by Vicki James
Maybe he saw the defeat in my eyes.
I was giving in to everything at the moment. Into Danny, my fantasies, and all my fears. But more than anything, I was giving in to the fact that maybe, just maybe, I’d brought our breakup on myself by suffocating a man who was never meant to stay in one place for as long as he had.
Maybe sometimes you can love a person too much.
Twenty-Six
I recognised the Plymouth Pavilion before we pulled up around the back of it to what Danny informed me was the stage door. Cars and buses lined the roadside, and we’d had to prove who we were—or at least the driver did—before we’d been allowed into the unloading of the equipment and the backstage access area.
When the limo came to a slow stop, I thought I heard screaming from somewhere beyond the windows. A shrill kind of cry I’d only ever heard on the television during coverage of premieres with fancy Hollywood stars.
Danny took the now-empty champagne flute from my hand, dropped it somewhere, and knelt in front of me, looking up as he placed his hands on my thighs. The screaming picked up again, and he closed his eyes for a second before he looked up again, his jaw ticking. I reached up to smooth the tension away on one side before I offered him a nod that wasn’t very convincing.
“My heart is doing that crazy beating you described to me before. The one where you think it’s going to burst out of your chest,” I admitted.
“You’re going to be fine. Do you know why?”
I shook my head.
“Because I’ll be right here with you the whole time.” With a kiss to the heel of my hand, he began to pull away. “Our driver has parked so you’re on the side closest to the entrance. When he opens it for you, look up and head straight to the door. No one will see you if we do this right.”
I frowned, just as the screaming picked up again. “Is that screaming for you?”
“Yeah. It’s completely embarrassing. The fake waves and the forced smiles. I hate it.”
“Hate is a strong word.”
“And one you used on me not two days ago.” He smirked.
“Yes, well, I have strong feelings about you that tend to swing one way or the other.”
He huffed out a laugh and shuffled over to the door. “Don’t I know it. Are you going to be okay?”
“Sure.” I nodded, feeling that, actually, I might just die instead.
“Be right back. See you in a few minutes.”
His door was open for barely a second before it shut again, but I saw the bright, flashing cameras aimed his way, and I heard the rise of the cries of his name. I didn’t have time to compose myself before the driver whisked my door open and carefully guided me to the Pavilion without so much as looking back. He showed his ID to someone who looked like a blur of a body before I was pushed inside the building and into a pale grey, busy corridor, packed and stacked with equipment and people charging backwards and forwards.
A few seconds later, the groan of the door caught my attention, and Danny came rushing through, his breathing heavy as it slammed shut behind him with a loud clang.
“You okay?” he asked, panting.
We’d been apart for less than a minute, yet the world looked different to me now somehow. I was standing in a foreign land. We just hadn’t had to take a private jet to get there.
I nodded, not knowing what the hell to do with my hands. All I’d brought with me was the phone in my pocket, my house key, and a small red lipstick. Now I wished I had something to cling onto.
Danny took my hand in his and squeezed my fingers tightly. “Come on. I’ve got so much to show you.”
Leading the way, he walked quickly. Roadies and business type people nodded to him along the way, greeting him with a mild salute, smile, or even a wink—that particular one coming from an older lady who clearly thought she stood a chance until she saw me on his arm, causing her top lip to curl in disgust.
The noise grew the closer we got to the black curtain. It sounded like drum pedals were being pressed, and microphones were being tested.
With one last look of reassurance over his shoulder, Danny guided us through into a much darker part of the network of corridors here. More people greeted him, and he acknowledged every one of them without fail. Names were thrown around like he was among old friends.
Hey, Stevie. Hey, Joe. Duke, man, where ya been? Cue laughter. That’s right. Tell the missus I said hi.
When we hit the inside of the empty arena, my eyes widened. I was a tiny snowflake in a giant snow globe.
Danny slowed and fell in line beside me when he sensed my resistance, wrapping his arm around my shoulder as if we hadn’t spent five years apart and lived two separate lives. I was grateful for his comfort.
“I wanted you to see it before the show,” he eventually said. “These places look so different when they’re empty. You can’t imagine it ever being full, or there being enough people in the world who’d want to come and see you play, but once it’s packed out and you’re standing looking over it, you can’t imagine any of those people not being there. The fans are strangers, but they feel like family, too. I always find it weird how one building can bring two completely different feelings like this.”
“It’s beautiful,” I breathed out, unable to stop looking at the empty seats, the balcony up above, or the barren floor space in the middle of the arena, where I had no doubt people would be standing and jumping around later that night. “How many will fit in here?”
“Close to four thousand tonight. This is a relatively small gig, too.”
“And you don’t get nervous?”
“I get nervous every time. I’d be worried if I didn’t feel those butterflies in my stomach before a performance. That’s where alcohol comes in.”
“You drink before you play?”
Danny scowled playfully, his smile rising. “We’re living the dream. We drink before, during, and after everything.”
“Oh.”
I was so naive to everything about his new life—or life in general, perhaps.
This world was noisy, filled with things I could never have imagined. Sure, I’d been out of Hope Cove plenty of times. Salcombe was my second home, with Kingsbridge and Plymouth being my third and fourth. Gina and I had nights out. We’d partied in small nightclubs and arrived home when the sun had already come up. We’d spent days at the beach, being wild and carefree, but anything beyond that, and I was a little lost. My parents were strict churchgoers, and my mother had the most severe case of nervous flying, so holidays had always been along the southern coast of England, apart from that one time we visited East Anglia, only for her to declare it a waste of a trip when we had better beaches on our doorstep.
The things Danny must have experienced, seen, felt, and heard didn’t bear thinking about in comparison to my simple, so-called life. I couldn’t help but feel a little inferior to him as I stood there, taking in my very first music venue at a ridiculous age of twenty-five years old.
I was about to turn to Danny and ask him where I was going to spend the night when a commotion flowed through the arena. We spun around—my body guided by Danny’s hold—to see four other guys I recognised as his fellow band members from the YouTube videos I’d watched.
Their names scratched at the edge of my memory, with only one coming to the forefront, that being the dark-haired, grungy-looking lead singer, Halo.
“There he is!” Halo cried, his eyes lighting up as he threw his arms in the air and walked straight to Danny. “Our pretty boy has returned. For a while there, I thought we were going to have to advertise for an average lead guitarist to fill your boots.”
Danny laughed and shook his head, throwing a playful yet powerful punch at Halo’s arm when he got close enough. “No one can fill my boots, and you know it, Luce.”
Luce?
“Like fuck we couldn’t.” Halo smirked, smacking Danny’s arm in return.
I was released from Danny’s grip as the two of them play-fought, ruffling each
other’s hair up and throwing some gentle punches to their opponent’s gut. A very handsome guy with a warm smile and short blonde hair stepped forward, catching my eye.
“Hey, ignore those two,” he said. “They’re always battling it out like lovers. Are you here with Danny?”
I glanced over to see Danny laughing and ducking under one of Halo’s limp punches. “Yeah. I am.”
“Then you must be Daisy.” The way he said my name had me turning back to him and raising a brow. “We’ve heard a lot about you.” He held out his hand. “I’m Theo.”
“Hi.” I shook his hand. “Not sure I want to know what you’ve heard.”
“Only good things.” Theo unleashed his dazzling white smile, and I’ll admit to feeling the effects of it as my cheeks heated.
An arm was slung around my waist, and I stumbled as Danny caught me and laughed, pulling my body to his. “Back the fuck off, Theo. She’s taken.”
That was news to me, but I tucked my hair behind my ear anyway and tried not to blush any harder.
“Zee,” Danny said, gesturing to the band. “Meet the guys. Theo, you’ve already met. This prick here is Halo.”
“Hey.” Halo chucked his chin at me and smirked before he pulled a toothpick from behind his ear and started chewing on it.
“Then we have Fletch and Archer,” Danny pointed to the two guys behind Theo.
Fletch winked, and Archer raised his hand in a weak wave. I smiled back at them, feeling the intense gaze of each and every band member. Theo looked ready to devour me. Halo looked more interested in his black-painted fingernails. Archer was definitely the quieter one of them all, which I found ironic considering he made the most noise on the drums. I remembered watching him perform on the videos and the way his arms and legs bounced high in the air as he got lost in the beat. Standing before me, he wore long board shorts and a black tank that hung low under his armpits, revealing tattoos that ran up and down his ribs. His hair was mousy and long, and it looked like it hadn’t been washed in a while, too.
Then there was Fletch, with those weird red stripes in his hair.
“You staying for the show, Daisy?” Theo asked
“I… think so.”
“Cool. Well, Archer’s girl is coming along soon, so you’ll have some company.”
Archer had been the one I least expected to have a girlfriend. Not that I thought any of them would, actually. Surprise must have lit up my face, because Theo’s smile grew.
“Don’t worry. Saff is decent. She’s a normal chick. Not like those fake cling-ons that the rest of us seem to attract.”
“Speak for yourself, dick,” Halo said around his toothpick. “I have high standards, and only the finest quality pussy is welcomed around me.”
Danny slapped Halo right across the chest, the sting of it clear in the way Halo hissed and rubbed his chest.
“Yeah, that sex worker you bagged for three weeks was a real quality homemaker, Luce.”
There was that Luce again. “I thought your name was Halo,” I said, turning to him.
Halo rolled his eyes and ran a hand through his jet-black hair, making the beads and cross around his neck shift and peek out from the confines of his dark denim jacket.
Danny leaned in. “We call him Luce after Lucifer.”
“Good to know.” I laughed. Danny did, too.
“Come on. Let’s show you the rest of the backstage area. You ready?” Danny asked, his voice smaller now, just for me.
Was I ready? I had no damn idea, but I nodded anyway and strapped on a smile that wasn’t a hundred percent natural.
“They’re just nerves, Zee,” he whispered, planting a kiss to the side of my head. “Don’t let them control you.”
“I won’t,” I assured him, not wanting to point out that these nerves were in fact for him more than anything else around me.
As Danny and the band guided me to the backstage area of The Pavilion, I couldn’t help but feel a stirring of something that reminded me of a little old friend called hope.
If Archer had a girlfriend, it meant it wasn’t impossible for the others to consider it, too.
Not that I was getting carried away with myself or anything.
No.
Not even a little bit.
Twenty-Seven
After a grand tour from Danny, I discovered that life with the band was hectic. I’d always imagined everything before a show being the epitome of calm to get them in the zone—whatever the zone was—but it was more like the workings of a high school prom.
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. Especially me.”
“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 c
onfusion 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.
“You still love me…” he eventually said, a slow blink making him look hurt before he unleashed bright green eyes down on me again, and a smile twitched on his lips.
“You think this is funny?”
“I think it’s incredible.”
“I’ve just told you I want to stop, Danny.”
Brushing his thumb over my cheek again, he bent at the knee. “You want to hate me; you’ve made that clear. You want to stop loving me; you’ve made that clear, too. But you do still love me, Zee, and my mind has just lost any control it ever had.”
He slid his thumb down to press it against my lips, cutting me off. He wore the biggest smile, and I didn’t understand how someone could see such optimism in something that should have been soul-shattering.
“No more talking about feelings until Saturday. The only time I need to know about those is if you want me to fuck off out of your life for good. When I hear those words from your lips, I’ll go. I’ll go, and I’ll never look back. Expecting you to feel anything after five years of pain was a long shot, and somehow, I made it. So, I’m going to spend the next two days showing you life, and at the end of it, you get to decide if you want me in yours or not. Okay?”