Page 80 of In the Danger Zone
My head shook. “No, Daisy told me it was open. That they were… That they were struggling to pay rent…”
“And you believed that?” Asher rolled his eyes. “They shut down years ago. After all this came out, no one was going there. Who would fucking want to?”
“But I gave…” I thought about the money. About that ten thousand I had handed over to Daisy like it was nothing. And itwasnothing for someone like me. “Daisy told me it was still open.”
“She’s a liar.Obviously.”
“But… No, I fucking gave her that money.” I was trying to figure out the mystery as I spoke to Asher, because Daisycouldn’tbe a liar. I didn’t want to believe she was one. Asher was the last person I wanted to have a conversation with, especially about Daisy. But I wasn’t left with much of a choice. “She told me her parents were having trouble paying rent. I gave her that money so she could help them out.”
Asher’s eyes widened. “Yeah, you sure fucked up there. How much did you hand over?”
“Ten thousand…” I grumbled. “But she… She told me she wasn’t gonna cash it.”
“Why would you trust her?”
“She’s never given me a reason to not trust her!” I explained, feeling a wave of anger take over. Daisy couldn’t be a liar. She couldn’t be. Because she wasn’t. It was that simple. Daisy wasn’t the kind of person to lie and there must have been some reasonable explanation for that shit on Google. “Why wouldn’t I trust her?”
“Oh, and you can’t trust me?” asked Asher. “You’ve known me practically your whole fucking life, man. You threw our friendship out the fucking window in seconds.”
I blinked at him before looking down at the floor. “I didn’t like how you were treating her.”
“Why do you think I did that? For fun? You already know she’s lied about that bakery still being open. Why do you think she did it?” Asher asked with gritted teeth. “I’ll tell you why: because she’s a greedy bitch who’s always been after money – just like her family.”
I stepped towards him. “Don’t fucking call her that. Don’t.”
“She lied about me attacking her when we were in school. She did that to make me look bad. And you know why? So she could drag us to court and get a payout,” Asher whispered sharply. “It was too fucking bad for her that we had a good lawyer.”
“That’s bullshit.” I shook my head furiously. “There’s no fucking way.”
“Check your phone,” Asher demanded. “Check your banking app. She told you she wasn’t gonna cash that check, right? That she was gonna hang on to it? Because she’s so damn innocent, huh? Bet you she already spent that money.”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
But Asher didn’t answer my question. Instead his eyes darkened that little bit more. “I saw her in the library a couple days ago. Where’d that fancy new laptop come from, Evan?”
My heart stopped. “That was a gift from her parents.”
“What, her poor parents that arestrugglingto get by?” Asher asked. “I know you’re dumb but I didn’t think you were this fucking stupid.”
The insult didn’t even phase me. I just frowned, trying to process everything I had learned over the last few minutes. It was too much to take in and I just wanted to see Daisy. I wanted to hear her voice and have her tell me that everything that Asher was saying was a lie.
“Who are you gonna believe?” Asher asked. “The guy you’ve known since you were a kid, or the girl you only met a few months ago?”
My eyes shut. “You don’t know her like I do.”
“I’ve known her longer than you have. I know what she’s like, Evan. I told you the first day you saw her, remember? She just loves attention. She’s a liar. That’s who she is. That’s what she does. She’s always made up shit like this.”
“You’re fucking lying.”
“Check your phone.”
“What?”
“Look at your bank app or whatever. Did she cash that check or not?”
“I didn’t get a notification for that…”
Asher rolled his eyes. “Do you even have them turned on?”
