AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“In my experience, when a person runs from you, it’s because they’re scared. And no one has ever feared something powerless.” A wicked grin tips up one side of his face. “Do you understand, Georgina? You hold the power.”
“I don’t want power—I only want him. I don’t care about anything else. I’ve never wanted anything else. Only him.” I suck in a deep breath and try to silence my weeping heart as it howls in my chest. “I’m holding on, Christopher, but he is breaking me. When do I say it’s enough? When do I accept that we’re fucking doomed to-to-to this?”
Ever the problem-solver, he looks around us as though the answers are floating in the air and he can simply pick them and fix everything. He’s a good guy, better than I’ve ever realised.
“I’m sorry,” he tells me, eyes narrowing on mine as he grasps my shoulders and squeezes like that’s enough to make me feel better.
“You’re sorry. For what? Why?”
“I haven’t done enough, and I should’ve intervened by now.”
“Christopher…” God, this is not how I intended this go. It’s not what I was searching for when I stopped to look at the photo again. “This isn’t your problem. Your wife is pregnant—that’s the only thing you should be focusing on.”
“Let’s get one thing straight. Arabella is always my focus. However, you are a part of her, and that means that I need to make sure that you’re good. Even if it means shaking Freddie out of his stupor.” Pulling his handkerchief from his pocket, he wraps it around his finger before using it to pat my under-eyes dry. “It’s what it is, you know? Part stupor and part stubbornness.”
“If he wasn’t such an arsehole, I couldn’t love him more.” A stupid laugh bursts from me. “I can’t even tell him that without him freaking out.”
Christopher nods, folding his handkerchief and offering it to me. When I don’t take it from him, he puts it back in his pocket. “He’s had it rough. Rougher than most realise, and it’s not that he doesn’t care enough. It’s that he loves too much.”
The sound of my gasp gives him pause. A pitying frown flits over his face as he tilts his head to the side and shakes out the mascara-printed cotton square. All the while I’m still trying to get my head around his words as though they’re new or like I didn’t know it.
“Love isn’t the problem. The issue here is that he won’t admit it to himself. If he didn’t love me, I wouldn’t be here. It wouldn’t feel like this.”
“His first instinct is to protect himself and shut down. He did it when my parents brought him to live with us after my uncle died. In your case, he’s become a complete fucking cunt so that even though he’s the one pushing you away, he can pretend that you’re the one leaving him.”
“You say that like it’s classic Freddie.”
“I’m saying it because it is classic Freddie. It’s also how you can be certain that Lucy isn’t a problem.”
“Like I told you, I can handle her. It’s his guilt, Christopher. He’s so blinded by it. So consumed that…” That it’s going to destroy him.
It kills me to even think that.
“He’s his own worst enemy,” I manage to breathe even though my throat is so swollen that it feels blocked. The reality is that I knew Freddie was never going to be easy from the very moment his hand grazed mine when he sat beside me on my sofa.
We spent hours like that, sat together in complete silence. While I snuck glances, he outright and non-stop stared at me. If it didn’t feel like he was seeing straight into me, it wouldn’t have got to me the way it did. But he saw me when I was only a bystander. As much as he is an enigma, I see him too. I see his pain. It’s tearing me apart the more he pushes me away.
The other night when he was having the nightmare, he kept yelling for me to come back, and it didn’t matter how hard I shook him or called his name, he didn’t wake up. It was as if he was stuck in his dream, and the pain etched on his face even as he slept…it was agonising. The tears. The desperation in his voice. It reminded me of the little boy that kicked and screamed at the door for his mother to come back.
My chest constricts around my insides as I stare back at the photo.
“I’m still fighting. With everything I have.” Because in spite of everything, when we have good moments, they’re great. Those bursts of sunshine where he allows himself to breathe and laugh. They are everything, and I want more of them. I want all of them.
“Eyes on the prize, remember?” Christopher chuckles.
“He’s not a fucking prize. Not to me. He’s…he’s Freddie. My heart, and every day that I wake up and he’s missing…it gets harder to live. I’m stagnating.”
“No, you’re not,” Christopher whispers with a most serious knit to his brow before he adds, “You’re going to look back on this someday, and it’s going to be the best blackmail material you could ever have.”
“Why are you so determined to help me?”
“George.” He says my name with a knowing smile. “I’m helping my cousin and making sure my wife doesn’t kill him so we keep some semblance of family peace.” After a beat, he goes on. “And he’s never been like this over anyone else. After everything happened with me and Arabella, Freddie had my back. So while he’s working his shit out and being a dick about it, I’m going to fight his corner like any decent brother would.”
Before I can say anything, he starts up the stairs again, leaving me to get one last look at the photo that started our tête-à-tête. It’s a beautiful picture, and I can only imagine what it will look like in a few years when we’re all a little bit wiser and a little less younger. All the kids adding to the mess of people. And I don’t care how he’s looking at me, so long as in that photo Freddie’s still got his sight set on me.
“I’m fighting your corner too here, because no one looks at a photo like that unless the object means something to them. Trust me.”
“You don’t ask for much.”
