Page 124 of Degradation
More confused than ever, I begin to ask what she’s talking about when Shade steps into the room. Mav’s here too, I realize.
‘They wouldn’t help her at the medical center,’ he says quietly. ‘My father has made it so that she needs him to be at any and all appointments.’
‘I lied to you, too, anyway,’ she mutters as if she’s having a completely different conversation to the one we’re having.
Mav sits on the bed. ‘What do you mean, Daisy?’
I step closer to her, my heart lurching in my chest uncomfortably. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘What have you lied about?’ Shade grinds out.
‘Greg told me you were out clubbing all night and you all smell of smoke and alcohol… and probably perfume. I just want you to know that you aren’t the only ones who can lie.’
She thinks we were with other girls last night?
I give Shade a narrow-eyed look and see Mav do the same.
I tap a quick message.
We need to tell her something closer to the truth.
We can’t let her believe we were out getting wasted and fucking sorority girls like we used to.
Shade looks at his phone.
She’ll be in danger if she knows anything about Sauvage.
‘Daisy,’ Shade murmurs, coming closer. ‘I’m sorry we said it was a thing we had to go to with Applegate. That’s my fault. I thought you might want to come with us, and it was a business thing. We were trying to protect you. We didn’t mean to be gone all night. It was…unavoidable.’
‘I understand.’ But her breathing hitches and she buries her face in the pillow.
‘I have something for the migraine,’ I say to her, touching her shoulder.
‘I doubt it,’ she whispers. ‘Painkillers won’t touch it.’
She jerks away from my hand and the action makes something hurt inside my chest. Was this how she felt when I did the same?
I curse our dumb lie as I go into my room to the back of my closet and grab the box that’s there. It’s stuff from my dad’s house that I cleaned out last year when he went to jail.
He gets migraines, so we might get lucky. I rifle past a couple of old photos of me and him and my mom that I can’t bring myself to look at. At the bottom are the orange pill bottles from his medicine cabinet. I find the one I was thinking of and read it over, keying in the name into my browser for the specifics.
I take it back to her room and find the other two pretty much in the same places as I left them. Both look as upset as I feel.
Is this all over with Daisy before it even really began? A wave of hopelessness I haven’t felt in a long time crashes over me.
I hope not.
‘I found some that are still in date, and I think are safe for you to try. Mav?’
I throw him the bottle and he catches it, reading it over and nodding. ‘Yeah, that’s what they’d have given her. Half a pill, though.’
I grab it back off him and approach the bed, opening the top and grabbing two of the pills out.
‘Daisy?’
She sits up, not looking at any of us and grabs a bottle of water from her nightstand. I drop the pills into her hand, and she takes them before she lays back down and closes her eyes again.
‘Let me know when she’s feeling better,’ Shade says, his eyes hard. ‘We need to have a talk.’
