Mack

  Pushing Daisies 5

  Heather Young-Nichols

  Mack

  Pushing Daisies 5

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Heather Young-Nichols

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 2021 Heather Young-Nichols

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Cover Art by Sassy Cat Creative

  heatheryoungnichols.com

  Also by Heather Young-Nichols

  Also by Heather Young-Nichols

  New Adult Romance

  Pushing Daisies

  Daisy

  Van

  Bonham

  Daltrey

  Mack

  Courting Chaos

  Cross

  Ransom

  Booker

  Dixon

  Eagan

  (A Courting Chaos Novella)

  Finding Love

  Making Her Mine

  Making Him Hers

  Harbor Point

  Love by the Slice

  Love by the Mile

  Love by the Rules

  Gambling on Love

  Highest Bidder

  Highest Stakes

  Highest Reward

  Paranormal Romance

  The Empowered Series

  The Gremlin Prince

  The Goblin War

  Dark Coven

  Witch of Warwick

  Doomed by Magic

  Moonstruck

  With J.A. Hardt - Bound by Magic

  With Amelia J. Matthews

  Dirt on the Diamond

  After Office Hours: Seducing the Professor

  Contents

  1. Bri

  2. Mack

  3. Bri

  4. Mack

  5. Bri

  6. Mack

  7. Bri

  8. Mack

  9. Bri

  10. Mack

  11. Bri

  12. Mack

  13. Bri

  14. Mack

  15. Bri

  16. Mack

  17. Mack

  18. Bri

  19. Mack

  20. Bri

  21. Mack

  Epilogue

  Cross

  Heather’s Treasures

  About the Author

  1

  Bri

  It was finally happening. I was getting sprung from this godforsaken place.

  I’d never understood why it took so long to be discharged from the hospital once the doctor said that you could go. I’d been spending too much time in hospitals recently and it was always the same.

  My phone chimed in right then with another text from my best friend, Daisy Thompson. She was the lead singer of Pushing Daisies and I was supposed to go see her on tour a while ago. I kept having to push it off and she’d been worried I was going to delay again. I wasn’t. No matter what, I was going to do this. I deserved it, even if the idea of being around her brother made my stomach clench.

  “That Daisy again?” Mom asked as she pretended to tidy up the room. She did that when she was worried and nothing gave her more concern than me going out and living my life.

  “Yup.” I tapped out a reply then looked up at my mom. “When is the nurse going to be here with the discharge papers?” My words came out suspiciously like a whine.

  “I don’t know, honey. Soon, I’m sure. She did say the doctor wants to talk to you before we leave.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “Seriously? What more could she have to say?”

  “Nothing major,” Dr. Roma said as she came into the room, taking both of us by surprise. “I really just want to make sure one last time that you understand your condition and see if you have any questions.”

  It took everything in me to not say something snarky. She’d asked this same thing about an hour ago. “I understand.”

  “I have a question.” Mom held her hand up like she thought she needed to be called on.

  “Mom—”

  “No.” She settled her sky-blue eyes on me. She was where I’d gotten most of my looks from. Some kids were a mix of their parents. I supposed you could say that I was because my dad also had blond hair, but his was a different shade. “She asked if we have any questions and I do. I’m going to ask.”

  There’d be no stopping her, so I didn’t try again. I just wanted to get out of here and her questions were going to slow me down.

  “Bri is planning on meeting her friend for a few weeks and I just don’t think it’s a good idea.” Yup. That was what I’d been thinking she was going to say. And it wasn’t even a question.

  Meeting Daisy was the only excitement that I had to look forward to right now. There was nothing Mom or the doctor or anyone could say that would keep me from getting on that plane.

  “Where are you going?” Dr. Roma asked me. She was utterly gorgeous with her dark skin and long, black hair. She wore a skirt with heels and her lab coat and looked very stylish. Less like she should be in a hospital and more like she should be bossing people around in her very important job as a CEO of an international company.

  “She’s in a band and I’m going to meet her on tour,” I told her. “So I’ll be in lots of different places.”

  The doctor nodded. “Well, you need to take care of yourself. Acute glomerulonephritis very well may go away. But as I told you before, it could also lead to you needing dialysis. The better you take care of yourself, the less likely that will be and hopefully we can push off needing a transplant.” I swallowed hard before she spoke again. This idea of either wasn’t appealing. “That’s only if things get much worse, as I told you.”

  “But I can go?”

  She cracked a small smile. I probably sounded like a kid on Christmas morning. To be completely honest, I was going either way, but it could lift a bit of weight off my shoulders if my doctor said it was fine.

  “It shouldn’t be a problem unless you don’t take care of yourself.”

  “I will. I promise.”

  The doctor left the room, which meant Mom and I were alone again.

  “I’m going,” I told her before she could try to talk me out of it again. “I haven’t seen Daisy in months.” I wasn’t going to mention Mack because I never did. No one knew what had happened between us, not even my best friend, and that was exactly how it would stay. “I’ll take really good care of myself.”

  The nurse came in with my discharge instructions and we were finally free to go. Dad was downstairs with the car just waiting to take me home. I wouldn’t be leaving for the tour today, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get packed.

  “Travel light,” Daisy had said because the buses had limited space.

  Neither of my parents mentioned the trip to me again. My guess was that they knew they wouldn’t be talking me out of it.

  After I got my suitcase with wheels out of my closet, I pulled my phone out from my pocket and dialed Daisy. She wouldn’t be on stage yet and I wanted to catch her before she had to be.

  “Do not tell me that you’re calling to delay again,” she answered.

  I snorted. “No. I’m not. I’ll definitely be there tomorrow night in…” I couldn’t for the life of me remember what city I was meeting her in.

  “Dallas,” she answered for me. “Then we’re heading out West.”

  “I’m so excited.”

  “Me too. I feel like we haven’t seen each other in forever.”

  “We haven’t.”

  And that was mostly my fault. Daisy had wanted me to visit her for a while. We’d even made plans, but I had to cancel when I’d gotten sick. At the time, I didn’t tell her or anyone other than my mom and dad about my illness because I didn’t want anyone looking at me like I was the sick girl. This trip was going to be epic and any talk about hospitals or my kidneys would ruin it all.

  There was some noise behind her and I could’ve sworn I heard Mack’s voice which made all of my muscles clench at once. That was going to be the toughest part of all this. Seeing him again when we’d done such a good job avoiding the very thing that would bring back all the memories that I didn’t want to remember.

  I can’t have him, I reminded myself. No time to act like a lovestruck teenager.

  “So tell me the plan again,” I demanded when I pulled some shorts out of my drawer. “We’re staying on your bus, right?”

  “Right. It’s Lawson and me and his sister, Lexi, which means Van most of the time.”

  “I seriously can’t believe that Van has an actual girlfriend.”

  She chuckled on the other end. “Tell me about it.”

  “Every girl in our high school would be very jealous right now.”

  Now Daisy groaned. She’d always hated how the girls would fall all over themselves for a chance with Van. The ones who hadn’t cared about relationships got their chance with him. There had been a lot of those, too. No judgment. Everyone was aware that Van Thompson didn’t do relationships, which meant they’d known the score when they’d gotten themselves into it.

  Van hadn’t left a trail of broken hearts, but the ones w
ho wanted a relationship… they were the ones left with disappointment.

  “And Lawson doesn’t mind another person intruding on your personal space?” I asked her. I’d met him virtually a couple of times but I didn’t really know him. Though from the look on his face at each encounter, he’d give Daisy the entire world if she asked for it.

  “Not at all. If I’m happy, he’s happy.”

  Meeting Lawson was a big reason I wanted to go, besides spending some time with Daisy. She’d told me that he was it for her and I wanted to size him up myself.

  He was older. Twenty-seven to her twenty-one, which happened to be the same age difference between her oldest brother, Mack, and me. But I wasn’t going to think about that.

  Lawson also managed Courting Chaos, one of my favorite bands, and I was so excited to get to see them in concert. Not to mention meet. If Daisy thought Lawson was it for her, I needed to know him. We needed to get along because she and I had been best friends for a long time and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

  A small gnawing of guilt hit my chest when I thought about how long we’d been friends. It had been long enough that I should’ve already told her what was going on with me and why I’d had to postpone so many times.

  It was there. On the tip of my tongue. Yet instead of just telling her, I said, “Am I going to have to watch any gross love stuff when I get there?”

  Daisy laughed loudly. “Yes, but don’t be a pervert about it. No peeking through the door at night or anything.”

  I gagged. Even the idea of watching her and anyone turned my stomach. Daisy was like my sister and that was gross. Not to mention that I didn’t have any voyeur tendencies.

  “You’re so nasty,” I said, but I was laughing along with her.

  “Listen, I have to go get ready, but I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

  “Tomorrow night,” I confirmed. “I’m just sorry I’m not going to get there until your show is already over. Stupid layovers.”

  “Well, you’re in luck then, because we do this basically every night. You can catch the next one.”

  “I love you,” I called out, knowing that she was going to have to hang up.

  “Love you too.” And that was how the call ended.

  Once I’d finished packing, I lay in bed thinking through all the scenarios that could occur. Mack and I hadn’t been in the same room for more than a couple of minutes since that night. The thought of seeing him again both made my heart race and gave me the feeling of needing to vomit.

  Would he even speak to me? Would he acknowledge what had happened between us and the fact that he was a total asshole for how he’d responded?

  I didn’t think so. My guess was that he’d act like I wasn’t there. The same way he had ever since that night.

  Understanding where he’d been coming from back then did nothing to allay my worry now.

  Finally, at some point, I fell asleep. The pain from the past would have to stay buried. I wouldn’t talk about it if he didn’t.

  The next day, my mother grudgingly took me to the airport. Had to give her credit, though. She’d made her feelings clear and now she was just going to support me, even though she didn’t agree with me.

  I was an adult and could make these decisions. Granted, I was an adult who lived in her parents’ house when I wasn’t on campus and was on their health insurance and had her medical bills paid for by them, but I was an adult nonetheless.

  Unfortunately, I had a few-hours’ layover in St. Louis because this was the only flight I could reasonably make. It wasn’t enough time to go out into the city to see anything, so I spent it at the airport watching every Snapchat story that I had access to. Daisy didn’t post much, but why would she? Imagine if something private got out to the public. Even if she was just being silly, they could make a whole thing of it. Pushing Daisies might not be Courting Chaos level huge yet, but they were on their way. In her business, anything could be taken wrong.

  Then I took a picture of me with the planes over my shoulder and added text that read, “Waiting sucks.” Right away, two of my other friends replied and told me that they were jealous. They knew where I was going and what I was doing the next few weeks.

  Daisy and I hadn’t agreed on a time frame, so I didn’t actually know how long I’d be gone.

  If it wasn’t too weird and I had my way, I’d stay for the rest of the summer. It’d be easy to ignore the real world and all of my problems while on tour going from city to city.

  Finally, I was on my last plane, which landed in Dallas super quickly. I took a ride share to the venue. The concert was already over and Daisy had sent me a message that they weren’t leaving until I got there, so there was no need to rush. I could take my time.

  That meant the whole tour was waiting on me? No, thank you. I’d hurry.

  We pulled up to the venue about twenty minutes later to find the big buses still there as well as a gathering of fans. They didn’t give up easily, it seemed.

  Daisy was waiting there with a tall man wearing a suit. Well, most of a suit. His dress shirt sleeves were unbuttoned and rolled up and he wasn’t wearing a tie. That tall drink of water was one of the best looking me I’d ever seen with his dark hair and possessive look on his face.

  A male resting bitch face that was likely meant to scare away anyone who might want to approach Daisy away.

  That had to be Lawson. There wasn’t anyone else around.

  This was it. No turning back. I’d committed to not chickening out.

  It was time to face my past as much as necessary to spend time with my best friend.

  It was time to face Mack and everything that went along with that.

  2

  Mack

  Fucking hell, this was taking forever.

  Normally, Courting Chaos finished their show and we all pulled out at roughly the same time. Technically, Pushing Daisies could’ve left whenever the fuck we wanted to, but I hated the idea of leaving Daisy there alone to wait for Lawson to be ready to go.

  This had been so much easier back when she’d ridden on our bus. Now she basically lived with her fucking boyfriend, which was something I absolutely hated.

  Lawson Styles and I were fine at this point. As fine as we were ever going to be. He’d helped us out a lot with Daisy’s stalker and let me vent to him a bit when Daltrey had been going off the rails. He’d even suggested the sober life coach situation that brought Ella into my brother Daltrey’s life. Lawson was a good guy. I shouldn’t complain about him so much, even if it was in my own head.

  But every time I saw the comfortable way he touched my sister, all the good thoughts vanished into thin air. I was glad Daisy found happiness, but I’d hated their age gap from the beginning, mostly because I couldn’t have what I really wanted for the same reason.

  This waiting was kind of weird. The rest of Courting Chaos had already left, but Daisy and Lawson’s bus still sat there.

  “What’s going on?” I asked Lawson as I came up beside him. “We’re usually on the road by now.”

  He shrugged then told me, “Ask your sister.”

  Daisy was bouncing on the balls of her feet the way she did when she was excited. She’d done that since she was two and it was a dead giveaway.

  “Daisy?” I asked, but she just grinned and grew more excited as a car pulled up not far from us. It was like she hadn’t even heard me.

  The windows on the car were slightly tinted and with the angle, I couldn’t tell who was inside. But if I knew my sister, and I did, there was only one person who could get her going like this.

  It wasn’t that Daisy didn’t get excited. She did, but this was next-level and the only person she hadn’t seen in a long while that could make her bubble up like this was—