Page 40 of I Would Die for You

“No!” snaps Nicole, before instantly regretting it. She doesn’t need to attract any more attention to the fact that a global superstar, who is as equally revered as reviled in this house, is sitting outside it…like, right now.

She half walks, half runs up to the car and past it, knowing that she daren’t get into it while it’s in sight of the house. Cassie could be looking out of the window right now, and knowing her, she knows the number plate of the vehicle Ben travels in off by heart. So, Nicole keeps walking, around the corner, as the soft purr of its engine follows her.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing here?” she exclaims when it pulls up next to her and the window rolls down. Her burgeoning excitement has been replaced by a raging anger that he would be so arrogant as to expect her to drop everything to see him.He wasn’t wrong though, was he?

“What’s the problem?” he asks, seeming genuinely perplexed. But then, Nicole supposes he doesn’t normally get complaints when he turns up at someone’s house unannounced.

“This isn’t on,” she says, still not sure whether she’s getting in the car or not. “I-I’ve got stuff going on at home and this doesn’t make my life very easy.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he says, looking like a reprimanded schoolboy. “I just assumed…”

“Well, don’t,” says Nicole. “The world doesn’t revolve around Ben Edwards.”

He smiles. “You know my name, though.”

She wants to tell him that the only reason for that is because her little sister has been obsessed with him for the past eighteen months; has spent every penny of her hard-earned cash on him, and every moment she should have been studying staring woefully at his face on her bedroom ceiling.

“You said you had something…” she starts impatiently, the need to give him the impression she has far better things to be doing at loggerheads with the spine-tingling anticipation of what he has in store.

“I want to play you something,” he says, turning a cassette in between his thumb and forefinger.

She makes a show of getting in the back seat, rolling her eyes, as if she’s doing him a favor.

“OK—you ready?” he says, pushing the tape into the slot of the car’s radio cassette player that’s mounted on the carpet-lined partition separating them from the driver. The mechanical spools grab hold of it with a satisfying click. “But I need you to stay open-minded.”

The gentle strumming of guitar chords echoes in Nicole’s chest, making her want to close her eyes and lose herself in the soothing melody.

“There are things I could never teach you, no matter how hard I try,

Because only you can decide how high you fly,

I can set you on your way and catch you if you fall,

But only you will know…”

Ben’s voice reaches into every crevice of Nicole’s being, its rawness making her fingertips tingle. In all the hours she’s been forcedto listen to Secret Oktober through the walls of Cassie’s bedroom, she’s never heard Ben sing like this. She wouldn’t have thought it possible, and just when she thinks she can’t be any more surprised, he sings the chorus in falsetto.

“If you ever loved someone as much as I love you,

You’d know there is nothing I wouldn’t do,

And I promise you, I will never let you down,

I’ll make you proud of me, no matter where you are…”

Nicole’s eyes widen and she turns to face him. “That’smysong,” she says, the words catching in her throat. “That… that’s…”

Ben grimaces, waiting to see which side of the fence she falls on.

“I sang that in the bar the other night. You were there.” Her mind is a jumble of emotions that she can’t separate.What is he playing at?

“I know, I know,” he says, shifting along the leather seat. “It’s such a beautiful song and I thought…”

“You thought what?” she asks, wondering why she suddenly feels so exposed and vulnerable, while forcing herself to silently repeat the mantraThey’re just words. But they’reherwords, written for onlyherto sing, and to hear them in another voice, no matter how beautiful, is beyond disconcerting.

“I just wanted to lay down some vocals,” he says. “To get your mum’s words on the page. It could be your love letter to each other.”

Without warning, tears rush to Nicole’s eyes and no matter how much she battles to hold them back, clenching her jaw, one escapes onto her cheek.

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