Page 43 of Ghost Note

“Knock them dead.” I fake smiled.

Danny leaned over to kiss me on the cheek, and when his warm lips met my cool skin, he let them linger there for a moment before he whispered, “Thanks for letting me do this alone, Daisy. I know it isn’t easy for you.”

Before I could answer or give him false assurances of me being absolutely fine with it, he’d pushed out of the car and made his way to the boot to collect his guitar. When he slammed that boot shut, I flinched and closed my eyes…unwilling to watch Danny walk inside to fulfil a dream he’d apparently wanted to chase for nineteen years.

A dream he also, apparently, wanted to do without me there to watch him.

“Bye, Danny,” I whispered, before I climbed into the driver’s seat, buckled up, and I drove his pride and joy back to Hope Cove until I got the call to pick him up.

* * *

The problem with living somewhere with a population of just over a thousand people in its entirety: nothing stays secret for long. There’s also nowhere to hide. I knew Danny was coming for me; it was just a matter of time now, and time was all I had to kill as I made my way through my day with my headache as a constant companion.

I tidied my home at zombie speed, throwing cushions in place on the sofa without really caring where they landed. My bed was made without concern for the lines I couldn’t straighten out in the material. I even cleared up the glass from my broken mirror and lifted the now-empty frame downstairs, propping it up against the kitchen door to dispose of the next time I went outside to the bins.

That knot of dread didn’t ease until the knock on the front door came. Waiting for the bad things to come is so much worse than them actually arriving, and so I went to answer my visitor, letting that knot of dread bleed out with every step I took towards them before I swung the door open to see Danny standing there.

He’d been facing the sunshine, his back to me before he slowly turned around and took me in.

There was nothing to say on my part, so I waited, leaning against the doorframe and folding my arms over my chest.

“I told you I’d chase you the next time you walked away.”

“You don’t have to chase what isn’t running.”

“Your feet might not be moving, but your mind is taking off in a sprint.”

I scoffed. “That thing left you a long time ago.”

Danny dipped his chin to his chest, and I thought I saw a slight smile there that I immediately wanted to knock off his face until he looked back up again, his expression flat. “Okay, so you don’t love me anymore. That’s good.”

“Good?” I scowled.

“For you, yeah.” He took a step closer. “For me… not so much.”

I looked at him, half wanting to slap his jaw and half wanting to push my hand through his hair. The only man I’d ever loved looked like a stranger, yet felt like home, and those conflicting emotions and desires were tearing me apart, piece by piece.

“Daisy, if I asked you for one last favour, would you do it for me?”

“No.”

Danny raised a brow, and now his half-smile definitely was there.

With a roll of my eyes and an impatient exhale, I readjusted my shoulder against the doorframe. “What favour?”

“Take a drive with me. Give me an hour of your time, and once that’s over, I’ll leave you alone.”

“An hour?” I asked, my voice full of scepticism.

“One hour. Sixty minutes. That’s all I want.”

“Where would we go?”

Danny’s smile rose, untameable as he gave me a glimpse of that old Southern English charm I’d dreamt about for years. “I can’t tell you. You just have to trust me.”

“And why the hell would I do that?”

“Because, Zee, somewhere deep down in that cynical heart of yours, you know that trusting me is as natural to you as breathing. You can either fight it and make yourself angry, or…” he held out his hand, and I looked down at it, “you can let go. It’s only an hour with someone you used to love. What’s the worst that could happen?”

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