“There’s something I have to tell you.”
Chapter 23
Daisy
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t bear the concerned look on his face. After that orgasm, my whole body felt like nothing more than one giant heartbeat, an angry thump caged in nervous skin.
“I need…” Air pushed from my lips. “I need to get out.”
I stood, but too quickly. Blood rushed from my head, and I swayed right into Max’s waiting arms and his muttered curse.
For the second time tonight,my husbandcarried me into the bedroom and laid me on the bed.
“Wait, I’m wet?—”
“That’s never a bad thing in this bed, Daze,” he growled and kneeled in front of me, between my legs. I shivered even though there was nothing sexual about his position now, not the way concern bled from his honeyed stare. “What’s wrong?”
“I have to tell you something,” I repeated, hating how it sounded like it was a bad thing. It wasn’t.Or was it?
I didn’t know up from down, right from left, real from fantasy anymore. All I knew was Max.All I knew was that nothing had ever felt more right.
“You can tell me anything, Daze.” He reached for my hands and curled them into his big ones.
How things would’ve been different if he’d just told me how he’d felt…and if I had done the same.But what kind of different would they have been?
Would I have been ready to face that I’d made the wrong choice? Or would I have dug my heels in and stayed with Todd? Would it have ruined Todd and Max’s friendship? Maybe I never would’ve seen Max again. Maybe we would’ve had everything—each other—sooner. Or maybe my stubbornness would’ve blown my chance to be with him, and instead of getting this dream, it all would’ve crumbled into disaster.
With each breath that shuttled in and out of my lungs, I accepted thatdisasterwould’ve been the more likely scenario. Until that night at the McCormicks’, I wasn’t ready to admit Todd was the wrong choice. I wasn’t ready to accept that Max had always been the right one.
Until that night when I was forced to.
“That night of the party…after our conversation on the deck…” I gulped. “I realized how you felt about me…what you were really trying to tell me. And I was afraid of how I wanted you too. I tried to tell myself I was wrong. That I’d imagined what you said…how you said it. I convinced myself the man I’d been dating for four years was the one I wanted to be with…not his best friend.”
“Daisy…”
“When Todd found me, he was upset too. Something with his parents. I think…I think we both just reached for each other because it was safe.”
God, I sounded so pitiful.Who would stay with someone when they wanted to be with someone else? Me. I did. Because I was so afraid of how Max made me feel, so afraid to be uncharacteristically vulnerable, and Todd…I was comfortablewith Todd’s flaws. I was safer with the devil I knew than the dashing gentleman who made my heart race.
“You thought of me the night you…got pregnant?” Max’s calm voice cracked through the room, but it was the only calm thing about him. Every other inch of him, from his pupils to his fingertips, vibrated with tension and possession.
“It’s not just that, Max.” My heart clanged around like a train off its tracks, barreling at an unsteady pace toward him. Guilt gnawed at my throat, but something stronger clawed at my throat.The truth.“I didn’t just think of you, Max. I…it was an accident, but I…” I swallowed. “I said your name.”
My confession hung like a single strand of a spiderweb spun between us, so fragile but so full of possibility.
I blinked and let my focus settle on Max kneeling between my legs. He was so still. Not carved from stone, but sculpted from wax. Soft but immovable. Except his eyes. Pure fire churned in their depths, and I watched it melt him from the inside out.
“You said…my name,” he croaked as his throat softened.
My cheeks felt like fireballs. It was the most embarrassing moment of my life. The kind of despicable act they give to playboys in movies to show how big of a dick they were. And there I was, sleeping with my boyfriend of four years, just drunk enough—just shaken up enough—to let the wrong name slip.
“Screamed.” I paused, knowing the obvious question that came next, and vomited the answer before I lost my nerve. “Todd heard me, but he was…wasted, and he passed out almost right away. I thought in the morning he’d say something, but he didn’t. I planned on saying something—how could I not?—but then I found out about the baby…”
“Daisy,” he growled, his hands suddenly framing my face. The world narrowed to the radius of his eyes. Everything I wanted to know, to feel, contained in the bolts of his gaze. “You screamed my name.”
“Yes,” I answered before I realized it wasn’t a question.
