Chapter 7
Cade
“Oh shit.” I grimaced. “Are you crying?”
“No.” Daria turned away.
I reached out and cupped her chin, turning her to face me. Fat tears streamed down her cheeks. I couldn’t help but crack a smile. “You’re not crying, huh?”
“Shut up, jerk. I got something in my eye.”
I’d never thought it would be possible to laugh while talking about Everly’s death, but somehow Daria had done it. I chuckled. “Must be a bucket of water you got in there.”
She sniffled and swiped at her cheeks. “I’m so sorry, Cade. I shouldn’t have pushed you on the subject. I…I just didn’t think…”
“It’s okay. It was two years ago. She died in a car accident. A resident doctor who had just worked a twenty-four-hour shift fell asleep at the wheel on his way home. His car swerved into oncoming traffic, and he hit her head on. He didn’t make it either.”
“Oh, God. That’s horrible.” Daria kept shaking her head. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you.” I fell silent. But for a change, it wasn’t because I was brooding over Everly—though talking about her would always leave a hollow feeling in my chest. This time I was debating coming clean about one of the reasons Daria had irked me from the first moment we’d met.
She’d been honest about her asshole ex, so I figured I owed her some truth.
Plus, I was pretty buzzed. “Everly might have something to do with the reason I’ve been a dick to you. ”
Daria used the backs of her hands to dry her cheeks. “I don’t understand.”
“I don’t dream every night. Well, at least I don’t remember it, if I do.
But a few times a year, I wake up after a really vivid dream.
For more than eighteen months after Everly died, the dreams were always about her.
Sometimes it would be a memory. I’d dream about something we did together.
Other times it would be random shit my brain made up—like I’d be sitting in a movie theater watching a movie and she’d be the actress in it, even though she wasn’t an actress. But that changed when I met you.”
“You stopped dreaming about her?”
I swallowed and looked into Daria’s eyes. “I started dreaming about you.”
Her jaw dropped open.
I nodded. “Yeah. I had a lot of guilt about that. So I might’ve taken it out on you.”
“What were the dreams about?”
“Usually we were arguing.”
She smiled. “Shocker.”
“But then we’d wind up…you know.”
Daria’s eyes widened. “Cade McMahon, are you saying you had dirty dreams about me?”
I frowned. I wasn’t proud of it. “I had to shut you the hell up somehow.”
Daria was quiet for a long time. Eventually, she picked up her half-full glass of wine and chugged it back in one long gulp. “Hopefully I won’t remember I admitted this tomorrow,” she said. “But here goes… I sometimes use you as my fantasy when I…you know.”
It was my turn to be shocked as shit. “Are you saying you masturbate to thoughts of me?”
She buried her face in her hands. “I can’t believe I told you that.”
This conversation had taken a turn, one that had me growing hard as fuck.
It was totally inappropriate, but I couldn’t help it.
The thought of her touching herself while thinking of me, rubbing her fingers over her glistening clit, pushing them inside while moaning my name.
Fuck. Me. I dragged a hand through my hair. “That’s fucking hot, Daria.”
“What the hell is wrong with us?” she asked. “We spew venom at each other all day at work, and then go home and do that?”
“I don’t know. I guess sometimes all that pent-up anger spills out in ways you don’t expect. Especially when the other person is freaking gorgeous.”
Daria gasped. “You think I’m attractive?”
“We work in a shop with a wall of mirrors, Red. That can’t come as a surprise to you.”
She looked down, shaking her head. “I used to like my appearance, but I think Derek made me doubt myself.”
“Because he got with your friend?”
“That and…I’m pretty sure he was embarrassed of me.”
Anger coursed through my veins. “What the fuck? Why would he be embarrassed of you?”
“He’s an attorney at some snobby law firm where everyone graduated from Columbia, Yale, or Harvard.
When we first started dating, he seemed attracted to me.
But whenever we’d go to one of his work functions, he’d tell me to wear long sleeves.
” She sighed. “My friend Sharon, who he’s marrying next week, doesn’t have any tattoos or piercings.
I think she has cashmere sweater sets in every color. She’s really pretty.”
“Sharon sounds like a boring mouse he’ll be cheating on by their first anniversary.”
Daria smiled sadly. “Thank you for saying that.”
“I’m not just saying it to make you feel good, Daria. I’m being honest. You’re fucking gorgeous—from the top of your head to the tips of your toes. Your body is killer, and your face looks like an angel. Then you add all that sexy-as-fuck ink on top, and you’re like every man’s wet dream.”
“Except Derek, apparently.”
“Fuck Derek! He’s a moron. Any man who tells his woman to cover her ink because she might not fit in with his suit-wearing coworkers isn’t a man at all. He’s an insecure follower.”
Daria still didn’t look like she was getting it. So I slipped two fingers under her chin and lifted until our eyes met. “The problem in your last relationship wasn’t you, sweetheart. It was him. Any man would be lucky to have you.”
Her eyes roamed over my face. Then she did the last thing in the world I expected. She smashed her lips to mine…