AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Georgina nods, and as I’m about to pull her up to get a tea or coffee, Casper and Fleur find us. He looks between me and her before schooling the pissed look on his face. I’d like to take credit for it because after what he did to my nose, I still owe him his dues. However, this is the look he gets when something is wrong and he can’t do anything about it. When he’s helpless, and I am never powerless.
“I’ve brought you a change of clothes.” Fleur breaks the silence, giving Georgina a light squeeze. “And I have some wipes in my bag that you can use to freshen up.”
“Thanks.”
“Don’t be silly. There’s nothing worse than being worried and grubby all at the same time.”
Georgina makes no move to relinquish her hold on my hand. Not that I’m going to let her go anywhere without me anytime soon. Still, it makes me clutch a little tighter, enough that she automatically tucks herself into my chest. It’s obvious she’s emotionally and physically exhausted. Something that Fleur knows about all too well, well enough that she gives me one of her approving smiles.
Glancing from me to Casper, she tells him, “The smell of the coffee is making me thirsty. Why don’t we go get drinks? I’m sure everyone could do with a coffee or a tea. Georgie?”
“A tea would be good,” I answer on her behalf as Georgina squeezes her arms around me, face pressed into me so that I can feel her hot, teary breaths while she silently hiccups. Kissing the top of her head, I smooth her hair over her shoulders before rubbing her back. “Maybe one of those chamomile ones. They’re meant to be soothing, right?”
Fleur nods, placing the small gym bag with the change of clothes on the ground beside my feet. After she’s pulled a pack of wipes from her handbag and slipped it into the other one, she tugs Casper behind her.
“I need to talk to you,” he tells me as they start back towards the cafe.
It can wait. It can all fucking pause until we’re through this.
Right now my only priority is the woman in my arms. Georgina is the only thing that matters, and until she’s ready to stand on her own, I’m going to keep holding her up.
“It’s just you and me, Swan. Just you and me.”
I don’t know how long we stand in the middle of the hallway like this. It’s eerily quiet, so much so that when the doors to the theatres open, Georgina practically jumps out of her skin.
“Miss Gladstone?” The surgeon approaches slowly, hands knitted together in front of him and a solemn look on his face.
I know what’s coming even before he opens his mouth, and so does she because her cries deepen. The pain is so fierce that I feel it rack through her in a way that makes it impossible for me to take in most of what the surgeon says in favour of keeping her on her feet.
“In the end, the damage was too extensive to save him.” The surgeon swallows, looking between Georgina and me with trepidation. “I am deeply sorry for your loss.”
There’s a tick of quiet where the only thing I can hear is her almost silent sobs. It fucking kills me that she’s trying to close herself up on me. As always, she’s trying to protect everyone around her from the pain she’s feeling. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d shake it all out of her. Would empty her of it all. Instead, I pull her completely into me while the surgeon continues standing in front of us, stoic and immovable, even with her gut-wrenching grief.
It's like looking in the mirror. Normally that is me, and that insight, has me holding on tighter to her. Forcing myself to breathe, I allow her pain to seep right into the marrow of my bones so that I am not that man staring back at me. Detachment isn’t an option right now.
“Karen,” she finally states, clearing her throat as she pushes away from me to look around us as though there’s something she can do to fix this. “I need to call Karen. I need to make sure…I…I need to make this…I…ummm…”
“You need to breathe, Georgina.”
“I can’t!” Freezing in her tailspin, she levels me with a slack expression, eyes wet and dull with a trembling chin that makes her appear so young, so fucking fragile that my insides howl with a soul-deep ache—a need to wrap her in my arms and sweep her away from here. From all of this.
Closing the space between us, I lower to her height while grasping her face in my hands. “You are hurt, and I know you want to keep it all in, but you don’t have to. You can breathe, and you can be sad.”
“Sad?” She scoffs back at me, bejewelled lashes glinting with her sorrow. “I’m not sad. I’m…I’m…”
Clenching her jaw, she looks down between us, hands squeezing my wrists as her nails bite into my skin. She’s a wildfire—beautiful, dangerous, and devastating all at once.
“I’m so…mad.”
“Good, because here’s what’s going to happen.” Releasing her face, I slip my arms around her waist and hoist her up my body until her face is buried in the crook of my neck. Maybe she’s not physically hurt beyond repair, but she needs to be taken care of right now. It’s perfect really because that’s all I want to do. “—I’m going to take you home, and you are going to let me care for you.”
Of course, she tries to argue, however, as I hold her head to my shoulder and make a start away from here, she stops trying to fight against me. Her heavy breaths soak into my shirt as I carry on. “After that, I’m going to make this better. I can’t fix it. I can’t bring him back, Swan…”
I would if I could, if only to take away all this anguish that’s crushing her. I would do anything to hear her laugh right now.
“But I promise you that I’m going to find the bastard that did this, and I’m going to make them pay with every last breath they have left in their lungs.”
Slender arms coil tighter around my shoulders with every step I take in the direction of the lift, Casper and Fleur following at a distance. Cooper joins us in the lift. He’s got the gym bag in his hand, and while his shirt is bloody and he has some cuts and grazes to his face, he looks as ready to fuck something up as I am.
