AllFreeNovel
Share Us
That hopeful breath slipped out of me with my heart on its tail. “I … you what?”
He still hadn’t looked at me, just kept shaking his head and working the lump in his throat. “I can’t … I can’t see you anymore. And I want to tell you why, I want to tell you everything. But I can’t. Daisy, my family and my business depend on it—I’ll lose everything. I’m sorry. I wanted … I want to …” His voice broke. He didn’t finish speaking.
“I don’t understand, Keaton. What do you and I have to do with your business?”
“I can’t. Please. Please don’t ask, or I won’t be able to stop myself.”
My brain zipped and scrambled to make sense of it. What conditions for his livelihood could have to do with me? How could his being with me stop his business from surviving? Unless …
“Mitchell,” I whispered.
His face broke, and he pulled me into his arms, crushed me to his chest, buried his face in my neck, his trembling breath warm against my skin. For a long moment, we held on to each other, and my tears fell silently, rolling down my cheeks until they were caught by Keaton’s shirt. There was nothing left to say. He was a victim of his circumstance, and I accepted our fate with the bitter pain of futile injustice.
Keaton was always too good to be true. Deep down, I think I’d always known I wouldn’t get to keep him. History was never in my favor in this, the curse I didn’t believe in but wholly consumed me making itself known. It was easier to subscribe to it. At least this way, there was something to blame.
Beyond Mitchell, of course, never above extortion. He almost always got his way, in the end. The only times he didn’t were due to my family’s interference. It was no wonder he hated us.
The feeling was entirely mutual.
Keaton leaned back only far enough to kiss me, a kiss deep with longing and goodbye, with silent prayers and dreams lost. A kiss made on salty lips from tears shed over a thing we could never have.
Love.
The kiss broke, our foreheads together, his hand in the curve of my neck and our breaths mingling.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered.
“Me too,” I breathed back.
And with a kiss on my forehead, he was gone.
I watched him stalk back to his truck, his shoulders low and head down. Our gazes caught and held for a long moment. My hand rose in a small wave, and he offered one back, before driving away.
My cheeks were cool where rivulets of tears had run, clinging to my jaw before falling away. I climbed up the ladder of the treehouse and sat inside against the thick trunk, the musty smell of timeworn wood a testament to the years since I’d been here. Last time, I’d lost someone else, the boy I loved, the one I was supposed to marry. This time was only different in that Keaton was alive and well and loved me—he loved me, he said he loved me—but I couldn’t have him.
So I sat in the treehouse, watching branches sway and leaves tremble in the wind from the small windows, and thought of nothing else.
Only him.
26
PIE FIXES EVERYTHING
DAISY
A long and terrible week passed with impressive slowness.
My family was properly and understandably shocked, armed with questions that I dodged as best I could. I gave them a version of the truth—Keaton and I just didn’t work out, and he had to scale back business to pay for his repairs. Eventually, they accepted it. And fortunately, I was a master of secrets. The rest of my family were not. They said whatever they thought, whenever they thought it. I preferred to only give the emotions that I’d already processed and packaged, thus training me for situations like this.
I hated everything about it.
Alone in my sadness, I spent my days smiling and my nights crying. The construction site had been deserted, the materials left haphazardly stacked, the community center only half finished. The spot where the temporary office had been left a bleached rectangle on the slab, nothing more than a ghost.
Mercifully, Poppy had taken over the task of finding another construction company, and I’d been moved to assist her rather than oversee the work, my family correctly assuming that I wasn’t ready to keep on keeping on. And so, we carried on that way for a week that felt like a year, doing our level best to get back on track.
Grant had offered Keaton more money for the project, but he’d respectfully declined, citing larger financial troubles that one contract couldn’t make up for.
I hadn’t left our property much, though I’d spent quite a bit of time away from the house, volunteering for anything and everything that would keep me isolated. Because pretending I was fine exhausted me to lengths I didn’t know were possible. I kept hoping if I faked it long enough, I’d make it.
