by Vicki James
Like the night when Danny ended things.
Come on, Daisy. He’s nothing to you now. This isn’t real. He’s not real. Your love wasn’t real.
I slipped off my shoes, curled my toes into the grass beneath my feet, and I looked at the back gate.
Then, I ran, and I didn’t stop running until I got home, where I locked all the doors and headed straight for my fridge to grab that chilled bottle of rosé wine that was waiting for me to destroy it.
Within an hour, I’d drunk the lot.
My phone rang and rang and rang until I had no choice but to text Ben and Gina to tell them to back off. With alcohol came courage, and I was feeling ballsy now the fear had been drowned by Echo Falls, 11.5%.
Me: Ben, there’s nothing wrong. I left before I did something stupid… like throw a bottle at Danny’s head. I’ll call you in the morning.
Me: G, thanks for letting me know you didn’t cause a scene, and yes, I’m glad Jackson didn’t run over to get his autograph, either. I’ll call you tomorrow. Tonight, I have a full series of Grey’s Anatomy to catch up on and three bottles of wine to drown in. Fun times. ;)
I hoped that sated them because I had more alcohol to sink, and I wanted to do it in the comfort of my grey jogging bottoms and my white I Love Devon T-shirt. I could lie and say it had been the first thing at hand, but it hadn’t. I’d scrambled through a drawer I barely opened these days, looking for this thing as an act of defiance to the superstar who’d once thought this great county wasn’t good enough for him.
It was more than good enough.
It was everything—everything he’d walked away from.
The TV wasn’t holding my attention when I sat on the cream, soft sofa with my next bottle of wine. My blood was warm, my cheeks flushed, but other people’s voices were grating on my last nerve, so I switched the thing off and let the screen turn black. I didn’t listen to music usually—at least not music with lyrics—but I was partial to the odd score soundtrack, or an orchestra album every now and again. Scrolling through my phone, I found my free version of Spotify I hardly ever used, hunted down the Twilight score, and I hit play, listening to the hypnotic melodies of Edward and Bella’s love.
It was the only kind of romance I could allow myself to drown in, because the man wasn’t mortal and wouldn’t fuck up, and if he did, he’d somehow fix it so that life was perfect again—often better than before. He was a vampire—fictional—and I could allow myself to get lost in fiction more than reality now. Just like Florence did after her heart broke when she lost her husband.
The wine flowed, and I dropped my head onto the back of the sofa, closing my eyes.
But that’s the problem with your own mind. You can try and train it to be defiant like your heart, but when your thoughts unconsciously drift, they often end up wandering into the very thing you were trying to avoid.
“This is such bullshit,” Danny groaned beside me, rolling onto his stomach and burying his face into the pink pillow on my bed.
I threw another piece of popcorn into my mouth and smirked as I chewed down. Robert Pattinson was on the TV screen in my bedroom, throwing Kristen Stewart over his shoulder before he climbed a very tall tree like some kind of invincible, fanged monkey. The melodies of the soundtrack rang out around the room, building and building and building—the music designed to make the viewer become doe-eyed and dreamy as they watched a regular girl fall in love with a ridiculously handsome vampire. Like there was no danger to her whatsoever.
Danny was having none of it.
Expletives fell into the pillow like muffled F-bombs. His fists were tucked under his chest, and he occasionally smacked his head down over and over again, his feet doing the same dance, making him look like some kind of demented fish.
Sure, I loved Twilight, but I tortured him with it for these kinds of reactions. Danny, when passionate, was at his hottest, whether that passion was love or hate. I may have been young, but my hormones definitely raged whenever Danny showed fire.
He always showed fire, hence why I was always a horny teenager around him.
“You okay over there?” I mumbled around my popcorn, my legs crossed at the ankle, as casual as can be.
“Idonwhywehavewatchalltime.”
“Sorry?” I leaned in closer, raising a brow he couldn’t see. “I didn’t quite catch that. You want to watch New Moon after, too?”
Danny turned his head, his cheek squished up as he glared at me. “Don’t you dare.”
“Don’t worry. Jacob is about to make an appearance soon. I know he’s your favourite.”
“He was… until I realised he was a pussy who wasn’t going to tear that stupid pale face apart with his teeth.”
I gasped, faking my disgust. “You watch how you speak about my future sparkly husband.”
“Please. That would never last. You hate the sight of blood.”
“I’d be staring at his strong jawline and brooding eyes, not the blood.”
“He’s not even that good-looking.”
“I may have to ask you to leave.”
Danny groaned, and I loved the sound he made whenever he did that. His voice had changed over the last couple of years, the sweetness of his tone fading away as he transitioned into a man. His jaw had become more prominent, and stubble had started to grow there, doing things to me I couldn’t ever explain. I’d always loved my little skater boy. I’d always been attracted to him. But Danny Silver becoming a man was making me feel things I’d never felt before.
Mainly constant arousal.
Especially when he was pouting, all the while knowing that I was only his girl—the one who could straddle his waist, cup his prickly cheeks, and turn those growls into moans of satisfaction.
“Daisy,” he said, dropping his voice and losing his irritation. “If you turn this shit off, I’ll do that thing you like me to do with my tongue.”
I watched his small smirk come alive, and I lasted an entire ten seconds before I hit the remote and the room went dark, leaving me to put my popcorn aside and roll over to the boy I planned on spending the rest of my life with… if he happened to want that, too.
My eyes pinged open, and I stared up at the ceiling of my living room as the dream I hadn’t wanted to dream lingered around the edges of my mind like a frayed seam, and all I could think as I sat there was…
Don’t pull at that thread, Daisy.
With a groggy groan, I sat up and drank more wine. I drank it until the thought of looking in Danny’s eyes again went from the worst thought possible, to the best idea I’d ever had.
Within minutes, I was pacing my house, wandering into the kitchen aimlessly, only to spin around and saunter back into the room. The wine no longer tasted nice, and I left my glass on the coffee table as I ran my hands through my hair in frustration.
“Don’t pull at that thread,” I reminded myself. “Don’t pull at that thread, don’t pull it, don’t pull it.”
But that didn’t stop me. The need to do something—anything—clawed away at my stomach until I was walking out into the hall, slipping my feet into my worn-out old Nike trainers and throwing an even older, cream, heavy-knit cardigan over my shoulders.
I grabbed my keys off the hook by the door and stared down at them in my open palm.
“I hate him…” I said aloud.
Yet, I couldn’t deny that a sick and twisted part of me wanted to see him looking weak. I wanted to see how much he’d changed, how well he handled grief, or if he was the coward I’d always known him to be.
“I… hate him…” I whispered.
Still, I opened that door and stepped out into the cool night air, and I locked my house before I began to wander towards the beach. The sky was clear that night, and I looked up through hazy eyes to see a collection of stars watching over me. I could imagine what they were thinking…
What a foolish, silly girl.
But like all trainwrecks, they couldn’t look away, and I was already tired of being their entertai
nment. Dropping my focus to the street ahead, I trudged along on heavy feet until I could hear the sounds of the ocean waves. Danny was probably long gone, but there was a part of me I couldn’t explain or understand that needed to see where he’d been. To see if he’d left any wreckage there, too, like he had when he’d walked away from me.
The beach was, as I expected, empty when I got there.
No crowds had gathered around a rock star when news had spread of his arrival. They probably knew that he wouldn’t hang around for long, anyway. Danny’s name wasn’t popular around here with the more mature side of the residents. How could anyone find the man who hadn’t attended his own parents’ funeral charming? People hissed and spat when he was mentioned. They rolled their eyes and grumbled about how this place they loved hadn’t been good enough for him. They patted me on the arm and told me I’d had a lucky escape—that I could do better.
Every time I wanted to agree with them, and even when I did, there’d been an odd feeling in my stomach. One that hurt like some kind of betrayal.
I let all the air out of my lungs, wrapped my long cardigan around myself even tighter, and I made my way down the concrete walkway to the beach. The fresh air felt good in my wine-soaked veins, and nothing calmed my racing heart quite like the gentle sound of the waves crashing against the shore.
My skin prickled with a night chill when I sat down on the sand and stared out at nothing.
If he wasn’t here, I could find peace in my surroundings. That was one thing Hope Cove had always offered me in abundance.
“Sleep tight, Grandma Florence,” I whispered.
I imagined her response in my mind: You take care of that beautiful face and heart, Daisy Piper. It was what she’d always said whenever I’d left her house with Danny holding my hand. Like she’d somehow known what my future was to become.
The tiniest dot of orange light caught my eye, and I turned to the left, squinting down to see a figure emerging from the shadows by the rocky cove. The farther into the light they got, the more that chill rolled down my spine, until I recognised the subtle swagger of the walk.
I recognised the body.
And I recognised the face of the man who stepped closer and closer with a cigarette hanging between his fingertips.
I wasn’t sure if he was real at first, or if the wine had gotten a hold of me to the point of me imagining him there now. I froze, not moving or saying another thing as he drew closer, wearing smart black trousers that were covered in grains of sand, a white shirt opened at the collar, and no shoes. His bare feet padded towards me, his face unreadable and devoid of emotion.
The years had changed him, that much was clear.
His puppy fat had drifted away to reveal a chiselled jawline, hollow cheeks, pouty lips, and hair darker than it ever used to be.
Danny’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly when the few streetlamps behind us lit up his face even more, and he stopped only eight feet away.
The closest he’d been in five long years.
“Daisy?” he said roughly.
My name sounded wrong when he spoke. He voice was harsher around the edges, sounding more like a warning than an acknowledgement of my presence.
I stared at him, dumbfounded.
He was here. He was really here… and so different to how I remembered.
A million thoughts ran through my mind, and all the words I’d ever wanted to say to him tumbled over one another on my tongue, but when I opened my mouth to speak, nothing came out.
Not even the hate I held inside, and that hate, as I stared into his eyes, was dangerously alive.
Five
Go to Hell, the most dominant part of me wanted to scream in his face—to get right up there and stare into his cold eyes and confess every nasty thought I’d ever had in his absence.
Instead, I continued to look at him as though he wasn’t real. A stranger I’d never seen before on these shores, or someone I should have run from.
My hate did nothing to make me speak. All it did was turn me mute.
Danny had no right to stand there looking the way he did, like life had been nothing but good to him while mine had been a constant stream of hard days trying to rebuild the parts of me that he’d destroyed. He had no right to look as though the world had made his dreams come true, while mine had always wondered what dreams we could have built together.
He had no right to say my name without an apology attached to it.
“You shouldn’t be here,” slipped out from my mouth without thought.
Danny didn’t even blanch. With a hand tucked into the pocket of his trousers, he simply narrowed his eyes and brought his almost-finished cigarette to his mouth to take a long drag. It was a stub in his slender fingers, and he held it with precision as he stared back at me, not saying a word. When he lowered it, he blew out a stream of smoke, aiming it towards the sky.
The arrogant weasel.
My words or voice hadn’t affected him, and I wasn’t the kind of woman who threw punches, even though I wanted to. I shouldn’t have come here, that much I knew, so I stood as swiftly as I could and brushed down my tatty old joggers. Then, I wrapped my cardigan around my body, gave him one last parting look of disgust, and I turned to leave.
I made it three steps before his hand curled around my arm, making me freeze in place.
Danny was touching me.
My chest rose, inhaling sharply before I slowly spun around and looked down at his fingers wrapped around me. There were a thousand things I should have said. The curl of my lip was ready to spew some venom at his gritty little face, but instead, my eyes drifted up to his, and I found myself staring into pools of green I’d tried to forget existed. His eyes were my weakness, like the oceans I’d seen that belonged to foreign lands. They’d always drawn me in and held me captive, but now they looked darker with bloodshot strands invading what had once been pure white.
Danny tilted his head to the side. “You look so different.”
“Really? That’s what you’ve got to say to me?”
“You’ve lost weight.”
I scowled at him. “You’ve lost heart.”
His fingers curled around my arm with ease. “Have you not been looking after yourself?”
“What the hell has that got to do with you?”
“Daisy…”
“Screw you. Let me go, Danny.”
His eyes shot up to mine. “Say that again.”
“What?” I frowned deeper, tugging myself out of his grip and stumbling back on shaky feet, the uneven surface of the sand not helping.
“Say it again. Tell me to let you go.” Danny took a step closer, flicking the end of his cigarette to the sand before pushing both hands into the pockets of his trousers again.
“What the hell are you talking about?” His eyes were glazed, and memories of Jackson telling me he’d had a bottle in his hand earlier flashed through my mind. “Are you drunk?”
“Just say those words, Daisy.”
“Go fuck yourself, Danny.”
A small smirk played on his lips. “How long have you wanted to say that to me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself by thinking I’ve let you into my thoughts enough to care.”
“You’re fierier now, too.”
“Are we really doing this?”
“I have nowhere else to be.” His shoulders bounced.
“Funny,” I huffed out a laugh and shook my head. “I remember you having everywhere to be but here.”
He took a controlled step closer, but I held up a hand in warning—a warning for him to stay back and keep his mouth shut because he’d only spoken a few words, and I already didn’t like this version of who he’d become… or who I was becoming because of it.
“You have no shame, do you?” I said quietly, my voice breaking. “It was your grandmother’s funeral today, and you’d rather stand here making me feel like crap than acknowledge the fact that you couldn’t even be bothered to show up at the church to pay your
respects… if you even had any.”
“I paid my respects.”
“How? By getting drunk on the beach she once loved. By tossing your used-up cigarettes all over the place, the way she used to hate tourists doing every season. By—”
“You don’t know shit, Daisy,” he cut me off.
I stuttered, the words I wanted to say getting caught in my throat when Danny turned his back on me and looked out at the inky ocean.
“You think you know; I can tell you do, but you don’t know a damn thing about any of it,” he blew out as if the words weren’t meant to be spoken. They drifted back to me, the ache in his voice making my chest pinch before I rubbed it away with the palm of my hand. “But carry on, please. Keep saying what you have to say if it makes you feel better.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” I told him again, even though he had more right than any of us. “You shouldn’t have come back.”
“No one owns this place. I’ll do whatever the hell I want. I don’t need your approval, and I don’t need Hope Cove’s.”
What has happened to you? I wanted to ask him.
This wasn’t the soft-hearted boy I’d grown up with. He was unrecognisable to me. His voice didn’t sound like his. When had he even started smoking?
I had so many questions, but none of them mattered. I knew I wouldn’t like the answers, no matter how carefully he delivered them, so I kept them inside, locked away in that box labelled ‘Danger’ in my mind.
The moon’s light shone down on the ocean in a single strip, a white brick road illusion that made you think you could somehow walk along it to get to the horizon. It held my focus for ten seconds before I shifted back to Danny’s broad back. To those shoulders I used to climb upon when wading out to sea together. To that neck I’d tickle every night before falling asleep side by side.
How can a person somehow still feel like home when you haven’t known where they’ve been for the last five years?