On the car ride home, the air is tense with something I can’t name.
And when we arrive back at the mansion, I lift her in my arms, and she winds herself around me. When we’re in her bedroom, I place her gently on the mattress and stand over her.
I’ve grown addicted to carrying her around. With how she buries her face in my shirt. And how I lean my head down to her hair to see if she still smells like the perfume I first bought her so long ago.
I tell myself that it’s no big deal she still wears the perfume. That it has nothing to do with me. She probably just likes the scent, or it’s a habit.
But somehow, it matters.
I clear my throat. “If that’s all you need, I’ll let Archie out and go to bed.”
Archie sits at my feet, having followed us into Daisy’s room.
“Stay,” she says in a whisper.
I couldn’t have heard her right.
She looks like an angel with her golden curls tumbling around her. Her eyes are the deepest blue. But they aren’t twinkling in mischief like usual. She’s uncharacteristically serious.
“Stay,” she repeats. Clearly. With certainty.
Everything in my body is tense, on high alert.
She rolls over, so she’s on her side, head resting on one hand. She’s so damn beautiful. I don’t see her as the girl she was.
She’s all woman now.
Over the last few weeks, she’s driven me mad with her flirtatious sass. But now, she watches me with zero artifice. There’s only raw vulnerability, bare of her normal masks and defenses.
Daisy, with her brash confidence, is a force. But this version of her hollows me out. I have a driving need to peel back the layers and explore who she is without the barriers she puts up when everything else is stripped away.
This is why staying here, together, is a bad idea.
“I can’t,” I say raggedly.
“Why?”
“Chase—”
“I love my brother. But he has nothing to do with us. I’m not sixteen anymore. I’m twenty-six. Besides, I’m sure he knows how I feel—” She stops and looks down.
“He’s one of my best friends, Daisy, and I have damn few true ones. He would kill me, deservedly, if something were to happen between us.”
“Why?” she repeats.
“Because he knows I don’t do relationships. I don’t want to lose a decade of friendship—his or yours—over a one-night thing.”
She makes a small shift back as if she’s been struck. It’s subtle, but I see it. The way her clear gaze shutters. I want to take the words back as soon as I say them, just to restore her soft eyes and gentle smile.
But I can’t, because my words, though harsh, are true. It doesn’t matter that I want her with everything in me. That I don’t just see her as Chase’s little sister. I already caused her enough pain ten years ago. I led her on and hurt her. I refuse to make the same mistake again.
Daisy gets under my skin. Makes me forget how vulnerable she is. Back then, I hadn’t realized how hard she’d fallen for me until it was too late. I loved being with her, and it was a novelty for a girl to see me for me and not as some superstar. She made me laugh, teased me out of my bad moods, and had a unique ability to find joy in simple things, a quality I’d lost over the years of fame and living in the rarefied world of celebrity.
I was blind, selfish. And I ended up hurting her worse than I could have ever realized. My rejection started a chain reaction that almost ended her life.
I can’t let that happen again.
“Do you still see me as some kid?”
