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“You started this conversation. Now I sound as bitter as I feel towards her and worse, like the jilted lover that I am. I wish that she was still gone. Worse…”
“Worse? There’s more?”
“I’m an awful person for wishing that she were dead.” The expression on her face drops to a serious purse of her lips. “See, it’s written all over your face. I’m a horrible person. I keep asking myself why he always chooses her, but it’s obvious, isn’t it?”
“Sweet fucking Christ, you need to stop agonising over her and realise that neither of you is the problem. It’s him. Saying that, he is out there…he’s been out there for the last two nights.”
“I’ve been holding on for months. This little cutie wasn’t even born yet.”
Letting out a deep breath, I tuck Grace to my chest and spin, groaning at my internal frustrations. I’ve gone over this non-stop. What else I could’ve done so that things went differently. When I stop turning in circles, Grace starts grumbling again.
“Where’s that stupid dummy?” Fleur gripes, pulling out the two kitchen drawers filled with random baby paraphernalia. “I can never find the bloody thing when I need it.”
“Probably because you’re overtired most of the time when you’re looking for it?”
“And the rest?”
“Still tired,” I chuckle, lifting Grace up in my arms and jiggling her the way Casper does so that we have momentary quiet. “Maybe you should listen to Casper and get that live-in nanny he keeps going on about?”
A low, knowing snicker vibrates from her before she sighs at the newfound silence. “He got to you too, huh?”
“Yep, he’s stealthy like that. At least you know he cares.”
“Yeah, well, given fuckface is relentless in his efforts to get to you…” Gesturing towards the lounge with one hand, she shuts the kitchen drawer a little too enthusiastically. “Ugh, as much as I hate him right now, I’m going to have to start offering him dinner and drinks if he carries on.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s cold out there.”
“It’s summer,” I remind her, knowing from the tone in her voice that she’s playing Devil’s advocate.
“It still gets nippy at night.” Fleur goes back to root through the other drawer, obviously avoiding my gaze.
“Fleur!”
Nothing. She ignores me until she finds one of Grace’s favourite dummies. “Aha! Found you, fucker!”
“It’s summer and the temperature hasn’t fucking dropped in weeks. It’s fucking hot.”
“Shhh…” Fleur tells me off as she shakes the rinsed dummy and puts it in Grace’s mouth. “Can you hear that? Peace. Quiet. Heaven. Also, stop swearing in front of the baby.”
“Like you and Casper don’t. Anyway, back to whatever it is you’re trying to avoid telling me.”
“It’s just that Freddie wouldn’t be out there if he didn’t…”
“If he didn’t care?”
“Exactly.”
“Well, like I told him, it’s too little too late,” I grumble back at her, feeling disappointed that my one full-force ally is backtracking even though my heart skips a beat at her words. The way that it used to when I was a young girl and my friends used to tell me my crush was into me too. It’s silly, but there’s something so precious about that nostalgic feeling that I get choked at my dismissive reply.
“Is it really?” Fleur stops in front of me. She’s so tiny that she makes me look like a giant beside her, and I’m average. Still, it’s not her height that makes the wound in my chest weep. The way she’s standing with that soft smile of hers, obviously holding back so she doesn’t engulf me in a hug. “In spite of what people say, old dogs can learn new tricks. And Freddie is a fucking dog. A heart-breaking mutt.”
My first instinct is to refute her dog metaphor. It’s the general consensus with everyone when they talk about Freddie. They always make him out to be an animal—wild, vicious, and irrational. Obviously, I can see all those sides to him, but more than that, every time he touches me, I feel his pain and the weight he carries on his shoulders. More than that, the affection and loyalty he has for the people he cares about, it’s unlike anything I’ve ever known. And while he is all darkness and brutality, there is something divine about him. Something that I have never encountered before. It’s what makes his presence inescapable no matter where you are. Everything about Freddie Emsworth is all-consuming.
“It’s not even about teaching him new tricks,” Fleur says, pulling me from my thoughts as she goes about boiling the kettle again. “The thing about Freddie is that he doesn’t like anyone to see that he cares. He does though. Maybe more than he realises sometimes.”
“Fleur…”
