13. Daisy
Chapter 13
Daisy
I t was early when Wolf pulled up outside Cassie’s Cuppa on Friday morning. I’d finished my workout and was looking forward to two days off — from the gym and work — to sleep in and work on the house.
I’d been surprised when Locke had said, “See you Monday.” He’d been ruthless all week — and I had the sore muscles to prove it — but when I’d questioned him to make sure he’d said what I thought he’d said, he told me my body needed rest and lots of water and good food for recovery.
He didn’t have to tell me twice. My appetite had come back with a vengeance, but it wasn’t the donuts-and-pasta appetite of the last three months. For the first time in a long time, I wanted giant salads and grass-fed burgers, Thai food and clean soups.
Wolf turned off the car. “We could sit somewhere else. On the other side of the coffee shop.”
“You won’t even know we’re there,” Otis said, leaning forward from Benji’s back seat.
“You’re not coming in,” I said. We’d already had this discussion. I was meeting Ruth for coffee before she drove to the local community college for the classes she took there one day a week. It was a program for accelerated students, and since Ruth was as much a superstar student as she was a superstar cheerleader and a superstar lacrosse player, she was enrolled in the program. “That would be weird.”
“Would it?” Otis asked.
“Yes,” Wolf and I said at the same time.
“We’ll keep an eye on you through the window then,” Otis said.
“That doesn’t sound creepy at all,” I said.
“Does it?” Otis asked.
“Yes,” Wolf and I said at the same time.
“I’ll be fine.” They never let me go anywhere alone anymore, the only exception being Cantwell. They still drove me to work and picked me up, but even Otis acknowledged I was probably safe inside the office building with everyone else. They weren’t worried about a mass serial killer — just someone who had it in for me. The same someone who’d started the fire that had killed Jace.
I missed tooling around in the Mustang, but I got it.
I reached for the door, then felt Wolf’s hand on the back of my head. I turned to look at him and fell into his blue eyes.
“Hey,” he said. “I think you’re forgetting something.”
I leaned over to kiss him and lust surged through my body, my pussy pulsing with hunger until the quick kiss I’d meant to give him turned into something heated, our tongues sparring. My nipples were hard when I forced myself to pull away.
“Damn,” he said.
“I’ll take some of that,” Otis said.
I twisted in the front seat but the angle was bad so I ended up giving him a quicker kiss than I intended. Still, his lips were pillowy on mine, enough to remind of what it felt like to be in bed with him and Wolf, their lips and fingers everywhere.
“Sorry,” I said, a little breathless.
“If you’re apologizing for my hard-on, you can make it up to me this weekend,” Otis said.
I smiled. “Deal.”
I got out of the car and hit the pavement feeling better than I had in months. I still felt like I couldn’t breathe when I thought about Jace, but when I could tuck that into a dark corner of my heart, my body and mind felt alive.
Awake.
And my body was more than ready for playtime with Wolf and Otis. Not the sad sex we’d been having, where I came and came only to fall apart crying when it was all over, but actual mind-numbing fucking.
I was glad I was wearing my sports bra. My nipples were so hard they hurt and my cunt throbbed at the thought of two whole days at home with Wolf and Otis.
I stepped into Cassie’s feeling almost embarrassed by the thoughts running through my head.
The coffee shop was packed with weekend tourists. I lifted a hand to Cassie when she caught my eye and she met me at the end of the counter with my latte.
“Sorry I can’t chat,” she said. Her copper hair was as shiny as a new penny, pulled back into a ponytail, and her hazel eyes looked more blue than green. “You know how it is this time of year, the world is about to run out of pumpkin spice everything.”
I laughed. “No worries. Thanks for the coffee. I’ll pay my tab next time I come in when it’s not so busy.”
Fridays and Mondays were always the worst during peak tourist season. City people took extra days off to pack their social media profiles with pictures from a long weekend of apple- and pumpkin-picking, microbrewery tastings, and bonfires.
“I’m not worried about it.” Cassie narrowed her eyes like she was noticing something new. “You look good. Catch up soon?”
“Yes please.”
She smiled. “I’ll text you to make plans.”
She hurried back to the counter where Drew and Kaylee were busy serving customers and I grabbed a window seat. I didn’t entirely trust Wolf and Otis not to renege on our agreement to stay in the car, especially if they couldn’t see me.
I thought about Blake’s phone while my coffee cooled. I’d only had the phone back for a day, but so far I hadn’t found anything new. I kept thinking I could unlock his secrets with our shared history — like I had when I’d figured out the password to his phone was connected to our childhood dog — but so far I’d come up empty.
I took my first sip of the hot, creamy latte, then looked up as the bell on the door rang and Ruth stepped into the coffee shop. I hadn’t seen her since Jace’s death, and she looked even more beautiful and grown up than she had when I’d taken her to the ground-breaking ceremony for the resort.
I’d called her on her birthday the month before to see if I could treat her to a spa day. She’d said she’d get back to me and never had. I’d been too far gone to hound her about it, but honestly, I was a little hurt that I hadn’t heard from her after Jace’s death.
It wasn’t like it was a secret. The local news had been filled with breathless coverage about the fact that one of the Blackwell Beasts had died in the fire at the Blades compound. But Ruth obviously didn’t care and the whole thing had been too confusing to deal with when I’d been in the worst of my depression.
Could I blame Ruth for not caring that one of Blake’s murderers had died? She couldn’t know how much Jace had meant to me, and even if she did, that didn’t mean she had to care about him too. I’d told her about Blake’s involvement with the kidnapped girls, but I’d also told her my dad was involved and I’d been wrong about that, so my credibility wasn’t stellar.
“Hey,” she said, dropping her bag. “Let me grab something.”
I watched her as she stood in line, then ordered her coffee. She seemed a little taller than the last time I’d seen her and she’d filled out even more, making her look less like a sixteen-year-old high school kid and more like a twenty-something college student.
Worry nagged at my stomach. Between the time I’d caught her in bed with one of the Blades and her expert flirting with Gray at the ground-breaking ceremony, I wasn’t at all sure Ruth knew her limits.
Or that she even had limits.
My argument with Gray in the kitchen at Cantwell reared its ugly head, the mean shine in his eyes when he’d talked about Ruth.
I had no intention of ever putting that psychopath in the same vicinity of my sister ever again, but I wasn’t dumb enough to think he was the only threat to Ruth’s safety. The world was full of danger for women and girls, and Gray Cantwell was proof that danger was sometimes closer than you thought.
Ruth hadn’t learned that lesson yet. She thought she had the world figured out, but she was just sixteen, still giddy with the freedom of being able to drive, especially since our dad had given her a brand-new white Audi for her birthday, something I only knew because Ruth had plastered it all over her socials.
“God, it’s always so busy in here this time of year,” she complained, sitting down with an expert flip of her glossy brown hair. She turned her phone upside down on the table.
I took a sip of my latte. “It won’t calm down until Thanksgiving.”
“Speaking of Thanksgiving,” Ruth said, “are you coming home?”
“For Thanksgiving? I don’t know.” I hadn’t even thought about the holidays. Like, at all. I’d lost all sense of time since Jace’s death, was still trying to orient myself in the here and now.
Ruth frowned. “You have to come home for Thanksgiving. You can’t stay away forever.”
“I’m not going to stay away forever,” I said. “Don’t be dramatic.”
She pouted. “I’m not. I’ve hardly seen you since you moved out.”
I drew in a breath. “I know. It’s just been… a lot.”
She chewed her bottom lip. “I’m not going to say I’m sorry he’s dead.” Her words stung like a slap to the face. “But I am sorry you’re… I don’t know, sad?”
The breezy description of the hole in my heart was such an understatement it almost took my breath away. “Yes Ruth, I’m sad.”
I couldn’t hide the bite in my own voice. I’d tried to be understanding about Ruth’s feelings about the Beasts. Why couldn’t she do the same for me?
Not that I’d ever told her I was in love with them, but she knew I liked them. Knew I’d defended them.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That you’re sad, I mean.”
I nodded and forced myself to swallow the rage bullying in my chest. I wanted to smack her, to wipe the self-righteous expression off her smug face. I wanted to scream, to rage, to leave and never look back.
“How are you liking college classes?” I asked, trying to steer the conversation to safer territory.
She lifted her chin like the fact that she was taking college classes at sixteen was no big deal even though I knew she thought it was a very big deal because she’d been talking forever about how young everyone was at Blackwell High and how she couldn’t wait to get a taste of college life. “Fine.”
Her phone buzzed on the table and she picked it up, then smirked at the screen before putting it down.
“Cool,” I said. “Your birthday looked fun. Did you have a good time?”
I knew from Ruth’s social media that she and a group of friends had gone to the city in a limo — courtesy of my dad, I assumed — and then to a club. They probably had fake IDs. Either that or Ruth had twisted some bouncer around her finger to look the other way.
I hadn’t been invited, which was just as well because clubbing was the very last thing I’d been in the mood for since Jace died.
Her eyes lit up. “So. Much. Fun. The city guys are just…” She smirked. “On a whole other level. I can’t wait to get out of this place for good.”
It was like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I could see it coming but there was nothing I could do about it.
“Just… take your time, Ruthie. You have your whole life to be a grown-up.”
“Jesus.” The shine in her eyes flattened and she picked up her bag. The disdain in her eyes was searing. “When did you get to be such a downer?”
I drew in a breath, willing myself to be calm. “I’m just looking out for you. Mom— ”
“You’re not Mom,” Ruth spat, standing to leave. “And nobody calls me Ruthie anymore.”
“Ruth…”
But it was too late. She was halfway to the door, and a few seconds later, she was gone.