
Max pressed his finger under my chin, and suddenly, he was closer. In that space where we were near enough to feel our breaths ricochet.
“Just what?”
There was a different kind of danger that came with sharing a house with Max Hamilton, but what choice did I have? What good choice did I really have?
I swallowed hard. “I just can’t believe this is happening. First, you had to marry me. Now you have to move me into your house—”
“Don’t,” he cut me off. “I don’t have to do any of those things, Daze. I want to. Please,” he pleaded, his thumb pressing on my chin and a different kind of anger darkening his gaze. “Stop thinking of me the way Todd made you think of him.”
Air speared from my lips. He was right. And I hadn’t even realized I was doing it—treating him as though everything I needed from him was an inconvenience. As though I were an inconvenience.
“I’m not him, Daze,” he murmured, and I felt like a jerk. Max and Todd couldn’t be more different. Not in who they were, not in how they made me feel.
Max moved closer, his face lowering to mine, and then we were back in that moment—the one where he stood outside the truck in the rain, ready to kiss me.
“I know,” I murmured, my lips parting and my head tipping just a little farther into the path of his.
His eyes scoured my face. Every lash and every line. Every freckle and blush of color. All of it confessing how much I wanted to kiss him right now. And then he was gone.
My shoulders felt the empty chill first when his hands slid free, and then my lungs unspooled the energy crackling inside them. “The house has four bedrooms, Daze. So I’ll just be there…in case. Nothing else needs to change.”
Needs to…but what if I wanted it to?
“With my luck, there’s going to be a bogeyman under three of those beds,” I said with a weak laugh that wilted into nothing when his stare pinned mine, dark with flashes of desire like lightning behind storm clouds.
“You don’t need luck or a bogeyman if you don’t want to sleep alone.”
My heart slammed into my rib cage, and I clutched my hands tight, my ring—Todd’s ring—digging into my palm. Why was I still wearing it?
“Let’s eat, and then we’ll pack your things and head to my house,” Max instructed, locking the shop door behind us and heading for the apartment stairs.
I followed him, spinning the band with my thumb the entire way.
“Do you think he really called her?” I wasn’t upset. Maybe I should’ve been, but I wasn’t. Honestly, I was surprised when she said it, but deep down, I wasn’t even that either.
I wasn’t surprised or upset that Todd had chosen to step back into reality by calling his mother rather than calling me.
“I don’t know,” Max answered honestly. “I wouldn’t be shocked if he did, but I also wouldn’t put it past her to lie to get what she wants. Can’t imagine after the choice he made that Mary would be his first call…”
I made a soft sound in response, letting his words sink into my mind as we drove, the truck somehow full of a stupefying amount of clothing and personal items of mine that had collected at the apartment over the last couple of weeks.
The coast of Maine stretched its craggy peninsulas like knobby fingers out into the sea.
It was so peaceful here. So majestic. I’d buried the memories of the times Todd had taken me on long weekends to his parents’ house on the coast, one because they were steeped in his parents’ judgment.
And two, because every time I mentioned how much I loved it out here, Todd’s response was that it was a nice short getaway, but that I’d get bored after a couple of days.
Translation: He would get bored after a couple of days.
He wanted to be back in the city. With all the things to do.
With his friends. With the bars. How many times had I curbed the things I wanted to fit into his world?
Little things, like individual grains of sand.
Hardly noticeable until I stepped out of his orbit and saw just how much of my world he’d eroded.
“He never came to a single doctor’s appointment with me,” I blurted out, unsure why now was the moment I wanted to confess this.
“What?” I wasn’t sure if it was intentional or not, but a heavy brake accompanied Max’s question as he turned onto a small private drive.
A few feet later, he stopped completely in front of a wooden gate. “Hold on,” he grunted and put the truck in park.
I watched him walk from the truck over to the locked side of the gate and open it. Before coming back to the truck, he walked to the For Sale sign stuck in the yard. It was a nice one. White wood. Brass accents. Not one of those cheap plastic signs held up by metal twigs.
With one yank, he wrenched it from the ground.
My chest squeezed. I hadn’t been able to bury the feeling of being an imposition on him, but now, I felt like a downright intruder.
I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like he was even living or let alone wanted to keep this house, but for some reason, as he opened the gate and stared down the moonlit drive, I saw a weight on his shoulders that hadn’t been there before. And I knew it had to be because of me.
I forced my gaze back to the driveway, but in my periphery, I caught Max walk to the back of his truck. I heard the clunk of the sign being deposited in the truck bed, and then Max was back in the driver’s seat, a taut expression creasing his face.
“What do you mean, Todd never went to the doctor with you?”
Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.
“He always…had a reason,” I said, keeping my gaze fixed out the window, the deep blue sea sparkling between the tall pines.
“One time, he sent his mom instead.” I grimaced at the memory.
I don’t think I managed to speak a single word during that appointment.
Mrs. McCormick had just taken over, and I was so exhausted and…
shocked that Todd hadn’t shown up, I didn’t do anything to stop her.
“After that, I stopped telling him about the appointments until afterward, and he…never asked.”
And, fool that I was, I somehow fitted that into my world like it bolstered my independence. Like it was some kind of proof that I could still stand on my own rather than seeing it for what it was: evidence that I’d settled for a man who wasn’t worthy of being by my side.
When Max didn’t reply, I looked over and found his knuckles ghostly white where they gripped the steering wheel.
“Max…”
“I told him…he told me—” he broke off with something that was nothing short of a predatory growl, the veins running down his forearm looking like they were about to burst.
Without thinking, I reached out and put my hand on his arm. “I’m not upset, Max.”
“That makes one of us.” His eyes whipped to mine and then back to the drive. Ahead, the low flicker of exterior lights speckled the blanket of dark trees.
“It’s hard to miss something you never had,” I tried to explain the feeling as the truck pulled from the dirt driveway onto a cobbled clearing at the end of the jutting peninsula, Max’s house clutched on the bluff.