AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Without overthinking, I lift her into my arms and take her upstairs to my bedroom. The bedside lamp is dim, barely giving enough light that I can make out the light grazes on the left side of her face or the scratches on her legs when I put her down on the bed. While she wrestles with her hair, I slip the gun from my waistband into the top drawer of the bedside table.
Georgina’s despondency fades as I tug my top off, over my head, and go about taking off my rings and watch. After I got cleaned up, I must have put them back on while on autopilot. Normally cheer-filled eyes downturn as she stares at the scabbed-over and stitched wounds on my arm and chest while I’m caught in my view of her lying on my bed. Long, lithe legs hang off the mattress, and as I watch the irregular rise and fall of her chest, the sorrowful rhythm draws me closer until I’m standing over her, my shadow blanketing her.
“Georgina…” Her name parts my lips, whispering around us in the muted light as she sits up on the edge of the bed and looks up at me.
Small trembling hands anchor my hips, her thumbs stroking over the etched lines on either side of my groin as she presses her forehead to my stomach, and my hands tangle in her knotted tresses. Slowly, I brush my fingers through her mane, again and again, until Georgina peers up at me. Even swollen and grief-stricken, her eyes pull me in.
Lowering to my knees in front of her, I part her thighs and bring myself closer so that we’re almost face to face. She’s a little higher, and as she looks down, it kills me that I’m responsible for part of the heartbreak and agony staring back at me.
“I’m sorry.” The words roll from my tongue as a tearless sob shudders through her.
The curtain of curls that surrounds me as her hands rest on my shoulders envelops me in her soft, clean scent, warm and more beautiful than the rose gardens it reminds me of.
“I’m sorry I hurt you.” Leaning forward, I press my lips to her chest, lingering for a second before I kiss her rampant heart. When I pull back, I sit on my heels as I smooth my hands over her thighs to her hips and stroke over the bottom of her belly the same way she did mine. “I’m sorry I failed to protect you. I’m so fucking sorry that I can’t fix this. I want to. You have to believe me, I would do anything to make this better. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to spare you this pain. And I’m so sorry that your friend is gone…that I can’t bring him back for you. Forgive me.”
“None of that…” The crack in her voice swallows up her words into a deep sigh, laden with unshed-able tears. “God, none of it matters.”
“Yes, Georgina, it does. It matters to me.” In a way she will never understand.
This fucking saint will never grasp the depth of my sin. More than anyone, I should’ve been better to her. Worshipped every fucking inch of the ground she walked on if for no other reason than she loved me when I did not deserve her. I should have been more, everything she deserves. Instead, I was no better than my mother. Casper was right.
“It matters that you’re hurting and that I’m responsible for part of that pain. It matters that I didn’t put you first because I was…scared. I was a fucking coward. I pussied out over the possibility that you would leave even though you kept coming back to me. I was wrong.”
“You were.” Georgina blows out a deep breath.
“I fucked up.”
“Massively.” Her hands squeeze my shoulders. It’s the first time since the surgeon came out of the room that she inhales as deeply as she keeps sighing.
“I will never leave you again,” I tell her, bringing her closer even as I press impossibly closer so that her thighs are wide open and my chest is flush to her abdomen. My hands trail from her hips to her waist, the velvet of her skin beneath my palms making my heart trip over itself. “I will never let you go.”
“Promise,” she whispers, stroking from my shoulders to my neck. Shaky hands trail up to my jaw before her fingers tunnel into the hair at my nape. “Promise me.”
Roving my hands up her back, I hook my fingers around her slender shoulders and tug her down onto my thighs gently so that she’s astride me. The tip of her nose touches mine as we hold each other’s stare. Perfectly formed lips quiver with the emotional tremor of her dainty chin, trembling breaths skittering over my skin. There is nothing and no one that has or ever will compare to her. She is a divine phenomenon in a world that is burnished with hellfire. My salvation. My precious swan.
“I love you.” It’s the only promise she needs from me. The only promise that belongs solely to her. Not derived from duty. Not forged from guilt. Not orchestrated for a greater good. It’s a vow etched into our DNA. Something that neither time nor fate or anything in this universe can break. It is holy and precious and wholly hers. I’m entirely hers. “If I’m going to drown, I want to drown in you. Only you.”
“Only me.”
“You.”
Arms coiling taut around me as I hold her tighter, Georgina whispers back, “I forgive you.”
The murmur courses through me, warming my veins and twining itself around every cell of my being while I breathe her in. Breath by breath, etching every facet of my existence with hers.
“Tell me again.” With a longing sigh, her eyes flutter closed. “Promise me again.”
“I love you, Swan.” I trace over her lips to her ear. “I love you, precious thing.” Kissing each of her eyelids, I then trail my lips down her nose. “I love you, Georgina.”
I confess the promise over and over again, covering every inch of her heavenly face with my affection while I hold on to her as dearly as she has held on to me.
Chapter 15
GEORGINA
It’s dark and quiet. The room is still—too still for Freddie to be with me. He’s constant chaos, an enrapturing noise that mutes everything around him, and when he’s gone, there’s only silence. Awful silence that brings back all the pain.
My stomach churns violently, and before I can get my sore body to cooperate, I’m heaving all over myself and the bed. There’s nothing but bile and acid since my stomach is empty. I can’t remember the last time I actually ate anything substantial. Freddie is the only one that actively feeds me and watches what I eat. Everyone else is always too busy or preoccupied to notice. And Jordan…
