Page 103 of Sunshine
“Daisy,” I say, rushing down the stairs and chasing her as she strides toward the lamplit dirt road running past the cabins. “Wait. Let me explain.”
She spins around and spears me with an injured glare, and my whole world crashes down around me.
“What is there to explain?” she asks. “You’ve been lying to me for months about sleeping with my brother, and now I find you sipping wine and spilling all your secrets to a stranger.” Daisy waves an arm toward Annalise, who I guess is watching us from the front porch of her cabin, but I can’t drag my eyes away from Daisy to check. “Do I have it right?”
I notice my cheeks are damp before I realize I’m crying. “Yes, but—”
“How could you lie to me like that?” Daisy drops her face into her hands, then drags them back over her hair as she lifts her chin. “We tell each other everything.Everything. I’ve never kept a secret from you. Why didn’t you just…just…trustme?”
I brave a step forward, my hand reaching out of its own accord, but Daisy takes a step back.
“I wanted to,” I tell her. “I swear. I just… I was scared. I didn’t think you’d approve, and I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“Hurt me? Why would you loving my brotherhurtme?”
And suddenly, all the excuses I’ve made these last few months make no sense. Not even to me. “Daisy—”
“I can’t do this right now,” she says, starting to walk away. “I need to be alone for a while.”
“Please,” I beg, ignoring the way my voice cracks when I speak. “Can’t we talk about it?”
Daisy pauses and turns back. “I’m toohurtto talk.”
“I’m sorry, Daze.” It comes out as a whisper, and I don’t know why. “I’m so sorry.”
She shakes her head with a sad kind of smile, a wry kind of chuckle. “Me too.”
I swallow a sob as she turns and strides away, watching with hope as Dylan appears on the path ahead, then anguish as she passes him without looking up or acknowledging he even exists.
He pauses, calling to her once as she walks out into the night, then glances at me and closes the distance with a worried jog.
“What happened?”
“She overheard me talking with Annalise. She knows.”
Behind us, Annalise disappears into her cabin, and Dylan sighs. He pulls me against his chest and presses his mouth to the top of my head.
“It’ll be okay,” he says. “I’ll fix it. I’ll fix everything.”
“I don’t know how,” I mutter, surprised at the anger in my voice. But it’s not for him. It’s for me and all the ways I’m reckless and thoughtless and selfish andlost. “I’ve betrayed Daisy’s trust. God knows what Annalise thinks of what she just witnessed. And you’re stuck in the middle. You have to think about your sister and your daughter and the mother of your child…and me.” I try to laugh, but it comes out strangled. “Tell me how you’re going to fix that.”
“Shh,” he says. “Everything will work out. I promise.”
I want to believe him, but I don’t know how. I can’t see any way out of this mess.
thirty-one
Poppy
I sit on thesofa in Mona’s apartment, stare at my phone, and silently beg it to ring. In the twelve hours since fighting with Daisy, I’ve sent her twenty-nine text messages and called her seventeen times. I haven’t slept, I haven’t eaten, and she hasn’t returned my messages.
I don’t know what to do. We’ve never argued like this before. Everything’s a mess. And it’s all my fault.
I’m typing out another text when the door to Mona’s bedroom swings open. It stays that way, her bed through the door frame mussed but empty, and she breezes into the kitchen to make herself coffee before she breezes on out again.
I don’t look up when she doubles back and stands in front of me. “What’s wrong?”
I shrug, burning a hole through my phone screen as I blink back tears. “Daisy isn’t speaking to me.”
