41. Daisy
Chapter 41
Daisy
A week later I was sprawled out on the floor in my bedroom, wearing a face mask while Sarai did my nails. Cassie was sitting next to me, painting her toenails, her face covered in the same mask Sarai and I wore.
The original plan had been to have a girls’ night in — a long overdue catch-up — at Cassie’s apartment, but the Beasts would only allow it if I gave one of them permission to sit outside all night.
Like that wouldn’t be creepy at all.
Plus I didn’t totally trust Otis not to break into Cassie’s again, and I really did want to spend some time with my two best friends. I felt bad about neglecting them, and the truth was, I missed them.
I’d had to tell them about Jace to make it work, so I’d gone ahead and told them about everything else too. What was the old saying? In for a penny, in for a pound. If I couldn’t trust my two best friends, I was even more screwed than I realized.
“I just can’t believe Mac might be your dad,” Sarai said, sweeping purple nail polish over my short nails. She’d wanted to give me the full treatment with press-on acrylics, but I’d passed because of the punch list on the house, which wasn’t really conducive to long nails.
“You and me both,” I said.
“But also, he might not be your dad,” Cassie said.
“I don’t know,” Sarai said, “I can kind of see it in the nose and mouth.”
Cassie glared at her.
“What?” Sarai said. “I’m just saying.”
“It’s fine,” I said. “You don’t have to protect me. I’ve spent hours staring at my own face in the mirror and it hasn’t gotten me any closer to figuring it out.”
Sometimes I was sure I saw shades of my dad, but other times, when the light hit my face a certain way… well, I knew what Sarai meant.
“It doesn’t really matter though, does it?” Cassie asked. “I mean, I know it matters, but your dad is your dad. He’s the one who raised you, the one who took care of you and provided for you.”
“It’s more that it might explain some things,” I said.
“I’m sure Cass will kill me for saying this, but I don’t think it’s a secret that he’s always treated you different from Ruth,” Sarai said, brushing polish onto my last nail.
“Yeah, but don’t you think every kid would say their parents had a favorite?” Cassie asked. “My mom adored Bram. She was fine with me, but even Bram admitted he was her favorite, and there’s no way I’m not my mom’s kid.”
Sarai pulled out a little nail dryer that she’d brought and turned it on. “Put your nails under here. They’ll be dry in three minutes.”
“Wow,” I said, slipping my hands under the dryer. “Fancy.”
“Just a hobby,” Sarai said. “As my parents like to remind me.”
I looked at her sympathetically. “Still?”
Sarai’s parents were traditional Indian-Americans. They expected both their kids to go to college and specialize in something stable, something impressive.
“Still,” she said, capping the nail polish. “At least they have Krish. Speaking of favorites.”
Krishna was Sarai’s younger brother, a freshman at MIT.
“What do you want?” I asked her.
“Does it matter?” she asked, clearly miserable.
“I’d grab your hand if my nails weren’t wet and I didn’t think you’d be mad,” I said. “But yes, it matters.”
I knew it mattered because my dad wasn’t that unlike Sarai’s parents. Not Indian-American, but still a source of high expectations. Back before I’d found out Mac might be my dad, I’d just assumed he was disappointed in me because I lacked his brand of ambition.
Now I couldn’t help wondering if it was more than that, if I reminded him too much not only of my mom and her dreamy streak, but of someone like Mac, who’d lived on the fringes of polite society, making a life completely counter to the kind my dad valued.
My possible connection to Mac gave me a weird kind of hope in spite of the bomb it would throw into my life. Maybe I wasn’t just an entitled rich girl after all. Maybe my bohemian interests were in my blood, part of my DNA.
Maybe I wasn’t the daughter of an ambitious business titan and the woman who’d lost herself to his world but the daughter of two dreamers, one who’d worked to live his way and the other who’d died trying.
“Honestly,” Sarai said, “I like this.”
“The nail thing?” Cassie asked, sitting back against my bed and wiggling her toes, now painted a deep green.
Sarai nodded. “It’s fun. Fun and relaxing, which is the opposite of what my parents think a career should be. Plus it’s not like I’m going to get rich doing nails, let alone find a good husband.”
“Ugh,” I said. I couldn’t even begin to understand the pressure Sarai was under. She’d been fighting her parents on the college thing for two years. “I know it’s easy for me to say, but it’s your life. You’re allowed to find your own way.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” Sarai asked.
It might have sounded snide coming from someone else, but from Sarai it just sounded like curiosity. She and Cassie had been shocked to see the house, now almost fully renovated and quickly filling with the furniture and art and lighting I’d been buying with the last of my inheritance. I was living here at the top of the falls with the three guys who’d killed my brother, working part-time for Cantwell like I didn’t have a care in the world when really, my future was staring me down like an incoming freight train.
“I think so,” I said. “I mean, when I look back on the last year I realize it’s the first time in my life when I’ve done exactly what I wanted to do. It hasn’t always made sense, but at least I’m living my life my way.”
“What about the future though?” Sarai said. “Don’t you worry about it?”
“All the time.”
Sarai sighed. “I need snacks. Do you have snacks?”
“I live with three ginormous guys,” I said. “The house is filled with snacks.”
We got to our feet and headed downstairs via the front staircase. We were halfway to the first floor when I realized the guys had finished their work in the ballroom and were now in the living room playing video games.
My breath caught in my throat at the sight of them sprawled out on the designer furniture. Otis was bare-chested, his muscles flexing as he worked on the clock while Wolf and Jace played some kind of space game, their eyes fixed on the screen, both of them leaning forward, legs spread in their jeans.
They could have been an ad for condoms because right now I wanted to kick Cassie and Sarai out and fuck them all senseless.
“Hey,” Otis said, looking up as we passed. “Hey, Cass. Hey, Sarai.”
“Hey,” Sarai said, her gaze glued to Otis’ bare chest.
Jace glanced over. “Hungry?”
There was a smirk in his voice, a teasing light in his eyes, and I thought of our heated encounter in the bathroom at the Strike, Jace’s face buried between my thighs, his dick pushing into me from behind.
My face flamed.
“Yep,” Sarai said cheerfully. “Just looking for snacks.”
Wolf looked up with a smile. “There’s always something to eat in this house.”
There wasn’t an ounce of innuendo in his voice but my wet pussy didn’t seem to care. I needed to get out of here, stat.
“Nice to see you,” Cassie said as we passed.
“Say hi to Bram,” Wolf said.
“Will do.”
I turned the lights on in the kitchen and breathed a sigh of relief. Being around the Beasts was like being in a room filling with carbon monoxide: I couldn’t see, smell, or taste the lust, but it was still powerful enough to knock me unconscious.
“Holy shit,” Sarai said, collapsing onto the island. “How are you not fucking them 24/7?”
I opened the fridge to hide my face, because so far Cassie was the only one who knew I’d been doing exactly that.
Sarai marched over and slammed the fridge door shut, then held it there as her mouth dropped open. “You dirty slut! You are! You’re fucking them 24/7!”
“Shhhh!” I said, trying to cover her mouth. “Tell the whole world, why don’t you.”
“Why don’t you ?” she practically shouted. “That’s what I’d be doing if I was banging those three perfect specimens of manhood.”
“Oh my god,” Cassie said. “You’re talking about them like they’re pieces of meat. They’re people.”
“Extremely hot, sexy-as-fuck people,” Sarai said.
I pulled some salsa out of the fridge, then went to the pantry for tortilla chips. When I returned to the island, Cassie was studying me.
“There’s a lot more to this than the sex, isn’t there?” she asked.
She’d known I was developing feelings for the Beasts when I’d stayed at her place after finding out they’d really killed Blake. But that had been before Jace’s fake death, before I’d realized that I might actually not be able to live without them, not in any way that was worth living.
“It’s… complicated,” I said, walking to the cupboard.
I removed a large bowl for the chips and a smaller one for the salsa and returned to the island.
“Complicated how?” Sarai asked, uncapping the salsa and pouring some into the smaller bowl.
I dumped chips into the big bowl. “I don’t know. I mean, I have no idea how it would work. We haven’t talked about it.”
“From what I’ve seen, they’re pretty in it,” Cassie said.
She hadn’t made a big deal about the fact that Otis had snuck into her place to visit me at night when I’d been living there, but I was almost positive she’d known.
Sarai picked up a chip and dipped into the salsa. “Can’t you just ask?” She crunched down on the chip. “Do you have any soda? Or wine?”
I scrunched my face. “Wine with chips and salsa? How about beer?”
“Beer works,” Sarai said.
I pulled three beers from the fridge. “This doesn’t feel like something you just ask.”
“Why not? ‘Is there any way the three of you can stay here and fuck me forever?’” Sarai opened her beer and shrugged. “Done.”
Cassie laughed and shook her head.
“How would that even work?” I asked. “And…”
I stalled on the next part because I felt bad even saying it.
“And what?” Cassie prodded.
I sighed. “What would people say?”
It was something I hadn’t wanted to admit to myself in the equation of my possible future with the Beasts. It was one thing to live in the same house with Blake’s killers as hired laborers. It was another to set up house with them, let the world — or more specifically, Ruth and my dad — know I loved them.
All three of them.
“Does it matter?” Cassie asked.
I bit into a chip and chewed, thinking about Ruth, about all she’d been through after losing our mom and then Blake. Would she recover knowing I loved Blake’s killers, knowing I wanted to be with them? Would our relationship recover?
“I don’t know,” I finally said.
“I can’t believe this,” Sarai said angrily.
“What?” I was genuinely confused by the sudden change in Sarai’s mood.
“You’re being a hypocrite, that’s what!”
“What are you talking about? And why are you shouting?”
“I’m not shouting,” she said. “This is just such… such bullshit. You just gave me the big live-your-life-your-way pep talk and now you’re worried about what the gossips in Blackwell Falls will think?”
The accusation stung.
“It’s not just the gossips I’m worried about.”
“She’s worried about Ruth,” Cassie said quietly.
“Things are already weird between us,” I said. “How could she ever forgive me?”
“Shit.” Sarai looked down with a sigh. “Sorry. I didn’t think about Ruth.”
I reached for her hand. “It’s okay. And you’re still not wrong. I am being a hypocrite. Disappointing your parents is a big deal.”
She squeezed my hand and smiled. “I can admit that even disappointing my Indian parents isn’t as big a deal as telling Ruth you’re permanently shacking up with Blake’s murderers.”
“She’s just been so erratic lately.” I didn’t want to tell them about catching her in bed with the guy from the Blades. It was personal, and I wasn’t down to gossip about my sister, even with my two best friends. “It kind of feels like maybe all the shit that’s happened is finally catching up to her.”
Sarai and Cassie exchanged a look. Cassie hurried to close the bag of chips, but I knew a conspiracy of silence when I saw one.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked.
They looked at each other again before Sarai turned her gaze to me.
“We saw her,” Sarai said.
“Ruth?”
Sarai nodded. “With some guy.”
“Some older guy,” Cassie said.
A knot tightened in my stomach. “How much older?”
“I don’t know,” Cassie said, “maybe early thirties?”
“She’s sixteen!” Now I was the one practically shouting.
“We didn’t want to bother you with it after the thing with Jace,” Sarai said.
“I tried to talk to her actually,” Cassie said.
“When?” I asked.
“When I saw her out at the Mill with the guy.”
I rubbed my forehead. Ruth and her fucking fake ID and older guys. “What did she say?”
Cassie snorted. “She told me to mind my own business. Or mind my own fucking business actually.”
“Shit,” I said. Because as complicated as things were before, with Ruth on the edge the stakes were higher than ever.
It was all well and good to preach about living for yourself, but what if living for yourself meant hurting other people? Because there would be consequences for my relationship with the Beasts — and I wasn’t the only one who would have to face them.