She didn’t have to say it. I could tell she didn’t want to talk about Todd or the wedding or anything about today. She wanted to escape, and I didn’t blame her.
Hell, if I were her, I’d have gone to the nearest liquor store and purchased the largest bottle of alcohol I could find and escaped right into it. Obviously, pregnancy took that option off the table for her, though I doubted she would’ve chosen it even if there was no baby. Daisy had never been a big drinker. Sometimes, I wondered if she was always like that or if Todd’s relationship with alcohol made her that way. God knew it certainly had shaped me.
The last time—the only time—I had the urge to drink was the night Todd told me Daisy was pregnant. He’d already drunk half the bottle of Tito’s by the time he made it to my apartment in Stonebar. He’d been spiraling. Pacing and panicking that he wasn’t ready to be a father. That his parents hadn’t approved of Daisy. That they were going to kill him for knocking her up.
As I stood there and listened, all I wanted to do was knock him out for being such a damn idiot. For not seeing how fucking lucky he was to have Daisy by his side. To know that she wanted to have a baby, a family with him.For not seeing that his nightmare was my dream.
Before I did something stupid, I forced two bottles of water into him and told him in no uncertain terms that he needed to grow up. He needed to stop taking Daisy for granted because she was the very best person in his life and would do far more for him than his parents ever would. And then I drove him back to Portland, told him to make this right, and kicked him out of my car.
It was a good thing I’d dumped out the rest of the vodka before we left. Otherwise, I would’ve finished my friend’s bottle.
“You and me both,” I admitted. “I think when I saw those first two vans right after we had them wrapped, that was when it finally hit me that this was real. That my business—my dream—was real.”
I felt Daisy look at me, but my eyes kept to the road.
“It was real before that.”
My mouth kicked up on one side. “I guess it didn’t feel that way when I was delivering flowers out of one of my dad’s old farm trucks.”
“I think when you want something for so long, it’s easier to pretend it’s not real than it is to accept you have something to lose.”
My foot hit the brake just a little too hard for the approaching stop sign, and I mumbled an apology, sliding my gaze to her. She stared out the window, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth, the pink skin blanched white.
My hand locked on the wheel. “Daze?—”
“Where’s our first stop?” she asked with a hitch in her voice.
I hesitated for a second, but now wasn’t the time to probe. Not with what she was going through.Fucking hell, Todd.I roughly grabbed my phone from the cupholder and scanned the directions on the screen. “Beach house just north of Stonebar.” I hit my blinker, phone still in hand.
“Here. Let me.” Daisy made agimmemotion with her fingers. “I can give you directions.”
The phone could speak them to me too,I thought, but quickly realized she wanted the task—a distractionfrom the day that had thrown her life into chaos.
“All right. Where to?”
“Turn left here, and then in four miles, make another left onto Pine Road.”
Chapter 5
Max
“Wow.” Daisy’s eyes bugged at the cedar-planked mansion perched at the end of the long drive.
The house—with its sprawling grounds, tennis court, and separate six-car garage—overlooked a particularly scenic part of the coastal bluff. On a clear day like today, not only could you see the harbor in town, but also the wink of the lighthouse in Friendship.
“Yeah,” I murmured, holding back that Todd’s parents’ seaside home further toward Portland was at least twice the size. If the owners of this house were even half as stuck up as the McCormicks, I was about to get my ass reamed out for this delivery being over three hours late.
I parked the van next to the line of three Mercedes sedans sitting out front and unclipped my seat belt. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll come with you.”
My hand froze on the doorknob. “You don’t have to do that, Daze. I’ll just be?—”
“It’ll be harder for them to give a pregnant woman a hard time about a late delivery.”
My eyes narrowed.She had a point.“Okay.”
Once more, I rounded the front of the vehicle to open her door and help her out. It was the third time this morning I’d held her hand, and while I’d long been branded by the bolt of heat from her touch, there was no preparing for the ache that slammed into the center of my chest every time I had to let her go.
