I wrenched myself away from that thought, flinging my eyes open. No, no, that was no way to think about this. I couldn’t just wish death upon him. There had to be some humane way to work this out, there just had to be.
“So we figure out who really killed Hunter,” I said desperately. “We know everybody in town, there has to be something the cops missed. We can figure this out.”
“You aren’t Nancy Drew, Daisy, and I’m no Sherlock Holmes. This is a six-year-old cold case. All the evidence is locked up, they aren’t just going to hand it to me. You really think whoever did it is going to talk? They’ve spent the last six years comfortable and confident that they got away with murder. Assuming we could even get close to them, what do you think would happen? They’ve already killed once; they’d kill us to keep their freedom. Guaranteed.”
I clenched and unclenched my fists. There had to be something we were missing, some loophole in the law or in my house. Kash set his hand on my thigh and softened his expression, his voice softening to match.
“That’s why I wanted to come here,” he said. “To show you that this is survivable. Sure, your dad’s going to be pissed for a while, but he’ll get over it. Maybe the town will be shocked, maybe they won’t. I’m pretty sure my story isn’t the hot gossip it was a couple months ago.”
My heart lurched at the thought of my dad finding out and I shook my head furiously. “We can’t, Kash. We can’t do that.”
He touched my face. “Baby trust me. It’s going to be okay.”
I jerked away from his touch, terror sharpening my movements. “No, it’s not! You really don’t get it, Kash. He hates you. Take how much he hates Democrats, running out of beer, and stubbing his toe, roll those together and put them on a church pew during a sermon on charity, and that isn’t even half of how much he hates you. He’ll kill us both if he finds out about this.”
Kash scoffed. “He wouldn’t kill us. He’s a flash-bang, all noise and smoke. You’ve got to stop letting his temper freak you out, Daisy. He wouldn’t actually hurt you.”
The image of my mother rubbing her arm with a blank look in her face rose in my mind. When my dad got mad, her fibromyalgia flared up like clockwork. I had long suspected that she didn’t actually have anything of the kind, that her pain came from an external source, but I could never prove it. Honestly, I didn’t really want to put myself in a position to find out.
I shook my head. “You don’t know that.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Has he ever hurt you?”
I shrugged. “I mean—he used to whup us when we were kids and acted up. He quit that when I hit puberty, but—”
“That barely counts,” Kash said. “Your dad doesn’t know how to deal with kids. Common knowledge. But you’re not a kid anymore, Daisy. You’re a grown woman, and you deserve to be courted like one. Candlelit dinners. Sex in the sheets.”
A soft chuckle broke through my anxiety. “I would like that.”
“I know you would. I want to give that to you. I want to give you everything, Daisy. There’s a little house on Jermaine Avenue I was looking at. It’s small, but it’s cheap. I bet I could talk my PO into letting me rent it. Then you could move in with me and let your dad buy his own damn beer.”
Anxiety pressed against my heart and I shook my head. “No, no, absolutely not. He would flip his lid, Kash.”
Kash shoved a frustrated hand through his hair again. “What the hell do you want me to do, Daisy? You want romance but you won’t let me romance you. You want me to crawl through your window and fuck you in your bed like some goddamn teenager?”
I opened my mouth to respond to his tone in kind, but then I stopped. Kash in my bed—I could be quiet enough. Dad still drank himself into a stupor every night, and mom knocked herself out with Xanax nine times out of ten. Oh, yes. This could work. A wicked smile spread across my face.
“That’s a fantastic idea.”
Chapter 16
Her eyes sparkled in the dark. She was serious. I stared at her, unable to believe what I was hearing.
“Daisy think about what you’re saying. You want me to climb in your window and have sex in your bed twenty feet from your drunk dad who you think hates me more than he’s hated anything in his entire life. Which, I can’t say I blame him for. If he thinks, like almost everyone did, that I killed Hunter… I mean, seriously, does your door even lock?”
She nodded, bouncing a little bit on the well-worn bench seat. “It does! I installed a lock when he stopped busting in to check on me every night. He hasn’t done that in months. He still thinks I go to bed at eight and stay there all night. He passes out, then Mom passes out, and the whole house is quiet. As long as we’re quiet too, why shouldn’t we use my room?”
I shook my head. “You make no sense, you know that?”
A flash of hurt dulled the excitement in her eyes. Her brows furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Really? It’s too risky to step out of the car right now and kiss me on that bridge over there, but you want me to climb in your window and spend the night in your bed? How does that make sense?”
“Because,” she
