Vic Vaughn is Vicious

I pull out the sketchbook and stare at the cover. It’s your typical spiral notebook of drawing paper. But there are stickers all over it. Flowers. Daisies, to be specific. Pink ones, and blue ones, and a few ladybugs.

And then I smile. Because I know this sketchbook. I knew it. It’s the same one Daisy handed in for grading that night we met.

I open it up and stare at the drawing on the first page. I’ve taken enough art classes to recognize the assignment. Shaded geometric shapes. I flip through it, find more of the same, then she graduates to hands, and lips, and eyes, her skill improving as the assignments progress. I pause to study a still life of daisies inside a milk bottle half-filled with water sitting on an old wooden table with a crooked checkered tablecloth. There are a handful of acorns scattered around a half-seen aged leather halter.

It’s a nice drawing, shaded with care. And her use of negative space is above average.

I flip the page again and stop short when I realize she drew… me.

I mean, it’s a man. He’s got a bit of a beard. His hair is a little too long, his lips full. His eyes piercing. And none of this really looks like me.

But those tattoos… yeah. This is me.

She drew me. I scan the page for a date and find it. December tenth. I flip the page again, but after that, it’s all Vivi’s drawings. Daisies, like the stickers on the front.

I flip back and look at the picture of me again. This was her last assignment. Her final.

And she drew me.

Why?

If she wanted to forget about me, why draw me as her final?

And she had to have known she was pregnant by then. At the very least, she had to have an idea.

I close the sketchbook, put it back inside Vivi’s backpack, and shove it inside the house. I need to think about that, but not right now.

I glance at my phone and realize seven-thirty has come and gone and no kid. And I’m just about to get up and hunt Daisy down when I finally see them walking down Mountain Avenue towards the mansion.

Vivi starts running towards the house when she sees me, so I get up and meet them halfway down the block.

“Guess what, guess what, guess what?” Sis’s eyes are bright with excitement and she’s practically bouncing up and down.

“Tell me,” I say. “I’m a horrible guesser.”

“I got a phone!” She reaches into the front pocket of her backpack and pulls out a cheap, pay-by-the-minute flip phone.

I make my eyes wide. “That’s a-mazing.”

She looks at the phone like it’s a pancake with the face of Jesus on it, awestruck. She then proceeds to flip it open and closed, open and closed, as I turn towards an approaching Daisy.

“Don’t you have a car?”

Daisy scowls at me, but doesn’t reply. Instead, she turns to Vivian, bends down, and places both hands on her shoulders. “You will call me if you need anything.”

I sigh at that. “I know what I’m doing here, Daisy. I have five nieces. I have been babysitting them for over a decade.”

Daisy stands back up and smiles at me. It is not a warm smile. It’s a warning smile. “Be careful with my daughter, Vicious Vaughn. I will be back at six, maybe a little sooner if I get done with my finals early. So please have her ready when I arrive. Vivi?” Her voice goes sweet and soft when she says our daughter’s name. “You will call me if you need anything.” She looks at me again. “And I do mean anything.”

“I will, I will, I said I will.” Vivi is as anxious for her mother to go as I am. And she’s looking damn cute today with her lime-green shorts and pink flower top. She even has a new set of pigtails and they come with green and pink ribbons.

“You left your other backpack in my sidecar, sis. So I have it for you.”

She holds up her back-up backpack. “I got this one today.”

“I love it.” I turn to Daisy. “So. I should probably get your number, right? I mean, I had your number. Once. Long time ago. But only for a couple hours because when I woke up it was missing from my phone.”

She puts her hand out. I hand over my phone and she calls herself, her phone ringing in her purse. “There. Happy now?” She forces a tight-lipped smile and then turns to Vivi. “OK, I have to go. I’ll see you tonight. Be good and do not wander off.”

“I will, I will, I said I will,” Vivi moans again.

Daisy sighs. I can tell that she does not want to do this. She does not want to drop her daughter off here with me. But Alec Steele is not a lawyer to mess with. She doesn’t have to know who he is to understand what he is. Everything about him says formidable. And not the same way people might see me as formidable with my biker boots and scruffy face. Alec is one of those men who looks like he’s perpetually hunting. And not hunting the way the Moran clan hunts up in the mountains, either. Hunting for a real meal and hunting for a financial one—two very different things.