Page 55 of Ghost Note

“You don’t need to save me from the gossipers. I really don’t care what anyone thinks anymore… apart from you.”

“If you don’t care about the rest of them, why do you care about me?”

“I can’t believe you have to ask me that,” he said, his voice somewhat pained. I looked up to see him staring at me in confusion.

“Don’t look at me like that, Danny. It’s not fair.”

“How am I looking at you?”

“Like anything I’d say to you could matter.”

“You will always, always matter, Daisy. You and whatever you have to say.”

“Just not enough to stick around.”

Danny dipped his head, shaking it from side to side before he looked up with a smile on his face. “You know hanging around in the past is the coward’s way to live, don’t you?”

“What does that mean?” I scowled.

“All this pretending that I’m the big, bad villain. Focusing on what’s been and gone. I get it, Zee, I really do. You were hurt, and you won’t rest until you think the person who hurt you has paid. But you can’t hurt me more than I’ve hurt myself. You don’t see me hitting my own body hard with ten Hail Mary’s and a heap of self-flagellation every day because of it, though, do you? You never will. I’m not that guy. Yeah, I fucked up with you. I fucked up and somehow, I got something great out of it in the end with the music, but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognise that Ididfuck up. It just means that I forgave myself and kept on living because when you’re hurting is when you’ve got to be at your bravest. You’ve got to dare to dream and dare to jump. If you don’t, you’re just sitting around all day, every day, letting your mistakes or injustices suffocate you.”

“Maybe it would have been easier for me to move on and be brave, as you call it, if you’d have had the balls to finish with me the right way.”

“And what would the right way have been?”

“A proper explanation would have been a good start.”

Danny leaned closer, his face falling. “I did try, Zee. I tried to talk it through with you, and you ran.”

I thought back to that night, and the way I’d stumbled over grassy banks and muddy pathways just to get away from the truth of him ending our relationship.

“You ran, and then you blocked me out. No calls accepted. No doors answered. Your parents hated me within the hour, and I couldn’t get to you.”

“I…” My scowl hurt. “You…”

He reached over, resting his hand on my arm. “You, what?”

I stared down at him touching me, unable to ignore the way my heart beat faster and faster with every passing second.

“Tell me, Daisy. Say all the things you’ve got to say, because you weren’t entirely innocent in this thing between us, either.”

“I will,” I said quietly. “Once I’ve figured out how to say them.”

His face softened, a small smile creating a dimple in his cheek. “Don’t take too long. I leave soon.”

Danny slid his arm from mine, and he sat back, looking out over the ocean again. I couldn’t take my eyes off his strong jawline, or the way his long, dark lashes blinked down slowly. The way his top lip turned up at the middle.

“What’s it like?” I asked. “Your life now.”

Danny eyed me with caution, but for the first time since he left, I found myself wanting to know. Needing to dissect who he had become so I could hold it up against who I’d always thought he was.

“Is it everything you thought it would be?”

“Sometimes. It’s tougher than I ever imagined.”

“How so?”

Blowing out a breath, he rolled his head back, the strong tendons in his neck straining as he closed his eyes and groaned. “We were doing okay when things were slower.” Danny dropped back down to lay flat on the roof, his arms folding behind his head and his ankles crossed… exactly how he’d been when I’d arrived. His shirt rode up, exposing a slither of strong muscle above his waistband. “We had a crappy publicist before Jules came along. We weren’t always getting the right gigs, so sometimes we’d have a manic month or two, and then it would go quieter for a while. Our manager is a real battle axe, but she’s good at keeping us on the straight and narrow. She just didn’t have thatoomphabout her.”

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