Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Forrest
“Do you regret it?”
The question gets out before I can make it sound like I don’t care.
I do care.
Too damn much, apparently, because Daisy is standing in front of me in the bedroom she grew up in, rain ticking against the window, her mouth still swollen from mine, her cheeks bright with heat, her hands curled in my shirt like some part of her hasn’t received the order to let go.
For one second, she says nothing.
That second takes a year off my life.
Then her eyes narrow.
“Do I look like I regret it?”
“No.”
“Then why would you ask that?”
“Because you looked stunned.”
“I am stunned.” She lets out a breath, and it comes out annoyed and shaky and too honest. “Forrest, you kissed me so well I forgot what debt was for a second. That’s alarming. That’s not regret.”
My control takes a hit.
“Daisy.”
“What?” Her fingers tighten once in my shirt, then she notices and releases me like I burned her. Or like she liked holding on too much. “I’m being honest. Isn’t that in the rules? No lying when it’s just us?”
“It is.”
“Then no. I don’t regret it.” Her gaze drops to my mouth again. It comes back up slower, as if leaving costs her something. “I regret the timing. I regret the rain. I regret that my mother owns stairs and ears. I regret that Puck is in the room judging our life choices.”
At the sound of his name, Puck lifts his head from the rug.
Daisy points at him. “See? Judgment.”
“He doesn’t know what’s happening.”
“He knows vibes. Dogs are extremely vibe-forward.”
Puck yawns.
“Exactly,” she says. “Disappointed.”
“He almost ate a donut off wet grass today.”
“And yet somehow he still has higher moral ground than we do.”
She’s talking too fast.
I know that trick now. Daisy fills a room when silence starts telling on her. She smiles harder when she’s cornered. She turns feeling into commentary, pain into punctuation, panic into a bit she can sell if nobody looks too closely.
I look too closely.
That’s the problem.
I step back before I kiss her again without letting either of us breathe. “Puck.”
His ears lift.
“Hall.”
He stares at me.
Daisy’s eyes widen. “You’re exiling your son?”
“He’s not my son.”
“I can’t believe you’re denying him. He has your brooding eyebrows.”
“Hall.”
Puck sighs like I’ve betrayed him in a historic way, then hauls himself up and pads to the door. I open it. He steps into the hallway, turns around, and looks at Daisy.
Not me.
Daisy presses a hand to her chest. “Oh, don’t do that. I already feel morally compromised.”
“He’ll survive.”
“You don’t know that. He’s delicate.”
“He stole a donut.”
“Everyone copes differently.”
I drag a blanket into the hallway. Puck circles once, offended on principle, then drops onto it with enough drama to make Daisy look professional.
When I close the door, the room changes.
The rain keeps working at the glass. The house creaks somewhere beyond the walls. Daisy swallows, and I hear it because I’m listening to everything she does now. Every breath. Every shift of her feet. Every small betrayal of what she wants and doesn’t want to admit.
I stay by the door, one hand still on the knob. “We don’t have to keep going.”
“I know.”
“If we do, this isn’t for the lie.”
“I know.”
“It’s not because we’re trapped here.”
“We’re not trapped. You already said we could leave.”
“And?”
“And I stayed.” She takes one step toward me. “I chose that.”
My hand tightens on the knob.
She takes another step.
“I’m choosing this too.”
Fuck.
The words go straight through me.
No room to twist them. No joke to hide inside. No fake relationship, no shared room, no family audience, no convenient excuse. Just Daisy, flushed and nervous and brave enough to say what I haven’t earned from her yet.
“Daisy.”
“If you say my name like that again, I’m going to assume you’re trying to be responsible, and I will have to take legal action.”
“What action?”
“I don’t know yet. My legal team is composed of the romance section and a woman named Bea. We’re dangerous.”
I let go of the door.
Every inch between us feels charged now. Claimed by the choice we keep making in smaller and smaller ways. The choice not to leave. The choice not to laugh it off. The choice to stand here with all this want between us and stop pretending it’s only part of the act.
I close the distance.
She meets me halfway.
The second kiss isn’t careful.
Careful ended somewhere between her saying I’m choosing this and my hands finding her face again.
She lifts onto her toes, and I catch her waist, pulling her against me as her mouth opens under mine.
Her hands slide up my chest, over my shoulders, into my hair, and when her nails scrape the back of my neck, my whole body locks around the need to have more of her.
She makes a small sound.
I kiss her deeper because if I don’t, I might say something I can’t take back.
Daisy’s back meets the door. I brace one hand beside her head to keep myself upright, because her mouth is ruining my balance and every reasonable part of my brain has abandoned me.
“Still okay?” I ask against her lips.
Her answer is her hand pulling my shirt from my jeans.
I catch her wrist.
She freezes.
I loosen my grip immediately. “Words.”
Her eyes lift to mine, bright and wild and furious with wanting.
“Yes,” she says. “Still okay. Very okay. Historically okay. Legally, medically, and possibly spiritually okay.”
“Good.”
“Do not smile right now.”
“I’m not.”
“You are internally smug.”
“I’m internally something.”
Her breath catches when my hand slips beneath the edge of her sweater.
Warm skin.
Soft.
Real.
I stop there, palm at her waist, waiting.
Daisy looks at me, and the humor falls away so fast it leaves both of us exposed. She nods once.
I slide my hand higher.
Her eyes close.
It’s the trust that gets me.
Not the heat, though there’s enough of it to make the air feel thin. Not the way she arches into my palm when my thumb brushes the underside of her breast. Not the sound she makes when I kiss the corner of her jaw, then the sensitive line below it.
The trust.
Daisy Thorn, who jokes her way out of hurt, who schedules disasters into manageable columns, who can smile so convincingly that most people never notice the cracks beneath it, is standing against her bedroom door and letting me touch her like she believes I’ll stop if she asks.
I would.
I would stop so fast it would break me.
I pull back just enough to tug my shirt over my head.
Daisy goes still.
Then her gaze drops.
For once, she has no words.
I shouldn’t enjoy that as much as I do.
“Nothing?” I ask.
Her eyes snap back up. “I’m composing a respectful statement.”
“Take your time.”
“I need several business days and possibly a grant.”
A rough laugh slips out before I can stop it, and Daisy looks at me like the sound did something to her. Like she wants to save it somewhere.
Then she reaches for the hem of her sweater.
I cover her hands with mine. “Only if you want.”
Her expression softens in a way I feel under my ribs.
“I want.”
I let her pull it off.
Her hair falls around her face. Her skin is flushed. Her breath is uneven. She’s beautiful in a way that makes the word feel useless, so I don’t say it.
I kiss her instead.
Slow this time. Deep. My hands move over her back, learning her by inches, the curve of her waist, the warmth of her skin beneath my palms, the small tremor she tries to hide by kissing me harder.
Daisy melts into me for half a second, then apparently decides surrender is offensive and bites my lower lip.
I groan.
She smiles against my mouth.
“There he is,” she whispers.
“Careful.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I am done being careful for today.”
I lift her.
She gasps, arms wrapping around my shoulders, legs around my waist. I carry her to the bed and pause, because this is Daisy’s bed.
Daisy’s room. Daisy’s past gathered around us in books and old photos and vineyard ribbons.
A place that knew her before I did. A place that might know better than I do how easily people leave marks.
She must see something cross my face, because she touches my cheek.
“Don’t disappear into your head.”
“I’m right here.”
“Good.” Her thumb moves along my jaw. “Stay.”
That word hits harder than it should.
I lower her onto the bed and follow her down.
The mattress dips beneath us, and for one strange second, I can feel the line we’re crossing.
Daisy’s fingers trace the ink on my ribs, the old scars at my shoulder, the places hockey left behind. She doesn’t ask. She just looks, then touches, and every part of me that expects judgment doesn’t know what to do with her tenderness.
“Your body tells a story,” she says softly.
“It’s not a good one.”
Her eyes lift. “It’s your story. That already makes it yours, and you should be proud of it.”
The words settle somewhere I don’t have protection. I kiss her before she can see too much.
When my hands find the clasp of her bra, I stop. “Yes?”
Her answer is a nod first, then a breathless, impatient, “Yes, Forrest.”
I open it slowly anyway.
She makes a noise of protest, soft and irritated. “Are you always this controlled?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
“Not right now.”
Her mouth parts.
That gets her.
I drag the straps down her arms, watching her watch me. Watching the moment confidence leaves her face and want takes its place.
“You’re gorgeous.”
Her eyes close for half a second. “That’s very unfair of you.”
“Why?”
“Because I was prepared for sarcasm. Not sincerity. Rude, honestly.”
I bend and kiss the center of her chest. “You want sarcasm?”
“I want . . .” She stops.
I lift my head.
There it is. The thing neither of us can joke past.
Daisy swallows. Her fingers slide into my hair, not pulling, just holding on. “I want you to keep looking at me like that.”
The request wrecks me.
I kiss her again, then lower my mouth to her breast.
Her body reacts before she can cover it. Her back arches. Her fingers tighten in my hair. A soft, broken sound leaves her, and she immediately turns her face toward the pillow like she can hide from me while I’m learning the taste of her skin.