Page 82 of The Final Beat

That was one of the things I loved about her. She was unapologetic about everything. The way she cursed, her anger, her straightforwardness. That was also why I loved the softness that she was starting to show when she was with me. It was the other side of her that only I got to see. A little secret that Destiny had given to me.

“Me too,” Ronnie added with a wistful look.

Amber rolled her eyes. “You can have a steak whenever you like, babe. I only suggested we stick to white meat.” She leaned in and kissed him but as she sat back up she winced.

“You okay?” he asked her.

“Just uncomfortable. I can’t wait for this pair to come out.”

I glanced at Destiny, wondering whether talk of babies made her feel uncomfortable, but she seemed okay. She was watching Amber carefully but more in concern than distress at being around a pregnant woman. She was strong, another thing that I loved about her.

“Right,” I said, clapping my hands together. “Who’s going to miss me while I’m gone?”

“There was a chorus of no and like fuck from my band members, but the girls all gushed that they would. All except Destiny, she didn’t say anything, but I knew if she felt anything at all like I did, then she wasn’t looking forward to the following day. I tried to push it from my mind, though, because we still had twenty-four hours.

As the chatter died down, I noticed Elliot gave Beau a raised eyebrow. I almost missed the brief nod of the head, but he wasn’t quite sneaky enough.

“What?” I asked, looking between them. “What’s got you two throwing secret glances?”

“Nothing,” Belle said, giving him a warning glare.

“No, go on,” I insisted. “It’s clearly important to you.”

“They’re just being nosey,” Simmy added.

Instantly, I knew what they wanted to know.

“You want to know what’s going on between me and Destiny, don’t you?” I made sure that I didn’t call her Daisy in front of anyone. That wasoursecret, along with her softer side.

The woman in question groaned next to me and snatched up her glass of water. It seemed she wasn’t willing to help me out.

I took a fortifying drink of water, placed my glass down and then opened my mouth to tell them a version of ‘what was going on between me and Destiny’.

“As you know we had a thing years ago, when we first started.” I cleared my throat. “For one reason or another we stopped.” I paused to look at Destiny, wondering whether she might want to add anything, but she was still staring down at the white table cloth. “A couple of years back we started seeing each other again.” Ronnie choked because he knew exactly what that meant—we started shagging again. “Recently things have changed, and we’ve realised that we are more to each other than a quick bunk up. We’ve spent the last couple of weeks together and when we get?—”

“Look,” Destiny piped up and I almost jumped out of my chair. I’d been convinced she was going to keep her head down until the food arrived. “We’ve had fun for the last couple of weeks but we’re both going away for months, so that’s it.”

If she’d shot me in the chest at point blank range, I don’t think it would have hurt as much. My heart felt like it had seizedup as anger and disappointment flooded through me. After everything we’d said, what we’d agreed about seeing how we felt when we got back, now suddenly she was saying ‘that’s it’. When I looked at her she was looking blankly between Beau and Elliot. It was like she’d just read information from a shopping list.

I had to push it. “Well, we’re going to see how we feel when we get back.”

Destiny shot me a glare. “Eight months is a long time.”

“Yeah, but we said?—”

“We said that eight months is a long time,” she repeated.

Before I had a chance to respond a waitress arrived with a trolly full of food and started to lay it all out on the table. Everyone began to tuck in, and our conversation was forgotten. There was the usual banter and chat about the plans for the new studio, which I got involved in, but my heart wasn’t in it. All I wanted to do was get out of there and ask Destiny what the fuck was going on.

CHAPTER 35

DESTINY

All the way back to my house I could feel Joey’s tension building. His knuckles were white, and from the way he gripped the steering wheel I thought his fingers might break through the leather. When we pulled up on my drive, I wondered if he’d just let me get out without saying anything, but instead he flung his own door open and followed me inside.

I threw my keys into the bowl just inside the front door and stalked off towards the kitchen. We were clearly going to have a shouting match, that much was certain. If that was going to happen then I needed a cup of tea to go with it.

Flicking on the kettle I turned around to see Joey standing next to my kitchen table. He was looking down at my vase of daisies, touching them gently with his fingertips. The contrast between the white petals and his tattooed fingers was stark, yet it didn’t look strange. He didn’t look out of place.

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