Chapter 21
Daisy
My time with Harper didn’t end after the tour of her apiary.
Even though I was feeling marginally better after our conversation, I wasn’t ready to go back to the house and face Max yet.
So after we left her hives, she took me over to Nox’s barn-turned-glass-blowing factory. He wasn’t there, but Harper walked me through his burgeoning operation and then proceeded to show me the custom beehive-shaped containers he’d fabricated to jar her honey.
We stopped at a restaurant for lunch before heading into Friendship.
Harper had errands to run—a stop at Frankie’s candle shop, a few minutes in the Stonebar Farms store where Ailene plied us with blueberry scones and fresh maple butter, and then some time at Jamie’s woodworking shop.
Harper was coordinating with Violet about the specs of the new support stands for her new hives.
It was dinnertime by the time we finished, and Vi invited us to join their family for sloppy joes. Harper offered to take me back to the house then if I wanted, but I didn’t.
I wasn’t ready.
Somehow, the four years I’d spent concealing my feelings for Max sat like a boulder on my chest. Not crushing me, but like a weighted blanket.
Somehow, it had become soothing to only want him in secret.
Safer to desire him in the shadows of slumber.
It buried the beats of my heart under something that was as impenetrable as it was inescapable.
I could long for Max in secret because there was no chance of getting hurt. And I could simultaneously fight to make things work with Todd because he wasn’t a threat to my heart. He never had been.
Now, that boulder was gone. Lifted. My heart, freed to beat and ache and be with him. And risk getting hurt. And that was what frightened me.
So Harper and I accepted the invitation to dinner and spent a few laughter-filled hours with Jamie, Violet, and their kids before calling it a night.
By the time Harper’s bug took the turn to Max’s driveway, daylight was in short supply.
“Thanks for everything today, Harper,” I said when we reached the end of the drive, my hope hollowing out when we pulled into an empty parking pad. Max’s truck was gone.
“I think he’s at the farm,” Harper said, and I looked over. “He’s been texting me all day—and no, I haven’t responded except to provide proof of life before he sent the whole state out searching for you.”
I managed a weak smile. “Thanks.”
“Are you okay?”
I looked over the house rising in front of us. Max’s house. My dream house.
“Everything I’ve done has been for you.”
Over the course of the day, Max’s words metabolized in my mind, dissolving my fears word by word, piece by piece, until the only thing left was the deep-rooted yearning in my bones.
I wanted him. I’d wanted him since the beginning.
And after last night, I couldn’t hide from it any longer.
“I think I will be,” I answered finally and squeezed her hand when she reached over and took mine. “Thanks again.”
I worked my way out of the car, somehow feeling like an extra-wide tractor-trailer by the end of the day. Holding the rim of the door, I turned and dipped my head to her. “Good night, Harp.”
“Good night, Daisy.” Harper leaned over the console. “Don’t forget, feel free to torture him a little. He needs to not be so much of a gentleman all the time.”
I pulled my bottom lip through my teeth, the corners of my lips curling slightly into a stifled but sheepish grin.
“Don’t worry, Harp. He’s not.”
I shut the door on her comically round eyes, chuckling to myself all the way to the front door.
Toeing off my sneakers just inside the door, I went to the kitchen for some water. Filling a glass from the sink, I gulped it down, staring at the windows over the rim until I’d drank it all.
Leaving it on the counter, I let myself out the sliding back door, filling my lungs with the crisp night air. Stepping off the back deck, my bare feet pressed into the ground.
Tonight was one of those nights that could’ve been ripped straight from my dream. A calm, glistening ocean. A star-studded sky. A peaceful pocket of…home.
“Daisy.”
I turned. “Max.” I hadn’t even heard him come outside.
My gaze raked over him like I hadn’t seen him in years, rather than hours. Like he was a figment that could disappear at any moment. I curled my toes into the grass, wanting to root myself here. With Max.
“I’m sorry I left earlier,” I started before the pressure bubbling up from my chest flagged.
“It’s okay. I know…it’s a lot.” He dragged his palm along the edge of his jaw, and it killed me to see him torture himself like this. “I shouldn’t—”
“I wanted you too, Max,” I blurted out, watching him freeze. “I want you too.”
His stare pierced mine, his irises like twin comets of lust barreling toward me, and I…I lowered my arms and anticipated the collision.
“Daisy, you don’t know…don’t understand—”
“I do,” I interrupted, taking my first step toward him.
“I know why you never said anything. I do understand. You’re a good man, Max, and an even better friend.
Maybe I wished you weren’t so good to Todd, but I’m not—I can’t fault you for not telling me before.
If anything, all the signs were there…if I’d wanted to see them. ”
His jaw pulsed. “It’s been a long day, Daze. Why don’t we—”
“Why are you still trying to walk away from me?”
He drove his hand through his hair, his gaze dropping for a split second to my hand resting on my stomach, and then growled, “Because you’re still wearing his ring.”
I held up my hand, staring at the diamond like it was a sparkling scarlet letter.
“Do you really think I’m wearing this because of Todd?
” I asked, lifting my eyes to his. “That, after everything…I could still be hoping…wanting him to come back?” I took another step closer, a thrill running down my spine when I saw Max’s reaction, like my closeness tugged on a string.
Not a string…on the sole rope of restraint anchoring him to the shores of sanity.
“That there’s any part of me that aches for Todd… after last night?”
His sharp inhale pierced the air like a star shooting through the sky.
“Then give me a better reason.”
Air shuttled to the pit of my lungs and then back up again, unearthing my deepest secrets with it.
“I wore it because I’ve been trying to remember it was safe to be with Todd.
” I reached for the ring, slowly twisting it up my finger.
“That he was the devil I knew—a devil who had many faults but none that put my heart at risk. It sounds stupid considering he left me at the altar, but at least when he left, he didn’t take my heart. ”
The band popped over my knuckle and slid into my palm.
“I wore it because it symbolized the old Daisy. The cautious, stubborn, independent Daisy. I wore it because it reminded me I was jobless, homeless, and pregnant, and the last thing I could afford to do was catch feelings for the man who kept stepping in to help me. The man who’s always been there to help me… even when I didn’t know it.”
I took another step, feeling the cool grass flatten under my feet.
“Daze.” Max hissed and held up his hand in a staying motion.
“It reminded me that I shouldn’t be so selfish as to desire my convenient husband.”
I held out my hand and the ring to him, an offering.
It came as no surprise when he didn’t take it.
Be brave. Curling my fingers around the band, I spun and walked toward the edge of the property.
“Daisy!” Max shouted, coming after me.
I had this dramatic moment cued up in my head where I’d toss the ring over the cliffs into the ocean, but I didn’t even know how far away that cliff was, let alone that I’d be able to make it there before Max caught up to me.
So I settled for the gesture. It was the thought that counted, right?
I heaved my arm back and slung it forward, the ring flying into the night.
“Shit, Daisy,” Max swore as he grabbed my other arm and spun me. “What are you doing?”
“Removing the barrier.” I flattened my palm to his chest, feeling the pounding of his heart, and then following it up the column of his throat to the angle of his jaw.
“Daisy.”
“What is it, Max?” I asked, torn between begging him and beating him for what was still holding him back. When he didn’t say anything, I started with the obvious. “You want me.”
His groan rumbled my fingertips before it reached my ears. “I do.”
“And I want you.” I lifted my now ringless hand, his grip still attached to my wrist. “So what’s holding you back?”
His eyes darkened. “Because, Daze…”
“Because why?” I curled my fingers into his shirt, wishing I could bury them right into his skin, so he couldn’t hide from me anymore.
“Because of how I want you, the way I…” He let out a slow breath. “It’s not how you’ve known me to be. And you deserve better.”
“Better?” I whimpered. “Was ‘better’ Todd stuffed up with your words and actions? Was ‘better’ a man who was puppeting what you told him?”
“Better,” he interrupted with a growl, shackling my free wrist with his other hand. “Better is a man who takes you inside and tells you to go take a long bath and relax after a long day.”
My breath hitched. “And you?” I managed to choke out. “What do you want to tell me to do?”
His jaw beat like a war drum, fervent and furious. “Daisy, please,” he clipped. “You should go relax. Get off your feet—” He broke off with a hiss when I slid my hand from his chest up to cup his face, my fingers drinking in the feel of his stubbled skin and the hardened planes of his cheek.
“Tell me.”
“Dammit, Daze.” His jaw looked about to crack.
Too respectful was right. All Max had ever done was take care of me, try to make me happy, even when it came at his own expense. I didn’t know what he was so afraid to say, but maybe he needed to know I wasn’t afraid. No matter what it was.
Maybe he needed to know there was nothing that could make me not want him.
“I used to think about you…about being with you when I was with Todd,” I confessed in a husky voice, and I watched the instantaneous change that came over him.
The dilation of his dark eyes. The flare of his nostrils.
The tightening of his grip on my arms. “All those times I would go with you on deliveries, I would fantasize about you laying me down in the back of your truck—”
“Fuck, Daisy,” he growled, his voice unraveling.
“When it got bad with Todd’s drinking, and he’d come home and want to…I’d hide in the bathroom until I heard him snoring. And then I’d come out and turn him on his side and then check my phone.”
“Daisy…”
“You’d always message me to check on him, but deep down, I knew—I know you were checking on me. And I’d…touch myself.”
“Fuck.”
“You’d ask me what I was doing, and I’d text back nothing, but I’d be thinking ‘if only you knew,’ ‘if only you could see.’”
He was heaving breaths now, like he was locked in a fight to the death rather than a spectator to my submission.
“And I’d come thinking of you, my boyfriend’s best friend, while Todd was passed out next to me.
” I pushed through the last before I lost my nerve.
“The way I wanted you felt too risky, so I fought it. Hid it. Especially when all you did was try to keep me and Todd together. I don’t want to fight it anymore. ”
His head turned slowly into my hand, his warm breath coating my palm. And then his mouth opened, and I gasped as his teeth sank into my skin.
“I want more of what happened last night, Max,” I said in a hurried whisper. “The things you did to me, the way you made me feel, I’ve never felt like that before. Please…I want more.”
His eyes closed, his teeth locked on my hand for one more second as he breathed in deep, and then let his exhale release. When his eyes opened, the look in them was different.
It was the way he looked at me last night.
“A gentleman would tell you it’s been a long day, and we can finish this discussion tomorrow.”
“And you, Max? What would you say?”
“Get on your knees.”