I shook my head. “I knew you. I don’t know you anymore, though. It’s like you said. A lot can change in six years. You sure have. So have I. You don’t know me at all, Kash. And I certainly don’t know you. So try again. Why should I believe you?”
He looked away from me. Resolve spread over his profile, a thick, dead sort of resolve.
“I’m not going to argue with you, Daisy,” he said blankly. “But I am going to ask you for a favor. Just one, and then I’ll leave you alone forever if that’s what you really want.”
I scoffed and shook my head. “You are unbelievable. What favor?”
He looked back at me, eyes burning. “I want to say goodbye to Hunter.”
Chapter 7
That familiar loneliness threatened to swallow me whole, even with Daisy walking beside me. I used to believe that my life was ours - hers, mine, and Hunter’s. Now that she’d made it clear I’d be facing the future alone, every breath I inhaled smelled like a prison cell and my legs were heavy with phantom shackles.
I knew I could convince her if I tried, but I didn’t want to try. It kind of defeated the purpose, didn’t it? Relationships like ours were supposed to be ride or die. If the same story was told about her, I wouldn’t have believed it for a second. I would have fought for her for decades, even if I didn’t have all the information. Even if she didn’t return my letters. Even if she didn’t call. Because I knew her heart. I thought she knew mine.
She stopped outside the cemetery gates and gestured. “There. Say goodbye.”
Rows and rows of dull white teeth rose up out of the ground, stretching out under the moonlight. The gate was locked, but the fence was short and easy to climb. Nostalgia washed over me, a soothing haze over my raw feelings.
“Remember that one Halloween? I think I was sixteen, so you two must have been fifteen.”
“Nope,” she said shortly. “Get your goodbyes over with.”
Shut down. Fine. “Which row is he in?”
“You aren’t going in there! It’s late.”
I laughed, but it came out bitter as it should have because, well…because it was bitter. “I’m a criminal, remember? Time means nothing to me. Which row?”
“What are you going to do if I tell you?”
God, she was dead set on seeing me as the villain, wasn’t she? I wanted to shake her until her walls fell and that part of her that always believed in me could hear me again. I sucked in a deep breath instead, then blew it out slowly.
“I told you. I’m going to say goodbye to Hunter.”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “Uh-huh. Sure you aren’t going to trash his grave? A little revenge for getting caught?”
I had to step away. She’d crossed the line from stupidly stubborn to senselessly cruel and my temper was already strained. I rolled the tension out of my shoulders and stretched, swallowing my worst impulses and dulling my sharpened tongue.
When I turned back to her, she was leaning against the wall watching me. Just watching me. I met her eyes, and stared at her as intently as she stared at me. Was that fear on her face? Really? Of all the people in the world who had a reason to be afraid of me, she didn’t even make the list. I would kill for her and die for her. Hell, I’d cut off my own arm before I hurt her. And here she was, looking at me like I was a monster. That shit hurt. A deep, sharp, bloody kind of hurt.
Daisy twisted the fear off her face with a bitchy pout. “Are you done?” she asked.
“Haven’t even started yet. What row is he in? No, you know what, never mind. I’ll find it myself.” I didn’t wait for her to answer and didn’t bother looking at her face. It was getting harder and harder to stomach the things I saw there.
Soft graveyard earth embraced the soles of my boots and greeted me with that fertile pungency. Life adores death. The stones nearest me were round and smooth, the names on their faces worn down to nearly nothing. Hunter had died a hundred years too late to be laid to rest in this quarter and so I knew that I needed to keep trudging onward. I ran my hand over one of the old names, wondering how many of these people had died by violence. How many of them were victims of some senseless crime. Whether a mysterious, unnamed, faceless man or a wife, a lover, sister, best friends. Dark things happen in small towns all the time. Secrets so grim not even whispers of their truths escape the chokehold they’re held in.
Behind me, I heard Daisy climb over the fence and I grinned to myself, pushing the thoughts that had seeped in far to the boondocks of my mind. She couldn’t stand to watch me do things wrong, she never could. She also could never leave me to my own demise, always wanting to be close, always drawing near when she should be far. I think back to life with her and Hunter – the way she was always itching to be a part of everything we were in. The way we were always adamant on keeping her out. That’s not to say we didn’t spend a lot of time with Daisy. Hunter wasn’t just her brother, wasn’t just her twin either, they were best fucking friends. Sibling rivalry didn’t exist with them. Hunter wanted for Daisy more than he ever wanted for himself. All the wrongs he might have done, he did them to offer her a better life. The same was true for me. I’d never wanted anything more than I wanted…well, than I wanted her.
To make her believe in love.
To be the one to love her.
To make her feel protected.
To be the
