Page 72 of Ghost Note

The early hours of the morning arrived, and Danny slept with his arm around me while I listened to the steady beat of his heart. The night had been more than I could have dreamed of, and more than anything we’d done together in our years as boyfriend and girlfriend.

Last night, we’d acted like it was our one and only time… and now it was over. That’s the problem when you build things up in your mind; they come to an end eventually, no matter how much you enjoyed the performance.

My head was resting on the shoulder with a daisy tattooed upon it. It was the grungiest looking daisy I’d ever seen. He’d inked a reminder of me on his skin, and then he’d dropped the bombshell.

He still loved me.

Yeah, Daisy, but he’ll also still be leaving.

Closing my eyes, I pressed a kiss to his chest and let it linger there. He released a sleepy moan before he turned on his side to face me and curled his arms around my body, burying my head into his chest. He smelt so clean and manly, and I wanted to bottle the scent of him up to save for the days when I knew I was going to miss him the most. He smelt like home, and my heart ached for it, even while drowning in the scent of him.

I had so much to say, but the words were bouncing off the walls of my mind, and I couldn’t seem to pick out the ones I needed to form anything that would make sense.

“You okay?” Danny asked sleepily.

“Just… thinking.”

“Try sleeping instead. It hurts less.” He pulled back to look at me.

I blinked up at him with sore, tired eyes and offered a small smile. “Ha-funny-ha.”

“What are you thinking about?”

“About this house, and how I’m probably going to have to leave it. Find somewhere else to live.”

He scowled; his hard lines visible as the moonlight poured into the room. “Why?”

“Well, I’m never going to be able to have another man in here now. Not after you. Not after… that.”

He couldn’t contain his smug smile no matter how hard he tried. “Don’t move. I like it here. It feels like you.” Danny ran a thumb over the apple of my cheek.

“Something to think about, I suppose.” My gaze drifted down, focusing on his collarbone as he continued to stroke me soothingly. I caught sight of his tattoos again. “When did you get all of these?”

“Pretty much straight after I went to Brighton with the guys to record the first album. There was a tattoo place around the corner from the flat we shared.”

“Which did you get first?”

“Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.”

My eyes rose to meet his. “The daisy.”

“The guy who owned the tattoo studio is one of the best. He has people flying all over the world to get a session with him. He was really into his music, so we decided to make a deal with him. If he worked out of hours to ink us up, we’d invite him over to the studio to jam with us. We were cheeky little shits, but Halo doesn’t care about any of that. We got him to make the deal and—”

“Halo? He’s the lead singer, right?” I remembered him from the YouTube videos I’d watched. “The one with the piercings and the weird black hair.”

Danny’s brows rose. “You know the guys in the band?”

“Not really. I gave up on music the day you gave up on us.”

“What?” he whispered, that frown deepening.

“It sounds lame, but when every song reminded me of you, I couldn’t take a second of it any longer. If it had lyrics, I didn’t listen.”

“Zee, that’s crazy.”

“Is it?” I asked. There I was, more vulnerable than ever, laying my most embarrassing truths on his chest.

“How can you live in a world without music?”

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