I walked back through the door of my parents’ home and took a deep breath. I had blood spattered over my clothes. Not a lot, but enough for me to doubt they’d believe that I’d had a nosebleed. Which left only one option…

Taking a deep breath, I stalked down the hallway, pulling Danni’s shampoo out of the bag I’d managed to pluck up off the ground before walking away from Terry and Tasha. I straightened down my hair as much as I could then I stopped in the doorway, close enough that they could all hear me, but far enough away so they couldn’t see the damage.

“Guys,” I called out.

“Marcus,” Danni answered. “What are you doing?”

“I’m preparing myself.”

“For what?”

“Actually, I want to prepare you.”

“Marcus, just get in here.”

I sighed. “Promise not to freak out?”

“Why would I…?”

She didn’t finish. Her voice trailed off before she cautiously stalked around the corner to find me. There I stood looking a bit simple with my lips pressed together and my eyes wide.

Danni’s hands flew to her mouth before she cried into them and scanned me from head to toe. Within seconds, my sister was standing behind her, followed by my mum, and then I had three pairs of eyes on me looking shocked and unsure.

“Before you all start,” I began, holding both hands up in the air and waving the shampoo bottle around. “This is your fault. I had to fight someone for the last bottle of this stuff. I couldn’t have my girl going international with dodgy locks.”

“Marcus!” Mum squeaked.

“Please tell me that’s a nosebleed?” Sammy muttered from behind her hands.

“Technically, yeah. I mean… my nose did bleed when the guy smashed his elbow into my face.”

“I’m going to pass out,” Mum whimpered.

“I’m fine, Mum, really.”

“Who the hell did this to you?” she asked, stepping forward at the same time as Sammy. Danni didn’t move, though. She stayed behind, staring at me through wide eyes as the other two assessed me. Mum fussed with my hair. Sammy leaned in and turned up her nose, looking at the slight swelling on my face.

“Just some idiot. Nobody important,” I answered, still staring at Danni.

“Are you okay?” she mouthed silently, her hands falling to her chin.

I gave her a small nod and a smile only she could see.

“We need to phone the police,” Mum said suddenly.

“No, we don’t.”

“We bloody well do!” she snapped. I knew that tone. It was her don’t mess with me tone. I’d gotten around that a million times before.

“Mum, I’m not going to sit here waiting for the cops to show up, only to give them a report that will lead to nothing, when what I should be doing is getting on a plane with my girl and going to live my life. So some idiot decided he didn’t like the look of me. No big deal. I handled it. I got a little messy in the process. Now I just want to go back to my life on the road and have some fun.”

“What do you mean you handled it?”

I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I mean I threw a punch back to defend myself, and then he fell. I walked away. He was just a fool with an attitude, Mum. The world is full of them. Please, let’s not turn this in to a bigger deal than it is.”

Mum stared into my eyes for a lifetime, unshed tears forming in her own before she exhaled slow and hard. She shook her head in resignation as her shoulders sagged.

“Why can’t you be four years old again?” she whispered.

“Because the laws of life don’t allow it. Also, because I drove you crazy back then. If I’d been four for all this time, you’d be bald and chubby by now, forced to eat a thousand doughnuts a day to deal with the misery I forced upon you.”

“Always an answer for everything.”

“Would you have me any other way?” I asked lightly.

“No.” She smiled.

After a mass rush of panicking to collect our cases together, load them into the back of Dad’s car, change my clothes quickly so I didn’t look suspicious when going through customs, and saying my goodbyes to my loved ones, Danni and I were finally on our way to the airport.

She hadn’t said much in the last hour. Her face had fallen, and that usual spark of feisty, self-assured lightness had faded away. My hand was curled around hers in the back seat, both of us staring ahead as Dad made idle conversation from the front. It was only when he got lost in the lyrics of a Bon Jovi song and turned up the volume to drown us out that I was able to turn to her and catch her attention with a squeeze of my fingers.

“You okay?” I whispered.

Her eyes met mine. “Are you?”

“Never been better.” I smiled reassuringly.

The car bounced over the ill-kept roads of Yorkshire, forcing our heads closer together until it felt like she was all that surrounded me and nothing else existed.

“Who was it?” she asked in a breath.

“Some guy.”

“Marcus…”

That was the thing with Danni. She heard what I didn’t say more than she heard anything else. The truth wasn’t something I particularly wanted to hide from her, but I also wasn’t sure how she would feel about it.

I sighed softly. “Remember that one-night stand I told you about before I got with you. The one straight after my split with Nat?”

“Yeah,” she said, her eyes searching mine.

“It was her new boyfriend.”

“What?” She scowled. “Why would he…?”

“Does it matter why?”

“How many times have I told you? I don’t need you to protect me by keeping things from me. The worst thing you can do is hold back, Marcus. The best thing you can do is give me the whole story, offer it up on a plate, and let me decide which bits I like the taste of and which bits I don’t.”

“Fine.” I swallowed, squeezing her hand again. “She must have told him that I was an ex… even though I wasn’t. He knew about you, too. He was saying I thought I was a big shot. Too good for Calverley now. A load of shit insults. She must have told him some things that weren’t true.”

“What did he say about me?” she asked, her face falling and her eyes widening.

“He didn’t say anything about you other than you were a star now, and I thought I was a big shot for bagging you. He’s just a bitter idiot with nothing better to do than throw his weight around, Danni. When I say it’s no big deal, I mean it’s no big deal.”

She gave me a small nod, and for a moment, I thought I’d appeased her enough. She faced forward again, her fingers holding mine with a white-knuckle grip.

“Marcus?” she eventually whispered, just as Dad was venturing into a solo drumming session on his steering wheel.

“Yes, baby?”

“Promise me something.”

“Anything.”

“If you start getting any hate for being with me, don’t try to hide it. Let me know.”

I turned to face her again, my frown forming as I studied her expression. “Danni?”

She didn’t look at me. She didn’t do anything but stare ahead. For some reason, I felt that old panic rise in my chest. I saw the suicide mission of our relationship written across her face. I saw the fear there. The worry. I saw an older version of myself who would throw their own happiness under the bus to save someone else.

I hated it.

“Whatever it is you’re thinking, you can strike a line through it and start again,” I ordered calmly.

Her eyes flickered my way, her eyelashes fluttering before she focused on me. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. I know that look you’re wearing. Don’t you dare for one minute think about walking away from us in the future just because some prick we don’t know might throw shade at me. Don’t you dare think about ways of letting me go gently to save me, Danni.”

“Marcus, I—”

“Don’t.”

Her head bobbed around as we hit another bad patch of road, her face unmoving until a small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and her eyes began to crinkle at the corners.

“You’re an idiot,” she said through a small laugh.

“No, you are if you think anything can push us apart.”

“Do you honestly think that me of all people would give up on the best thing that’s ever happened to me? And so easily?”

“But—”

“Do you honestly believe that there is anything in this world that can keep me away from you now?” she interrupted. “Jesus, Marcus.”

“I saw that look on your face just now.”

“You may have seen it, but you didn’t read it properly. That was a look of determination. That was me wondering who I might know that would be connected to part of a mob crew in Leeds that could maybe arrange for this one-night stand’s boyfriend to get a crowbar to the back of the knees. That wasn’t me being weak, Marcus. That was me wanting to cross the line to get revenge on someone who dared to hurt the man I love with every fibre of my bloody well-known body and soul.”

I stared at her, unable to think of a single thing to say as the hottest woman I’d ever known became even hotter right before my eyes.

“That’ll be the last time you ever underestimate me like that, thank you very much.” Danni smiled softly.

“Yes, ma’am,” I whispered as my smirk took over.

“I felt the fear and loved you anyway, remember?”

I leaned in and planted a small kiss on her cheek, wishing we were on the other side of the world already so I could lean in and plant a thousand kisses in a thousand intimate places by way of apology.

After saying another fond farewell to Dad at the airport, we checked in and handed our luggage over before making our way into the terminal that would take us to L.A. I was going to L.A. A place I’d only ever seen on the television just one year before. Our schedules until Christmas were going to be hectic, and as we stared out onto the runway and watched a dozen planes coming and going from the airport, I felt a slight roll of nervous excitement in the very pit of my stomach. The good kind. The kind that knew I was about to embark on another amazing journey with an even more amazing woman. The kind that was aware that it would be down to me to document the memories that she was gifting me with. The kind that knew I was living the dream right there, right then.

“Part two of our journey begins,” I said quietly, my hands in the pockets of my jeans while Danni had her arms around my waist, her chest pressed to my back and her chin resting on my shoulder.

“Chapter two of a thousand chapters,” she whispered.

“A thousand?”

“Maybe more.”

“Damn, I’m excited for life with you.”

“You should be. Life is going to be good for us.”

I leaned back, resting my head on hers as I blew out all the butterflies in my chest. “I’ve got a feeling we’ve barely even scratched the surface of what we’re capable of making together.”

“You know it… baby,” she whispered in my ear before she nipped it between her teeth. “Although I kinda think we should have one of those big arguments that other couples have at some point. You know, like a full on verbally abusive tennis match? I’ve heard those are fun.”

“Hell, no. I can already see how those will go. You’ll lose your shit, and I’ll crumble like a chocolate fireguard in front of an inferno because you’re just too cute to stay mad at.”

“Oh, come on. I bet I could wind you up real good.” She smiled against my cheek.

“That’s not a challenge, Danni.”

“Think of the aggressive make-up sex,” she whispered.

I sighed, spinning her around until she was in front of me, her arms around my waist as I pushed the hair back from her face and held her cheeks in my hands. “I assure you, I don’t need to be mad at you to fuck you like I hate you.”

I didn’t, and she knew it. She knew it because I showed her the moment we got to our hotel in California. She knew it from the way I commanded her body, pushing and pulling when I needed, only to caress her like she was velvet in my hands the next. She knew it from the way I made love to her one minute, then pulled her hair and made her breathless the next. She knew it by the marks I left upon her skin. Marks that reminded her she was mine. Marks I couldn’t take my eyes off the very next day.

Or the day after that.

Or the day after that.

I was all for showing Danni all the things I couldn’t say. She could be the talker in our relationship. I would be the doer. Together, we were pretty damn perfect. But I was just a guy from Leeds who wore his heart on his sleeve too much. What the hell did I know?