Page 64 of Ghost Note

The whole thing was overwhelming and emotional. I was sitting in the middle of something I shouldn’t have been… until he pulled out a picture of the two of us together. Danny held it in both hands, between his fingers and thumbs, his smile growing as he stared down at it and shook his head.

“You and I had just started dating here,” he said softly. “This was the first time you met Gran properly.”

“The one where she made us stand by the willow tree in her back garden and cuddle?” I cringed.

“Yeah.” Danny huffed out a laugh and handed it over.

I took it, drawing in a breath when the image of us together, so innocent, young, and happy, stared back at me. Danny wore some long, khaki cargo shorts and a plain black T-shirt, while I stood next to him, wrapped up in his arms, with my hair poker straight and down to my hips. I was fourteen and so incredibly in love, unable to believe that I had somehow captured the attention of Danny Silver.

“Two young kids,” I sighed. “God, we were dorks.”

“Speak for yourself,” he teased, pulling out another picture and staring down at it.

But I was lost in this first picture of us. “If you could go back and say anything to those versions of us, what would you say?”

“I wouldn’t say anything.”

“You wouldn’t warn them about… I don’t know… what was to come? The decisions they’d have to make. Those happy days would… end,” I said, the word ‘end’ as barely a sound when it left my lips.

“I wouldn’t do anything that would change a moment of the time those two kids spent together, no. I wouldn’t warn them about it ending because then all those amazing memories they shared wouldn’t exist. It would just have ended sooner because they knew it was coming.”

“Maybe sooner would have been better for me.”

Danny slid closer, and his hand was under my chin within a second, his soft touch guiding my head up to look at him. “You can’t regret amazing things just because they come to an end, Daisy.”

His eyes searched mine, and that pull to him was hard to rationalise. Even though he’d been the only man to hurt me in my life, he was where I felt the safest, too.

“I need you to believe me when I tell you I’m sorry,” he whispered. “And I need you to stop pretending that you hate me. I can see it in your eyes, Zee. You can’t hate what you still love… even if that love is platonic. Even if that love is there in a non-romantic capacity. You can’t hate what you care for.”

“I can want to hate you, though.”

“Absolutely.” Danny lowered his head, his eyes never leaving mine. Not even when there was nothing more than a few inches between our lips. “But hate takes up too much energy, and your heart is too pure and pretty to carry it around, so let it go, and know that I will always love and care for you, too. Always. You’ll never stop being my girl.”

Tears welled and my throat dried. I glanced down at his mouth, desperate for a kiss. Desperate to release all this pent-up frustration within me by slamming him against a wall and taking what I needed so badly from him—what I’d struggled to get from any other man since he left my life: passion, unwavering desire, and that unrivalled attraction, where the only thing you could think about, night and day, was having them inside you.

“However,” Danny whispered, bringing my gaze up to meet his twinkling eyes. “You have a boyfriend now, and I have to respect that. I can fall asleep with you in my arms, and I can think about being inside you while I struggle to sleep at night, but I won’t leave this place and turn your life upside down again. I won’t walk away from a fire I started and expect you to put out the flames. That’s not fair… no matter how much I want you one last time.”

Walk away…

One last time…

Those were the only options available at the end of the week for us.

The wordsHe’s not my boyfriendthrobbed on my tongue, begging to be set free, and I couldn’t find the strength within to push them out of my mouth. I needed that excuse to cling onto, even if that excuse was nothing but a lie. Living a lie had saved me from falling into the truth since he’d left, and that was how I was going to have to survive for now.

“You’ve never played fair,” I reminded him.

“Maybe it’s time for me to try.”

He let me go and left me cold as he walked over to the wine rack next to Florence’s large silver fridge. Danny bent and glanced through the collection of red wines she’d gathered over the years.

“To say she didn’t drink so much, she kept a lot of booze in this place.” Slipping out a bottle, he threw it in the air and caught it, flashing me a smile when he did. “Shall we? It might take the edge off all of this.”

I didn’t particularly like red wine. “Sure,” I said anyway, and I reached over for another picture of Danny and me together. This one was when we were around fifteen, the two of us laughing as Danny tried to drag me into the sea on the day of The Cove Festival. “I can’t believe she kept so many memories of us. I’ve never seen some of these before.”

I riffled through some he’d already picked out and dropped on the counter, finding one of us playing Jenga at this home’s dinner table. My face was scrunched up as I pulled a wooden block out, the tower already crumbling, while Danny’s head was thrown back in laughter.

“She captured some real beauties,” I said quietly.

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