Page 35 of Ghost Note

Not today. I didn’t even want to be in Hope Cove. You couldn’t escape anything around here.

“Ben called me,” she finally admitted. “He told me what happened yesterday with Danny and that Rhett guy.”

“Nothing happened.”

“But you saw him… Danny.”

“Yeah, so what?” In a temper, I turned and kicked the box again just for something to take my frustrations out on. “You and Ben need to stop gossiping. I know drama in Hope Cove is rare, but there’s more to life than the two of you twittering over the phone about me and my ex who shouldn’t even be there.”

“It’s only because we care.”

“Well, care less, and trust me enough to know that if there was something for you to know, it would come from me.”

I ended the call in a hurry, hanging up on her in a way I’d never done so before. This wasn’t the woman I was. I never snapped at my friends, and I never hung up the phone without saying goodbye. In less than two days, my world and everything about me had been tipped on its head.

As soon as I pushed the phone into the back pocket of my jeans, I regretted the way I’d spoken to her. She hadn’t deserved my snotty response. I made a mental note to call her back later and apologise, but for now, I was going to allow myself to take a moment to sulk and get over the throbbing on my head.

There’s an ache you learn to live with when your heart’s been broken—an ache that drifts through your body, mourning what no longer lives there. Old love doesn’t just die. It gets weaker and weaker as time goes on, but it still drifts through your veins, searching for that connection it once had. Some days you feel it in your chest. Others, you feel it like a weight in your stomach. A sadness behind your eyes, or a prickling of your skin you can’t find cause for.

And do you know the worst thing about that constant ache? It feeds you bad ideas, and it tricks your mind into believing that those ideas are good.

That morning, the ache was everywhere.

I hated it.

Pulling my phone out again, I dropped down to the floor of my stockroom, curled my legs, and I brought the phone into my lap. Maybe Ben had been right, and me living in ignorance was doing more harm to my progress than anything else.

After a few minutes of overthinking, I hit up Google, and I typed in the words ‘Danny Silver, Front Row Frogs’, seeking out the very thing I’d been avoiding for five long and lonely years.

Eleven

Front Row Frogs were more popular than I realised.

Thousands and thousands of fan sites popped up throughout my searches, with some being dedicated to them as a five-piece, while others focused solely on one band member. It didn’t take me long to surmise that Danny was the fan’s favourite, either.

Like I said, he’d never had to try to stand out.

Pictures of him flooded the searches. On some, he looked like my Danny of old. On most, he looked like this new guy I didn’t recognise: the one in skinny jeans with tattoos, and a cigarette in hand.

Everything about him had changed. The way he styled his hair was now more structured; an organised sort of chaos that made you want to reach through the screen and push your fingertips through the thickness of it. His straight-line brows looked as if they’d been waxed to perfect his sultry stare as he gazed into the camera on photoshoot after photoshoot. He’d adopted a new half-smile that even I could tell was manufactured to seduce the fans, and it worked. It seduced me, making me trace my finger over the lines of his face as though I’d never had him inside my body a hundred times before—like he was some kind of stranger I wanted to fantasise about.

His other band members looked as enthused to be on their journey as Danny did, and one guy who was apparently called Halo—I hoped that wasn’t his real name—seemed to enjoy the trip more than most. He was your typical rock star, upfront and in everyone’s faces. Always the exhibitionist on the red carpets, while the other four stood back smiling, letting Halo do the hard work on their behalf.

In time, my search led me to YouTube, and I was watching a concert of Front Row Frogs supporting Youth Gone Wild at Wembley Arena.

Wembley.

My man had made it toWembley. Even I knew that was a big deal, but the thought instantly made my face scrunch up, and I shook it away. He hadn’t beenminefor a very long time. Danny was everyone else’s now. He belonged to the world and all the screaming fans within it. I belonged here, in this shop… in Hope Cove…

Selling bloody bath bombs.

The camera zoomed in and out of the stage and across the crowds. Halo—who looked to be wearing black eyeliner for this concert, with a string of beads around his neck and a big cross hanging from it—dominated the scene, making you tap your foot to the beat, even if you didn’t know the song. But it was Danny the girls were screaming for, and whenever the camera flashed his way, I could understand why. He held his guitar like he’d been born with it in his hands, those muscles flexing, and as the music to one of their songs played out around the stockroom, I thought back to where it all truly began to go wrong between us.

“What’s going on?” Danny asked, scowling and smiling as we stood at his garage door, waiting for it to rise. His house had been decorated with 18th birthday decorations, an array of blues taking over their lovely sandstone built, four-bedroom home.

“Wait and see, nosey.”

When the door had lifted, Danny’s eyes drifted into the empty garage space. Empty… apart from one big box with a black and white over-the-top bow on it.

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