She shot him a look. “You know what I mean.”
He sighed. “I’m not sending you to the frontline war, Daisy. I’m giving you an opportunity. Is it without risk? No. But if you were my daughter, I’d have no qualms about sending you.”
She’d always known Russell as the man who stayed late at work to avoid his parental duties. His words should’ve fallen flat, but for some reason, they didn’t.
The pull of it all, the temptation of something new, something unpredictable, overcame the voice inside her that told her to run in the opposite direction. And before she knew it, she was saying yes.
Daisy had never told anyone about Logan until the day before she went to Afghanistan. Morbidly, she felt it was better to explain to someone now in case the unthinkable happened and he took it upon himself to show up to her funeral.
It felt strange, almost embarrassing, to admit that she’d developed feelings for someone she’d only shared a handful of hours with. Stranger still, to confess that she thought about him constantly. Whether she was stuck in traffic, driving to work, or even standing in line at the supermarket, he lingered in hermind. She would see strangers on the street, and for a split second, the way they moved, the tilt of their head, would send her heart into a frantic lurch. He was everywhere, yet nowhere at all, and it left Daisy feeling like a love-sick millennial teenager pining over a man she’d met in some AOL chatroom.
It was as if she was caught between two worlds: one where he was simply a passing stranger, and another where he was someone she was desperately missing, someone who had never truly been hers.
“Wait, who is this guy?” Edie had asked as Daisy recounted their story.
“He’s some…” Daisy hesitated, rubbing the back of her neck, trying to recall the details. When they met, he’d just graduated from Cambridge, but she couldn’t remember what discipline. “He’s a brain doctor of sorts.”
“And you interviewed him?” Edie raised an eyebrow.
Daisy nodded, her fingers idly tracing the edge of her glass. “A while ago.”
Edie took a moment to consider, tapping her fingers lightly against the table. “And since then?”
“We’ve had these…I don’t know…weird moments, and we email.”
“You email?”
“Oh, stop it!” Daisy said with a laugh, giving her a light-hearted shove. “I actually quite like it.” She hesitated for a moment, then asked, “Do you believe in soul mates?”
“Is that a loaded question?”
“No! I mean, kind of.” Daisy laughed again, this time covering her face with both hands.
“Do I believe in soul mates?” Edie repeated, her voice soft as she seemed to drift into her own thoughts. “Yeah, I do. It certainly was the case for my parents. They knew within a day ofmeeting each other that it was the real thing. Me? I haven’t been so blessed.”
Daisy raised an eyebrow and smirked. “Oh, come on. Look at you and Alec.”
Edie’s shoulders tensed, and her lips pressed into a thin line. “I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about you. It sounds…complicated.”
Daisy felt her chest tighten, unsure how to read Edie’s reaction. She exhaled long and slow, her hands folding nervously in her lap. “It is,” she admitted with a resigned sigh. “But none of that matters now. He’s married—”
“He’s married?” Edie’s voice cut through, sharp and disbelieving, her eyes wide. “Oh, Daze, don’t be that girl. Don’t go down that road. You don’t want to be the other woman.”
“I’m not,” Daisy said quickly. “We haven’t spoken in forever, it’s just—”
“Probably best to keep it that way, pet,” Edie interrupted. She placed a hand over Daisy’s, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “You never know; you might find yourself some muscled military lad.”
Little did she know, Edie was right.
X
LOGAN
A year into his marriage, Logan found himself staring at the ceiling more often than he wanted to admit. He and Kate had started arguing over petty things: who had loaded the dishwasher, how much they were spending on eating out. They hadn’t been intimate since their honeymoon in Spain, and Logan was becoming increasingly uncomfortable with her growing attachment to a new colleague at work.
She would ask him if he was still happy with her, and he dreaded facing the truth—he never really had been. There was some physical attraction and a semblance of friendship, but she didn’t set his soul on fire. They had slipped into a miserable routine, like two ships adrift in an endless night, and by thetime his thirty-third birthday arrived, he couldn’t recall a single happy moment from the year before.
Despite their troubles, Kate had organised a birthday dinner for him with friends in Soho. It should’ve been a happy evening, and it could’ve been until Kate decided to share with the group information he was oblivious to.
