“She moved in with the fucker I nearly killed. They found her body in the river a few months later. Ruled it an accident – said she was drunk and fell into the water or some shit like that. The guy she was with died about a month before I was released – he was driving drunk and ran his car into a tree. When I got out, I was sent here to Arkansas to live with my great-aunt.” He looked around the room. “This was her house. She left it to me when she passed a couple years later.”
“I’m sorry, Cash,” I whispered.
He shrugged. “I got off easy,” he said quietly as he looked down at Sage.
I wasn’t so sure he had, but I didn’t say that.
“Daisy,” he murmured.
I looked up to find he was looking at me.
“Why us?” he asked gently. “Why did you want to stay with us instead of Ronan?”
I felt my chest constrict as the air seemed to get knocked out of me like it had when he’d landed on top of me during the shooting in my apartment.
I could have lied and spouted some bullshit about how I felt safer with them because they’d saved my life, but doing that would cheapen what Cash had done. He’d held nothing back. He’d exposed his and Sage’s pasts, even though he’d been under no obligation to do so. He’d accepted my rush to judgement about his and Sage’s dynamic and hadstilltaken the time to explain something to me that wasn’t any of my business in the first place.
My fingers were resting on Cash’s. When I didn’t respond, he didn’t pressure me, but he did move his thumb so he could brush it back and forth over my knuckles. The move made something that was cold inside of me start to loosen and thaw. With every slide of his rough skin, I began to feel warm.
I began to feel like I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
“That,” I whispered as I motioned to his finger. He stilled briefly as his eyes dropped to where we were touching, then resumed the gentle caress.
I forced my eyes up. “Ronan would have made me feel safe, but you and Sage, you make me feel… more. And I haven’t felt much in a really long time.” I let my eyes skate over the peaceful expression on Sage’s face. “He makes me smile like no one else can. And you” – I looked Cash directly in the eye – “see me like no one else does. I don’t know how or why, but you do… you saw it that night in the motel room after the wedding and you didn’t let me run from it. And you saw it again after the shooting. You knew what I needed without needing to ask.”
I realized the way I’d said the words came out like more of a question.
“Yes,” Cash murmured.
“Why?” I asked. “You and Sage are together. I can tell how much you love each other. But that night in the motel, you included me… was it… was it just to get off or something?”
Cash’s finger briefly stopped, then suddenly he was turning my hand over. He began trailing patterns over my palm.
“No,” he finally admitted. “Sage and I have brought other people into our bed on occasion.”
I stilled at that because it was the last thing I’d been expecting tohear. That warmth inside of me began to fade and I started to pull my hand back, but Cash must have known what I was going to do because he carefully closed his fingers around mine. “You were different, Daisy. You always have been.”
I stopped trying to escape him and held his gaze as he continued.
“The people we bring to our bed – it’s not about them. It’s about heightening this thing Sage and I have between us. We bothneedthat power play in our daily lives, but in bed, it’s different. It’s a place we can push the boundary a bit. It’s almost like the other person doesn’t exist. They become a tool for our own sexual pleasure. I know how that must make us seem to you, but he and I never have and never will be saints. And we make it clear to the person joining us that it’s only about sex. That they won’t be a part of our lives and that it isn’t anything more than a one-time thing. Call it a kink, call it perverted or deviant, call it whatever you want… it works for us.”
“I wouldn’t,” I cut in before he could continue. I made sure he was looking at me before I added, “I don’t claim to completely understand, but if tonight has taught me anything, it’s that just because I don’t understand something, that doesn’t make it wrong. I’m sorry if I made it seem like that even for a second, Cash.”
He squeezed my fingers, but didn’t say anything for a moment. He released my hand so he could sift his fingers lovingly through Sage’s hair. He pushed it off Sage’s face and then stroked his cheek. “I knew after the first time he talked to you on the phone that you were different. He couldn’t stop smiling when he hung up. Said you called him on his bullshit. He loved that.”
I smiled at that because I remembered my first conversation with Sage. He’d flirted outrageously with me. If we’d been chatting via video, he would have been able to see how I’d been blushing and how much I’d really loved every moment of it.
I hadn’t known he’d been in a relationship at the time, though.
“It didn’t bother you?” I asked. “Him flirting? Even if it didn’t really mean anything?”
Cash shook his head. “At the time, I’d accepted that what he and I had was a temporary thing. Part of me had even hoped for it.”
“I don’t understand,” I said in confusion. “You love him.”
Cash smiled sadly. “I do. I love him enough to wish for him to have a normal relationship. I love him enough to give him up to someone who can give him more than I can. I want that for him – I want him to not have to give up control just so he can feel in control. But I’ve come to realize his need is like mine. It’s part of who we are. I need the control he’s willing to give me as badly as he needs to give it to me.”
I didn’t ask him why he needed it, because I already knew. He’d spent his entire childhood trying to control the outcome of the chaotic lives his parents lived.
