Stealing Sunshine (Cherry Peak, #4)

by Hannah Cowan

I’ve always known it would be easy to talk to Daisy, and I’m being proven right with each passing minute we stand here. My edges soften in her proximity, and fuck, that’s dangerous. That’s why I sharpen them again before she has a chance to do any damage with her toothache-inducing sweetness.

Sunshine.

She hits my arm with hers and laughs louder. Fuck, she has a pretty laugh. Like a wind chime blowing through a quiet, dull night.

“Okay, we’ll do this. Fucking fake date.” It sounds ridiculous, yet my heart is thrashing at the agreement. The crush I’ve had on Daisy Mitchell for the past three years should have made me turn this idea down and build a permanent wall between us. Instead, it’s encouraging me to go along with this.

I’ve thought about Daisy in the exact way I’m going to be “pretending” to over the next who fucking knows how long. If she ever found out that I agreed to this, knowing that I want her for real, she might never trust me again.

For three years, I’ve successfully hidden my affection for the sunshine girl beside me. Every blunt, cold reply and blank expression were my only ways of keeping my cards hidden. I’ve never reacted to someone the way I do her, as if she’d somehow already burrowed herself into my life without my knowledge by our first meeting.

“Frosty?” she croaks. I wink, my smile sly. “Sunshine?” “What a fucking pair,” she says absently.

My older sister, Giana, is rambling about one of the players on the Vancouver Warriors hockey team who won’t stop ruffling her hair every time she asks for him to pose for a photo, but I’ve given up listening.

👀👀

“I’m more of a scowler,” I say bluntly. Aiming for it to sound like a joke, I hope it doesn’t sound as self-deprecating as it feels. “I like your scowls too.”

It looks too real. For them and for me.

Bryce is a woman that anyone would be lucky to have in their life. Stunning in the way that doesn’t seem real or possible sometimes, protective to a fault, and passionate.

“Yeah, I think the present is a pretty fucking good place to be right about now, Sunshine.”

I lift my eyes and find hers waiting. Like an expert in all things Bryce, the aspects of myself that I don’t reveal to fucking anybody, she bypasses all of my safety protocols and makes a home for herself in the pits of my insecurities and worthlessness that I’ve tried to bury for over a decade. They don’t feel so heavy once she’s reached them, like she’s transferred some of her colour into their black holes.

“Have you been checking me out?” “As if you don’t have people checking you out all the time. You’re gorgeous,”

“It’s not just you, Daisy. It’s only you. I’ve never brought anyone else here, and I don’t want to. I like it like this. With only us.” I do too.

“I’m ready. I’m your girl, and I’ll make sure they know that you won’t be accepting another from anyone else. Let alone them.”

I may be a hard, cruel person, but I still believe I have a fragile, battered soul. The kind that strikes first out of fear and doesn’t allow for any prisoners. My defenses are high, but once you manage to slip past them, you’re granted free rein.

Who doesn’t have a family puke bowl?

Eww a puke bowl!?? Is this a white people thing !??

“I liked it.” “You like hearing me tell you to shut up?” “I like your backbone, Daisy.”

“Easy, easy. I don’t want you to slip and hurt yourself.” I’d do it on purpose if it meant she’d heal me afterward.

There’s not a chance I’m telling her that I stayed up until 4:00 a.m. finishing it the same night she said she’d like one.

It’s a silent declaration from me to her that if given the chance, I’d do this every minute of every day for the rest of time. I wouldn’t need anything else. No wealth or success. I’d toss my tattoo guns off the top of a snow-peaked mountain for the chance to kiss her like this even once more, let alone the rest of my life.

“They’re going to think something’s wrong now that you’ve followed me,” I ramble. “I’m going to be honest with you, Daisy,” she begins, slowly dragging those piercing, angry eyes up my body until they dig into my face. “I don’t fucking care.”

“Every time you look at me, touch me, or speak to me, this is what I feel, Daisy. Sometimes, it beats so fast that I’ve imagined it giving out because there’s no way it should be able to keep up with such a fucking disbelieving pace for hours on end.”

“If you want to reward me, Daisy, offer me a taste of this pussy.”

“If I wasn’t the one to pull away, I’d have kept you trapped in my bed with me for hours, kissing you until your lips were swollen and sore. I wasn’t reminding you that it was just practice. I was reminding myself because if for even one minute I let myself believe otherwise, this fake agreement would be done, and you’d be gone before I’d even had you for one real moment.”

“Yes, Bryce. My girl. In here and out there and everywhere in between. If that’s okay with you, of course.” “More than, Sunshine.”

My Sunshine.

“You’re always my priority. Everything else is just background noise.”

“You’re different.”

Sharing blood and DNA doesn’t give anyone access to my most important moments. Those are sacred, and I won’t have them tarnished by unwelcomed faces who were invited solely out of obligation,”

Daisy . . . she’s something more. A blessing from the universe that I know I won’t get lucky enough to receive twice.

Ours is full of light and excitement. A deep yearning and desire. It’s the first ray of sun streaming through the clouds of a lifelong rainstorm.

If I don’t have it with Daisy, then I never want to with anyone else.

“You’re supposed to be my fake girlfriend.” Her nails dig into the material of my jeans, and her jaw tightens before relaxing. “I’m not your fake anything. Use that term again and I’m more than happy to keep you in my bed until you forget it.”

“I love Bryce Lemieux! I love her so much, and I don’t care what anyone thinks about that because I’m going to love her forever!”

“I love Daisy Mitchell, and I will for a long, long fucking time.”

“I love you, Frosty.” “Say it again.” “I love you.” Daisy Mitchell loves me, and I think that might be my greatest accomplishment to date.

“I wanted you to notice me,” she reveals, her face remaining hidden in my neck. “There was never a time when I didn’t.”

“Bringing sunshine to my life. I think I’ve stolen some of it along the way.” I squeeze her hand as tight as I can and snag the blanket, pressing it to my chest. “Keep it. I think it’s always belonged to you, anyway.”

“If my hand’s out of commission, I guess you’ll just have to ride my face, then.”