by Mynx, Sienna
“It’s not like that. Let me explain.”
“Explain?” he shouted in her face.
Daisy clenched her fist, trying to find her voice. Nothing came out but broken breaths. Anxiety cooled her thoughts and turned them to ice. Nothing formed. Pete shivered with fury; he gripped her by both arms and shook her violently. The hold was so tight and so strong that she felt his nails cutting through her sleeve. “You could do that? After all these years of leaving me guilty, thinking I wronged you, and you’re keeping a baby from me! My baby?”
"I didn’t know I was pregnant when you left…”
“…You don’t think of anybody but yourself…”
“…I was alone, and so scared…”
“…You just do whatever the hell you want! Nothing matters to you, not even that little girl…”
“…I wasn’t sure…”
“Save it!” he shouted at her. He was too filled with hurt to hear her. In a fit of rage, he shoved her back, pointing a threatening finger in her face. “You haven’t changed. Still the heartless selfish bitch you always were. Nothing changed, right Daisy? Especially not you.”
She couldn’t answer. He fired off one thing after another at her. Everything that happened in the day had left her wounded. She just didn’t have the strength to withstand another attack, no matter how much she wanted to fight back. But for Amy, she managed.
“Get out!” she said glaring at him, her pride salvaging what was left of her strength. “Get the hell out of my house.”
She could feel her throat closing up as he glared at her. Her mouth felt like old and dry paper. She couldn’t say another thing. He had broken through her fragile hold on control, and she was ready to explode.
“I’m coming back. And you better be here.” He looked to the house as if he’d go in and she stepped to the patio door to block his entrance. “Leave!”
Pete stepped back from the deck and walked off the steps, disappearing around the house. Daisy stumbled away from the terrace doors, back to a deck chair and dropped in it. Her face was wet with tears. She had no idea what Pete would do, but if he thought he’d take Amy from her, he really didn’t know her at all.
****
Aiden ran the final button through. He neatly tucked his shirt into his pants, smoothing down the front. The final touch was his watch that he plucked from the dresser. The platinum timepiece gleamed in the shadowy light of his suite as he slipped it on his wrist––snapping it shut. That’s when he spotted it; the slight tremors that went through his hand, a continual quaking that moved through his fingertips, palm, wrist, shooting numbness through his elbow, shoulder, and threading throughout him. The very air he breathed seemed to burn in his lungs. There was so much caged rage he held to that it consumed him.
He listened to Donovan as he unveiled Daisy’s secret with not even a blink. Aiden was done with fits of hysteria over this woman. Done. Donovan was told to call his jet and meet him in the lobby in an hour. Nothing more was said on the matter.
Aiden tightened his hand into a fist to stop the shake. His eyes lifted to the mirror and his polished image reflected back at him. The fool. She had played him like a pro. All his riches and power, all the years he masterfully set his life into control, and it was one woman to come in and tear him apart from the inside out. Just like his father.
That’s who he saw staring back at him; his sniveling, pathetic, weakling of a father, who groveled for the love of one woman only to have his pride crushed to dust under her heel. Daisy Johnson was the first and only woman to whom he’d ever said, I love you.
Even now, he could hear his voice begging her, saying words he used mockingly but never sincerely. That was the worst part of it. He had allowed himself to hope for too much. All the while, he was walking in the dark, blind to it all. Him! He was the master manipulator, liar. He’d taken riches from Kings. How dare Daisy Johnson take his child!
She’d done him in, having left him nearly weeping against her breasts. From what? One night five years ago? No wonder she mocked him and laughed at his weakness. He had believed her to be different. A fool he was. She took his child and denied him even the right to know she existed.
Fury. One hundred percent raw fury moved through him like bubbling lava, incinerating whatever feelings he thought he had for her. All of that bullshit about ‘wanting’ to be different and to believe in something was all fake.
Rage. It gripped his gut and iced it with crystals.
“Bitch!” he yelled and shot his fist into the mirror, splintering it from the center in a spider-web of cracks as his knuckles bled. Huffing and breathing through his pain, he let it focus on his wounded hand and not his wounded heart. He no longer wanted the organ in his body. It would be easier to fill it with concrete and seal it off permanently.
Dropping his hands on the dresser, one now running blood between his fingers over the finish, he let rage, anger and fury take him under. His head hung low.
I do love you the only way I knew how. I had to know, Daisy, if…if it was worth it. Nothing is worth getting ripped apart. Right? So go back to hiding. You’ve… you… you’ve cured me of the fantasy. I won’t bother you anymore.
Stunned and sickened with too much emotion, he replayed her words. She had whispered in his ear, sweet and soft as he believed her to be. The vixen was seducing the man in him but delivering the knife in his chest at the same time.
That’s it, Aiden. You can have my company, my money and my body, but you can’t have me.
He wheezed.
Because, Aiden, there isn’t enough money in all your golden bank accounts to make me want you.
Aiden clenched his battered hand back into a fist. He could feel the swelling, a dull pain aching through and cutting off his breath. He continued to squeeze it, releasing the pain of a man facing the harsh realities of loneliness. Was he even capable of being a father? Did she see in him how unworthy he was? Donovan’s voice hit him from the back of his skull and rattled him.
Daisy wanted war. He’d show her war. He lifted his head to the now shattered image of himself. He knew exactly what he planned to do.
Stepping back, Aiden turned and walked out of the room. He went to the bar and fixed a scotch for the road. His vow to give up the booze was a joke. One shot of liquor and he felt better. A trip to Mango Grove was what he needed. He couldn’t wait.
Chapter Ten
Daisy closed the door to Amy’s room. The temperature was dropping in the house. She made sure Amy was warmly tucked in her bed before getting her sweater to ward off the chill. Her bare feet padded down the hall, stairs, sending icy chills up through her bones.
Tonight her baby-girl was more worked up than usual around bedtime. Maybe it was Pete’s arrival. She asked Daisy many questions about him. Two story time books later, Amy was finally sleep and Daisy could find a way to exhale the day’s events.
Her place was dark except for the moon-glow coming in through the bay windows. The dim lighting didn’t matter. She knew the placement of every piece of furniture by heart as she sidestepped a chair, a table then the sofa, heading trance-like through the living room. She stopped and looked around, her eyes adjusting, seeing the space as it was earlier: where Pete and Amy had met.
Dear God, Pete had met Amy…
The mere thought bought a small smile to her lips. As soon as it formed, it slowly faded. Despite his angry words and despite the blame he leveled at her in that moment, the reunion with him had affected her. Over the years, she succeeded at this because she reminded herself of Pete’s hate. Now, did he feel both?
She wiped her hand down her face then headed for the terrace’s patio doors, mysteriously drawn to them. Pushing up the lock, she placed her palms flat to the cool glass as she slid it open and stepped out on to the deck. A blast of the salty sea aroma filled her nostrils. Moths and other winged insects that slammed against the light, drawn to its glow, drowned out the electric hum of the large outdoor bulb of a security lamp.
&n
bsp; Daisy’s gaze moved out across the beach. The night was still. Neighbors slept. There were no pets running along the cooling sands. A black ocean rolled in its dark waves across the shore in a sudsy lather then withdrew with the low tide. Its waters sparkled in the distance from the unusually bright moon and blanket of stars. Daisy loved the ocean. From the first time she spotted it on the coast, she vowed to always be near it. While pregnant, she walked the beach, her pants rolled up to her knees. She had enjoyed her feet sinking in the sand as the water rushed in and bathed them.
Amy would kick and twist around so much she feared she’d get tangled in her insides. Then she’d be so still. Daisy would cry and try to talk her into moving, fearing something was wrong. She was such a weeping mess toward the end: so lonely and so full of self-loathing. How could she explain that to either man?
She approached the banister and leaned over it. The night breeze carried tiny grains of sands that she squinted against, stinging her already sensitive eyes. Sleep would be impossible tonight anyway. She knew it. The hole in her heart seemed to be widening. Turning away, she went to the four steps, and then out across the beach in her bare feet.
A spring night in Mango Grove that was windier than most had her hair whipping behind her. The moon peeked out from behind a cloud for another shot at glory casting silver rays about her. The stars glistened like jewels and disappeared behind another shifting dark cloud. She dropped on the beach and sighed, eyes fixed heavenward for answers.
Tomorrow he’d be back. She knew it. She knew Pete. Right now he was angry and mostly confused. He’d return in search of the answers she didn’t have. Who was Amy’s father? She closed her eyes. Alone, she could be honest. From the moment she saw the plus sign on the little wand, she tried to convince herself he was. But in her heart, she feared differently.
Amy was the most precious gift given to her in this world. She never wanted her daughter to know that her greed led to her conception. What mother wants to tell that story to her child? Of course she needed it to be Pete. She prayed at her daughter’s bedside that Aiden Keane was never proven to be.
Her thoughts moved to Aiden, his obsession and hers. Her body hadn't fully recovered. Secretly, she longed for his touch; for the strange meanness that softened unexpectedly and made her hurt for him. And what of his big declaration of love? It wasn’t even possible. She didn’t know him. He didn’t know her and all they had between them was a million dollars and a lot of pain. These were the thoughts that gnawed at her and kept her paranoid and running.
Daisy drew her knees to her chest while wrapping her arms around them. Her toes scratched the hard grainy surface of the sand as another cool wave washed up the bank and withdrew. At least she didn’t have to worry about Aiden Keane. For now, all she had to do was think of how she planned to deal with Pete and how she’d protect Amy and her pride. Her mother would be so proud.
****
A television set blared beyond the thin wall behind Pete’s head. Two voices rose above the noise with laughter before they faded altogether.
He stared up at the dotted patterned ceiling, cut in blocks. Sleep hovered, taunting him with the promise of relief from the mind blowing truths that plagued him. It slipped from his grasp each time he reached for it. He lay in the middle of the bed fully dressed, his arms raised and folded behind his head. Again, he closed his eyes.
Exhausted by his anger, he feared how irrational his newly formed thoughts were. He’d only spoken to Daisy briefly and only seen the little angel that blew in the door for a second. He was so scared in that moment, afraid of the truth.
Daisy's request for him to leave was for the best. Pete had never been so full of emotion before. Now, with a storm raging inside of him, he fought his urges to jump in his rental and drive back over there and demand more. More of what? What did he want?
Pete’s eyes closed. When he left, he drove in circles, replaying it all in his head. She aborts a baby, doesn’t tell him, then has a baby and doesn’t tell him. Did he ever know her at all?
No, his mind whispered back.
Did she ever plan to come clean? Tell him the truth?
No, his inner voice answered again.
“Damn you, Daisy,” he mumbled. Behind closed lids, a little cherub face formed. He could recall the chalky but soft smell of the baby-lotion and powder on her skin when he held her. His ears burned with remembrance of her sweet voice. And those eyes that were so full of life stared up at him. She had a mass of unruly hair, skin a toffee shade of brown, and Daisy’s smile. Her name is Amy.
“Amy,” he said shaking his head smiling. Pete remembered how tiny she was in his arms. Some kids shied away from strangers. Maybe Amy did too, but instantly she was his. He felt that.
The lumpy mattress and stale air reeking from phantom cigarette smoke embedded in the beige walls and brown soggy carpet circulated with the aid of the cranky wall unit in his motel room.
Strange that now, with money in the bank and a credit card in his pocket, he chose ‘this’ as a place for the night. He opted out of comfort and instead he sought something to fit the dark fog engulfing him. He wasn’t that loser who couldn’t afford a respectable place, although he bet Daisy thought he was. Maybe that was why she pushed away from his arms when he reached for her. It was painful to be denied his existence to his own child. The anger returned. In truth, he’d never be a man to own a home on the beach or waste money on that fancy car she had in her driveway. And the woman he wanted wouldn’t mind; a woman like Nina.
Pete's chest rose and fell with another deep sigh. There was only one person in his life he could tell anything to. His anxiety lessened with thoughts of her. He remembered her standing behind him in the Winn Dixie as he frowned at the meat behind the frosted glass.
“So your mama never told you what would be quick and easy. Try the cube steak. It goes over nice and tender if you do it up on the stove at medium heat.”
Pete’s head turned to the sound of the sweetest voice. Nina Stevens stood behind him with a green grocery basket hooked on her arm, stuffed with milk, onions, and eggs. She wore white scrubs with little blue patterns and a smile. It had been years since he even spoke the name, Nina Stevens. He hadn’t seen her since high school and hadn’t thought of her since grade school.
“Hi, Nina.”
“Hi, Pete?” she said.
“Pete, can ya hurry it up?” Mrs. Patterson said behind her.
Nina gave a soft giggle that made her eyes dance with merriment. He ignored the old woman and focused on her plump lips, then back to her eyes. Nina’s eyes were a beautiful walnut shape and deep amber brown with thick lashes. She looked past him to the butcher. “Give him two pounds of the cube steak, Ronald.” She returned those large doe-like eyes to him. “Ronald keeps them tender. Here’s what you do. Season em’ first. Then cook em’ in onions with a little Kitchen Bouquet and some flour to thicken it for the gravy,” she winked. “It’s easy.”
“Sounds like your specialty.”
“No. My specialty is pot-roast, but you’d have to earn that.”
“Here ya go, Pete.” Ronald placed his package, wrapped in white butcher’s paper and taped into a small block, on the counter. “The same, Nina?”
“Yeah, thanks. Add a pound of chicken breasts and wings too,” she said, checking her watch. She barely caught her yawn with her hand.
Pete reached blindly for the cold block of meat in cellophane paper and dropped it in his basket while never taking his eyes off Nina. She’d changed. Gone were the thick bifocals and acne. Her hair was shorter than he remembered, a sexy pixie-cut, tailored in a neat style about her round face. It bought out her eyes that now held him in a hypnotic gaze. She chewed on her bottom lip and blushed, avoiding the intensity of his gaze. He kept staring. He imagined looking in her eyes all night. A slow smile crept over his mouth at the thought of Nina Stevens and him as an item. Who would’ve ever thought it? She was such a nerd in school. Damn, the boys didn’t know a rare beauty was a
mong them.
She frowned. “Excuse me?”
“Huh?” He feared he spoke his thoughts.
“My meat.” She pointed behind him to her package.
Ronald glared at Pete. In fact, everyone behind her in line fixed him with a look of irritation. Time had lapsed. Several minutes had ticked by as he stood there gawking. “Oh.” He took the meat and put it in his basket instead of hers.
“That’s mine,” Nina smiled.
“Yeah, well it’s on me since you just came to my rescue and all. Least I could do, right? Now, how about you show me where the Kitchen Bouquet is for this gravy?”
She blinked those thick lashes with an exaggerated eye roll and laughed. It gave him stomach flutters and warmed his groin through his pants. “Okay, Pete. Consider it my good deed for the day. I've worked twelve hours straight, but I can’t turn a hungry man away. I might even cook it for you too.” She winked and started to walk off. He quickly fell in step behind her, trying hard not to imagine how she looked out of uniform.
Nina was miles away, but he could actually feel the gulf between them widening with each passing minute. “Damn.”
