Lottie Loves Read online

  “I didn’t mean…”

  “No, I know you didn’t.” I threw my hands up in the air as exasperation coursed through my veins. “Of course I know that, you were going through the worst time of your whole life. I understand that, I just don’t think there’s any coming back from it.”

  I pursed my lips for a second and watched him, wondering if any of my words were sinking in, but his eyes continued to dart over my face as if they were looking for something else. He wasn’t getting the answer he wanted, so he was trying to find them in another way.

  Typical Joe, it took all that I had not to visibly roll my eyes at him!

  I grabbed hold of my bag and took a small step backwards. There was nothing else to say now, I’d gotten it all off my chest. It was going to be hard to say goodbye to Joe and this side of my life forever, but once the shock wore off, I felt like it’d probably be a weight lifting from my shoulders.

  “Don’t go,” he rasped, reaching his hand out to me. “You’ll never be happy, not without me, and especially not with him.”

  “You don’t know anything about me anymore.” I narrowed my eyes and kept my tone sharp. I was going to have to be cruel to be kind in this case, it was the only way I could get the message through loud and clear. “You aren’t responsible for my happiness, I am. Whatever I decide to do with regards to Danny is absolutely none of your business.”

  I hadn’t made any kind of decision where my future lay, but that didn’t matter right now. I’d laid my past to bed, I’d closed down that chapter.

  “But…we can still be friends?” He looked so pathetic with his wet eyes that I almost agreed, just to leave this whole mess on better terms, but in the end I couldn’t. Me and Joe would never be able to be ‘just friends,’ far too much had happened for that.

  “I’m sorry,” I told him sadly. “That isn’t possible, this really is goodbye.”

  I gave him one last, lingering look, at last getting the farewell I wasn’t given before, then I span rapidly on my heels and I stalked out of there without looking back.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The aftermath of learning that Joe was gone forever felt absolutely horrific. I couldn’t eat, or sleep, or even think about anything else. I was in a world of my own, absolutely lost in the never-ending abyss of unhappiness. For the first few weeks, I simply lay on the bed, wallowing in a deep hole of self-pity, only getting up to look at the mail as the course acceptances started coming in. I needed something new to focus on, something of my life to take my attention off the horror that was my life, and that was all I had. It didn’t feel as good as it should’ve to learn that I was at least wanted somewhere, but I was trying.

  The fact that I would now be going off to college alone, without Joe’s comforting presence by my side, was the main reason I felt compelled to bypass photography as an option. It just reminded me too much of the person I was doing my best to forget. Anything to do with him left a physical ache in my chest, one that made it challenging to even breathe, and I knew that if I was ever going to make a go of a life of my own—a concept that admittedly felt alien—then I needed to do something totally different. English seemed like the next best thing, it might’ve been a spur of the moment decision, but I enjoyed it and got a fairly good grade for it at school. As it turned out, that was the best decision I could’ve made. I met Cici, and some other friends, and it led me down the career path that would make me very happy as I grew up.

  Still, even as the future looked a little brighter, the agony remained.

  At home, there was no escaping it. The knowledge of what’d happened clung to every wall, it ran thick in the air; every breath, step, moment, was a constant, unwelcome reminder. Joe’s parents were suffering the agony of losing both their children in very different ways, and if that wasn’t enough to tear their marriage apart, the affair he’d had with my mother lay in the mix as well. It wasn’t much of a shock to witness the ‘For Sale’ signs going up in their garden, it was the only way they’d ever have a shot at surviving it all, but it killed me all the same. They might’ve only been moving across town, to be nearer to Marie’s grave, but that took Joe too far away from me forever. At least if they were still here, we might bump into each other when we were both home, but now he was truly lost to me for the rest of my life.

  That pain threatening to swallow me whole every single day. I didn’t think I could survive it, and to be perfectly honest, I still wasn’t totally sure how I had.

  Then there was Mum. Looking at it as an adult, I could see she was heartbroken over losing the man who was probably the love of her life—after all they’d both risked, it had to be love, surely? But at the time I needed someone to blame for my issues, and she was the only one left. Maybe me and Joe could’ve remained friends at the very least if she hadn’t deemed it necessary to sleep with someone that wasn’t hers. She could barely hold it together, and at the time, not only did I need her the most, but I also wanted to push her away, it made me even more resentful. Frustration and anger seeped between us, creating an irreparable chasm.

  Then, to make things even more insulting, she soon met Malcom. He was someone who came into her life through her work, and put something of a smile back on her face. Maybe I should’ve been happy for her to find someone that made her feel more positive after the life trauma she’d just been through herself, but I didn’t. He didn’t start off as her lover, she was still too fragile for that, but I could see from a mile off that it’d end up that way, and I hated her for it. I hated him more, a feeling that I never quite managed to shake off no matter how old I got. It was probably much more circumstantial, than a genuine personality conflict, but it was never going to be anything but toxic from day one.

  I didn’t feel fully ready to move on to college when the time came around. I was still stuck in a terribly emotionally exhausted state, but I couldn’t remain in the constrictive, claustrophobic state of home, either. Especially not with him coming around more and more often. I was petrified and thrilled to say goodbye to every bit of it, to start on a chapter of my own.

  “Hi.” The girl I found in my assigned room, the one I presumed I’d be spending the foreseeable future with, beamed brightly at me. She had an aura of fun, and the sort of eyes I couldn’t imagine anyone ever saying no to. I immediately wanted to be liked by her. “I’m Cici, what’s your name?”

  “Oh, erm, Charlotte, but everyone calls me Lotts…no, Lottie.” I was blushing furiously, stammering over my words, wanting to make at least a half-decent impression despite the debris that the hurricane of my life had left behind. “It’s good to meet you. Are you on the English course too?”

  “I sure am.” She flung her hands onto her hips and peered deeply into her wardrobe. Cici was already totally unpacked, seemingly really prepared, whereas it’d taken me over an hour to work up the courage to just walk out my front door to get into the car. This was the sort of person I needed in my life, this was a friend I wanted, someone who would pull me out of my shell. I could already tell she was totally unique, different to anyone I’d ever been friends with before, but that was okay. Perfect, in fact. “So, I already spoke to a group of people that live down the hall, and they’re arranging a night out tonight. I know that we’re supposed to go and do all the dumb fresher’s stuff, but this sounds way more fun, don’t you think?”

  “Erm, yeah, sure…” I tossed my bags down on the bed and eyed her curiously. Maybe she was going to be a little too much for me. “Doing what, exactly?”

  “I don’t know, going to watch some band, I think…”

  Luckily that wasn’t Danny’s band—I wouldn’t have been anywhere near ready to meet him at that point if it was—but that moment did cultivate our love of going to gigs. We studied hard, most of the time we got our work in on time, but the rest of our social lives revolved around going to see live music playing. That was a passion I hadn’t had before, and I loved having something that was just mine.

  I still thought about Joe, a
t least once a day. I wondered where he was in the world, what he was up to. I didn’t know if he was still travelling or if he’d made it back home yet, and I didn’t ever ask. I never really wanted to know, not when I was doing my best to become Lottie, not one half of Lotts-and-Joe. Eventually, the pain in my heart lessened when his face popped into my brain, the knot in my stomach wasn’t quite so agonising, the tightness of my lungs was slightly less crippling…

  Maybe I didn’t totally get to the stage where I didn’t feel anything at all when I thought about him, but it was an improvement, and that was all I could ask for. I avoided home as much as possible to keep it that way. I spent as much of the holidays as I could with my friends, and every day it just got that little bit better.

  Then, in the middle of my second year, Cici bounded over to me, shrieking with excitement. The words that came out of her mouth next would change my life forever…not that I knew it at the time. “Do you remember that band we became obsessed with last year, with the super-hot singer?”

  “Which one?” I chuckled in reply. “That sounds like all the music we listen to.”

  “Oh, come on—Jax. I have tickets for us to go and see them tonight. I didn’t realise they were playing, so it’s all a bit last minute, but you’ll come, won’t you?” There was a pleading in her eyes that didn’t really need to be there. I was so in!

  “Yes, for sure. Oh my God, that’s so exciting. Although I did always think that the drummer was much hotter than the singer…”

  We went out dressed to the nines, giggling with excitement, expecting to have a whole lot of fun. I never thought that me and Danny would have a moment, that our eyes would meet in such a lightning bolt way, and of course I never thought he’d come and join me after the set. When he brought me that first drink and we chatted as much as we could, I felt something real shift within me. I couldn’t explain it, even then, but being beside Danny made my feelings for Joe feel childish. This felt like it was on another level entirely.

  It was honestly the start of my real life.

  Little by little, Danny completely overshadowed everything I ever had with Joe. He never seemed ashamed of me, despite his public reputation, he never left me not knowing where I stood, he always treated me like a princess, and best of all, I felt like I could be myself around him. I never had to hide my feelings or disguise my inner-sadness. If I was mad, I could just be mad, it was absolutely liberating.

  Maybe my mum never gave Danny a chance when she first met him, but Cici absolutely adored him, and her opinion had quickly become the main one that mattered to me. She always seemed so smart, and she told me what she was thinking in the most straightforward way possible.

  I should’ve let her in more this whole time. As I made my way back to my mum’s house to gather up my belongings, I realised I’d been focusing on all the wrong things entirely. Instead of dealing with the issues that life had presented me right now, because I couldn’t think of an immediate answer, I veered off into another area of problems entirely. Maybe once a few days had passed I would see it as a good thing, a positive step to finally close that door behind me, but right now I felt foolish. Instead of seeking out Cici’s advice, instead of planning what I actually wanted to do with my current relationship, I was screwing around and visiting Joe.

  What an idiot!

  A determination surged through me, and my steps quickened even more. The past was done, it was done before I even went to college, I should’ve locked it up then. Joe made that decision then, and maybe it was the lack of control that kept me clinging on, but this time it was me who locked the door, I was the one to say goodbye, and I wanted to roll with that. It was the closure I’d always needed, that I never thought I would get.

  Now I needed to focus on me, on what was happening in this present moment, and I had to start immediately. If I didn’t, I risked losing everything I’d worked so hard to build. Maybe I didn’t know any truth, maybe I wasn’t sure of anything, but not thinking about it at all wouldn’t solve that. Only action would.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  A deep sigh left my lips as I clicked the door shut behind me, shutting the rest of the world out. I’d been through the ringer in the past couple of days, my head was all over the place, and all I needed now was some silence. I was looking forward to kicking back and processing the locking away of the past, before working out what I wanted to do next in the future. Leaving my mum’s in a hurry had been the best idea for me, I wasn’t achieving a single thing while I was there.

  Maybe I didn’t know what was going to happen next, but I wanted to find out.

  “Hey.”

  My heart leapt up into my throat as I heard the one voice I didn’t expect to hear again. It’d been so long that it was a little like my brain had turned him into a fantasy, rather than someone I spent the last few years living with.

  As I span around slowly and I finally found him, everything twisted and turned inside of me. It was still Danny, everything about him was exactly the same, yet everything was different too. His light brown curls were begging me to run my fingers through them, but my body was fixed in place, unable to take that step. His warm brown eyes offered me comfort, but I wasn’t sure I could accept that. I had no idea about anything anymore, and that was utterly terrifying.

  “What…what are you doing?” I stammered awkwardly as my bag slid to the floor with a thump. “Why are you home?” Jax were still on tour, I knew that for a fact, so none of this made any sense. Much as I wanted to talk to Danny, to sort things out, I wasn’t quite ready. I wanted to be fully adjusted first, but I wasn’t given that option.

  Danny stepped closer, extending his arms in my direction. He was inviting me in, wanting desperately to hold me, and much as I’d love to fall back into his familiar embrace, I couldn’t help picturing those arms around another woman. The photographs all over the Internet loomed painfully to the forefront of my mind, causing my body to recoil in horror.

  “I quit the band.” Danny’s eyes widened as his arms dropped to his side. “As soon as I realized they wouldn’t let me leave, I quit. It took a while because I needed to sort out the legal side of things, but now I’m out.”

  “What the hell did you do that for?” I never wanted that! I didn’t want him to lose his dream. If I’d known for even a second that was his plan, I’d have put a stop to it. Maybe that was why he didn’t tell me.

  “I couldn’t stand the idea of you thinking that about me, it made me sick. I knew I had to get back to you if I was ever going to salvage the best thing that’d ever happened to me.”

  Oh God. I was instantly all tied up in knots, his words getting to me. Rationally I knew I needed to remain strong if I was going to get through this with any dignity intact, but my feelings didn’t know how to do the right thing. They acted of their own accord, causing my pulse rate to fly, my tummy to dance, and a lump of sheer love to form painfully in my throat.

  “So, what are you saying?” I practically whispered, needing to know absolutely everything now. He’d already told me that none of it was real, but I couldn’t rule out the heartbreaking possibility that he’d fought his way home to confess, to beg for my forgiveness. “What actually happened?”

  His gaze fell to the floor, and I felt the ground shake beneath me. Something monumental was about to happen here, and all of a sudden I didn’t want it at all. I’d already been through so much, was there any way that I could escape this just for now? I’d come back to it when I was more mentally prepared…

  But then Danny started speaking, and my brain completely shut down. I became nothing but my ears, listening to the tale that would influence my entire future forever. “It was a bit of a crazy night, I’ll admit that.” I fell back against the cold wall, just to ensure I had enough support. “I’d had too much to drink, all the boys had. I guess we didn’t realize there were photographers around. Helen was persistent with me, more than I was used to. I mean, I’ve had female attention before, but never quite like her.
”

  I was swimming…no, not swimming…drowning. I couldn’t breathe, I felt like I was battling against an invisible force with all my might, but I wasn’t getting anywhere. This was too much for me. I wanted him to stop, I needed him to stop talking, but at the same time he’d started now. I couldn’t delay the painful inevitability of me having to hear this. Maybe it was better for me to get this over and done with right now.

  “I was trying to get rid of her without being rude—you know me, I don’t know how to be a dick.”

  Weirdly a laugh bubbled from my lips at those words. He was right, he wasn’t able to be awful to anyone. But I still wasn’t convinced that was an excuse. “Right, so was she in your room?” I meant to ask that very calmly, I really wanted to be cool and collected, but the bitterness ran into the accusation, making it acutely obvious how hurt I felt.

  “No, actually she ended up with Craig. I don’t know if she ever wanted me particularly, or if it was just any of us, but that was who she got. I don’t know why it was reported that she came from my room, maybe it was just an assumption because of the earlier…pictures.” He squirmed as he said those words, his cheeks tainting red. I actually felt my heart go out to him a little bit as I realized that this was incredibly hard for him to talk about. “I know it looks really bad, I get that.” He moved closer, slipping his hands into mine, and I was too weak now to resist. “And I’m sorry I couldn’t come back right away, but it wasn’t that simple.”

  “I know.” I nodded slowly, emphatically. “You probably shouldn’t have come back at all. Not until the end of the tour. What are you going to do now?”

  “I don’t know.” He cocked his head to one side and shot me a sweet smile. “But I don’t mind as long as I have you. All I want is for things between us to be okay again.”