Chapter 26: Shotgun and Secrets

Daisy

The next morning I was up at six fifteen, which was ten minutes earlier than usual, which I refused to read anything into.

I was simply awake. People woke up early. It was a biological occurrence with no emotional subtext whatsoever.

I was in the kitchen making tea when Liam came downstairs at six forty, already dressed, keys in his hand, and stopped when he saw me at the counter.

"Morning," he said.

"Morning," I said.

We had successfully returned to monosyllables, which was either progress or regression depending on how you looked at it. I was choosing not to look at it.

He poured himself a coffee, stirred it three times (I noted the three times), and then firmly instructed me to stop noting things and leaned against the counter.

"I'll drive you today," he said.

I looked at my tea. "That's okay."

"Daisy."

"I can take the bus. The bus is fine. The bus has existed as a transportation option for the entirety of my time at Oakwood and—"

"Daisy." His voice was patient in the specific way it got when he had already decided something and was waiting for me to catch up.

"I'll drive you."

"After yesterday," I said carefully, "arriving together is going to generate a specific kind of attention that I am not sure I have the energy for before eight AM."

"I told you I'd handle Tiffany."

"You told me that twice already."

"And this time I mean it differently," he said. "Get your bag."

I looked at him across the kitchen. At the complete unruffled certainty of him, standing there with his coffee and his car keys like a person who had never once in his life been talked out of something he'd decided.

"If anything happens," I said, "I reserve the right to say I told you so."

"Noted," he said. "Get your bag."

I said goodbye to Chloe, who was eating toast and pretending not to notice anything while noticing everything, and followed Liam out to the car.

The morning was cool and bright, the California air doing that thing it did in October where it couldn't decide between summer and autumn and compromised by being both at once.

The drive to Oakwood was eleven minutes. I had counted them before. I counted them again now, internally, for no reason except that counting things was calming.

For the first four minutes neither of us said anything.

It wasn't the uncomfortable silence of last night's library. It was something else, the particular quiet of two people who were both thinking about different things and had mutually agreed, without discussing it, to let the thinking happen.

Then Liam reached forward and turned the radio on.

The song that came through the speakers was Golden Hour by JVKE, all bright piano and that specific aching warmth that felt designed for exactly this kind of early morning light coming through car windows.

I looked out my window.

The piano line moved through the second bar, and before I fully registered that I was doing it, I was humming along. Quietly. Under my breath. The kind of humming that happened below conscious decision-making.

"You know this song."

I turned.

Liam was looking at me with an expression I hadn't seen on him before. Not the composed certainty or the quarterback authority or the carefully calibrated warmth he deployed during our sessions. Something more unguarded than any of those.

Genuine surprise.

"Yes," I said.

"Huh." He looked back at the road.

"What?"

"Nothing." But the corner of his mouth had moved.

"Say it, Liam."

"I just—" He glanced at me sideways. "—I had you figured as a strictly classical music situation." Maybe study lo-fi. Not JVKE."

"I contain multitudes," I said.

"Apparently." He tapped his thumb against the steering wheel in time with the beat, which I noted was in perfect rhythm, which I immediately stopped noting.

"Do you actually like it or do you just know it?"

"There's a difference?"

"Yeah. Knowing a song is passive. Liking it is something else."

I looked at him. "I like it," I said. "It sounds like a feeling you can't quite name. Which is the best kind of song."

He was quiet for a second. "That's a very Daisy-Henrico way to describe a pop song."

"What would a very Liam Martinez way sound like?"

"It slaps," he said immediately.

I laughed. Actually laughed, short and surprised, and Liam's expression shifted into something that was definitely a smile even though it was trying not to be.

"See," he said. "Books."

"I just laughed."

"At something academic. You analyzed the emotional architecture of the song before deciding you liked it."

"I did not—" I stopped. " Okay. I slightly did. But that doesn't mean

I'm not fun."

"Daisy." He said it with the gentle condescension of someone stating an established fact.

"You color-code your notes. You have a separate notebook for observational data. You explained calculus integration using narrative theory."

"That was one time and it worked—"

"All books," he said. "Zero fun."

I turned and looked at him with the specific expression I reserved for incorrect answers on practice problems.

Then I reached forward and turned the volume up.

All the way up.

The piano filled the entire car, and I turned back to the window and I sang.

Not humming. Singing. Full words, full melody, and the bridge that opened up in the middle of the song where the vocals went somewhere higher and more honest than the verses, and you either committed to it or you didn't.

I committed to it.