Page 30 of Provocation (Den of Deception #3)

I take a seat at the back of the room and the lecture goes quickly.

At the end, I make sure I've sent in my part of the project to McKinsey, so that I don't need to see or speak to Bennet again. Blake seems to have put the fear of God into him though. As I pass Casey’s bag, I slip the flyer in just to make sure she knows the party is happening.

My plan is simple, but Bennet has to show up. Blake may have taught him a lesson on my behalf, but I still feel a need to do something to him and those sorority clones myself.

After class, I stop by Grinder, deciding to help with the lunchtime rush when I see Lu there all alone.

‘Why are you by yourself?’ I ask as I throw on my apron and join her behind the counter.

‘Janet’s on break.’

I look closer at my friend, and she definitely looks more harried than usual. There are dark rings under her eyes, and she looks a little pale, too.

‘Hey, are you okay?’ I ask, not needing to feign concern.

I’ve never seen her like this. She’s not even her usual bubbly self.

But she just gives me a shrug. ‘Just tired, dude. When it rains it pours, you know? I’m sick, got rehearsals, work, and the holidays coming up, which with my family is always crazy, but we have some, uh, drama going on right now with my cousin and my gramps.

Everything’s just a little nuts. Sorry I’ve been MIA. ’

‘It’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘I’ve been busy too.’

She waggles her eyebrows. ‘I’ll bet you have. Are they all as good in the sack as half the girls on campus want them to be?’

I feel my cheeks heat as I look away and she squeals. ‘I fucking knew it!’

I help Lu until Janet gets back, at which point Lu waves me away and tells me to get out of there before I catch her cold, and she’ll message me later. I return to the science building, taking the elevator to the lab.

The guys are sitting at one of the tables together studying. I join them without a word.

‘How was Bennet?’ Mav asks, grinning down at his books.

‘You knew?’ I ask.

He shrugs. ‘I know Blake.’

I chuckle. ‘He looked like shit. It was pretty awesome.’

Mav winks and I’m handed a protein bar and a bottle of water. I bump into him with my shoulder, giving him a smile as I open my books.

We study until Mav needs to go to class, leaving Shade and I alone. Only a few minutes goes by before he’s letting out a sigh and closing his books. I look up curiously.

‘Did you mean what you said? About coming with me to visit the place… where it happened?’

I immediately know he’s talking about the crash site, and I nod. ‘Whenever you want.’

‘Now?’

I close my books and give him a small nod. ‘Now works.’

We pack up our stuff and take the truck away from campus, through Richmond, and out to the winding road where my mother met her end. Shade parks the truck by the side of the road close to where Lu did when I came with her the first time.

It’s sunny today, but I bundle the huge coat Mav lent to me more tightly around myself as the autumn wind whips through the trees, making browning leaves fall to the ground in waves.

Shade stands at the clearing, looking at the gouged tree. I can’t read his face and I’m not sure what to say, so I don’t say anything at all. After a few minutes, his hand finds mine and he squeezes it. When I look up, I see that he’s crying, his eyes clenched as he sobs quietly.

‘You were right,’ he whispers. ‘I feel her more here than I do at her grave.’

‘Do you…want me to go for a bit so that you can be here with her alone?’ I ask, but he shakes his head.

‘No, it’s right that we’re here together. She loved us both, Daisy.’

I don’t tell him that she loved him more than she did me. I’m not upset about that anymore. He deserved her.

I blink back tears as he moves closer to me, putting his arm around my shoulders. I snake one around his waist.

‘We need to find out what happened,’ he says.

‘We will.’

We stand there for a few more minutes, until dark clouds begin to roll in and the temperature falls with the light. It’s gloomy when we get back in the truck. I think we’re going to leave, so I’m surprised when Shade plucks me out of my seat and settles me on his lap, kissing my lips gently.

My hands delve under his shirt, feeling the hard lines of his body. If he cares that they’re freezing, he doesn’t show it, but he does begin to pull off my jeans and underwear.

‘Wait,’ I say, and he pauses.

‘What is it? You don’t want to?’

‘It’s not that. It’s just that I’m on my period. It started this morning.’

His eyes flash with something. Disappointment?

‘I do want to have kids one day,’ I say quietly, searching his face. ‘But not yet.’

He nods. ‘Me too.’

He kisses me and then draws back. ‘I don’t care about…’ he looks down. ‘If you don’t.’

I shrug. ‘It should be pretty light still, so it won’t make a mess.’

In one swift motion, he pulls off my bottoms completely as I grip onto him, pulling me back to straddle him and thrusting into me.

He fills me slowly, his movements unhurried and gentle.

He doesn’t fuck me the way he usually does, and I understand that this is the difference between fucking someone and making love to them.

He makes love to me , his hands almost frantically trying to pull me nearer, to touch more of my bare skin to his.

And I do it back, not because I’m mimicking him, but because I want to be as close to him as he does to me.

It’s quiet and desperate, and it’s everything we both need in this moment.

He pulls open his shirt, baring the tattoo on his chest of the daisy, the one that he said was for April, to my eyes.

‘April’s favorite flowers were white roses, not daisies,’ he whispers. ‘This was for you.’

‘I love you,’ he whispers. ‘I love you.’

He says it over and over like a prayer or a chant, and we stare into each other’s eyes, share each other’s breath. Minutes go by and I don’t feel the need to look away, or to hide from him. I see him and he sees me. I kiss his chest where the tattoo resides and then his lips.

When I come, it’s not a tsunami that washes over me, it’s more like a pebble disrupting the surface of a pond, the tiny waves fanning out and lapping at the shore.

It’s a calm and relaxing ebb and flow. He pushes into me one last time and lets out a satisfied hum as he goes rigid under me and spills into me.

When we’re finished, we hold each other tightly, our eyes wet. We stay there in the truck. The heavens open, pelting the car with freezing rain as intermittent gusts of loud wind make the vehicle sway a little.

‘Oh, I forgot,’ he murmurs after a few long minutes, drawing back a little. ‘The box from Stevens.’

‘What about it?’

‘I brought it. I thought, maybe, it would be nice to look at it here, but if you’d rather get back. You know, cleaned up…’

‘No,’ I say, drawing on my underwear and my jeans quickly. ‘I’d like to look through it. I have a pad on. I can wait a few minutes. Where’s the box?’

‘Behind your seat. Here.’ He grabs it from the back and puts it between us. ‘Ready?’

I nod and he opens the innocuous cardboard box. We peer inside expectantly.

‘Looks like it’s from the closet,’ Shade murmurs and I nod, pulling out an old, flattened shoe, its counterpart nowhere to be seen.

Feeling a bit disappointed, I rummage around in it, taking out a couple of costume jewelry pieces that weren’t really her .

Shade pulls out some loose receipts and a couple of pieces of paper that he scans. ‘Sorry. After waiting so long, it’s sort of anticlimactic, huh?’

I smile. ‘Just a little.’

Then I frown as I move a shirt to the side and see a little blue book under everything else.

‘What’s this?’

I pull it out and open it. ‘It’s my mom’s handwriting,’ I say, showing it to Shade.

‘It looks like a diary.’ He sounds a bit more excited. ‘When is it from?’

I look at some of the pages’ dates. ‘The year she married your dad,’ I say, handing it to him when he reaches for it.

He flicks through it. ‘Look. The first page. This is just over eight months. This must not have been the only one there was. I didn’t even know she kept a diary.

There were probably a ton stored in that closet.

’ He looks sad. ‘My fucking father. He just had everything taken and thrown away like it was nothing, like she was nothing.’

I take Shade’s hand. ‘It makes me upset, too,’ I murmur. ‘That day I went in there and everything was gone…’

He puts an arm around me. ‘Do you want to read it?’ he asks.

I nod. ‘You?’

‘Yeah. But you go first.’

‘I love you,’ I whisper. ‘Sometimes it might not look the way other people’s does, but you know I do, don’t you? I’ve never cared about anything as much as I do you, Mav, and Blake.’

His hands cup my face. ‘Yeah,’ he says softly. ‘I know. We know. And we all feel the same. You know that , right? We’re a family, Daisy. All four of us. Always.’

I’m flooded with a warmth inside that makes me clutch at him with a long, contented sigh.

‘All four of us,’ I echo. ‘Forever.’

God, I hope I don’t have to run without them.

BLAKE

The rain is coming down hard as I make my way slowly up the cement steps and through the double doors of the prison’s main entrance.

Even the weather isn’t enough to hasten my dragging steps.

I don’t want to be here. I fucking hate this place.

But he’ll keep bothering me until I visit. It’s best to just get it done.

The worn linoleum floor is stained and yellow. The walls too. There’s a smell of detergent and stale smoke.

‘Number?’ one of the prison cops asks.

I give him my dad’s prison number.

‘You aren’t on the list.’

I resist the urge to tell the asshole in front of me to stop fucking with me. That’s what they want.

‘I’m here to see Harris Blake,’ I say instead. ‘I’m his son, Eric. I’m on the approved list. I just haven’t been here in a while.’