by Vicki James
I turned to look at him through blurry eyes. He looked so fucking good, all fresh-faced and put together. Like he’d had no trouble sleeping. And there I was, a ragdoll of emotions, all tattered and torn, not stitched together quite right, as Ben had reminded me. The seams I didn’t dare pull at, Danny was pulling for me. Yet, despite that, all I could think about as I stared into his eyes were the hundreds of memories of the fun and heat we’d created together.
Singing in the car.
Screwing behind the bar of his first ever public performance before he joined the band, when he was solo and brave and delicious and mine.
Making love under the willow tree in Beechfield Park.
His tongue between my legs.
His hands…
His fingers…
His mouth.
Every wall I’d built over the last five years was blown to pieces on that stockroom floor, and I moved before I could stop myself, pushing myself up and over Danny until I was straddling his lap and staring down into his wide, stunned eyes.
“I really fucking hate you,” I whispered, right before I slammed my mouth against his, and I let Danny taste my devastation at his return.
Twelve
His hands froze against my back, his eyes wide as he looked up at me. I could see the question there—the bewilderment, too. But screw Danny Silver. He thought he was the only one who made the decisions here—he was wrong. It was my time to decide how to silence my own mind, and his warm lips and familiar kiss seemed like the perfect distraction.
I watched him watching me as I moved my tongue over his, massaging and teasing it the way he always used to love. My arse moved, riding into him… back, forth, back, forth, until I’d built a rhythm that was rubbing heat over his dick. It grew beneath me, the way it always had done. He may have left me behind, but his desire for my body was an old friend, and I knew how to build him up and up and up. My fingers curled around his neck, and I kissed that ex-love of mine like it was both the first and last time I ever would.
A low groan escaped him, and Danny was gone. His eyes slammed shut, his hands digging into my back and pulling me closer to him, his strength so prominent now. But close wasn’t close enough. I wanted to squeeze the last five years out of him and remind him what he’d walked away from, dragging his guitar case behind him like a fool.
“D-Daisy,” he mumbled, bumping against my mouth.
“Shh,” I ordered quickly before nipping down on his bottom lip and dragging it out, letting it go with a flair. “Isn’t this what you want?” I ran a hand through his hair, feeling the stirrings deep in my stomach as I rode his erection. “Me, willing to throw myself at you whenever you decide it’s time?”
I dug my nails into his scalp, watching him before I tugged his head back and leaned in closer, my breaths mingling with his. “Come on, superstar. Play with me.”
“I…”
“What?” I pressed, my face turning colder as I turned him on. “You… what?”
“You’re so different now.”
“Yeah,” I said, brushing my lips over his. “And you can’t handle me anymore.”
“Is that a challenge?”
Was it? I had no idea. Part of me wanted to push him—to see how much he’d fight for me now the way he hadn’t back then, but another part of me was repulsed by him. He was meant to be better than this.
I was meant to be better than this.
Danny pulled me closer, his arms tightening around me until my tits were pressed against him and not an inch sat between us. “Is it, Zee? I’m willing to play the game, but you’ve got to ask yourself if you’re ready to hurt that boyfriend of yours because I promise you, I’m not the same guy I was back then either, and I don’t play nice when I want something now.”
Boyfriend?
He still thought Ben was mine.
I should have told him there and then that everything I’d said had been a lie, but clarity and thinking before speaking weren’t a thing when you were writhing against the man who’d hurt you. I was a woman scorned, petty and ruined, desperate to scorn him in return.
“Don’t worry about Ben. He doesn’t mind sharing me.” I slid my cheek against his, and I let my tongue trail over his ear before I whispered, “In fact, sometimes he watches me with other men just for fun.”
Danny’s body tensed and froze beneath me. “What?” he growled.
I smiled to myself… a little victory.
“You always wanted me to let go and have fun in life. I guess I just needed the right man to bring it out of me.”
He moved—his hands finding my face and pulling it back so I was staring down at him, not feeling as victorious all of a sudden. His worried eyes searched mine.
“What the fuck did you just say to me?” he whispered violently.
“I… erm…”
“Tell me that was a fucking lie, or I swear to God, Daisy, I will not be held responsible—”
The bell above the shop door rang out, breaking us from the moment. Or at least me. My head turned in that direction, and I heard two feminine voices on the shop floor, cooing over the beauty of my stock. But when I turned back to Danny, he hadn’t moved. His brows were knitted together, furious and focused.
My racing heart didn’t know what to do, but it seemed my mouth had a mind of its own.
“I guess you’ll never know,” I said quietly, before I peeled myself away from him, rubbed the tears from my eyes and stood tall. “Don’t you dare come out of this room until my customers have gone. The last thing I need is everyone knowing I’ve made another mistake.”
Faking strength, I pushed out through the seashell curtain and greeted the two ladies with a smile I hoped would please them.
Smiling when hurting takes more strength than anyone realises, and those eleven minutes of serving two tourists felt like a lifetime. All I could think about was Danny not a few feet away from me, and how his kiss still burned my lips…
And that look of anger when he’d stared up at me, thinking Ben and I…
“I may pop back in and treat myself to that gorgeous lilac backpack later,” the lady with the red cardigan told me. I’d barely taken in her features when I glanced up at her, but I smiled anyway through the haze of confusion that had become my life.
“Please do. I’m here until two.”
“Closing early?”
“Just for today.”
With a nod, she and her friend left, and the bell rang out to signal their departure.
I stayed behind the counter, not wanting to face Danny. Eventually, he pushed through the seashell curtain, his steps slow and controlled. I stared straight ahead, my face expressionless, and my body limp. I didn’t even look up at him when he came to stand beside me, and his finger pushed strands of hair behind my ear, almost affectionately.
“Six days left, Daisy,” he said quietly. “That’s all you have to start telling me some truths. And no matter how brutal those truths might be, I’d rather listen to them than the lies you’re trying to kill me with.”
I hitched in a breath, held it in my chest, and I closed my eyes as his finger trailed down my neck.
“And if I find out what you said isn’t a lie… I’ll kill him instead.”
By the time I exhaled, the bell rattled again, and Danny was gone.
What the hell had I just done?
“I have a favour to ask.”
“Missing me already, Dais?” I could hear the smirk in Ben’s voice, even though he was a little out of breath and in the middle of something. His groans of manual labour would have set any other woman’s heart a flutter, but mine was broken, so it had little effect. “Fucking get in, you stubborn prick,” he strained.
“Is now a bad time to ask? You sound busy.”
“It’s fine. Just fixing up the Myers’ boat.” He blew out a breath, and it sounded like he shifted some tools out of the way. “What do you need from me?”
“Well, nothing huge. It’s no big deal, really. I just wa
nted to give you a little head’s up. I may have done something… stupid.”
“Stupid? You? Never.” With a groan, I heard a pop, and Ben laughed to himself. “Gotcha, you little bastard,” he said quietly. He did this often when we spoke. Had a conversation that was half with me, and half on the task in front of him. “What have you done now?”
I pushed the key into the shop doors, locking up for the day, fifteen minutes earlier than I’d promised those two ladies. The day had dragged, and I needed to go home for a long soak in the tub.
“I may or may not have said something to Danny that made him a little… ragey.”
“Ragey?”
“Yeah.” I cringed as I turned to walk the streets of Hope Cove.
“Like…”
“Well, I may have been trying to hurt him… and I may have written your name on one of the bullets I fired.”
There was an unusual silence for a moment before Ben cleared his throat and spoke. “What, exactly, does that mean?”
“It means that Danny might think we’re an official thing.”
“We were barely a thing. Never mind an official thing.”
“I know. I know. But—”
“Listen, Dais, I love the shit out of you, but if you’ve used me as a mean’s to—holy fuck!” Ben grunted loudly, and it sounded like he dropped his phone before a commotion ensued.
I stopped walking, a strange tickling of fear crawling down my spine. “Ben? Ben, are you there?
“Fuck,” he groaned again, and there was scrambling on the line.
“Oh, shit,” I said to myself, turning in the direction of Harbour Beach.
All I could see was Danny’s anger when I’d said what I’d said… and all I could hear was his threat to kill him. Had he got there already?
“Ben!” I called out, my voice loud, drawing the attention of a few passers-by.
The noise continued until a desperate, gasping Ben came to the phone. “Fuck, Dais, you there?”
“What just happened?”
“I tripped over my wrench and dropped the phone behind two loose deck panels. Tore my damn hand open.”
Closing my eyes, I released a breath. “Jesus, Ben. You had me scared. I thought you were fighting.”
“Fighting? Why would I be fight—oh…” his voice dropped. The penny, too. “The rock ‘n’ roll guy. Danny.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to use you to hurt him, but he saw us together yesterday, and I just really wanted him to suffer, so I said some stuff. Some really, really stupid stuff. I acted like a child, Ben. I don’t know what was wrong with me. Danny didn’t take it well, but I’m going to make this right. I’ll find him, and I’ll make sure he knows not to say or do anything to you.”
“Yeah?”
“I promise.”
“Well, all right then,” Ben said, sounding somewhat appeased. “But, Dais?”
“Yeah?”
“You may want to try and call him or something within the next minute or so. Because unless you have legs that can make you move like lightning, I don’t think you’re going to get to him before he gets to me.”
“What?” I scowled, spinning in the direction of the beach.
“There’s a Danny-shaped figure getting closer, and he doesn’t look very happy, I’ve got to tell you.”
Thirteen
It turned out that my legs could move like lightning when forced to.
I ran, and I ran without thought, heading straight towards Danny and Ben.
No matter the dainty size of Hope Cove, I was still out of breath when I made it to the small beach lined with boats to find Ben standing inside the one he was working on, looking down on Danny, who had his arms folded across his chest.
“What the hell are you doing?” I shouted at Danny as I came to a panting stop in front of him, and I tugged on his arm, jerking his body. But he was unmoveable as he glared at Ben like he was about to destroy him. It was a side of Danny I wasn’t familiar with.
Another side.
“Everything’s fine, Dais,” Ben assured me. I glanced up at him to see him rubbing his hands with a dirty rag, his eyes on Danny. “Everything’s fine.”
“Danny?” I asked, breathless, turning back to him.
“Like the guy said… everything’s fine.”
“Why are you here?”
Danny’s eyes drifted to mine, narrowed, with a coldness pouring free. “Just introducing myself to my tenants. Checking them out.”
“Tenants? What are you talking about?” I scowled.
“Didn’t my gran tell you? She owned half the rentals around here. Now she’s gone, I guess I do.”
I glanced up at Ben, who was looking at me, giving nothing away as he ran that rag over his torn-up hands slowly. “You rented your home off Florence?”
“I rented it from Cove Lettings.” He pointed to Danny. “And Cove Lettings happens to be a limited company. Turns out his gran owns… owned that agency and some of the houses within it.”
I gasped, turning back to Danny. “Is that true?”
He answered with a subtle nod, letting me figure out the rest.
Cove Lettings was who Gina and I rented the shop from. It was who I rented my home from, too. In all the time I’d been a part of Florence’s life, even after Danny had gone, she’d never once told me. I guess it made sense why I was the one to get the properties. Even with a shoddy business plan and no guarantees of being able to draw in the income, Cove Lettings had approved mine and Gina’s application almost too quickly, letting us beat older, more experienced applicants who wanted to turn the shop into all kinds of things, including a fishing supply store.
Then there was my home. My home had been a blessing my parents told me had come from God. It was their only explanation—not just for my house, but for everything—given the fact that I had little savings and a new business we weren’t even sure would make it.
Florence had made everything happen, and I wasn’t sure how the hell to feel about any of that.
I blinked up at Danny. “How long have you known? How long have you known that my life is in your hands again?”
“In my hands?”
“Answer the damn question, Danny.”
“I found out this morning. It’s why I came to the shop to talk to you.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me before you left?”
“When did you want me to tell you, Daisy? While you were crying, or while you were—”
“Okay, stop!” I held my hands up in the air, cutting him off as I closed my eyes. “Just… stop,” I sighed and brought a hand down to my thigh while my other pinched my nose. This life I’d tried to create on my own had been built with bricks made of Silver, and it cheapened the whole thing—the years of hard work, the moments of feeling like I’d achieved something alone.
I was twenty-five, and for eleven years now, everything had been about Danny. I couldn’t take another second of it.
Looking back up at him, I shook my head and held his gaze.
“Is this the part where you run again?” he asked quietly.
“If I stay, I’ll say some things I won’t mean. Or maybe I will mean them, and then you’ll know.”
“Know?”
“Yes. That loving you has been the biggest mistake of my life.”
He looked like I’d shot an arrow straight into his heart, the sharp pinch of his brows and the parting of his lips revealing his pain.
“You don’t mean that, Daisy.”
“Then how come it feels like the truth?”
When I turned to walk away, I did so slowly, not scared of his threat about what would happen if I turned my back on him a fourth time. I was tired of fleeing now, knowing I couldn’t outrun him no matter how fast I flew. That didn’t mean I had to suffer his face for a second longer than I needed to
“Are you nervous?”
Danny was sitting in the driver’s seat of his new car when he turned to me. “A little,” he confessed.
&nb
sp; I took him in, wearing a dark grey, distressed T-shirt, and his black jeans. He hadn’t done anything particularly different with his hair. It was its usually shaggy messy from him running his hands through it over and over again. Still… he looked different. Somehow older, and less like my boyfriend of the last few years.
He’d joined a band not long ago. Their name, although weird in my mind, was one Danny said no one would forget in a hurry, and so on their offer to be a part of something special, he’d accepted his place among Front Row Frogs as their lead guitarist.
To say he’d been thrown in at the deep end was an understatement, but as with everything he did, Danny hadn’t wasted time on nerves or questioning himself. He’d simply caught up and secured his position. And now we were here...
Taking one last look at the neon signs above Bar Belgrave in our neighbouring town of Kingsbridge, I strapped on a smile I didn’t fully commit to and squeezed Danny’s hand. “You know you’re going to blow everyone away, right?”
“Am I?”
“There isn’t anything you can’t do, Daniel Oliver Silver.”
“Full naming me. You must be serious.” He smirked, but I saw that rare uncertainty in him, so I squeezed his fingers again, knowing that no matter how strong the pep talk, he wasn’t going to listen and take it in. When Danny got like this and went inside his own head, it was better to let him ride it out. So many times, we’d argue when I’d try to pull something out of him that he wasn’t willing to share, and now I was learning that his brooding silence wasn’t always a bad thing. It just meant he had to get his thoughts in order. I hoped that was what this was because sometimes, lately, his silence had been a bad thing, and it had created days of distance between us that made me nervous. Distance that had only been there since he’d joined the band.
Danny took a look out of his window and blew out a breath, tilting his focus up to the neon signs. They projected an array of colours of his chiselled jaw and perfectly straight nose—they caught the moisture in his eyes and lit them up. And somehow, while looking at him sitting there close to me in that car, I felt Danny slipping away.