Page 1 of Ghost Note

Prologue

DAISY PIPER

Danny stared at me from his perched position on the bonnet of his white Volkswagen Scirocco. The car that was his pride and joy, coming second only to me.

At least that’s what he’d once said.

Now, his strong hands hung limp between parted legs, and his eyes turned sad as he waited for me to respond to the news he’d just shared.

News.That’s what he was calling it.

He hadn’t warned me that what it was, in fact, was him ending our relationship like it didn’t even matter. He hadn’t warned me that I’d kissed his lips for the very last time without knowing so, or that this news wasn’t even news at all. What it was, when you stripped away all the bullshit, was a goodbye.

I studied him, seeking out the twenty-year-old boyfriend who’d held my hand and guided me through life for the last six years. Instead, I saw a stranger.

I have to do this, Daisy. I have to follow my heart, and that heart is taking me to the music.

The music.

The goddamn music!

After years of pledging our love to one another, he was throwing me away like a chewed-up, overused toy he’d grown bored of, and I was meant to stand here and tell him that he had my blessing—that I admired him for chasing his dream without the heavy burden of me on his back.

“Is that what you want?” I eventually asked, my voice frayed at the edges.

Danny looked at me with his sea-green eyes. Eyes I’d woken up to hundreds, if not thousands of times, and eyes I would probably never wake up to again. I studied his short brown hair, and visions of all the times I’d clung to it while he’d been inside me flashed through my mind. All that sweet love we’d made. The things we’d said to each other. The memories we shared.

“Want is a weird word to use,” he answered. There was no life in his response, and it made me scowl into the car’s bright headlights. Danny was the definition of life. None of this made any sense. He sighed dramatically. “I don’twantto hurt you, Daisy…”

“But you’re going to anyway. We’ve been together since we were fourteen, Danny,” I reminded him.

“Exactly. There’s more to life than this.”

“Than us?”

“Than Devon. Hope Cove! This dull, crappy village we live in. This way of existing. This…” He raised his hands only to slap them back down on his thighs, his frustration obvious in his tired exhale as he looked around. “There’s more to life than what we know. I have to go out there and try to discover some of it.”

“Why can’t we do that together?”

“Taking you with me wouldn’t work. You like this quaint way of living. You like waking up to familiar things and knowing what’s going to happen in the next twenty-four hours. I want more than that, Zee. I want to live in the real world. Hope Cove isn’t it.”

I wanted to run to him—to throw my arms around his neck and kiss his lips the way I’d done so many times before. I wanted to whisper a reminder in his ear; a reminder of the promises we’d made to one another, the things we’d overcome, and all the ways we could be happy. But Danny was different now, and since joining his rotten band, just twelve months ago, I’d watched him drift further and further away from me, little by little, week by week, piece by piece.

Until we’d come to this.

Nobody wants to sound desperate, so I swallowed down my pleas and took a moment for myself.

This night was meant to be so different.

I’d chosen the perfect outfit to wear on what I thought would be another date filled with romance. One where we’d perhaps walk on the beach, barefoot. One where he’d brush his hand through my long brown hair and tell me how much he adored the way it felt between his guitar-playing fingers. One where he’d perhaps tell me how my pale blue tea dress was pretty, and he loved the way it hugged my breasts… or one where he’d finally, finally look at me like he had when we’d first started going out.

He used to tell me that I was his dream and that nobody could replace me.

I guess that hadn’t been a lie. Nobody had.

It wasn’t a person who stole my future. It was a thing. A passion. An addiction that had wormed its way into the heart and mind of the love of my life, making him blind to me and a possible future together—the very thing he once said he lived for.

I’d been replaced by a guitar, and only one of us appeared to be mourning the fact.

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