24. Jace
Chapter 24
Jace
T here was no easy way to do this. No easy way to tell them what I’d learned and make things right with Daisy, all while bringing myself back from the dead. The details — of my time away from her, of what I’d found on the compound — were all jumbled together, coming out in a way that didn’t seem quite right given everything that had happened.
I’d been alone for a long time, had gotten used to being alone with all the thoughts running through my head.
Wolf shook his head. “What the actual fuck?”
“Exactly,” I said.
It wasn’t that I wasn’t still shocked — and a whole fucking lot of other things — but I’d been sitting with it, trying to figure out if the discovery meant it was time to go home.
To go back to Daisy.
It had hurt to be away from her. Hurt in my body. My bones.
I’d lurked around the house even when I knew it was dangerous, knew she might see me. I’d lingered in the trees around the old cemetery, listening to Daisy talk to me, trying to send her answers with my mind, wishing I could cross the distance between us and pull her into my arms when she cried. I’d watched her fade away before my eyes, get thinner and paler until I didn’t know which of us was supposed to be the ghost.
“Wasn’t your dad cremated?” Otis asked.
“That’s what I was told, but I was just a kid. Not even five years old. Truth is, I don’t really remember it.”
I remembered him , but only in flashes: a gruff voice telling me to go play, a giant of a man with a beard and hard green eyes. Sometimes I even thought I remembered the funeral service. I saw people standing on the banks of the river, Mac tipping an urn until a stream of ash poured into the water.
But I didn’t know how much of it was real and how much of it was imagined.
Especially now.
“How do you know this?” Daisy asked.
For the last three months, I’d only seen her from afar, and as fucking pathetic as it sounded, I just wanted to look at her. It wasn’t even four a.m. and she was as beautiful as I’d ever seen her, brown hair tousled and cheeks pink, her violet eyes blazing with anger and something I wanted to believe was relief.
I could still feel her tight pussy around my cock when we’d fucked in the kitchen, her warm flesh in my hands, the fevered sweep of her tongue in the moments before common sense had gotten the better of her.
Fuck. I was hard again, which was hella inconvenient since I was pretty sure Daisy would never let me touch her again.
I pulled out the burner phone I’d bought in Carlton. I’d left my other phone in the fire along with my wallet, but Wolf and Otis had left the burner during one of their drops. I hadn’t seen them — that would have been too risky — but we’d set up a rendezvous spot in the woods in case of trouble, and they’d made regular deliveries of cash and other supplies.
I opened the phone and pulled up one of the pictures I’d taken when I’d finally managed to sneak into Mac’s quarters on the compound.
“I found this.” I slid the phone toward Daisy.
She picked it up and stared. “Mac’s guardianship papers?”
It made sense that she wouldn’t see it. I’d never told her the date of my dad’s death.
“Let me see that, doll.”
Daisy handed the phone to Otis.
“The date’s wrong,” Otis said after looking at it for a minute.
“Or it’s not,” I said.
Wolf held out his hand and Otis passed him the phone. It only took a few seconds for Wolf to take a deep breath, like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, which was totally fucking relatable because I’d been going crazy with the knowledge for the past week while I’d tried to decide if it justified my return from the dead.
I only got to do that once. The timing had to be right.
“This is dated after your dad died,” Wolf said.
“Exactly,” I said. “Any idea how my dad would have signed over guardianship to Mac from the fucking grave?”
“Wait,” Daisy said, “you’re saying that your dad’s signature on those papers was added after he died?”
“Yep,” I said. “Tell me how that makes sense.”
Daisy chewed her lip. “A forgery?”
I’d thought about it. Had Mac forged my dad’s signature to pave the way for the courts to assign him as my guardian?
Except that didn’t make sense either.
“If you’re going to forge somebody’s signature on something as important as a custody document, why use a date after the death of the guy signing over custody?” I asked. “Seems like it could cause problems if someone gave it a good look."
“Unless it was the actual date,” Wolf said.
I nodded. “I think it’s real. It has a court seal and everything.”
“Maybe he just didn’t want to be here,” Otis said.
Wolf shot him a familiar look. It was a look that said, I know these things are hard for you but jesus fucking christ take it easy .
Otis shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
“It’s possible.” It wasn’t like I loved thinking about the possibility. If it was true my dad hadn’t died then he’d chosen to leave me behind. He’d given me to Mac like I was a used TV or an old sofa.
Like I was nothing at all.
I’d been wrestling with possibility ever since I’d snuck into Mac’s private quarters and found the custody document, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
“Do you think your dad and Mac had some kind of falling out?” Daisy asked.
I wasn’t stupid enough to think that she’d already forgiven me for pretending to be dead — or to think that she ever would — but I was glad we were talking about something else, even if it had to be this.
“I thought about it,” I said. “But then why sign custody over to Mac?”
No one said anything because we all knew there was a pretty simple answer to the question: there wouldn’t have been anyone else. Who was he going to leave me to? Pinky? Aloha? Snake?
The truth was, there hadn’t been a single other person who had given a shit what might happen to me.
“Okay,” Wolf said. “Let’s think this through. Right now it seems like we have two separate issues: what happened with your dad and Mac’s relationship with Daisy’s mom.”
“Three,” I said. “We also have the missing girls, although that might be connected to Mac too.”
Wolf looked surprised. “Why would Mac have anything to do with the missing girls?”
“I found some articles.” I hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that — Wolf and Otis liked Mac, they always had — but there was no point beating around the bush.
“About the missing girls?” Daisy asked.
I nodded. “Some of them were printed from the internet. Others were clipped from local papers.”
Wolf sat back in his chair. “Fuck.”
I exhaled the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. “Yeah.”
Silence reclaimed the room. No one wanted to think about the possibility that Mac had something to do with the missing girls. Especially not me.
“I have to go to work in a few hours,” Daisy finally said, getting to her feet. “I’m going to bed.”
I didn’t blame her. It was still dark outside, but it wouldn’t be long before the sun came up.
Otis stood. “Sounds good to me.”
Daisy shot him a glare that could have frozen hell itself. “Alone.”
Otis nodded and sat down. We couldn’t exactly blame her for wanting to be alone. Not after what we’d done.
She looked at us. “In case you think you’re forgiven… you’re not.”
I watched her head for the stairs with my heart in my fucking throat. I’d been close to her for a few precious minutes, had been inside her, just like I’d been dreaming for months.
Now she was gone again, because no matter how much I tried to tell myself I could change for her — that I could be good for her — I just couldn’t stop proving myself wrong.