Daisy #2
I exhale and take a sip of water to buy time.
“That’s… not—” Grizz lifts a brow. It’s not accusatory or even angry.
It’s just patient, like he’s waiting for me to stop performing and start telling him the truth.
I set my glass down carefully. “Okay. Fine. Yes.” He keeps looking at me, and somehow that’s worse.
“A fashion brand reached out after my former editor put in a good word for me,” I continue.
“They offered me a ground floor job in communications.”
Grizz shifts, processing the sentence and also everything inside it—every implication, every door it opens. “What brand?” he asks casually.
I hesitate and his eyes narrow a fraction. “Daisy.”
“It’s… big,” I say, which is the professional equivalent of Please don’t make me say it out loud because then it becomes real.
“Big doesn’t mean anything,” he says. “What brand.”
I push a piece of chicken around my plate. “You wouldn’t—”
“I would,” he cuts in, calm. “Try me.”
I hate this. I hate how easily he can corner me without raising his voice. I hate how I’m suddenly twelve again, hiding a secret from a parent, except this time the person across from me isn’t going to punish me.
He’s just going to see me.
“It’s a major fashion house,” I say, choosing words carefully. “They’re expanding. They want someone who can handle press, crisis, celebrity partnerships, all of it. They want… me.”
“And it’s in LA,” he says, not a question.
“Yes.”
He nods slowly. “When did you find out?”
I glance up. “Why are you interrogating me?”
He lifts his shoulders. “Because you didn’t tell me.”
“That’s not—” I stop because it is. It is exactly what it looks like: me tucking something enormous into my back pocket and hoping no one notices the outline.
He leans back slightly in his chair, gaze steady. “When?”
“A couple weeks ago,” I admit.
His lips purse. “And you’ve been what… sitting on it?”
“I’ve been thinking,” I say. “I’ve been trying to figure it out.”
“Figure what out?” he asks.
I laugh once, short and humorless. “My entire life?”
His expression doesn’t change, but the brightness in his eyes does. The teasing is gone. The game is gone. It’s just him, looking at me like I’m not a problem to solve. “Okay,” he says quietly. “Tell me.”
I stare at the plate because it’s safer than his face. “It’s a big opportunity. It’s… it’s everything I said I wanted.”
His voice is careful. “Everything you said you wanted when?”
I swallow. “When I started with the Vipers,” I say. “When I took this job. When I told myself this was my… second chance.”
His hand shifts on the table, fingers flexing once. “And now,” he prompts.
“And now,” I repeat, because the words feel strange in my mouth, like admitting a truth that will change the shape of my future. “Now I have a reason not to take it.”
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t fill the quiet with false reassurance.
He just says, “This sounds like a dream job.” I look up and his eyes are on mine, unblinking. “Like your dream job,” he adds. He doesn’t sound bitter or possessive. Just… honest. “This could be the second chance you were hoping for.”
It’s so hard it almost hurts because he’s right.
Because if I strip everything down to the bare facts, this is the kind of email you screenshot and send to your best friends with ten exclamation points.
Call-your-mother type news, the type you say yes to before the other person can change their mind.
Under any other circumstance, it would’ve been a no-brainer.
I go still and my fork rests against the edge of my plate. The dining room feels too quiet, the air too warm, the smell of roasted chicken suddenly too intimate.
Grizz waits.
And I realize that the only thing more terrifying than telling him is the possibility that he already knows.
“I…” My voice cracks on the first word, and I clear my throat, furious at myself. “Under any other circumstance, I would have already accepted.”
His gaze doesn’t leave mine. “And what’s the circumstance?” he asks. “What’s the reason,” he corrects. I guess he needs me to say it plainly.
My throat won’t cooperate. My body won’t do the tidy, articulate thing it usually does when words are weapons or shields. All I have is this pounding in my chest and the ache of wanting and the sudden, clarity of what it would mean to walk away.
Grizz’s voice is even softer. “Daisy.”
I push my chair back. Not dramatically—just enough to let me easily slide free. I stand, move around the table, and he tracks me with his eyes, still not moving, still letting me choose.
I stop beside him, and for a beat I look at his face—this man who made dinner for me, who is now sitting here asking me the one question I’ve been avoiding because I’m afraid of my own answer.
His hands rest on the edge of the table, strong and still. “What’s the reason?” he says again.
My heart stutters as I lean down and kiss him. Grizz responds for a moment, and I think it’s all forgotten, but then he pulls back.
It’s only a few inches, barely anything, but the loss of his mouth—of that heat, that certainty—feels like a door slamming in my chest.
For one horrible second, I can’t breathe. My brain does what it always does when it senses danger. It starts spinning stories at high speed.
You moved too fast, Daisy. You made it weird. You made it serious. You just handed him a truth you can’t take back and now he’s going to step away and look at you like you’re—
“Daisy,” he says, my name, rough in his throat.
I freeze, my hands still on his shoulders, fingers curled into the fabric of his shirt. I try to read his face and all I see is stunned focus, like he’s taking in the entire universe at once and trying not to break under the weight of it.