Chapter Seventeen Daisy
Chapter Seventeen
Daisy
I am the sun, the moon, the earth, the stars,
I am all that is fierce and beautiful,
I am the divine feminine,
I am imbued with the power to give and receive pleasure,
I am sensual magic waiting to be unleashed.
And so it is.
—A spell for reclaiming your sexuality
By the time Daisy and Nora walked out of Soraya’s apartment, they were hot and laughing.
She was borderline wine drunk and felt better than she had in a long time.
They’d danced to angry breakup anthems until they were sweaty and flushed, and even if she looked like a disaster, she felt great. Happy.
“I’m just going to get a car.” Daisy started to search for the rideshare app on her phone.
“We can share one.” Nora already had hers open and was ordering the ride. “He can do two stops. There’s one just a couple minutes away.”
“Okay.”
They stood on the curb, and Daisy wrapped her arms around herself. Then she looked up and saw a man walk out of the bar across the street.
“Oh. That’s Zach.”
Then she realized he was looking right at her.
“Oh,” Nora said. “Shit.”
“What?”
“He’s waiting for you.”
A zip of excitement shot through Daisy’s veins. It felt like high school, but in a good way. “No, he isn’t.”
Then he started to cross the street toward them.
“Yes, he is. Because he likes you,” Nora hissed.
“I am in no position to have anyone like me,” Daisy protested.
“You might not get to be in charge of that.”
“What should I do?”
“There’s nothing—”
“I can give both of you a ride home,” he said. “Since I’m the reason you don’t have a car here, Daisy.”
“I ordered a car already.” Nora waved her phone in the air. “If I cancel it, it’s going to tank my rating.”
“I’ll just go . . .” Daisy started to say she was going to ride with Nora.
“You can take Daisy,” Nora said.
“Nora . . .” Her heart thundered when she looked up at Zach. The truth was, he wasn’t offering anything other than a ride. It was just that Nora had gotten in her head about it.
You’re attracted to him.
Maybe. Okay. More than maybe. She was attracted to him. What woman wasn’t attracted to him? He was . . . Zach Woods. It wasn’t like he was her friend or anything. It’s not like it would break anything if the two of them . . .
“Thank you,” Daisy said.
Nora shoved her.
“Nora.” She gritted her name out through her clenched teeth. The town square might as well have suddenly become a high school cafeteria.
Nora grinned, more than a little wine drunk herself. Daisy felt stone-cold sober.
And alone, as Nora’s car pulled up and she waved, getting inside quickly.
“I’m just parked over here,” he said.
“Okay. Okay.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m good. I . . . I’m very good. In spite of the fact my husband is marrying a woman who’s ten years younger than us.”
“He’s an asshole.” Zach was matter of fact. “I need you to know that. I also need to talk to you about something.”
“What?” Her heart hammered. Was he going to say he liked her? Would he kiss her? She was getting way ahead of herself.
“What?” she said again, trying to sound a little bit less keen.
“I want to sell my portion of the business to you.”
“What?” She was entirely sober now.
“I own the majority of it. So if you bought it from me, you would be the majority owner.”
“But . . . but . . . I can’t afford it,” she sputtered.
She looked across the street, at the light on in Soraya’s apartment window glowing above the apothecary. A reminder that she was in the real world and not having a delusional fantasy, because this didn’t feel like it could possibly be real. It just didn’t.
But Zach was looking at her in a way he never had before. No one had looked at her like this before. She wouldn’t have been able to fantasize this if she wanted to. “I’d like to sell it to you for a penny.”
“Zach, I can’t let you do that. I can’t . . . accept that. It was an investment for you, and there’s no way . . .”
“I have plenty of money. I invested in this because I met him, and he had a young family, and he was trying to get this thing off the ground. I invested in it because . . . It’s hard for me to explain it.
The point is, I don’t need the money. I also think what he’s doing to you is shitty.
I’ve seen some messy breakups. Entertainment is a small industry.
People break up, and they still have to work together.
It’s not unlike a small town; it’s not unlike what’s happening to you.
I hate what he did to you. I know everything you did for the business.
I don’t do much as far as the day-to-day running of it.
I just . . . own the majority of it because I paid all the money to start it up, and I collect a percentage in repayment. ”
She was dizzy. “I get how it works. I did the books, remember?”
“I know you did. You did the majority of the organization. I want to make sure a fair percentage of that goes to you.”
“You already arranged to have those sets built for the play, and they’re so . . . beautiful—they must have cost a fortune.”
“I have connections to set builders. It’s not that big of a deal.”
“It is, though. I just don’t . . . I don’t understand why you would do all this.”
He lifted his head, and the streetlight caught his angles, just like it would have done on a well-lit set, making him look even more compelling. Even more beautiful. “Do you really not understand?”
She shook her head, her chest tight, her whole body shaking now. “I really don’t. This is so much. It’s a lot.”
“I want you.” The words were rough, fractured. As far removed from the actor version of him as it was possible to be. As far removed from her husband’s friend and business partner as it was possible to be.
This was someone else. Someone she felt like she was seeing, really seeing, for the first time.
Oh. For some reason, it utterly shocked her now. Because it came from nowhere, came when she wasn’t expecting it. “So is this . . . ? Are you . . . ? Are you paying me for . . . for sex, because I would’ve slept with you for free.”
The words came out all jumbled up, broken, embarrassed and excited and angry all at once.
“What? Hell no. I’m not paying for sex. I’m not . . . I’m not paying you to . . . I did this wrong. I shouldn’t have said that to you. I shouldn’t have told you that I was attracted to you.”
“You absolutely should’ve told me that. Because that’s genuinely the best .
. . nicest? I don’t know, it’s not nice, but .
. .” Get it together, Daisy. “I’m not . .
. You’re Zach Woods. I’m just Daisy McNamara from Hemlock.
I am a deeply average mother of three who doesn’t have abs or any idea what the latest tips and tricks in sex are . . . I’m not your usual type.”
“What do you know about my type?”
“Only what I’ve read on the internet.”
He lifted a brow. “Do you read gossip about me?”
“Sometimes.” She couldn’t lie. Not now. Actually, she could have, but it would have seemed really stupid.
“I’m sorry. I screwed this up. One thing I decided recently, though, was that when you want your business partner’s wife, there’s never really a right time. Ever since he left you, I’ve been waiting. For the right moment. But there’s not a right moment.”
“You . . . you want me.”
“I did say that.” His gaze was steady. Unwavering. It made her stomach feel hollow.
“I know you did, but it . . . How is it that you feel like you’re messing this up? I haven’t been with anyone other than Jonathan ever, and I’m just me.”
He moved closer to her then, and she could smell him. Which sounded weird, but he smelled amazing. “Let me show you.”
She didn’t really care about right and wrong. Didn’t care if it was mixed up and messed up, or that there might be some potential consequence for it down the road.
She’d been everything for everyone else. She’d done everything for everyone else. This felt like something for her. It felt like something good and real and fun.
That horrible feeling she’d had the last time she saw Jonathan. The feeling of longing, of wanting to go home again knowing she never could, was unbearable.
Home didn’t exist anymore. Maybe it never had.
She wanted that feeling to go away. She wanted to feel like Daisy, herself, whoever that was. She needed to make a home with herself. That started by making choices that had nothing to do with anyone but her.
She’d been with Jonathan since she was sixteen, so it was inevitable that she didn’t quite know who she was standing on her own. Maybe sleeping with someone else wasn’t the answer to that.
But what about her body? Her sexuality? What about her being desired not because she’d been there all along, not because she was a convenient, warm body? Not because of what she could do for someone, but just because she was wanted?
Maybe Zach only wanted her because she had been off-limits. Even that made her feel good. Even that made her feel like there was something sexy and exciting and illicit about her. She’d never felt like that in her life.
Not since the first time she’d had sex. Seventeen and trembling with delight and the fear of being caught.
It felt like that now, except more. There was a tangle of emotions inside her. She had the ridiculous inclination to tell Zach that she couldn’t offer him anything more than a night. That everything was too complicated. That he shouldn’t go getting his feelings hurt by her.
It was the silliest thing, because he was Zach Woods. He was sexy and singular, and famous, and could certainly have any woman he wanted. She didn’t need to give him disclaimers, she assumed.
She just needed to decide whether or not she wanted this. It wasn’t for the greater good; it wasn’t for Jonathan; it wasn’t for her kids, her mother, her grandmother. It wasn’t for anyone.
It was hard to make herself move forward. Hard to make herself take the step. But then . . . he did it. He closed the distance between them. He lowered his head and kissed her.