30. Daisy
30
DAISY
I was wrong.
Sex is not overrated.
Sex is so magnificent that I’m not sure how people who are already aware of this fact even function on an average day.
Four times last night, and once again at dawn, and I’m still not done. He’s moving through his morning—pod in the coffee maker, protein shake tucked into a pocket of his briefcase—while I’m wondering how I can convince him to do it again, to do it a hundred times more and never return to his office.
“Stop looking at me like that, Daisy,” he warns, “or I’m not going to get out of here.”
I climb on the counter. I picture pulling him to me by his tie and wrapping my legs around his waist. Would he like that, or would it make me seem too young, too clingy?
A part of me is scared he’s already thinking it, that we might already be over and I’m the only one who doesn’t know it.
He sets the travel mug into the coffee maker and then turns, raising a brow. “What’s with the sudden darkness, Goth Barbie? ”
I smile. That much-hated nickname is a little more palatable now that it’s not reminding me of the age difference. “No darkness,” I reply. “Just planning my day. I assume you’ll be late again.”
“Baker can go fuck himself,” he growls. “I’m coming home.”
I shrug. “Well, I mean, there’s no rush, really. I’ve still got my date.”
I don’t. I already texted Jon to explain, but Harrison doesn’t need to know this just yet.
He turns toward me, his jaw unhinged. “ What? ”
“My date. I told you about it last night.”
His nostrils flare as if he’s scented prey. “Daisy,” he says quietly, “that had better be a fucking joke.”
I bite down on a grin. If he’s going to pull a disappearing act, at least it won’t be today. “Yes, it was a joke.”
He crosses the kitchen and pushes my knees apart so he can stand between them. “It wasn’t a funny one,” he says against my mouth.
I let my hand press to his fresh-shaved jaw. “It made me laugh. It’s still making me laugh.”
“I can think of a few ways to make you stop laughing.”
I gasp as his teeth sink into my lower lip, and he yanks me to the counter’s edge. Between us, my favorite bulge in the whole world is growing.
“That sounds like an empty threat,” I reply.
He undoes his belt and pulls my hand down to grasp him. “How empty does it sound now?”
I inhale. I love how feral he is when he lets go of all that restraint. I love that we’ve barely started this conversation and he’s already thick and hard beneath my palm.
I slide my hand under the waistband of his boxers to grasp him, to stroke, and his eyes fall closed, his forehead leaning against mine as if the pleasure is so intense he can’t quite keep his head upright, and then I squeal in surprise as he lifts me and heads for the stairs. “We don’t have to,” I argue. “You’re going to be late.”
“I don’t have to?” His mouth moves to my ear, and his voice drops as he starts taking the stairs two at a time, with me still wrapped around his waist. “Daisy, I’ve never cared less than I do right now about being late for work.”
He gets home early, but for obvious reasons, it takes us a while to get out to the break, and we don’t last long there either. I pull him into the outdoor shower with me afterward. When we’re done there, he carries me straight to his bed and tosses me onto the mattress.
“So tell me,” I say, collapsing on my back, “that erection you got the first day I was on your deck…was that actually about me or was it just some random A.M. occurrence?”
He laughs, running a hand over his face. “Suffice it to say that any of the erections you’ve witnessed since you moved in—and I’m pretty sure there have been several—were entirely because you have an incredible ass, among other attributes, and tend to wear very few clothes.”
“I’m amazed by your restraint.”
“In retrospect, I’m amazed too. But, you know…” His smile slowly fades. “This is something your mother and Liam would never forgive me for. They still see you as a kid, and I think they always will. They would trust me not to do exactly what I’ve done.”
I sigh. “My mother kills herself trying to keep me safe and shape my life but is seemingly untroubled by the fact that the guy she married is so awful I had to move out.”
He rolls toward me, running a hand over my hip. “Are you ever going to tell me what he did? Because it was more than him being a dick. I know you that well at this point. ”
It’s a truth I’ve never told anyone since I first suggested it to my mom, mostly because I couldn’t stand to have one more person fail to believe me.
“Scott cheats. A lot. I knew it even before they got married because he hit up my friend’s older sister on a dating site right before the wedding.”
Harrison doesn’t appear to be surprised. “I kind of figured. He seems like the type. Did you tell her?”
I shrug. “I was going to, but she was having this big brunch for the bridesmaids and was all excited about it, and there was just never a good time. She was so happy, and after the brunch she had her bachelorette, and the rehearsal dinner, and I didn’t know what to do.”
He squeezes my hip. “So instead, you dyed your hair and let everyone call you a brat. Including me. God, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I was being a brat. I just didn’t know how else to handle it.” I swallow. “But then I caught him a month later. He was supposed to be out of town, but I saw him with some chick at Long Point. So I did tell my mom, and it all went really badly. He’d driven all the way back to the airport, had her pick him up, and they’d gone to dinner after—I assume he saw me, too, and was covering his bases.”
“So she didn’t believe you.”
I flip on my back. “No, it was worse than that. She started crying and begged me to go to counseling. Scott…” I hate this. I hate saying it out loud. “Scott had been pointing out ways I was like my dad, so me coming to her with some wild story about seeing him at the beach was one more sign. And if I suggested he’d seen me, that he’d driven back to the airport…I’d have sounded even crazier, so I was just screwed.”
I glance at him, waiting to see doubt in his face. Waiting to see that question there: Is she like her dad? Are there signs I’ve missed? Anyone can be made to look insane if you selectively choose their worst moments—you list out the depressed times, the angry times, the irrational thoughts spoken aloud, even in jest. Except in my case, it’s also possible. And I won’t know until it happens. Maybe I won’t even know then.
His lips press to my head. “Jesus, Daisy, I’m so sorry.”
I blink back tears, not at the retelling of the story, but at being believed. Yes, he’s only the second person I’ve told, but he’s the first one who’s taken what I said at face value.
“After that, he was watching for me to slip up. If I cut school, he somehow knew immediately and told my mom. Then my stuff started going missing or was messed with. My surfboard wasn’t where I left it, my toothbrush disappeared and reappeared, my laptop would be unplugged and dead when I got home though I never unplugged it. When I accused him, he and my mom just shared this look, like ‘ oh here’s another sign.’ Eventually I just moved in with Liam.”
“Daisy,” he groans, “I wish you’d told her. Or me. I’d have believed you.”
I shake my head. “Scott was too good at it. He’d already made me look jealous and crazy, and me telling her that he was hiding my stuff and trying to make me look worse…it would just have been a bigger argument that he was right.”
“You could explain now, though.”
“What’s the point? He’s listed every single thing I’ve done wrong for seven years. She has a mountain of evidence that I might be ill somehow. And even if she believed me, I’d just be ruining all those memories for her. If her marriage to Scott is the only romance her life will ever hold, I’m not going to destroy that.”
He pulls me against his chest, a place I probably wouldn’t be if Scott hadn’t been such a dick.
Right now, it’s impossible to wish any of it had gone another way.