Page 73 of Pushing Daisy
This morning:
Look, you’ve made your point clear.
I’ll see you at the meeting this afternoon, but as far as any “US” is concerned, we’re done.
I tried to show you that people actually care about you, that I cared about you, but all you did was push me away, brushing me off as nothing more than a good lay.
I can’t keep hoping that you’ll finally see me.
Daisy paces along the bar, re-reading the series of unanswered messages again, and replays their last conversation in her mind. “No. No. No. No. Fuck. Shit.” Sloan said she liked her, and Daisy said she doesn’t sleep with people she doesn’t like. “Goddess, no.” Daisy’s hands run through her hair in frustration. “What have I done?” she asks herself.
“I don’t know, but by the looks of it, it wasn’t something good,” Lachlan teases as he enters from the back room.
She turns and glares at him, power surging inside her. She pushes it back down, not needing to set the bar on fire right now. “Not funny. I fucked up. Huge.”
He puts the case of beer in his hands on the counter, rests an arm on top, and turns to face her. How can he look so casual and relaxed when her life is about to implode? Again. “What happened?”
“I fucked up.”
He rolls his eyes. “Yes, I got that part. What happened to cause the fuckup?”
“Sloan may have told me she liked me. You know, that she liked me, liked me.”
“Okay. Doesn’t sound so bad so far.”
“I said I liked her too because I don’t sleep with people I don’t like,” Daisy says.
His mouth drops open, dumbfounded. He must see the reaction wasn’t what she wanted because he closes his mouth almost immediately, doing his best to school his features.
“Okay. Definitely a bit of a fuckup. But you can just tell her you didn’t mean it that way,” he offers.
“Then I accidentally ran my phone over, and it took a couple of days to get a new one.”
“Didn’t think to conjure a new one?”
She side-eyes him. “You live with a witch. You know we can’t conjure things we don’t already have.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, she sent me a bunch of texts, and I never responded. She thinks I ghosted her and says whatever happened between us is done.”
His features tighten, and his brow furrows. It’s taking so much effort for him not to react. She appreciates his attempt to be sensitive to her mood, but watching him fight this is torture for her. “Oh, my goddess. Fucking say it already.”
“Yeah, you fucked up, Daze,” he says with a stupid smirk. He can be such an ass.
Daisy collapses onto a chair, folding her arms on the table, and leans over, tossing her head between them. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have known without your confirmation.”
The chair beside her moves as Lachlan settles in it. “It’s not irreparable, though,” he says softly, reassuringly placing a hand on her arm. “Sloan cares about you. I’m sure she’ll hear you out.”
“Doubtful,” Daisy replies. She huffs out a breath, frustrated with herself and how she completely misunderstood what Sloan had been trying to say, when something clicks. Her head shoots up, and she locks eyes with the dirty demon beside her. “Wait. How do you know she cares about me?”
He smiles, leaning back and crossing his arms over his broad and traitorous chest. “She stopped in a couple of days ago, and we chatted. She was struggling because she realized she had feelings for you and wanted to be more than fuck buddies. I told her to tell you. I’m guessing that conversation didn’t go to plan, or you wouldn’t be here freaking out like a fifteen-year-old whose crush said they liked her back.”
“And you didn’t think to say anything to me?”
“Why would I? As far as I knew, she was going to tell you.”
“You should have warned me,” Daisy insists. Internally, logically, she knows none of this is his fault, but she can’t stop herself from lashing out. Wanting someone else to be to blame for her fuckup. She’s so tired of being the one constantly making mistakes. Being the one everyone looks down on as they step over her on the way to their own achievements. She wanted to be seen as a success for once, and she couldn’t even manage that.
