The Fae Book 2: Burr and Daisy

Chapter 3: Absolutely Nothing Special

After being away for a little over three months, I'd finally come home. When I'd left town just hours after ditching Daisy, I'd told my family I had one last mission. It wasn't a lie. It just wasn't military-related, and I didn't correct their assumptions. They'd find out soon enough what my mission -- my successful mission -- had entailed.

Not too long after I returned to Harbor's Edge, my sister became engaged to Hatch, and if she was happy with this asshole, I could live with it -- even if I was still salty about the way he'd treated her when they first got together and he'd ditched her while she was pregnant. That screamed special kind of asshole to me, and I liked to remind him of that every chance I could. I refused to draw any parallels with how I'd treated Daisy. The situations weren't remotely the same.

Tonight, my mother was holding a family-only engagement dinner for them, and of course that included Daisy and Raine. 

I couldn't help watching Daisy when I didn't think anyone was watching me. So, since most of the attention was on Harmony and Hatch and wedding planning, I had plenty of opportunities to quietly observe her. Once again, I was a non-entity to her and everything in me wanted her attention back on me. Maybe she was right and I didn't like being ignored by any woman, but as I thought about that, I realized it wasn't true. I'd never cared in the past on those rare occasions a woman had ignored me. I'd either had her and finished with her, or she was playing hard to get and would eventually succumb. That wasn't conceit, it was fact. Women had always been drawn to me, and I knew that it was a mix of my looks and the magic I held. 

Daisy didn't look at me once. Didn't even let her head drift in my direction. I noticed she was just pushing the food around on her plate, though, and wondered if it was because I was at the same table with her and that had zapped her appetite. Did that mean she hated me now? Did she just need more time to get past what had happened with us? Would we ever go back to the slight friendship we had? Would I ever call her Daisy-Daze again?

After the engagement dinner ended, Dad, Hatch, his father (Blue) and I cleaned up the dishes while the women sat and talked. From the kitchen, I could hear them chattering, and I found my ears were tuned to Daisy's sweet voice and her soft laughter. Had she been thinking about me at all these last few months? What had she been doing? I knew the bakery kept her busy, but other than hanging out with Harmony and Raine, I had no idea what she did with her time. Did she read? Walk along the beach? Date? That one stopped me. I had no idea if Daisy dated. I didn't think she had much, if ever, when she was in high school. Then after high school, she'd opened her bakery with a loan from my parents, and I knew that took a lot of her time and energy. But what about now? What if I'd opened the floodgates, so to speak? Lightning flashed outside, once, twice, three times, so I knew I needed to shut off that line of thinking before I called down an entire storm.

When we finished clean up detail, Hatch grabbed Harmony and Lyric to take them home; Blue left at the same time; and Raine and Daisy took off then as well. Mom and Dad went for their nightly walk along the beach and Nan had taken a call from the wedding planner. I went to sit on the back deck, brooding about the way Daisy had blatantly ignored me the entire evening, start to finish. She hadn't even said hello to me when she'd walked into the house, but everyone else had gotten a hug and a hello. When she left, it was the same thing. Hugs and kisses and fucking smiles for every single person...except me. It proved to me that she wasn't sophisticated enough to handle casual sex. Daisy needed to grow up and learn that sex didn't equal a relationship. It was just a way to feel good and have a good hard fuck for no other reason than the need to have a mind-blowing orgasm. 

After a while, Nan came out on the deck to join me, handing me a beer.

We just sat silently for a few minutes, enjoying the sunset, watching the waves rush in and retreat on the shore. Then we began talking about inconsequential things, wedding-related shit I could give two fucks about, when my interfering grandmother said out of the blue, "Daisy's a nice girl."