“How much longer do you have?”
“I’m scared to look.”
“Could be anytime now, huh?”
“Yeah, Charm School, any time,” Daisy grumbled.
“I’m scared too,” Chelsea said softly. “I only have one more day to go.”
“Are you afraid you’ll be disappointed?”
Chelsea shook her head. Her crystalline eyes looked at everything other than Daisy. Unlike Aiden, and even unlike Shannon, Chelsea wore her faults in looks and passing glances. Every once in a while, she would let her emotions crack behind her eyes—a glacier fracturing in warm waters—before she could steel herself against it, and everyone would know if Chelsea was hurt or pissed or happy.
Daisy knew people from a perspective most didn’t bother with. She watched them the way she watched her own drawings and paintings come to life. If Chelsea was one of her sketchbook creations, she would be made up of hard strokes from a densely packed paintbrush and scratches from a sharp quill pen.
“I’m afraid of being the disappointment,” Chelsea confessed.
Daisy thought it might have been a lie, but it sounded like the truth. “What do I do now…? Do I go to the grocery store? To the beach? To work? I mean, what’s the protocol for this shit?”
“Go wherever you want to; fate will turn up in the right place at the right time.” Chelsea could’ve been reading from a script. Daisy wasn’t convinced that Chelsea believed her own bullshit, and if she did, she’d been spoon-feeding it to herself for long enough to stomach the taste.
Daisy lifted a brow and took a sip of her hot coffee. She thought of everything she wanted—to brush her teeth, to hide under a blanket until her Camellia Clock gave up, to go back in time and stop Vance from doing what he’d done.
Chelsea’s voice lowered into something sweeter, and she smiled, mouth stained with leftover red lipstick. “Do you want me to help you get ready? Fix your hair? Do your nails?” She paused to grin; pretty white teeth gleamed against her beige skin. This Chelsea, calm and genuine, was unfamiliar in a way that relaxed Daisy. It reminded her of when they’d jumped off the cliff on Aiden’s birthday and the hours after, as their adrenaline settled and they watched the sunset in shared silence. Chelsea had never seemed more at ease than that night.
Chelsea went on to bat at the air with one hand. “I mean, not that it matters what you look like, whoever it is will lo—”
Daisy had never heard a sound like the gasp and choke that left Chelsea’s mouth. Her throat caught around the rest of what she was about to say, conjuring a wounded breath, as if she’d been kicked in the stomach.
The silence that followed pressed on Daisy’s shoulders, weighing her down. It hurt and it didn’t. It surprised her and it didn’t. It made sense and it absolutely didn’t.
Warmth spread from Daisy’s thumb into her wrist, vibrated her palm, tingled in her elbow.
Chelsea’s coffee mug shattered on the kitchen tile.
Daisy told her lungs to expand. They wouldn’t. She told her hands to stop shaking. They wouldn’t.
She didn’t hear the coffee mug hit the floor, but she did hear the rhythm of Chelsea’s breathing change.
They looked at each other, because there was nowhere else to look.
Daisy told her eyes to retreat. They wouldn’t. Daisy caught the exact moment Chelsea’s pupils dilated. She saw the flutter of Chelsea’s eyelashes and the slow movement of her lips parting. It took an eternity to pull her gaze away and direct it at Chelsea’s hand instead.
Daisy watched each finger unbuckle from a tightly clenched fist.
The numbers under Chelsea’s thumbnail glowed 00:00.
Coffee seeped under Daisy’s bare feet.
Chelsea studied her thumb. Her thoughts were as loud as the look on her face.
This is impossible.
Aiden’s bedroom door opened.
“Did something break?” Aiden’s voice.
“Mornin’, guys.” Shannon’s voice.
Daisy might’ve heard Aiden ask her what was wrong. She might’ve heard Shannon repeat the question. She might’ve heard Chelsea choke out her name. But everything sounded far away beneath the bassline of her heart hammering and her lungs finally cooperating and her thoughts thundering.
Chelsea Cavanaugh is my Rose Road.
Daisy heard the words clearly in her mind, but she didn’t say them.
She grabbed her shoes, her keys, her purse, and almost turned around to apologize for slamming the door. But before she knew it, she was in her car—foot on the pedal, music turned up as loud as the speakers would permit—and she was gone.
4
Chelsea had accurately estimated the distance from tree branch to swing set on the playground when she was seven years old. She’d told her mother that, if she swung high enough, she could launch out of the swing, grab the branch, and the climb the tree that no other child had climbed.
Her mother had told her it was impossible.
Chelsea had been valedictorian, homecoming and prom queen, varsity cheerleader, district community service representative, faith outreach coordinator at her church, and president of the student council. When she’d sent out unnecessary college applications, unnecessary because her father had connections in the medical field that would fast-track her education, she’d talked on the phone with three different counselors who questioned her integrity. Being all those things at once would make her a force unlike any student they’d seen. It was impossible.
Chelsea had graduated top of her class from medical school at twenty-five years old. She’d studied under her father after she graduated from high school, taken online courses to get her undergrad material out of the way in record-breaking time, and upheld the perfect sorority sister image while she did it.
Everyone—her professors, her mother, her friends, her side-lined sweethearts—had told her it was impossible. Chelsea Cavanaugh was a woman who climbed over impossible things wearing Jimmy Choo’s. But this impossibility left her without any room to conquer it.
“What the hell was that?” Aiden snapped. He pawed at his eyes; his bare torso stretched down to gray sweatpants. The black-feathered phoenix inked over his ribcage looked meaner than usual this morning. “What’d you say to her, Charm School?”
“Something’s not right,” Shannon said quickly. He placed a hand on Aiden’s shoulder, willing him to calm down. His jeans were still unbuttoned; his white T-shirt hung loosely on his shoulders.
Chelsea couldn’t find the strength to move. If she did, this impossibility would become real. It would become something that had passed, and now needed dealing with. If she could stay in the moment, she could dissect it. If she could persuade time to freeze for just a few minutes, she might be able to make sense of it.
“Yeah, something’s not right.” Aiden huffed, glancing from the shattered mug at Chelsea’s feet to the blank expression that crossed her face. “Daisy doesn’t do shit like that, all right? Tell me what…”
Chelsea lifted her right hand, fingers spread out, showing the lack of numbers beneath her thumbnail.
Aiden’s breath caught.
“That can’t be right,” Shannon whispered.
“One in ten thousand Clocks speed up,” Chelsea said.
The moment ended. Everything crashed into her, and Chelsea’s knees buckled until she hit the floor. She sat with her back snug against the cabinets under the sink; coffee soaked into her socks.
“I have to find her,” Aiden said. The words rushed from him, panicked and soft. “Chelsea—”
“Go,” Chelsea growled. She threaded her fingers through her hair, gripped the top of her head, and curled in on herself. If there was one thing she could do without, it was Aiden Maar’s pity.
Aiden grabbed his helmet. She heard the familiar sound of him lacing his boots.
“I’ve got this; go fi
nd Daisy,” Shannon said softly.
Chelsea heard the press of lips on cheek. She made a disgusted noise, not at the kiss, but at Shannon’s presumptions. She wasn’t a thing to have or fix or coddle.
The front door opened and closed.
Mercy purr-yawned and flopped next to Shannon’s bare feet. Her tail swished, signaling to them that the most important thing at the moment was her empty food bowl.
“The cat’s hungry,” Chelsea muttered.
“Yeah, I need to feed her,” Shannon said. He shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“What did you do when this happened? Did you run away?”
“No, Aiden did.”
“Of course he did,” Chelsea said bitterly. “Those two are too alike for comfort.”
“You’re going to come down on Daisy when you’re the one sitting on the floor in a puddle of coffee?”
Chelsea peeled her hands away and let them drop to her sides, daring Shannon to keep going. Her eyes felt hot with tears, but she refused to let them fall. She swiped at her eyes with her wrist and started picking up shards of broken coffee mug.
Shannon knelt to help her.
They didn’t speak until Chelsea stood up and deposited the ruined coffee cup in the trash. “I’ll buy him another mug,” she said.
Shannon shook his head. “It’s fine, Chels.”
“No, it’s not. I broke it; it’s my fault. It fell right out of my hands, and I’m gonna buy him another one, because it’s the right thing to do. It just slipped right on out, like it wasn’t even there to begin with, and I couldn’t catch it, and I…”
“Chelsea.” His voice was barely above a whisper. One hand rested on the top of her arm. “It’ll be all right.”
She hovered next to the situation, an onlooker searching for the details she hadn’t come to terms with. Every bit of uncertainty threatened to spill out of her pores. Her limbs felt heavy, as if her bones had turned to cement, and her veins filled with hot air.
Everything crumbled into itself.
Chelsea Cavanaugh’s life turned into a black hole.
“How will this be all right?” she asked, finally allowing the confusion and fear to make itself known. “Tell me, Shannon.”
“Daisy’s a pretty incredible person,” Shannon said. His eyebrows pulled toward the center, causing a couple of lines to darken his forehead, and he narrowed his eyes. “I know it’s not what you prepared for, but—”
“For the love of god, do not tell me how I should feel right now.” She hadn’t meant to yell, but it came out that way. Her throat turned to sandpaper, and her nose itched. “You thought your Clock was wrong, Shannon. You told me that.”
Her gaze slid to his face, and he stared back at her. His cheekbones were more prominent as his jaw flexed.
“You thought Aiden was just some punk kid. You didn’t want anything to do with him,” she added, venom building behind her lips.
“That’s not true,” Shannon snarled. “I wanted him and that scared me. I was a coward.”
“Let me have that then. Let me be afraid,” Chelsea said, mustering as much anger as she could and aiming it at him. “Because this… her, that,” Chelsea said as she pointed at the door Daisy had slammed, “is not something I know how to deal with.”
Chelsea didn’t realize there were tears on her face until she felt them gather on her top lip. She didn’t realize how horrid her voice sounded, or how badly she was shaking. She didn’t realize any of it until Shannon gripped her arm a little harder and pulled her against his chest.
“Can you take me to the inn?” Her voice was muffled against his shirt, which smelled like beer and weed, meaning it was actually Aiden’s shirt. “I need to call the hospital and I should probably e-mail my parents. You need to feed the cat, and I’m sure you have other things to do besides deal with me.”
“You can tell me if you want to be alone.”
She nodded. “I think that’s for the best. I don’t wanna be mean to you.” Her accent felt sloppy and drawn as it threaded between her words.
“Well, all right then.” Shannon’s accent thickened too, a reminder of where they came from, what they’d been through. History was a blessing and a curse. “But you know, you’re awful good at bein’ mean to me, so if there’s ever anything you need to take out on someone, just give me a call and—”
Chelsea slapped him playfully on the shoulder while he laughed and laughed.
Daisy made it to the gym without getting sick in her car. However, she did throw up in the planter on the side of the building, which was better than in her duffel bag. Thankfully no one was around to watch her keel over in a pair of pajamas, no bra, hair a mess, wearing mismatched flip flops.
She didn’t bother looking at the person behind the front desk, just scanned her keychain, walked into the locker room, and got in the shower without taking her clothes off.
The water was freezing cold. She gasped when it hit her face and coughed, backing up until she was out from under it. Her shirt went first, then her pajama bottoms and underwear. She contemplated sitting on the floor but thought of all the feet that had stood on those gym-shower tiles and decided against it. Instead she braved the cold, stepped under the spray of icy water, and gasped and shivered as it soaked her to the bone.
Daisy stared at her blank thumbnail where the glowing numbers 00:00 had once been.
When she couldn’t take the cold anymore, she turned the knob until the water stopped flowing and got dressed: yoga pants first, sports bra second, then a pair of lightweight gym shoes, a headband to hold her bangs out of her face, and ample tape around her knuckles. She didn’t look in the mirror when she swished a mouthful of Listerine, but made a mental note to put a spare toothbrush in her bag for days like this.
Days like this. Daisy almost laughed. She only got one day like this one. Just one.
One moment. One Camellia Clock. One day. One Rose Road.
The first jab landed hard against the bright blue punching bag. Daisy wrenched her fist back and struck it again, and again, and again. She kicked, hit, growled, kicked again, aimed her knee at it, jabbed and swatted and panted.
He appeared in her peripheral vision. His sharp, brown eyes drifted over her once, and he nodded, tilting his head. She kicked.
“Higher,” Aiden said.
Daisy kicked higher.
“Good, don’t forget to tighten your core. Good.” He watched as she kicked and kicked, hit and hit. “Wanna spar?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I think it’s a great idea.” Aiden snorted.
He hadn’t touched a weight or broken a sweat, yet here he stood, shirtless and ridiculous in the middle of the gym. Since they’d started working out together, Aiden had cut himself into a beautiful specimen, lean and tight, sporting new and old marks from Shannon’s mouth on his hipbones. Meanwhile Daisy was enduring a violent hangover and probably looked sickly. She rolled her eyes and poked one of the hickeys.
“You guys ever gonna stop sucking on each other like that?”
“I fucking hope not. C’mon, spar with me.”
“Aiden…” Daisy groaned, holding onto the punching bag with one hand while the other rested on her hip. “I don’t need you to pretend like you’re here to work out.”
They looked at each other: Daisy a panting, sweaty, hot mess, and Aiden, like a bird of prey, assessing her with a lift to one side of his mouth and looking elegant in his ferocity.
“Chelsea’s super-hot,” he said smugly, lifting a brow. “Like, really hot.”
“Oh, my god, shut up. Just go; get away from me,” Daisy hissed. She pushed his chest again and again, but he simply swayed on his feet with a grin plastered to his face. “You’re not helping me at all. You’re actually making it worse.”
“Are you going to tell me what happene
d or not?”
“If I spar with you, will you stop talking?”
Aiden nodded.
They made their way to the mat. Aiden kept his word and stayed quiet the whole time. The first jab she threw landed on his chest. He swept her legs out from under her. Daisy crashed to the mat. Aiden’s bare foot smacked her thigh, urging her to get up. In a flurry of angry jabs and deflections, Daisy would throw her fist at him, and he would catch it. She would aim a kick at his chest, and he’d knock her foot away.
“You can do better than that,” Aiden taunted.
Daisy gnawed on her bottom lip.
Chelsea’s face kept manifesting behind her eyes. She made shock look beautiful with her parted lips shaking and her wide, blue eyes staring unblinking at Daisy. The shadow that curved down her slender throat had deepened when she swallowed. For the rest of her life, Daisy would never be able to associate the smell of freshly brewed coffee with anything other than Chelsea’s expression.
Aiden grabbed her arm and twisted, pinning her down. “You wanna talk yet?”
“I’m not good enough for her, Aiden,” Daisy gritted.
“I’m not good enough for Shannon,” Aiden panted out, hauling her back to her feet. “It’s a crime we’ve made it this far.” Aiden winked.
“I actually hate you,” Daisy deadpanned.
“Sure you do. C’mon, go take a shower. Let’s get smoothies.”
“Fine, but can we not talk about this?”
Aiden nodded. “For now, yeah. We’re discussing it at some point, though.”
“Not like I have anyone else to talk to, asshole,” Daisy shouldered him as she walked by.
Relief washed from her nose to her toes.
Talking about Chelsea Cavanaugh, her Rose Road, Shannon’s ex-girlfriend, Aiden’s used-to-be nemesis, and her newly established future, was something Daisy would put off until she couldn’t.
Because Daisy was just Daisy, an artist and a bookworm and a Laguna Beach native, but Chelsea was more than that—a storm of accomplishments.
5
Curved Horizon Page 3
