by Vicki James
That would have been a good place to end it, but with a deep inhale for courage, I went on…
“I don’t know how I went so long without hearing your voice. Now it’s the one thing I think I need to get by, so call me when you get this. Oh, and one more thing…”
I sang Superstar because I wanted him to hear something in my voice that would make him smile. I asked him if he remembered when he told me he loved me… and when he said he’d be back one day, ending it on a string of cries for him before I laughed and shook my head at myself.
“Okay, so that’s enough embarrassment for one night. Don’t say I never give you anything.”
With that, I ended the call, and I turned off my light and allowed myself to fall asleep. There wasn’t anything else for me to do now.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this, Zee?” Danny panted.
Staring up at his handsome face, I lost myself in pools of green I couldn’t look away from. “I want it more than anything in the world,” I whispered.
Danny hovered over me. We’d been kissing and working up to this moment for so long already, that unexplored ball of need that was sitting in the very depths of my stomach had turned painful. We were guiding each other by instinct, neither one of us having done this before—two virgins, about to give up a part of their life they could never get back and would hopefully never want to.
He’d already rolled the condom on, and the sight of his huge erection hadn’t scared me as I once thought it would. The candles around us flickered, and I could smell the roses from the garden, while we hid in the treehouse in his parents’ back garden one hot summer’s night.
“I want you,” I assured him.
He trailed a finger down between my naked breasts, his stroke slow and teasing, even though the hunger in his eyes was desperate.
“I want you, too,” he breathed. “More than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life. I can’t believe you’re mine.” He smirked. “I’m the luckiest guy.”
I had no idea how he thought he was the lucky one in this, but I tugged on his arms, needing him closer—needing him inside me.
“I’m not scared.” Reaching up, I held his face in my grip and parted my legs wider.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“The pleasure will outweigh the pain in the end.” I smiled up at him.
With a low groan that told me he could no longer hold off, Danny dropped his arms to the sides of my head, propping himself up, and he held my gaze. A few slow rolls of his arse later, and he was positioned right at the very entrance of me.
“Remember that I love you, Zee,” he groaned.
“Get inside me, Danny.”
His smirk held all the satisfaction in the world, but when he thrust inside of me slowly, his mouth dropped open in surprise, and Danny’s Adam’s apple froze in his throat, making his groan break and his eyes squeeze shut. I hitched in a breath and took him in as much as I could before I tensed around him. The fire down there made a whimper escape me, and it took a second or two for either one of us to speak before Danny’s eyes fluttered open, and he stared down at my face.
“Stay with me,” he whispered. “Remember… the pleasure will outweigh the pain in the end.”
I woke with a start to the sound of my phone vibrating on the bedside table.
Danny’s name lit up my screen, and so I answered with a grunt as I flopped back down on my pillow and threw my free arm over my eyes.
“Hello,” I croaked.
“Hey, baby,” Danny said, slightly slurred. “I just got your voicemail. Fuck, you sang for me.”
“I did,” I confirmed, too asleep and lost in the memory of my first time with Danny. “What time is it?”
“Four a.m.”
“What the hell?” I groaned.
“I know, and I’m sorry, but I couldn’t wait. I needed to hear your sleepy voice. I’m never going to delete that voicemail, Zee.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“Little bit.”
“You need to go to sleep.”
“I need to be with you.”
I couldn’t help the lazy smile that tugged at my lips. “You’re crazy.”
“And you’re smiling, I can tell. You’re smiling, even though you’re trying to be grumpy. And you fucking want me, too, baby, I know you do. God, I can still feel you everywhere. Every time I close my eyes, I can see you riding my lap, staring down at me. These new memories of you are making it impossible for me to sleep. Every time I see your face, that smile makes my dick hard because I know… I just fucking know you want me as much as I need you.”
“You are drunk.”
“Give in to it. For me. For us. Give in to that desire and let yourself be happy. Let me send a car for you. I’ll put you on a damn plane no matter when you say yes, as long as I know you’re going to say yes soon. I won’t last another day without you, Zee.”
“Isn’t that a Carpenter’s song?”
“Yeah.” He laughed softly, lowering his voice. “Want to sing it for me while I wrap my hand around my dick and get off to you?”
“Danny,” I laughed fully, my legs scrunching up in bed.
“You know you want to.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“I’m in love.”
Those three little words made the air in my lungs pour free, and my body melted into the mattress beneath me.
“I’ve never stopped being in love,” he added. “But what I feel for you now seems like so much more than anything we had before. Maybe that old saying is right. Maybe absence does make the heart grow fonder.”
“Perhaps we should stay apart a little while longer then.”
“Any longer, and I’ll burst. You can die from being too in love. You know that, right? You don’t want that to happen to me, do you, Zee?”
“Of course not,” I chuckled.
“Then come save my life and be by my side for the rest of it.”
“The rest of your life is a long time,” I whispered.
“If you’re there with me, it’ll be too short no matter how long it lasts.”
I sighed softly, that pull to him so damn painful now, I was starting to forget why I said no to going with him in the first place.
“Okay,” I said quietly.
“Okay?”
“Yeah, okay. I’ll come to you.”
Danny sounded like he gasped before something near him got knocked over, only for him to curse and quickly fumble around before he came back to the phone. “Did you just say you’ll come? To me? As in… leave Hope Cove? Come on tour? As in…”
I laughed again, delirious with exhaustion, and dizzy on love. “Yeah. I said I’ll come to you, but—”
“Fuck! Fuck! Zee. Fuck! Are you serious? Holy fucking shit. I don’t believe this. I never thought you’d say yes. Never in a million… hold on a minute. You just said but, didn’t you? What’s the but for? Don’t break my heart here, Zee, please, I’m begging you. It’s pounding so fucking fast.”
“I’ve spent time thinking about things, and I want to be brave. I want to do something nobody, not even myself, thinks I can do. But…”
“Christ—”
“I want to do it right. So, I’m going to need some time.”
“What kind of time?”
“However long it takes.”
“To do what, exactly?”
“Oh, I don’t know. To get my life in order. Some guy I know just left me two houses and a shop that I apparently need to agree to taking.”
He blew out a stream of air, his relief washing through the phone. “Don’t forget the Scirocco.”
“What?” My eyes flew open, and I stared up at the ceiling.
“You haven’t seen? I left it next to your garage around the back of the house. I figured your blue and my white had spent too many years apart. They looked cute together. I couldn’t bring myself to tear them apart.”
Pushing the duvet off me, I ran to the window and yanked the curtai
ns apart, only to squint over at the garages. Danny’s pride and joy was parked there like it was exactly where it needed to be.
“That car means everything to you, you idiot. You can’t just—”
“I can do anything I damn well want, and what I want is to entwine our worlds so fucking much that, in the end, it’ll be impossible to tear us apart. I want us to have two homes. One on the road, and one in Hope Cove to go back to.”
My shoulders deflated, yet my heart swelled, and I pressed my palm against the heavy beat of it as I studied his bright, white car in the middle of the night, where the sky was already beginning to turn a lighter shade of grey before the glorious yellow sun rose to introduce a new day.
“Zee?”
“Yeah, Danny?”
“One day I’m going to marry you, too. You know that, don’t you?”
With a smile I couldn’t control, I whispered in return, “Yeah, Danny. I know.”
“Good.” He sighed, and it sounded like he’d sunk down onto a chair or a sofa or a bed when he groaned, low and sexy. “Now, sing for me like only you can, and let me get off to the sound of that voice.”
I did.
I got off to the sound of him getting off to me, too, before we fell asleep on the phone together.
Just two idiots who didn’t believe in the old adage, once bitten, twice shy.
The caution had gone, and I was ready to be bitten again, especially if it was his teeth sinking into my masochistic heart.
Forty-Two
“You can stop looking at me like that any time you feel like it,” I said, lifting my fork to my mouth and wrapping it around the lobster ravioli with a pop. It was only 11:00 a.m., but I was ravenous, and my favourite restaurant asked no questions when I ordered my favourite dish for breakfast… as well as a large glass of wine. I needed that to fuel my courage.
Ben brought his elbows to the table and clasped his hands together as he studied me. “I can’t believe you’re actually going to do this.”
“I really am.”
He held my gaze, and I held his, waiting for him to ask a million questions about whether I was sure this was the right thing to do or to plant a hundred seeds of doubt in my mind, but this was Ben. I should have known he wasn’t that guy.
“All right then.” He tilted his head, nodded, and smirked. “You go out there and chase the dream.”
“And you accept my apology?”
“No.” He scoffed. “I reject it because it’s a stupid apology to make.”
“Ben…” I sighed, dropping my fork and leaning closer to him. “Please. For me. I need this.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want anyone left behind without the answers to questions that they didn’t dare ask me. I’ve been there.”
“Newsflash, Dais: I’m not you. I’m not that deep and troubled.”
I raised a brow in warning, and Ben sighed in defeat.
“Fine. I accept your apology for using me for sex. It was such a hardship. I don’t know how I’ll ever get over all those amazing times in bed with you. My pride is wounded forever, and the memories of your legs being over my shoulder will do nothing, not one thing to ease the pain of having been used by the most gorgeous woman this side of Devon.”
I stared at him, deadpan, while his smile grew and turned into a laugh that had him sitting back in his chair.
“Honestly, Dais, you’re a trip sometimes.”
The only response I had in my arsenal was to pick up my napkin and throw it at him. He caught it effortlessly and straightened it out to lay it next to his plate, with the remnants of his laughter still tickling his voice.
“Not everything needs an apology. The sex was great.” He shrugged. “You’re great. No harm, no foul.”
“Despite you being an obvious arsehole, I want only good things for you, Ben Atwood.”
“They’ll happen. When do you leave?”
I glanced at my watch. It was now the Wednesday after Danny had left. Since then, I’d had several conversations with his solicitor about the properties he’d left behind, which were going to take some time to transfer over into my name, thankfully. It gave me time to try and convince Danny that he didn’t need to do any of this.
I’d had so many chats with Gina about things, as well as one very drunken night curled up watching movies together at her place, while she got excited about what was about to happen, and I just nodded in all the right places, unable to ignore the butterflies in my tummy.
How will you feel the first time you walk down a red carpet?
I can’t wait to see your face in a magazine.
There’ll be hundreds of designers waiting to dress you in their finest dresses, Daisy.
I’d told her not to be ridiculous. Those things weren’t on my mind. I couldn’t let myself even imagine them, otherwise I got too scared.
“A car is picking me up in fifty minutes,” I told Ben, reaching over for my wine and taking a big glug, eyeing him over the rim of the glass.
“And Danny doesn’t know about any of it?”
“Nope.” I dropped my glass back on the table. “He thinks we’ll be apart for at least a month.”
“Poor guy.”
I huffed out a laugh. “Yeah, he wasn’t happy about it.”
“And you’re going to be okay flying out there on your own? You’ve never done it before.”
“Jules will be there for me. She held back when the band flew out to Paris. She had some things to sort out with her son, Corey. Apparently, she’s only flying in for the day before she heads back to England to be with Rhett again.”
“That’s… nice of her.”
“She’s a nice person.”
“You’ll have to let me know how it goes once he realises you’ve gone out there to surprise him.”
“You think he’ll be okay about it?”
“A beautiful woman chases an average man—who already has everything he could ask for except her—across the big, bad world to beg for his devotion. What could possibly go wrong?”
“Ben…”
“Everything’s going to be just fine, Dais.”
I nodded, the excitement and nerves tearing through me. “I think so, too.”
Jules held my hand at every opportunity on the way to Paris. In the last few hours, I’d experienced more new things than I had in the twenty-five years before it, and if she hadn’t been there, I may have been too overwhelmed to have gone through with any of it.
Private limo rides to Heathrow Airport.
Private access to a private plane.
My first flight in the sky was experienced in pure luxury, and I could hardly speak throughout any of it. My eyes were sore and already tired from having been bugging out of my head since the car arrived to pick me up from my home. I kept running my hands along the smooth, cream leather armrests on either side of me on the plane, and every time Jules caught my eye, she’d laugh softly and promise me I’d get used to it eventually.
I didn’t think I ever would.
We were given any variety of drink we wanted, and snacks were provided, too, even though I didn’t feel like I could eat much of anything. The flight was going to be short, and I just wanted it over with. My feet hadn’t stopped bouncing since I’d boarded the plane, and the jingling of my knees was making my legs ache. Everything already felt like a dream, and I was pretty sure I was about to let nerves ruin this masterplan I’d put in place with the help of Julia.
She sat across from me, and when the captain came over the speakers to tell us we were to start making our descent, I caught her eyes. She obviously saw the worry I was carrying.
“Are you having second thoughts?” she asked calmly.
“Second. Third. Fourth. Fifth…”
“We can put a stop to it at any point.”
“You don’t think I can do this?”
“You know I do, but you have choices.”
“I don’t, Jules. Not anymore There’s only one choice, and he’
s it.”
“All I’m saying is that no one would think badly of you if you simply wanted to walk in there and throw your arms around Danny. Even I’d struggle to go through with this.”
“That’s not helping.”
“Sorry.” She smirked. “I’m just surprised you want to do something so…”
“Stupid?”
“Grand. It’s quite a statement you’re about to make.”
“I should have done this last time instead of running away like a coward. I don’t want to be that person.” I want to be like Saffron. Danny deserves that.
Her warm smile was comforting. “I understand.”
“Do you think we’ll get there in time? I just want to get it over with.”
“We’ll get there with time to spare.”
“Okay.” I blew out a breath, laid my head back on the headrest, and I closed my eyes.
I needed Danny to see that I wasn’t scared anymore, but more importantly, I needed to prove to myself that I could be a part of this. If someone had told me a week ago that I’d be flying to France to surprise my ex-boyfriend by standing on stage with his band during soundcheck and… singing, I’d have told that person to lay off the drugs.
Yet, there I was.
Jules had arranged it with the guys, and I only hoped they’d managed to keep it secret from Danny.
I also hoped I didn’t let my fear outweigh my courage, because right now, I wasn’t sure how the hell I was going to make it through any of this without being sick.
“Hey, Mum. Hey, Dad.” I smiled at them through the phone with their familiar faces staring back at me, confused. My voice was quiet as I stood in the backstage corridors of AccorHotels Arena, hiding away from Danny and the rest of the band as they took to the stage for their sound checks ahead of their three-night stint at this venue. I had one last thing to do before I went ahead and put myself out there, and that was check in with my parents—to let them know what side of life I was on now. Neither of them were particularly good with technology, but Gina had done me a favour and gone around to their house, making the call to me on their behalf.