Page 26 of Ghost Note

“You know, I haven’t felt this used since I was eleven and Tori Dawson used me to make that foreign exchange student jealous.”

I dropped my wine glass back on the table and turned to Ben, rubbing my lips together. “You were friends with Tori Dawson?”

“She had boobs and was three years older than me. Of course, I was friends with her.”

“Didn’t she become some kind of white witch?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Ben grumbled, his face showing his disappointment. “She’s been casting spells over men like me with those titties for years.”

I slapped him on the arm but couldn’t help my laughter. The wine had made my skin flush, and when I caught sight of Danny glancing over his shoulder at me again, I sat upright and placed my hand on Ben’s arm.

“Bathroom time,” I said quietly.

“Mind the rock stars on your way.”

“I’m blind to their light.” I beamed, feeling the lie hit me in the stomach. Or maybe that was just the pressure of my bladder building. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, come and find me.”

“Ten minutes? You women and your bathroom breaks. The mind boggles.”

With a half-hearted laugh, I tugged at my dress and flattened it over my stomach, raised my chin, and I walked past Danny and Rhett like I hadn’t even noticed they were there. Once around the corner and out of sight though, my shoulders sagged, and the air streamed out of my lungs like a deflated tyre.

It took me two minutes to do what I had to do in the ladies’, and when I was washing my hands, I looked up at my reflection in the mirror, taking myself in as the warm water streamed over my cool fingers.

“Do you ever look in the mirror, see yourself, and just think… wow?” Danny asked as he came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my shoulders, his head resting on top of mine.

I was sitting at my vanity table in my bedroom, and I’d just applied a pale pink lipstick, when I looked up at him, rubbing my lips together.

“Because if I saw what you see every day, I’d never look away.” He smirked at my reflection in the mirror, that smooth, easy charm of his making the butterflies in my stomach soar to life.

“Never, huh?” I dropped my lipstick into the drawer with the others before I leaned back in my chair and wrapped my hands around Danny’s wrist, using his arms as a human necklace I wanted to cling to for forever. “Isn’t there a saying about that word? How you should never say never.”

“I’llneverget bored of waking up next to you, Daisy.”

“Said the seventeen-year-old horn dog to the girl who can’t say no to him.”

“You say no to me.”

“When?”

Danny kept his eyes on mine in the mirror, and he dropped his lips to my ear. “When I asked if I could fuck you on the beach two nights ago.”

Goosebumps flared to life on my skin, and my nipples tightened beneath the thin cotton material of my white vest. Danny spotted them instantly, and he slid his hand down to cover one, his thumb and finger rolling the tight bud with expert precision.

“You denied me that fantasy.”

“Only…” I said breathlessly; the fire beginning to burn in the very pit of my stomach now, “only because…”

“Because?”

“Because people were watching.”

“I don’t care who sees me love you, Daisy Piper, as long as people know that I do.”

The lump in my throat was painful. I swallowed the memory down before it gained traction, and I turned the tap off abruptly, wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand.

“Stop it, Daisy,” I whispered to myself. “That guy doesn’t exist anymore.”

It took me a minute to compose myself, but with dry hands and my dress and hair smoothed down, I let that nervous anxiety fuel me to step out of the toilets…

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