Chapter 1 Daisy
DAISY
Nearly five years.
That's how long I've been Daisy Smith, at least on paper.
Five years of charity galas and corporate dinners and learning which fork goes where.
Five years of a reading room built for me with custom shelves and a window seat that catches the afternoon light perfectly.
Five years of falling in love with a man who doesn't know how to love back.
Tonight is the fifth anniversary of my book club at The Margin, Nell's little bookshop downtown.
I've been running a livestream from the penthouse reading room for three years now, after our Thursday meetings, chatting with followers about romance novels and characters who get happier endings than most of us deserve.
Tonight Nell kept the anniversary gathering short so I could get home for this longer stream.
"Okay, okay," I say into the camera propped on my favorite shelf, "I know you're all furious about the twist in chapter eighteen, but hear me out. If she'd just forgiven him immediately, would you have believed it?"
Comments flood the screen. My viewers are passionate and opinionated and deeply invested in fictional people's happiness, which makes them my kind of people.
DogEaredDaisy_Samantha: NO but also my heart hurts
RomanceReadRita: He groveled for like 2 pages. That's not enough groveling.
BookishBeth42: MORE GROVELING ALWAYS MORE GROVELING
I laugh, adjusting my position on the window seat.
The reading room glows warm around me: fairy lights strung along the shelves, my mother's annotated paperbacks displayed in a special section with little cards identifying them, a fuzzy blanket draped over my legs because Adam keeps the penthouse cold enough to store meat.
"The groveling discourse continues," I say.
"Here's my take: sometimes the grand gesture isn't the point.
Sometimes it's the small, consistent proof that someone has changed.
The hero in this book doesn't give her flowers or write her poetry.
He shows up. Every day. He's patient. He lets her set the pace. "
RomanceReadRita: Fine but he could ALSO give her flowers while being patient
"Valid point, Rita."
Adam has been gone a week. Singapore, then Seoul, then whatever else rich men do when they disappear for days at a time. I got two texts, one to confirm his flight landed, one to say he'd be back today. That's it. Seven days, two texts.
I'm used to it. That's the worst part. I'm so used to it that I've stopped being surprised by the distance, stopped expecting anything different.
We have good moments: rare, precious, confusing moments when he looks at me like I'm the only thing in the world that matters.
And then he leaves, and the silence stretches, and I'm left wondering if I imagined all of it.
"Who else finished the book?" I ask the camera. "Show of hands in the comments."
The responses pile up. I monitor them while chatting, years of practice making it easy to keep three conversations going simultaneously. This is what I'm good at. This is what I've built, Dog-Eared Daisy, a community of romance readers who believe in love even when real life disappoints us.
My mother would have loved this. She'd be in the comments right now, probably using too many exclamation points and calling everyone "sweetie." She'd be asking about my marriage. She never met Adam.
I miss her so much my chest aches with it sometimes. The reading room helps. Her books help. The blue ink annotations in her handwriting ("oh no honey don't fall for it" and "YES FINALLY" and "this is the good part") make me feel like she's still here, reading alongside me.
"Chapter twenty-two," I say. "Let's talk about chapter twenty-two. Because if you weren't sobbing by the end of that scene, I don't trust your emotional processing abilities."
BookishBeth42: SOBBING IS AN UNDERSTATEMENT
DogEaredDaisy_Samantha: I had to take a break and go stare at a wall
"Same, Samantha. Same."
I'm mid-sentence when the door to the reading room opens.
Adam fills the doorway like he always does, too big for normal spaces, too present to ignore.
He's in his suit, rumpled from travel, laptop bag over one shoulder.
His hair waves slightly at his temples, the result of a week without whatever product he usually uses.
He looks tired and gorgeous and my heart does the stupid flip it always does when I see him after an absence, no matter how angry I am about being left.
"I'm interrupting," he says, voice low. "I apologize."
The comments go insane.
RomanceReadRita: WHO IS THAT
BookishBeth42: OMG OMG OMG
DogEaredDaisy_Samantha: DAISY WHAT
I feel my face heat. We've never done this before, never let the two worlds collide, my online community and my private marriage. Adam has been a ghost in my content, mentioned occasionally in vague terms ("my husband travels a lot") but never shown.
"Hi," I say, stupidly. "You're back."
"I'm back." He sets down his bag, takes a step closer. "I need my wife."
The comments lose their collective minds. I don't even look at them anymore. I'm too busy watching Adam cross the room toward me, his focus absolute, the way it only is when he's decided something matters.
"I'm in the middle of a livestream," I say.
"I know."
"My channel has a hundred thousand followers. Nearly ten thousand are watching right now."
"I know." He stops in front of me. Close enough to touch. "I can wait."
But he can't. I can see it in the set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders. Whatever brought him to this room, it wasn't patience.
I turn to the camera. "Okay, my loves. I'm going to have to cut this one short."
RomanceReadRita: NOOOOOOO
BookishBeth42: BUT WE HAVEN'T FINISHED CHAPTER 22
DogEaredDaisy_Samantha: WE NEED ANSWERS ABOUT THE HOT DOORWAY MAN
"The hot doorway man is my husband," I say, "and he apparently cannot survive another five minutes without my attention. Which is actually kind of on theme for tonight's discussion, if you think about it. Small consistent proof. Showing up."
Adam makes a sound that might be amusement.
"Goodnight, everyone. Same time next Thursday. Extra groveling discussion, I promise."
I end the stream. The room goes quiet except for the soft hum of the fairy lights and my own heartbeat, which is doing things it has no business doing for a man who left me alone for a week.
"Ten thousand people," Adam says. "All watching you talk about books."
"Romance novels. Specifically about groveling."
"Groveling."
"When the hero screws up and has to earn the heroine back. It's a whole genre convention." I set my phone aside, drawing my knees up to my chest on the window seat. "You look terrible."
"Thank you."
"I mean it. Did you sleep at all?" I search his face for the exhaustion he's hiding.
"On the plane."
"That doesn't count."
"It counts enough." He's still standing there, still watching me with that intensity that makes my skin prickle. "I missed you."
The words land like stones in still water. I feel the ripples spread through me, want and anger and hope and exhaustion, all tangled together.
"You were the one gone a whole week," I say.
"I know."
"Two texts, Adam. In seven days." The number sits between us, ugly and precise.
"I know."
"That's not missing someone. That's barely remembering they exist."
He flinches. Slight, barely visible, but I've been watching him for five years. I know his tells.
"You're right," he says. "I'm sorry."
"What happened in Seoul?" I ask.
"Nothing important."
"Then why were you gone so long?"
"Meetings. Complications." He runs a hand through his hair, making the waves worse. "My father had opinions about the expansion timeline."
Victor Smith. The chairman of Meridian's board and the architect of his son's emotional constipation. Each time I see him, I like him less.
"Your father always has opinions," I say.
"Yes."
"And you always let them dictate your schedule."
"Daisy."
"I'm just saying." I unfold from the window seat, standing to face him properly. "You could say no. You could tell him the expansion can wait a week, or that you have things at home that matter. You could—"
"I know what I could do."
"Then why don't you?"
"I don't know how," he says finally. "To say no to him. To prioritize things that aren't..."
"Quantifiable?"
His mouth twists. "Yes."
"I'm not a metric, Adam. I'm your wife."
"I know that."
"Do you? Because sometimes I wonder."
He closes the distance between us in two strides and kisses me.
It's not gentle. There's five years of frustration and wanting in it, all the words we can't say translated into pressure and heat.
I grab his lapels because I need something to hold onto, and he cups my face in his hands like I'm breakable, which I am, which he keeps forgetting.
My back hits the bookshelf. Several paperbacks tumble to the floor, my mother's copies of Susan Elizabeth Phillips, annotations and all.
"Wait." I break the kiss, breathless. "The books."
Adam looks down at the fallen novels.
"Sorry," he murmurs. He crouches to pick them up, handling them carefully, checking the spines for damage. "Are they okay?"
"They're fine." I take them from him, running my fingers over the dog-eared pages. "They're tough. They've survived worse than being knocked off a shelf."
He's still crouched at my feet, looking up at me, unreadable as ever. The light catches the faint scar near his eyebrow, the one from our wedding night, when he hit his head on the doorframe trying to carry me across the threshold.
"I did miss you," he says. "Even if I'm terrible at showing it."
"You are terrible at showing it."
"I know."
"The worst, actually."
"Probably."
I set the books back on the shelf. "I missed you too. Which is annoying."
"Why annoying?"
"Because I keep telling myself not to. And then you show up in my doorway looking rumpled and exhausted and saying you need your wife, and my stupid heart forgets all the reasons it should be protecting itself."