46. Daisy
***Daisy***
It took me a second to place the annoying voice breaking through my haze of lust. As soon as I did, however, every last bit of my arousal died instantly.
It was Tyler. At first, I was just irritated.
Whatever had been happening with Max, Flynn, and Wes was good, really good.
It was just going to get better, too. I’d let my guard down, decided I was brave enough to dive into whatever relationship I could have with them, and shaved every last inch of my body.
None of that mattered with Tyler standing just inside the kitchen doorway with my little sister standing beside him.
They both looked like they’d been through hell.
Gone was the couple from Brooke’s social media posts.
Instead, I was staring at two people who looked like extras from a natural disaster movie.
Haggard was the word that came to mind. Tyler needed a haircut, a shower, and a change of clothes.
I could smell him from where I was still straddling Flynn.
Brooke’s hair was oily and her makeup was smeared and sweated off until her skin looked patchy and red and her eyes were bloodshot with black mascara forming a ring around them.
Her normally expensive wardrobe had been replaced with clothing from a cheap tourist shop.
Instead of letting me go, Flynn curled his hands around to my ass and squeezed. “You should’ve called before just stopping by.”
My brain kicked into gear and I whispered to Flynn to let me down.
Instead of putting me on my own two feet, he and Max worked together to put me on the island between them with Wes standing in front of me.
I felt like I was on display like a queen being guarded by her most trusted guards.
It was embarrassing but I couldn’t lie and say it didn’t make me feel special.
“Called before just stopping by? Are you serious? What the fuck, Flynn? This is my house!” Tyler was bright red and shaking, so angry with what was happening in front of him that I was slightly concerned about his health. “Why are you here, Daisy? Are you fucking my brother?”
For some reason, him speaking directly to me was startling. I flinched and gripped the counter edge hard. I opened my mouth to say something, what I was going to say, I had no idea, but Wes spoke before I could.
“Watch your mouth, Tyler.” Stepping even closer to me, Wes reached back and put his hand on my knee. “Daisy is staying here this summer. She’s here because we want her here.”
“I’m not talking to you! I’m talking to my girlfriend!” Tyler took two steps forward, fists clenched at his sides. “You’re fucking my brothers. All that bullshit good girl shit and you’re fucking my brothers behind my back.”
Hot anger and shame hit me hard. I leaned into the anger as much as I could. “I’m not your girlfriend, Tyler. You’re with my little sister. Remember? You left me at the beginning of the summer via text message. Ringing any bells?”
“We didn’t break up! I just needed a break. And I took one. A short one! You had to know I was coming back, Daisy! You’re crazy about me. How could you do this?”
Something twisted inside my chest. Not love, but the thing I’d always dressed as love, obligation. I could feel that old familiar pull to keep Tyler happy but instead of answering it, I cut the tie completely. “We broke up. You have my sister. I’ve moved on. I want nothing to do with you.”
He tugged at his hair. “This isn’t happening. You’re a whore! You-”
“Enough!” Wes’ voice was loud enough that even I flinched.
“You’re not going to come in here and talk to Daisy like that.
This isn’t your house, Tyler. It belongs to me, Flynn, and Max.
I’ve let you stay here and treat it like a halfway house for years but if you can’t respect Daisy, and you clearly can’t, you’re not welcome here. ”
A wave of shock went around the room. Max and Flynn’s surprise quickly turned into matching looks of pride.
My own shock had stunned me stupid. He was drawing a line that he wouldn’t allow Tyler to cross, for me.
Brooke took a step backwards as Tyler’s mouth flopped open and closed.
He was searching for a response to his oldest brother but it was clear he hadn’t expected Wes to come at him so hard.
Max stepped closer to me and gripped the back of my neck, looking at me with concern and warmth in his pretty eyes. “You don’t have to stay for this. There’s nothing that says you have to hear him out.”
Tyler found his voice. “What the fuck? Why are you touching her like that, Max? Why were you kissing her, Wes? And she was straddling you, Flynn. What… What the fuck is going on?”
Flynn leaned back against the island next to me, taking his sweet time like Tyler had asked him about the weather. “Exactly what it looks like.”
“Daisy’s with us.” Wes said and then smiled proudly. “All three of us.”
Max didn’t say anything at all. He just left his hand right where it was, warm on the back of my neck, in full view of Tyler and everybody.
I watched my ex-boyfriend try to process what was happening and fail.
His mouth opened, closed, opened again. For three years I’d twisted myself into knots to keep that face happy, and now I couldn’t remember why.
Somewhere under the mortification of being caught mid-straddle by my ex, a tiny, wildly inappropriate flare of pride lit up in my chest. They weren’t hiding me.
Nobody was scrambling for their shirt or a cover story.
“That’s disgusting,” Tyler finally managed. “You’re passing her around like a party favor and she’s letting you. Mom would be rolling in her grave.”
“Careful how you speak about our woman. If you weren’t our brother I’d destroy you right now.” Max growled. Tyler’s eyes flicked to him and he took a half step back, which was the smartest thing he’d done since walking in.
That was when Brooke stopped shrinking by the doorway and stepped forward, and I watched my little sister change costumes right in front of me.
Her bloodshot eyes went soft. Her mouth that had been hanging open in disgust transformed into gentle, wounded concern.
I knew the voice she was going to use before she even used it.
It was the one she pulled out on Dad every time the credit card bill came.
“Daisy.” She said my name like I was standing on a ledge about to jump. “Sweetie. I know you’re mad at me, and you have every right to be. But somebody who actually loves you needs to say this out loud.”
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I said.
But of course she did. “Wes.” She turned those big wet eyes on him. “Everybody on this lake knows you’ll never love anybody but Sarah. It’s actually beautiful, in a sad way. But Daisy’s been through enough without being the first warm body you grabbed after your wife died.”
The kitchen went so quiet I could hear the burner ticking under the ruined chicken.
“You don’t say her name.” Wes didn’t yell but his voice came out so flat and cold it even scared me. His hand pressed harder against my knee like he could hold both of us together with it. “You don’t know the first thing about my wife or about what Daisy is to me.”
He was right, and I believed him, and it didn’t matter, because the arrow was already in. I’d spent all summer cooking in Sarah’s kitchen, sleeping down the hall from Sarah’s photos, loving Sarah’s daughter. Brooke hadn’t invented that fear. She’d just found it lying around and picked it back up.
Tyler smelled blood and got his swagger back.
“And Max.” He laughed, ugly. “Come on, Daisy, you’ve heard him say it.
Max doesn’t love things, he just gets addicted to them and throws them away once they make him lose control.
Everything he can’t control, he quits. Booze, drugs, people.
The second you cost him that precious control of his, you’ll be one more thing he used to do. ”
Max’s hand never moved from me; he actually held onto me tighter. But I remembered him in the ice cream shop telling me I was a threat to his control and he couldn’t have that, in almost exactly those words, and my stomach dropped like a stone off the dock.
“You’ve been gone for a long time, Tyler.” Max’s voice stayed level. “You don’t know me anymore. You never did.”
“And Flynn.” Brooke again, soft as powdered sugar. She looked at him almost pityingly. “Flynn’s so much fun. Ask anybody in town how long the fun lasts, though. Ask Charlie’s mom.”
Flynn laughed, and he slung his arm around my shoulders like she’d told a good joke. “You’ve been in Sweetwater for ten minutes and you’re an expert on my life. That’s impressive, Brooke.”
“What, you don’t want to tell my sister how you talked to me the last time I was here?” Brooke asked coyly.
“You’re a fucking joke.” Flynn shook his head. But he didn’t explain. He laughed and he held me and he didn’t say one word about it, and that little silence slid under my skin like a splinter.
“You’re all missing the point.” Tyler stepped forward again, and this time he looked straight at me, and I knew whatever came next was going to be the real one, because three years is long enough for a manipulative man to learn where everything is hidden.
“They don’t love you, Daisy. They love what you do.
The cooking. The cleaning. The free nanny for their kids.
The letting them put their dick in you whenever and wherever they want it.
You’re the help, baby. You let them play house all summer and it felt like a family, but summer ends.
And when it does, they’re going to figure out what I figured out.
Being needed is the only thing you’ve ever had to offer anybody. ”
Nobody said anything for a second. It was the truest-sounding lie I’d ever heard, and I knew it was true-sounding because it was the exact sentence I’d been saying to myself since I was seven years old, carrying trays at my parents’ parties, being loved for a living. Then the kitchen exploded.
Wes came around the island so fast his stool went over.
Flynn’s arm left my shoulders and his voice turned into a guttural scream calling out Tyler’s name.
Max moved in front of me like a wall going up, and all three of them were talking over each other, and Tyler was shouting back, and Brooke was saying “we’re just worried about her” in that syrup voice, and the burnt chicken smoke hung over all of it like the room itself was on fire.
“Stop.” My voice came out smaller than I wanted, so I said it again. “Stop. Everyone.”
They stopped. All five of them turned to look at me, and I slid down off the island so I was standing on my own two feet.
“I’m not doing this bullshit tonight. I’m not listening to your lies.
” I looked at Tyler, then at Brooke, and I kept my voice level even though everything under it was shaking.
“You don’t get to walk into this kitchen and tell me what I am.
I’m done for tonight. You’re leaving now.
If I decide I have anything to say to either of you, I’ll let you know.
That’s it. That’s the whole conversation. ”
Tyler’s jaw worked. He was searching for a way to land one more jab and the boundary gave him nothing to grab.
So on his way to the door he grabbed the only thing he had left.
“This isn’t over. I’ll be back in the morning, Wes.
We’re going to talk about what Dad would think of you cutting me off.
We’re going to talk about this family’s money. ”
Brooke stopped in the doorway, close enough that I could smell her airport perfume, and put her hand over her heart.
“I really do love you, Daise. I just don’t want to watch you get hurt when this little arrangement ends.
” Then she followed Tyler out into the dark, and the screen door clapped shut behind them.
The second the door closed, all three men turned to me at once, and I watched them shift out of war mode and into something gentler, and I couldn’t take it.
That was the terrible thing. An hour ago I would’ve given anything to be handled by those six hands, and now every soft thing they were about to say had to come through the filter Tyler had installed on his way out.
They need you. That’s not the same thing as being loved.
I knew it was poison. I drank it anyway.
“Daisy.” Wes reached for me.
“I need tonight.” I stepped back before his hand could land, and I watched it cost him something to let me. “I’m okay. I just need to be by myself for a little while. Please.”
I was almost out of the kitchen when Max spoke behind me, quiet, not moving from where he stood.
“Needing you and wanting you aren’t the same thing, Daisy. We know the difference. So do you.”
I couldn’t answer him. If I’d opened my mouth right then, everything would have come out of it and I was too emotionally wrecked already.
I ran up the stairs, locked myself in my bedroom, and slid under the blanket, wishing that Hank was with me.