Page 28 of Infernal Affairs

Then I catch Daisy’s reflection in the glass. She’s standing around the corner, listening.

“I do.”

The words escape me—volcanic, desperate, utterly beyond my ability to stop them.

Daisy’s hands fly to her mouth, her eyes shining with a kind of astonishment that steals the breath from my lungs. Violet goes pale.

Mr. Flowers raises an eyebrow.

“That’s a big word.”

I nod.

“It is. And I mean it.”

The rest of the evening is surprisingly anticlimactic. Daisy and her mother disappear into the kitchen, the clatter of dishes providing a hopeful distraction. Violet claims an armchair and spends most of the evening texting someone—presumably a Thistlebrook group chat dedicated entirely to my existence. Eventually, Mr. Flowers invites me outside to “see the shed,” and I quickly realize it isn’t a threat at all, merely his way of getting me alone.

He closes the door behind us, leans against the weathered wood, and sighs.

“You probably get this a lot,” he says finally, “but I don’t know how to feel about…all this. About you.”

“That’s fair,” I reply. “But you don’t have to like me. You just have to trust your daughter.”

He considers that.

In the slanting porch light, he looks older than he did inside—less stubborn, more tired.

“You strike me as honest,” he says. “So here’s my honest fear. My Daisy is too good for this world. I don’t want to see it break her. Not even a little.”

I swallow.

“Neither do I.”

He nods once.

“Treat her right,” he says, then grins, wolfish and weary. “Or I get to shoot you with the old crossbow.”

“Deal.”

He laughs, and it breaks the tension so cleanly I almost admire him for it.

The drive back to Blackthorn Bay is quiet. Daisy’s hand finds mine somewhere along the dark stretch of highway between her parents’ porch light and home, her fingers threading through mine and staying there. Trees blur past the windows. The radio is turned down so low I can barely make out the melody.

Then, softly, without looking away from the road, she says,

“I love you too.”

I don't answer.

I simply tighten my grip around her hand and keep driving.

CHAPTER 10

DAISY

I’m elbow-deep in cinnamon dough when my friend Zelda raps on the front window of the bakery, her signature staccato knock edged with impatience. I mutter a minor hex to keep the dough in its proofing bowl, wipe my hands on my apron, and unlock the door, letting in a burst of late-afternoon chill—and even more of Zelda’s irrepressible energy.

Zelda’s cheeks are pink from the walk up the hill, and she’s panting, but her eyes lock onto me with the predatory focus of someone who’s heard a juicy rumor and won’t rest until it’s wrung dry.