Page 89 of Pay the Price

“Yes,” we said at the same time.

“I think what we’re saying is, we don’t want you out of our sight anytime soon,” I said. “Not after what happened tonight.”

“I’m not exactly thrilled at the idea of being alone anyway,” she admitted. “You can sleep with me, as long as it’s just sleeping. I’m beat.”

I was mildly disappointed as we trudged upstairs, but I understood.

Besides, maybe she’d change her mind. A man could dream.

Chapter 54

Otis

Isat around the dinner table with my sisters, full of my mom’s meat loaf and that happy feeling I always got around my family. I’d hardly seen them since I got out of jail, and even though my mom wasn’t the type to send me guilt-texts, I’d missed my sisters and my parents.

Plus I needed to talk to my sisters. Alone.

“So Daisy really is, like, your friend?” my littlest sister Mia asked. She was twelve — almost twelve years younger than me — and I’d always been extra protective of her because I remembered clearly the day she’d been born and my dad putting her in my arms at the hospital. She’d been so small and helpless. It was the first time I’d felt like I would do anything for someone.

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to think about fucking Daisy at the Velvet Rope with Wolf. “She’s my friend.”

“That’s weird,” Grace, my other sister, said. They had matching blond hair, although Mia never bothered with hers while Grace’s, fifteen now, was always smooth and styled. “After what you did, I mean.”

“Grace!” my dad said, putting down the cake my mom had baked for the occasion. “That’s enough.”

His brown hair was starting to go gray, but he ran and kayaked and stuff. He still looked young and healthy.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s true.”

“How’s the house coming?” My mom’s hair was going gray too, but hers was blond, so the gray just kind of blended in. She had soft brown eyes, calm and watchful, like the deer Wolf and Jace and I would see when we used to play in the forest around the Blades’ compound as kids.

We’d talked about my family while we ate dinner — my mom’s job as a computer engineer and my dad’s as an environmental consultant, Mia and Grace and their grades at the end of the school year school, their friends — so I wasn’t surprised the convo was turning to me.

I had good parents. They cared about me, about what I was up to.

“It’s good.” We hadn’t had much time to work on the house over the past few weeks, but with four of us tackling jobs, even just part-time, it was coming along. “The third floor’s done. Now we’re working on the second floor while Daisy does the first floor. The kitchen and the pool are the next big jobs.”

“How will you manage without a kitchen?” Except for desserts, my dad was the cook in the family. Living without a kitchen probably seemed impossible to him.

“There’s a smaller kitchen on the third floor,” I said. “We can use that while they work on the main one.”

“Is Daisy going to live there?” Mia asked. “When it’s done and you and Wolf and Jace move out I mean?”

It was something I tried not to think about. Not Daisy living at the house after it was done but Daisy living at the house without us after it was done. It gave me a funny feeling in my chest, heavy, like it was hard to breathe.

“I don’t know,” I said. “Probably.”

I didn’t know what Daisy had planned for the house yet — I wasn’t sure she knew — but I did know she didn’t want to sell it.

“It’s a big place for one person,” my dad said.

I nodded because my throat felt kind of tight.

“Speaking of big places,” my mom said, “the new Cantwell resort is going to be a monster.”

We talked about the new hotel and spa over dessert, then I helped my sisters with the dishes. It was nice, like when we’d been kids except they didn’t seem annoying now that we didn’t live together. I’d missed them when I’d been in prison. All the things that had bugged the fuck out of me when I’d been around them all the time were the same things I’d missed the most, even the way they argued nonstop about everything from borrowed clothes to laundry left in the dryer to things that had happened at school in the years when they’d overlapped in elementary and middle school.

“So hey,” I said when we were done loading the dishwasher, wiping the counters, and sweeping the floor, “I need to talk to you.”

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