Chapter 1
Daisy
“Gatsby…”
“Daisy, you shouldn’t have followed me.” The boy I’d just spent last night with shook his head in pure agony as he stared from me to the body on the floor. He ran his hand through his shaggy, bright blond hair, tugging on it as he turned and paced. “Daisy, you shouldn’t have followed me,” he repeated.
I looked at the body of a strange woman, a knife firmly planted deep into her chest between her breasts. Crimson red slowly soaked her crisp, white blouse.
“I’m so confused.” My words came slowly. I stepped around the dead body and tried to go to Gatsby, but he stepped back, shaking his head. I stopped short, my heart shattering.
“You need to go.”
“Gatsby, please…” I pleaded, tears coming to my eyes fast and hot, streaming down my cheeks as my chest constricted with pain. This wasn’t happening.
Gatsby’s beautiful green eyes shone with his own tearsnot yet spilling. He kept shaking his head and backing away, as if I were… a disease.
“I told you not to follow me. Now…” His eyes flicked to the body on the floor. “Now everything is fucked up.”
What did that mean? I didn’t understand what was going on. Just a few hours ago, we were in bed, sharing the most intimate of things with each other. Our bodies entangled, our hearts bleeding together, our love overflowing.
What changed?
The scene in front of us was a stark contrast to what had taken place before. It felt so far off, I was unsure now if it had happened at all. Was it all a dream? I hoped it wasn’t. Because if that was a dream, then that made this real, and I couldn’t take the look Gatsby was giving me.
Please, make this a nightmare.
“Why did you come here?” I asked. “Who is she?” I motioned to the dead woman. She didn’t look familiar. Although with me being trapped in my Nona’s home for years, it wasn’t all that of a stretch for me to not know her. This giant house, however, told me she was someone important.
“Daisy,” Gatsby groaned. “This was all wrong. It went all wrong!”
“So explain to me what was supposed to be right?”
He opened and shut his mouth, swallowing.
“Daisy, you need to go. It’s about to get bad here, and you can’t be here when it does.”
Could it get any worse? There was a dead woman lying in the middle of an oversized dining room in the heart of a giant mansion.
“Who was she?” I asked again, my voice cracking. I looked at her face, her eyes wide open in shock. She was older, maybe thirty years old to my mere eighteen. She waspretty too, with shiny red hair, pale Caucasian skin, and striking features.
Everything that I wasn’t, essentially. Was this his…
“Did you love her?” I turned to Gatsby. Had I been betrayed? Had I fallen for this boy online, run off with him the moment I was a legal adult, given him my virginity, allowed him to…
I lifted my arm, the sleeve of his oversized T-shirt I’d taken this morning sliding down to reveal the tattoo he’d given me last night.
Beautiful Little Flirt
This weekend had been a myriad of permanent decisions I couldn’t take back. All of which, up until just now, I didn’t regret. But the expression in Gatsby’s eyes as he flicked from me to the dead woman shattered me in a way I’d never thought anything could.
“Love?” He stopped pacing to look at me. He hurried over, placing his large hands on my face, cupping me gently but firmly. “Daisy, the only person I’ve ever loved is you. Don’t, for one fucking minute, think otherwise.”
I tried to look away, but he lifted my face, forcing me to stare deep into his eyes. He was so handsome, so beautiful; everything about him was perfect. I’d never seen such a gorgeous face with the soul to match.
“I didn’t know her personally. I was—” He froze, releasing my face with a sigh as he tugged at his hair again. “Daisy, you have to go. You can’t be caught here when the police show up.”
“You can’t either.” I reached for his hand and tried to tug him toward me, but he dug his feet into the floor. “Come on, you’ll come with me to New York. I’ll wipe the knife down and no one will know what happened.”
