Chapter Six
Flint lay awake long after the house fell quiet.
Rain tapped intermittently against the windows, though the storm had weakened sometime after dusk. The fire in the parlor stove had burned low, leaving the room dim and warm. Every bruise on his body throbbed beneath fresh bandages.
Pain should have exhausted him.
The anger that rose in him wasn’t simple anymore.
A ruined, tangled thing made from hurt and guilt and bewilderment.
Part of him still wanted to demand how she could ever believe blindness would send him running.
Another part of him wondered whether Daisy had recognized his flaws long before he did.
Maybe she'd already seen the weakness in him. The restlessness. The kind of man Amos Grady found useful. Maybe Daisy had simply realized it sooner.
Flint scrubbed a hand over his face and immediately regretted the movement when pain pulled sharply through his side.
Even breathing felt like work.
He stared toward the dark hallway.
The house had gone mostly still an hour ago.
Nathan upstairs. Daisy likely in her room beyond the hall.
Yet he remained aware of her anyway. The faint scent of lavender lingered in the blankets she'd probably folded herself.
The careful order of the room around him.
The entire house reflected the life Daisy had built for herself: organized, deliberate, and stubbornly independent.
Daisy had built this life without him.
Once, Daisy had talked endlessly about adventure, travel, and a loud house full of family.
Now she moved through carefully measured rooms by memory and touch, independent in ways that made Flint feel clumsy by comparison.
He heard footsteps at last.
Soft and measured, they crossed the hallway.
Daisy.
Flint closed his eyes automatically before realizing how foolish that was. He heard her pause at the doorway. Listening. Then she crossed the room quietly toward the stove.
The poker scraped against the grate. Coals crackled brighter. Warmth strengthened faintly through the room.
Flint watched her through lowered lashes.
She wore a dark robe tonight, and her pale hair, loosely braided, hung over one shoulder. Firelight softened her features, gold and amber as she crouched carefully near the stove.
The sight of her still hit him too easily. He hated that nothing, not time, not bitterness, not Amos Grady’s men leaving him half dead in an alley, had managed to change it.
Daisy straightened slowly and turned toward the sofa. Not toward him precisely. Past him. That still hit Flint like a punch to the ribs every time he noticed.
He should say something.
Instead, he listened as she moved closer. Her breathing remained calm, but he recognized tension in the careful way she held herself. Daisy had always gone very still when upset. Like a deer hearing wolves too near the fence line.
She stopped beside the sofa. For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then quietly, “Nathan said your fever broke.”
Flint opened his eyes fully. Daisy didn't startle. Perhaps she'd sensed he was awake already.
“Seems I’m difficult to kill,” he muttered.
Pain flickered across her face at that. She reached toward the table beside him. Her fingers found the medicine bottle immediately. “You should take this.”
Flint watched her uncork it with practiced ease. “So, you got sick?”
Daisy stilled. “I am… fine.”
“Three years ago,” he snapped back. “You were sick before you lost your sight?”
The same three years that she had been missing from his life, without explanation.
Daisy’s hand tightened around the bottle.
For a moment, Flint thought she might leave without answering. Instead, she said quietly, “Yes. The fever caused the loss of vision.”
“And Nathan never sent for me.”
Daisy lifted her chin slightly. “I asked him not to.”
Anger flashed through Flint instantly. “You had no right.”
Her expression hardened at once. “It was my illness.”
“You should’ve told me.”
“So, you could do what?”
The sharpness in her voice stopped him.
Daisy set the medicine bottle carefully on the table before continuing, quieter now but no less fierce.
“Marry me out of obligation?”
Flint stared at her as though she had struck him. He stared at her, wondering if she realized what she had done to him. How her decision had impacted him and his life.
“Is that truly what you think of me?” The words came rough, scraped raw from somewhere deep inside him. “After everything between us?”
Daisy laughed once, bitter and soft. “I knew you would come. I knew you'd stay. I knew you'd tell me blindness didn't matter.”
“Because it wouldn't have.”
The words escaped before he could stop them.
Daisy's breath caught. “That's exactly why I couldn't tell you. I didn’t want your life put on hold for me.”
He wanted to argue. Wanted to tell her she was wrong. That blindness would never have mattered. That he loved her enough to build a life around any hardship if it meant having her beside him.
But another truth rose before he could speak: Would he have stayed?
Yes. Without question. And Daisy had known it.
Flint looked away sharply. Understanding her reasoning didn't lessen the hurt.
He laughed bitterly. “Goodness sake.” He pushed a hand through his hair, frustration burning hot beneath his skin. “You know what those years did to me?”
Daisy spoke carefully now, every word measured. “I know I hurt you.”
“That’s a mighty interesting way of putting it.”
“And what would you prefer?” Daisy snapped suddenly. “That I apologize for surviving?”
The force in her voice stunned him silent.
Daisy’s breathing quickened slightly. “Do you think blindness frightened me less because it happened to me instead of you?”
“No.”
“You speak as though I calmly made some cruel little decision.” Her hands were clenched at her sides now.
“I woke up unable to see my own brother’s face.
Unable to walk through my own house without bruising myself against furniture.
I couldn't even pour tea without spilling it.” Her voice shook once before steadying again.
“And through all of that, you expected me to think about romance?”
Flint’s anger faltered.
He pictured Daisy frightened and trapped in darkness while he stood outside Nathan’s office demanding answers neither of them was brave enough to give.
Guilt slid sharply through him. But hurt remained, too.
“You should’ve trusted me.”
Daisy’s expression softened then, not with pity exactly, but sorrow. “That was precisely the problem.”
Flint looked at her sharply.
Daisy turned slightly away from him, fingers grabbing the folds of her robe. “I trusted you enough to know you would stay.”
The quiet honesty of it knocked the breath from him harder than any blow Amos’s men had landed.
For one suspended moment, neither of them moved.
Flint remembered Daisy at twenty-three, standing beneath cottonwoods, sunlight tangled in her hair, as she told him she feared becoming trapped in an unhappy life more than anything else.
Now, he finally understood. She'd believed his loving her would trap him.
“You fool woman,” he said hoarsely.
Daisy laughed softly then, though tears seemed to live beneath the sound. “Yes.”
Pain twisted through Flint’s chest
He wanted to reach for her. He wanted to shake her. He wanted to drag back every wasted year between them and demand an explanation for why neither of them had been brave enough to speak honestly before it was too late.
Then a man’s voice drifted faintly from the front hallway. “Miss Whitmore?”
Flint instantly froze.
Every instinct sharpened at once.
He shoved himself upright before thought could catch up.
Pain exploded through his ribs violently enough to blacken the edges of his vision, but adrenaline drove him forward anyway.
Daisy startled. “Flint...”
“Who’s here?”
Flint swung his legs off the sofa.
The room lurched sickeningly. He caught himself against the table before hitting the floor outright. Pain ripped through his side so sharply he nearly blacked out.
Daisy moved instantly toward him. “Flint!”
“Stay back.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Daisy shook her head.
The hallway voice came again, closer now. “Miss Whitmore? Nathan said...”
Flint’s hand automatically reached toward where his gun should have been.
Of course, it was gone.
Panic and fury collided hot beneath his ribs.
“Who is he?” he demanded.
Daisy caught his arm before he could force himself fully upright. Her grip startled him. “Sit down before you tear your stitches open.”
“I asked who he is.”
“Julian Mercer. A merchant my brother works with.”
The name meant nothing to Flint. He tried to pull away from her hold. Big mistake. The room spun violently.
His knees nearly buckled outright. Daisy caught him harder this time, one arm braced around his waist. “You need to lie down.”
The sound of genuine fear in her voice finally cut through his stubbornness. He sagged slightly before he could stop himself. Humiliation burned through him instantly.
“I’m fine.”
“You are absolutely not fine.”
He could feel her now, close enough for lavender and beeswax to surround him completely. Her hand pressed firmly against his side, steadying him while he fought not to collapse like a fool.
Too close.
Every memory between them rose viciously alive all at once.
Daisy laughing breathlessly after he stole a kiss behind the stables. Daisy reading aloud to the Callahans while Flint listened. Daisy whispering someday against his mouth like a promise.
Flint swallowed hard.
Her face tilted upward toward his, though her unfocused eyes rested somewhere near his throat rather than his face. That hurt too. Everything about this hurt.
“You shouldn’t move that fast,” Daisy murmured.
Her voice had gone soft again. Flint forced himself to step back. Immediately, pain punished him for it.
Daisy tightened her grip automatically before he could fall. The movement pulled them even closer.
Flint felt the warmth of her body against his. The slight tremor in her breathing. The familiar scent that still lived in his memory after three years. And suddenly he understood something he'd been avoiding since waking in this house.
Daisy Whitmore had built an entire life without him.
This home. This business. This careful confidence moving through darkness. And perhaps Julian Mercer fit somewhere inside that life now, too.
A respectable merchant with calm manners and clean hands. A man who hadn't spent years collecting bruises and sins under Amos Grady’s employment.
Jealousy hit Flint so fast and hard, it shocked him.
Ridiculous.
He had no claim on her anymore.
Flint hated how quickly jealousy rose at the thought of this Julian sitting beside Daisy in this house. Humiliation burned through him hotter than fever ever had.
Daisy remained beside the sofa, but the distance between them still felt enormous.
Still impossibly far away.