by Vicki James
Swallowing down the odd sense of unease, I let go of his hand and squeezed both of mine between my legs.
He took a minute for himself before he eventually turned to me and raised his brows.
“Well, I guess this is it.”
“Knock them dead.” I fake smiled.
Danny leaned over to kiss me on the cheek, and when his warm lips met my cool skin, he let them linger there for a moment before he whispered, “Thanks for letting me do this alone, Daisy. I know it isn’t easy for you.”
Before I could answer or give him false assurances of me being absolutely fine with it, he’d pushed out of the car and made his way to the boot to collect his guitar. When he slammed that boot shut, I flinched and closed my eyes… unwilling to watch Danny walk inside to fulfil a dream he’d apparently wanted to chase for nineteen years.
A dream he also, apparently, wanted to do without me there to watch him.
“Bye, Danny,” I whispered, before I climbed into the driver’s seat, buckled up, and I drove his pride and joy back to Hope Cove until I got the call to pick him up.
The problem with living somewhere with a population of just over a thousand people in its entirety: nothing stays secret for long. There’s also nowhere to hide. I knew Danny was coming for me; it was just a matter of time now, and time was all I had to kill as I made my way through my day with my headache as a constant companion.
I tidied my home at zombie speed, throwing cushions in place on the sofa without really caring where they landed. My bed was made without concern for the lines I couldn’t straighten out in the material. I even cleared up the glass from my broken mirror and lifted the now-empty frame downstairs, propping it up against the kitchen door to dispose of the next time I went outside to the bins.
That knot of dread didn’t ease until the knock on the front door came. Waiting for the bad things to come is so much worse than them actually arriving, and so I went to answer my visitor, letting that knot of dread bleed out with every step I took towards them before I swung the door open to see Danny standing there.
He’d been facing the sunshine, his back to me before he slowly turned around and took me in.
There was nothing to say on my part, so I waited, leaning against the doorframe and folding my arms over my chest.
“I told you I’d chase you the next time you walked away.”
“You don’t have to chase what isn’t running.”
“Your feet might not be moving, but your mind is taking off in a sprint.”
I scoffed. “That thing left you a long time ago.”
Danny dipped his chin to his chest, and I thought I saw a slight smile there that I immediately wanted to knock off his face until he looked back up again, his expression flat. “Okay, so you don’t love me anymore. That’s good.”
“Good?” I scowled.
“For you, yeah.” He took a step closer. “For me… not so much.”
I looked at him, half wanting to slap his jaw and half wanting to push my hand through his hair. The only man I’d ever loved looked like a stranger, yet felt like home, and those conflicting emotions and desires were tearing me apart, piece by piece.
“Daisy, if I asked you for one last favour, would you do it for me?”
“No.”
Danny raised a brow, and now his half-smile definitely was there.
With a roll of my eyes and an impatient exhale, I readjusted my shoulder against the doorframe. “What favour?”
“Take a drive with me. Give me an hour of your time, and once that’s over, I’ll leave you alone.”
“An hour?” I asked, my voice full of scepticism.
“One hour. Sixty minutes. That’s all I want.”
“Where would we go?”
Danny’s smile rose, untameable as he gave me a glimpse of that old Southern English charm I’d dreamt about for years. “I can’t tell you. You just have to trust me.”
“And why the hell would I do that?”
“Because, Zee, somewhere deep down in that cynical heart of yours, you know that trusting me is as natural to you as breathing. You can either fight it and make yourself angry, or…” he held out his hand, and I looked down at it, “you can let go. It’s only an hour with someone you used to love. What’s the worst that could happen?”
Fourteen
My legs were squished up to the side of the seat in order to create as much distance between Danny and me as I could, but not even the space between us could stop my mind from drifting over the memories we’d created in this car together.
The sex we’d had, the kisses we’d drowned in, and the laughs we’d shared.
After agreeing to give him one final hour, the last thing I’d expected us to drive off in was his old, white Volkswagen Scirocco. I took every inch of it in, and I bathed in the memorable vanilla scent that had always somehow been woven into the fabric of the interior. The lights on the dashboard were as familiar to me as the colour of Danny’s eyes, and I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t the same person as I’d been back then.
We weren’t Danny and Daisy anymore.
He was Danny Silver of Front Row Frogs, and I was Daisy of Daisy’s Devon. One shone on stage while the other hid behind a seashell curtain or a cash register.
“Gran kept this in her garage for me,” Danny said with one arm on the steering wheel and his other hanging loosely over the gear stick. He was relaxed in his seat, his head occasionally turning to catch sight of me before he’d focus back on the road. “She said you should never get rid of your firsts.”
Oh, the jokes and snarky comments I could have made. Instead, I glanced out of my passenger door window, and I watched as familiar streets haunted me with old memories, just like this.
“Cars, I mean,” Danny added after realising what he’d just said.
“Yeah, I got that.”
“What do you drive now? I didn’t see a car outside your house.”
“It’s in the garage around the back, but the garage door is kinda rickety and a struggle to open, so I only get the car out when I really need it.” My voice was flat, like talking to him was a physical struggle.
Which, it was.
“What have you got?”
“Nothing you’d be interested in, I’m sure.”
“Daisy…”
The tone he used was so familiar, it irritated me, and I rolled my head his way and looked up through heavy brows. “Don’t Daisy me, Danny. You asked me to come on this drive with you, sure, but I never agreed to fall back into old ways just to give your ego a stroke.”
“My ego?” He laughed softly, his brows rising. “I only asked what car you had. What does this have to do with my ego?”
“Because you want to know if I got a Scirocco, just like yours, the way we always planned we would. Yours white, mine blue, right? Well, no, I didn’t get a stupid Scirocco. I didn’t get anything you’d approve of, so just leave it at that.” I turned to look away again, finding his smile and his eyes too irritatingly perfect. “My boring, small life will never live up to your full, exciting, wild one.”
“Wow. I always thought your voice was my favourite thing about you. Your newfound sass may have just taken the number one spot.”
I closed my eyes, as though that simple action would somehow close my ears off too, but my body and mind were constant betrayers, currently clinging onto his compliment and waving it around so I couldn’t avoid or ignore it. “If you want me to survive this hour without physically hurting you, can you please not talk to me like that.” I turned to him, eyes pleading. “Please.”
Danny’s smile faded, and though his eyes only lingered for a second, I saw the struggle behind them before he offered me a nod. “Sorry.”
“You should be.”
His lips twitched before he cleared his throat. A few minutes passed, and I didn’t care to ask where we were going. Danny’s answer would no doubt be cryptic, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of having any kind of control
over me, even though I had a million and one questions, starting with…
“So, Ben seems… nice,” Danny said, as though he somehow knew his meeting with Ben had been gnawing away at me.
“He’s one of the best men I know,” I answered honestly, because Ben was one of the best men I knew, and he deserved that kind of loyalty.
“How many men do you know?” Danny’s eyes flitted to mine only briefly before he focused on the road again.
“Are you asking me how many men I’ve slept with since you left?”
“No.” Danny laughed again, his head falling back against the seat. “Jesus, Zee, I’m not that much of an arsehole. I just meant how many men are you measuring him up against? Because it’s easy to be the best man someone knows in a small place like Hope Cove. But out there in the big, wide world, Ben might pale in comparison to some.”
“You and your big, wide world,” I mocked. “I can’t focus on what the rest of the world knows, Danny. I can only focus on what I know, and Ben is one of the best.”
“Do you love him?”
I glanced at the straight road ahead, swallowing down the lie I was about to tell. Instead, I answered with silence… unless he could hear the frantic beating of my heart.
“Poor Ben,” Danny whispered.
“I don’t have to love him to fuck him.”
He couldn’t hide his slight flinch or the way his hand tensed around the wheel, the knuckles turning white as the skin strained over them. The power I felt at his discomfort should have disgusted me. Instead, it spurred me on.
“But you don’t want to hear about that, do you, Danny? You don’t want to hear me say that Ben touches me in places you once did. You don’t want to hear me say that he’s a good guy who holds me right and never makes promises he can’t keep. You don’t want to hear me say good things about the man who treats me with respect because that doesn’t fit with the story you’re telling yourself in your head. What you want is for me to tell you I’m miserable—that sex with Ben is nothing compared to what it was with you. You want me to tell you that I can’t love him because the last man I loved was you, and I’m still not over that.” I leaned closer and dropped my voice. “You refuse to listen when I say I regret wasting my years on you because you refuse to believe that I’m this girl now… the one who survived without you.”
Danny’s strong jaw ticked, and I watched with sick amusement twisting me up until his nostrils flared, and he steered the wheel to a harsh left, making the car swerve sharply. We hit a grassy verge with force, and he slammed on the brakes. My body jolted forward, the seat belt digging into my chest. No air or words had time to escape me before Danny had unclipped his belt and was leaning over the panel between us.
With a single finger, he brought my face around to his.
“You can hate me, Daisy Piper. I’ll allow that, but don’t you ever say you regret wasting years on me because you and I both know those years weren’t wasted. They were the best either of us ever had, and every time you say anything different to that, your lies offend the air that I have to breathe.”
I stared at him with wide eyes and stuttering breaths pouring free.
His finger against my cheek burned, and I wanted to do such violent things to such a handsome face—things I’d never imagined before. Loving Danny hurt, and I wanted to inflict that pain back and give him a taste of his own medicine.
“And for the record, I’ve never—not once in my life—wanted you to be miserable. I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy and free, no matter who makes you feel that way.”
I held his intense gaze, not looking away when he let me go and drifted farther away until he was sitting in his seat again, looking through the windshield as he ran his hands through the thickness of his hair and tugged the ends of it in frustration.
“Sometimes we let go of the very thing we want to keep hold of, and we do it because we know if we don’t, that thing will never bloom,” he whispered, his voice rough and broken. “And we need it to fucking bloom.”
Tears welled in my eyes as I stared at him, my lips parted.
“Anyway…” Danny shook his head and started the car again, his focus back as he guided us back into the road with renewed purpose. “You’re eating into my hour, Zee. We might have to make it an hour and thirty now.”
“Danny, I—”
“Don’t,” he cut me off, not looking my way. “Just… don’t. Let’s get this over with for you. Let me put you out of your misery once and for all.”
We pulled into a driveway not long after, passing through a huge iron gate that I thought looked somewhat familiar, but couldn’t recognise or put a name to. My mind was somewhat foggy, stuck in three different places. The past, the present, and the future, but mainly locked on Danny’s outburst.
We need it to fucking bloom.
I had no idea what the hell he’d meant, but Danny’s mood had definitely shifted since his outburst, and I no longer had the strength to battle against his determination to see this through.
An hour. Ninety minutes at the most. Then it would be over. Over for good.
The thought both delighted and frightened me. How did you say goodbye to someone you still had so much to say to? I didn’t have a lot of time left to figure it out.
We drove down a driveway lined with rows of trees on either side that created a beautiful green canopy above. I couldn’t help but lean forward and look up at the beauty of it all, no longer caring if my hard mask slipped somewhat in front of him. Nature was a wonder, and no matter how many times it wowed me, it never failed to leave me in awe with its next piece of art.
Eventually, we pulled up to what looked like a huge Georgian country mansion sitting proudly at the end of the driveway. The trees seemed to part slowly, like a theatre curtain being drawn back to reveal, what was bound to be, an unforgettable show. The sun shone against the white-washed structure, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention. A small fountain sat proudly in front of it, the water glistening on our arrival.
“What is this place?” I asked as Danny turned the wheel to the right, taking us around the fountain, only to park up a few meters after.
“Let me show you,” he answered flatly, and a twitch of guilt bit at my gut.
Danny got out of the car, and even though we were in some kind of stalemate, he walked around to the passenger side and opened my door for me. His eyes burned into mine, not looking away as I got out and straightened down my clothes before looking up at the mansion on my left.
Huge was a lazy word, but this place was huge. It towered over me, teasing with long-forgotten secrets, past lives, and a history I could only dream of figuring out. Some places spoke to your soul, and this was one of them. I wanted to know everything about everyone who had ever lived here. The higher class, the lower, too who had worked for them. The story lover in me couldn’t help but smile, and I stared up at the white building standing proudly against the sky’s bright blue backdrop.
“It’s incredible,” I whispered.
“My dad’s dad used to work here,” Danny said, drawing my attention back to him. “Grandad Albie was a volunteer groundsman when he was younger. My dad spent a lot of his childhood playing out of sight where the owners couldn’t see him. He drove Gran mad at home, apparently, always wanting to run or chase things. He broke a lot of stuff, and that’s why Gran said she’d only ever have one child. Dad was hard enough work for the two of them.” Danny sighed heavily, as though talking about his father caused him pain, deep down inside. “Gran told me that Grandad once brought her here when they first started dating—or courting, as they called it back then—and he snuck her down into the folly at the South end of the gardens to steal his first kiss.”
“There’s a folly here?”
“There’s everything here.”
The smile on my face grew at the thought of Albie and Florence dating here, and of Tim Silver growing up as a boy, hiding away in the greenery I hadn’t even seen yet.
/> “I never knew this place existed.”
Danny’s smile was weak. “It’s only a few miles down the road from where you’ve spent your entire life, too. Imagine what’s a hundred miles away. Or a thousand.” Without waiting for a response, Danny pushed on his sunglasses and tucked his car keys away in his pocket. “Follow me.”
I did. I followed him like he was in charge of my life again.
Old habits die hard. Even when you thought they’d been dead and buried six feet underground for a while. The heart wants what it wants, and mine apparently wanted to follow the enemy himself.
Fifteen
Atley House looked like it was from another time—another world. I could picture the cast of Downton Abbey venturing here, their smiles romantic, and their skirts swishing in the wind as they ran over the grounds.
My imagination had always done the travelling on my behalf—my mind letting me wander into unknown worlds and territories, while I stayed safe at home among a small community of people I knew and could trust—but not even that imagination could take in that this place actually existed… and so close to where I lived.
Danny guided me around the outdoor grounds, taking me past an orangery where he nodded to a groundsman as though he was an old friend.
“Do you know everyone here?” I asked, struggling to keep up with him.
“Kinda.” He chucked his chin at another gardener across the way. “Mostly.”
“How?”
“We all have our secrets, Daisy.”
I could only imagine how many he held within.
Danny led me across the sprawling acres of finely manicured, bright green grass, and he steered me into a section of wildflowers that looked anything but wild. It was organised chaos, and every coloured head of a flower hypnotised me until any anger I’d ever held became a long distant memory, leaving me almost… floating.