I didn’t have time to sort out my thoughts before we were back on my street. Half of it was underwater, but Kash made it through. Before we were visible from the trailers, he shot me a glance.
“Okay Daisy, your choice. I can drop you here and you can be late, or I can drop you at your door and risk having your dad see me.”
I shrugged. “Nobody’s seen this truck in years. Besides, it’s covered in mud and looks like every other truck around here. I’ll just tell them that a regular from the library gave me a ride, it’s happened before.”
He frowned. “If you say so. Just—lie like you mean it, okay?”
“Are you calling me a bad liar?”
“Abysmal,” he said with a grin. It faded as quickly as it had come, though, as a different thought occurred to him. “Guess kissing you goodbye is out of the question?”
I could see my house then, complete with a silhouette in the window. One of them was watching for me, and it was probably Dad. I sighed.
“Looks like it.”
I knew it might have been a little sadistic, but I loved how sad he looked about not getting to kiss me, even after everything we’d just done. I squeezed his hand.
“See you tomorrow?”
He grinned. “Same time, same place.”
I was walking on sunshine all the way up to the house but controlled my expression when I got to the door. Dad was waiting, of course. To my surprise, instead of pounding me with questions, he wrapped me in a big hug as I walked through the door.
“You made it,” he said gruffly. “That was a hell of a storm. Billy’s trailer’s gone. You’re so late, I was worried you were gone too.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, heart squeezing with tenderness and more than a hint of guilt. “I couldn’t walk home in that. I waited it out and hitched a ride with a regular who was stuck at the library with me. I’m sorry I couldn’t pick up your beer.”
He waved that away. “Don’t worry about it, I grabbed it on my way home. There was a deal—anyway. I’m just glad you made it home safe.”
I hated myself for lying to him. Moments like these reminded me how much he loved me, how much pain he must be in still because of Hunter’s death. I couldn’t really blame him for being overprotective, could I? Conflict tore at my heart, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I kissed him goodnight and went to bed, resigned to crying myself to sleep.
Chapter 13
A protective tension rolled through my shoulders when she walked away. I knew how her dad was and knew that even though she was technically on time, she was still later than he expected her to be—and without her usual beer offering to soothe his temper. I waited in the circle until I was sure that she wasn’t in distress, then made my way back to the drive. Pants, I needed pants.
More determined than ever to get her out of there, I started planning out my agenda for the next day and the day after that. Being with Daisy turned out to be such a freaking good determination booster. Having felt her again, her body, her heart, I was reminded of just what I could never lose again. This time, though, I didn’t want bits and pieces of time. I wanted the whole damn thing. I wanted to love her out in the open. Protect her. Provide for her. Make her feel safe and happy and restore her belief in the future. Which meant there was a fuck load I needed to get done and none of it was going to be easy.
For starters, I needed to find myself a job that paid. The stash of cash that Hunter and I had left in the woods wouldn’t go far without a work history and a clean record, and I could only work on one of those at a time.
I was up until four in the morning looking for work on my phone. I applied to a bunch of places—every place in town that was hiring, in fact—the money didn’t matter to me nearly as much as the experience did. I had savings, a whole lot of them. All I needed was a buffer in my resume to mask the six-year absence from the general work force. By the time I was finished looking for jobs, reading through their requirements and taking note of all the fine print, my eyes were watering and all the words had started running together. But at least I got a couple applications in. Hopefully all that work wouldn’t have me coming up empty handed.
I turned my alarm clock off, too exhausted to even want to consider hearing it go off. Leroy would just have to live without me until I woke up naturally.
My eyes closed gratefully the second my head hit the pillow. My mind drifted through random thoughts the way it always did before I fell asleep. A checklist began to form in my mind from all the scattered to-dos rolling around in my head. Check application status. Fix the wall. Talk to my PO. Do my laundry. Go see Daisy.
I sat up with a start, swearing a blue streak. How had I forgotten about that? I had an appointment with my parole officer first thing in the morning. My release had come with a whole lot of complicated stipulations that I didn’t quite understand, and he was the man who would inform me of them in layman’s terms. Groaning, I rolled over and turned the damn alarm back on. Guess I would just have to face the music on three hours
