“I was afraid I’d lose Daisy forever,” I admit, voice so quiet I barely hear it myself. “I thought, once I remembered who I was, she’d disappear. And then I wouldn’t know how to love you anymore.”
Hunter shakes his head. “You never lost her, Tara. Daisy was just the part of you that wanted to be free. The part that knew what she wanted and took it, even if the rest of the world said she shouldn’t.”
I look at our hands, knotted together, his skin tanned and bronzed, mine ivory and pale.
“Is it weird that I want to keep being both?” I ask. “Sometimes I want to be Daisy, and sometimes I want to be Tara, and sometimes I want to be neither, just myself.”
He smiles, thumb stroking my knuckle. “I think you should be whoever you want to be. Or all of them. I’ll love every version.”
I close my eyes, let the feeling settle in my chest. “You’re such a liar,” I say, but I say it with love.
He laughs, then turns serious, tracing a line down my jaw. “I do have one thing to confess.”
My heart seizes a little. “What?”
“I should have told you right away, who you were,” he says. “Not because I wanted to hurt you, or keep you in the dark, butbecause I was selfish. I wanted to have you without the baggage. I wanted to pretend it was new, even though it never really was.”
I reach up, place my finger on his lips. “I know. You’ve apologized about that a million times already, Hunter, and I forgive you because we both got what we wanted in the end,” I say. “It just took a while to admit it.”
He kisses my fingertip. “I love you, my perfect, sexy, confounding woman,” he says, and this time it doesn’t sound like a dare or a confession. It just is.
I breathe him in, the scent of sweat and lilies, and I know I’m complete. I’m whole, with him.
We stay that way until the candles gutter out, the city falls asleep, and all that’s left is the warmth of his body against mine, and the certainty that, for once, I am not alone.
I am Daisy. I am Tara. And, finally, I am free.
17
CHAPTER 17 -TELLING THE PARENTS
Hunter
The restaurant is colder than I remember, but maybe that’s just my nerves. As a CEO, I don’t get rattled often but meeting our parents to tell them about our taboo relationship would put any man on edge. We’re the first ones here, and the maitre d’ walks us past a parade of strangers—old money, new money, shiny suits and manicured nails—to a private room lit by chandeliers that look like inverted ice sculptures. The linen on the table is a snowy white, and Tara floats beside me, in a modest green dress that covers her arms, and goes decorously to the knee. She’s calm and beautiful. Or at least, she’s faking it better than I am.
I let her sit first, then take the seat beside her, close enough that our knees touch. The room is quiet, every sound thickly muffled by carpet and the hush of money.
“I can’t believe you wore a suit,” she whispers, voice low enough that nobody outside this room will ever hear.
“Don’t you know? Dressing up is armor,” I say, tugging the cufflink tighter. “Thought I’d need it.”
She gives me a look—the new look, the one that’s sweet and spicy at once. She’s not wrong. There’s a lot riding on our conversation with our parents, and I feel every pound of it in my chest.
A waiter appears, all cheekbones and deference. “Can I bring you anything to start?”
“Just water, please,” Tara says, with a smile.
“I’ll take the same,” I say, and the waiter dissolves back into the ether.
We’re alone. The silence grows, shaped by a thousand things we can’t say.
She folds her hands on the table, fingernails buffed to a pretty shine. “What’s the plan?”
“Honesty,” I say. “To a point.”
“Define ‘point’.”
I grin, but the smile doesn’t go anywhere. “No mention of Sanctum. Or the auction. Or anything that might require an FBI background check.”