Page 83 of Ghost Note

The organisers rushed around everywhere. People who mattered made it known by barking orders, shouting in corridors about things that hadn’t been done, and the people who worked got to work without delay. We’d had to push ourselves against walls as trolleys of equipment whizzed by, and by the time we joined the other band members in the bar area, I was already exhausted and in need of a strong drink myself.

Danny handed me a bottle of beer and pulled me into a quiet corner. His warm hand on the small of my back made me relax, and I pressed myself up against a wall so I could look across the room to the others who were sitting around a small circular table, laughing freely without nerves or apprehension for anything.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said as Danny came in front of me, blocking my view and pressing his hips to mine. “You can go sit with them.”

“I’ve sat with them for the last five years. I know everything those fuckers have to say.”

“I just don’t want you missing out.”

“And what about what you want?”

I looked up into his eyes, and my heart raced wildly for him. “I don’t know what I want.”

His free hand gripped my waist, and his fingers curled into my bare skin. “It’s time to figure it out. Stop trying to please me and everyone else, Zee. You’ve got to connect with whatever your truths are, and you’ve got to follow them. No matter who it pisses off in the process. Even me.Especiallyme.”

“Sounds like a selfish way to live.”

“It’s the only way. If we’re not living honestly, what’s the damn point?”

“Okay,” I breathed out, feeling his arousal as he rocked into me without a care in the world who watched on or saw us being intimate. “Then my truth is that I want to know what your truth is. What’s all this about: us sleeping together, you dropping me into your world without warning, me being here? What’s it leading to?”

He dropped his lips to my neck and placed the softest kiss there. His lips were the sweetest caress, and I closed my eyes to savour it. “What do you want it to lead to?” he asked against my skin.

Us

You and me.

Your lips on my skin every day.

Waking up to your sleepy smile.

Growing old and grey, side by side.

Making it work, somehow.

Saying goodbye to the regret and saying hello to the possibilities.

“I don’t know,” I lied.

Danny stopped with his kisses, and his lips hovered over the curve of my neck before he blew out a soft sigh and lifted his head to look me in the eyes. His thumb brushed over my rosy red cheek. “I’ll get the truth out of you, no matter how long it takes.”

I stared up at him, so afraid to get hurt again, yet even more scared to let him go, but I wasn’t like Danny. I never had been. Bravery didn’t want to be my friend. Decisions and direction evaded me. He was a man who knew how to live. I was still a lost girl, parading around on beaches and thinking that the sunshine was all I needed to have a good life.

“That fear will kill you, Zee,” he whispered before he dropped a kiss to my mouth that made my stomach tighten.

The way his lips massaged mine delicately made the emotions in my chest bubble, until words I hadn’t known I wanted to speak tumbled out carelessly.

“I want to stop loving you somehow.”

Danny froze, his eyes widening as he pulled back.

I looked at him with just as much confusion as he looked at me. So many things had just been said in so few words, and I didn’t have a clue where to start the dissection of any of them.

“I want to stop you from having an advantage over me. I want to feel stronger and to be able to resist you. I wish I could be like Gina, with fire in my belly and anger in my heart that overrides what I feel and have always felt about you. I want you to have to work for it more because I think that’s what you deserve—to have to work for it. I want to stop loving you somehow so I can start all over again… but I don’t know how,” I added.

He just stared at me, waiting. Any pain he was feeling, he kept hidden somehow. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d kept his true intentions hidden from me for so long before he chose to leave.

“And I don’t think it’s even possible anymore,” I said, swallowing any guilt I felt.

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