Page 45 of One Last Chance

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.”

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