Daisy is a student, so she’s poor. She can’t afford her own lawyer if this whole thing with the sheriff blows up and that means she can’t afford to piss off Alec Steele and become his next target. Which means she has to play nice with me.
But she better not blame me for any of this. My name might be Vicious Vaughn, and this town might hate me and my whole family, but I am not a deadbeat. I work. Hard, most days. I’m the one who took care of my siblings after my mother died giving birth to Vann. Gramps and Pops were always at work tattooing. Vann had a sitter while the rest of us were in school, but after school I was the fucking babysitter. Not just for Vann, either. For all of them.
And fine. Maybe I didn’t do a great job raising them. Maybe we could’ve turned out better, but I was twelve years old. I did my best.
So if Daisy Lundin had come to me back in the day and said she was pregnant, I would’ve known what to do. I would’ve taken care of her too. Her life would’ve gotten easier, not harder.
Whatever she’s been through? None of that is my fault.
I refuse to take responsibility for any of it.
Daisy sighs one more time. Then forces herself to turn away and start walking back towards campus.
“Hey,” I call out.
She turns.
“Do you want a car?”
“What?”
“Would you like a car?”
“Would I like a car?” She looks at me like I’m insane.
“Yeah.” I nod my head towards the mansion. “We’ve got like… four extra. Only three are working right now, but it’s summer. We only ride the bikes in the summer. So. Let me ask you again. Would you like a car, Daisy Lundin?” I hold up a finger. “Actually, it’s a truck. They’re all trucks. As you can see.”
Her eyes wander over to the various haphazardly parked trucks in the large front yard, then flick back to me. “You mean right now? You want to give me a truck… right now?”
“Well, you are walking somewhere. So… yeah. Would you like a truck to get to school?”
I can’t see any way she takes offense to this offer, but she actually does take offense to this offer because her whole face changes. It’s not a good change. “Let me guess. Is this the part where you say, ‘You’re not walking around town with my daughter? She’s too good to ride the bus? She deserves a truck that only I can provide?’”
“What the actual… F are you talking about?” I’m seriously confused.
“This is the part where you try to make me feel unfit? Because we can’t afford a car and have to ride the bus?”
“What? No. I love walking. I walk almost everywhere. I have nothing against walking. The bus though…” I cringe thinking of all those students on it. “But you must have to like… grocery-shop or something. A car comes in handy for that. And it’s at least a ten-minute walk over to campus and you were late getting here. So if you take the truck, you won’t be late getting there.”
Daisy’s eyes go lazy and low. Like she couldn’t be more bored with me. “I don’t have a parking permit.”
“That’s gonna stop you? Really? You’re gonna to turn down free transportation because you don’t have a parking permit?”
“If you don’t have a permit and you park on campus, they give you a ticket.”
“Yeah. I know. I went to that stupid school for five years. But Daisy, they have meters in front of the student center that go for two hours. Just flash your credit card at it and leave it at that.”
“I have to go.” And then she turns and really does walk away.
I sigh and watch her. Vivi does too. But as soon as she turns the corner Vivi says, “She’s not mad.”
“No? She sure seems mad to me.”
“No. That’s not mad. That’s sad.”
Oh. Didn’t think of that.
“We have a car, it just doesn’t work. And we can’t afford to fix it.”
“Oh,” I say again. “OK. I get it.”
“But she will take the truck if you just give her time to think about it. She doesn’t like to rush into things. She likes to be careful. So ask her again some other time and then she might say yes.”
“Hmm.” I look down at the new princess and smile. “You’re pretty smart, you know that?”
She nods. “Yeah, I know. My mom is always telling me I’m way too smart. But”—she brightens—“my smart brain is how I found you.”
I wonder about this for a moment. How much I should say. How much I should leave for later. And then I land on this. “We have to take a test today, sis.”
“What kind of test?”
“A DNA test. It’s gonna tell us if we’re related.”