Her Every Wish Read Free Page A

him.
    Those wide, dark eyes angled ever so slightly. His light brown skin never paled in winter. His hair never straightened. His cheeks took days to turn to patchwork stubble, which she knew only because he rarely bothered to shave.
    â€œWhat am I? What sort of question is that?” She could imagine his smile—just a little tilted. “I should think that was clear enough.”
    Daisy ducked her head, proceeding down the steps. She couldn’t help but glance at him as she slipped past.
    â€œI am not a pineapple.” He made a show of looking down his body, checking himself. Of course he drew attention to his own figure in the process. Crash was slim, lithe, and muscled. He had long fingers, slightly callused, square at the tip. Once, he’d held her…
    She gave her head a shake and pointedly turned her face away.
    But Crash was hard to ignore. “I am not an elephant, nor a mouse, nor an oak tree. I seem to land firmly in the human category.”
    â€œYes, but…” The other woman’s voice was trailing off behind Daisy. “What sort of human are you?”
    â€œThat much is apparent at one glance,” Crash said. “I’m one hundred percent pure perfection. Now, if you’ll excuse me?”
    Daisy wouldn’t look back. She wouldn’t let him know she was paying attention.
    â€œBut—”
    â€œBusiness calls,” Crash said.
    â€œBut couldn’t we—”
    â€œI’m afraid not,” she heard Crash saying.
    â€œI haven’t even said—”
    She could just imagine the cocky smile Crash must be giving the woman. “It wouldn’t have mattered,” she heard him say. “Now run along.”
    Daisy could almost hear the sound of a heart breaking. She knew that sound all too well; she’d heard it in her own chest. She couldn’t even really blame Crash for it; he’d done nothing but tell her the truth. It was her own fault that she’d wanted lies.
    She didn’t look behind her, but she could hear him following. “Excuse me,” he said. “Pardon me.”
    There followed a set of gasps and a burst of applause. No doubt he’d done something ridiculous—something foolishly Crash-like, like doing a backflip off the steps to escape his hangers-on.
    She’d spent enough time watching him to know what he could do. She wasn’t going to look. She wasn’t.
    â€œDaisy,” Crash called behind her.
    The word sounded like a warning. Once he’d said her name very differently, almost reverently. As if she were not some kind of joke. But she couldn’t allow herself to dwell on that once. It wouldn’t help.
    The snow underfoot had changed from delicate white lace to the disgusting, dingy slush of well-trodden streets. Icy water seeped through the seams of her shoes. A cold wind tugged at her, and she cinched her scarf around her neck. She didn’t look back. She wasn’t foolish.
    â€œAhoy, Daisy.”
    She wouldn’t turn. That little skirling breeze coming up behind her would make her eyes water, and she was not, she absolutely was not, going to let Crash see her cry. Not even if her tears were merely wind-induced.
    But Crash had never been deterred by…well, anything, Daisy suspected. Certainly not anything so mild as someone purposefully failing to hear him. He came jogging up to her, settling to a walk at her side.
    At least he wasn’t on that terrible contraption he’d taken to riding about everywhere. What did he call that two-wheeled unbalanced monstrosity? A velocipede?
    Ha. An accurate description; it made her think of some monstrous twenty-legged thing, rushing about. One of these days he was going to crack his skull when he fell from the dratted thing, and she…
    She wasn’t going to care when he killed himself, not one bit.
    â€œDaisy,” he said. “You rushed off far too soon.”
    She made the mistake of meeting his