“But—”
“Are you high?” he snarled. “Do you not understand? I don’t want this. I won’t do it.”
Daisy was taken aback by his tone and, in truth, she wanted to hurt him as much as he was hurting her.
“You think I’m high?” She let out a snicker, no longer willing to feign ignorance. “That’s rich… coming from the guy who’s high on cocaine right now.”
He went still.
“Don’t bother lying,” she said. “I know. Everyone knows. They’re just too worried about this stupid band to say it. But I’m not. Because your drug use has obviously fried some brain cells and you aren’t thinking clearly.”
He moved toward her, three steps, until his face was inches from hers. His eyes were wild.
In a low, feral voice, he said, “I’m thinking crystal clear. And I don’t want this.”
She whispered, “I don’t know—”
“Just. Fucking. Do it, Daisy!”
Silence detonated the room. His eyes flickered—remorse, verdict, and a thousand things she couldn’t catch.
No one had ever spoken to her like that… least of all him. She fought hard to keep her face neutral, but her emotion had won the battle. With pursed, coiled lips, she allowed a singular tear to spill from the corner of her eye. This time Jameson didn’t reach out to catch it.
Chapter Fourteen
BEFORE HE BARGED OUT OFthe suite, leaving Daisy in a state of disarray, he sharply mumbled, “Meet me at noon in the lobby.”
Daisy didn’t move from her position next to the couch for almost an hour. She only moved when housekeeping knocked, prompting her to lock the latch on the door. She ran herself a scalding shower and sat on the tiled floor until the water eventually ran cold. After she dressed, she just stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, trying to reconcile what she had done in the last eighteen years to deserve this type of punishment. The mirror reflected a sad, hollow girl who had aged ten years in the last day.
While it wasn’t a pretty picture, Daisy still stared. Willing with all her heart for Jameson to come rushing back into the hotel room, begging for her forgiveness. She would have understood his fear. She would have forgiven almost anything if he had just been a little hopeful, even for a second, that something existed because they loved each other.
But the door stayed shut.
She almost couldn’t believe it when the clock struck noon and she was whisked through the hotel lobby by the band’s security guard. Jameson sat slouched in the back of a black SUV, his bloodshot eyes barely lifting when she slid onto the bench seat beside him.
The ride to the clinic was cloaked in silence. Awkward, suffocating silence. Every mile pressed heavier on Daisy’s chest. She almost prayed for a flat tire, for a crash, foranythingthat would delay what she was about to do. But fate gave her no reprieve, and soon they pulled into the lot of a women’s clinic in an obscure part of LA.
Neither moved.
For a full minute, they sat frozen until Jameson reached for the door handle.
“Stop,” Daisy blurted.
He halted and turned toward her. She flicked her eyes to his red ones and in a devastated voice said, “I don’t want you to come inside with me.”
He argued. “But, Daisy…”
“I said no!” Her voice cracked, then softened, mindful of the driver. “Let me make one choice of my own today.”
Before he could argue again, she shoved open the door and stepped out, her legs carrying her toward the entrance on sheer will. She knew the moment she walked back out, nothing in her life would ever be the same.
The woman at the front desk looked up from behind her reading glasses, hair pinned in a tidy gray bun. “Do you have an appointment?” she asked gently.
“Yes,” Daisy muttered.
“Name, honey?”
“Um… Daisy Daniels.”
