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“I tried to talk to you before, but you didn’t want to know. You’ve always had a soft spot for her, and I understand why. Lucy’s always been good at endearing people to her, at manipulating them into feeling things… I’ve washed my hands of all this. Of her. All these years that I blamed myself for what happened. So much time…” Clearing her throat, she sighs before continuing. “Let it go. Let Lucy go. She’s going to hurt you, Freddie. I don’t know what she was doing all this time. I don’t know who she is anymore. It’s doubtful I ever did. What I do know is that she’s poison. Far more fucking dangerous than I ever thought she was.”
“I heard about your mum leaving.”
“She didn’t leave—Lucy took her away. She took the one thing my father actually loves because she has some twisted vendetta against him for what happened. Lucy did to my mother what she tried to do to you—capture you in her web.”
“You make it sound like she’s some kind of predator.”
Taking a deep breath, she tells me, “She’s a fucking black widow. Small and apparently inoffensive, but she’ll creep up on you, tangle you in her web, and when she thinks you’re getting too close, she’ll strike at you. Don’t be a fool. Walk away, Freddie. It’s what I’m doing.”
Before I have a chance to ask anything else, she hangs up, and when I call her again, it goes straight to voicemail. I’m about to call Casper when Georgina meanders in, smoothing over her pleated, gold satin skirt that grazes her delicate ankles. Instead of wearing her usual Converse, she’s got a brand-new pair of white Superstars that Arabella dropped in the other day. They don’t look right on her. However, the fact that she’s wearing something other than one of my T-shirts or shirts seems like a step in the right direction.
“I thought I told you to stay in bed and take it easy?” I ask while she scratches the top of Chips’ head on the chair opposite mine and then rounds the kitchen table to perch herself on the edge, beside me.
“Karen hasn’t answered any of my calls.” With a shrug that has her loose white jumper falling off one shoulder, Georgina picks up the glass beside her and takes a long sniff of it.
She doesn’t drink much or often. The most alcohol I’ve seen her consume was at the opening event for the club. Even so, it was three or four glasses of champagne at most. Right now, she looks like she could do with one, but given she’s taken sedatives the last week, I won’t offer it to her.
“It’s been days, and I need her to know that I’m sorry for not staying with him until she got there.”
So far, I’ve followed her lead in her mourning. I know all too well what it’s like to have someone you care for ripped away from you. All too well, it seems, given how easy it is for me to feel all the chaos inside her. Perhaps this is my penance for all the wrong I’ve done her. This could be my chance at making up a fraction of the hurt I caused her by being able to help her through this. I want to. So fucking badly that it’s tormenting me. The need is corroding my insides like acid.
“I feel so guilty all the time that I don’t know what to do with myself anymore.”
“Maybe she needs a little more time to get to grips with what happened. Jordan meant a lot to her, and maybe seeing you and hearing your voice is only going to make it harder for her to cope.”
Sad eyes widen on mine, and when she finally puts my vodka back on the table, she shuffles closer, lowering herself onto my lap once I’ve pushed away slightly. Georgina’s so slight that she barely weighs anything, yet the feel of her on me makes my chest squeeze with relief to have her in my arms.
“How do you know all this? How can you make sense of something nonsensical?”
The question makes my throat swell, drying in a way that makes me swallow hard in the hopes of easing the discomfort. I don’t want to relive all the memories. Moreover, I don’t want to taint her perception of me with the past. Once she knows, she’ll forever look at me and wonder how fucked up I must be beyond what she sees. There’ll be that constant nagging worry in her eyes where she’s wondering when I’m going to follow suit. It’s what they all do. They’re waiting for the day when I fall apart like my father did.
I’m not him though. I’ll never be him. Inherently, he was more selfish than my mother.
“Freddie?” Georgina whispers my name, hands moulding to my jaw as she touches her forehead to my lips, and I hug her as hard and fiercely as I needed someone to hug me back then.
“Why don’t I take you out to dinner tonight?” At the same time I ask her, the doorbell rings.
One of Cooper’s guys opens it, and while she’s still huddled to me, Francis stands in the kitchen doorway with Benedict behind him. The sight must really throw them both because they backtrack slightly before pressing inside.
“Sorry to intrude,” Francis announces, making Georgina shrink into my chest. “It’s a doctor visit. We just wanted to bring you the report and see how things are going.”
Georgina tenses as her father strokes the cat, readjusting herself on my lap so that she’s facing them. I’m not sure why she’s so standoffish with him. Maybe I don’t agree with her being upset with Casper, but I understand that in a twisted way it’s a coping mechanism. That and the fact that she’s avoided anything to do with her usual routine or remotely dance oriented. It’s why she’s lost. However, her frosty demeanour towards her parents seems odd.
“You look well.” Benedict smiles at her as Francis places our internal report on the accident in front of me.
The fact that he hasn’t had it put into the database tells me that he wants to talk to me personally about it. Instantly, my thoughts go down this dire strait where my fear of losing Georgina becomes too real. Too fucking palpable. My arms wrap around her tightly, holding her as flush to me as possible because right now, if I could, I would cut myself open and shove her inside me so nothing could physically touch her.
“The report is back. We’ve gone through everything with a fine-tooth comb. There’s nothing, Fred.” Francis perches on the edge of the table opposite, twisting to look at us both. “The civilian police report is straightforward. We’ve gone through the statements of all the witnesses and the detail. I’ve personally looked into the driver’s background.”
“Keep looking,” I snap at him, sharply enough that Georgina cowers into me.
Whether it’s because she’s trying to comfort me or whether her fight-or-flight instinct is kicking in and she’s aligning herself with the side she perceives strongest, I don’t know. Regardless, I make a point of trying to relax as he continues.
“We’ve exhausted all our avenues.”
“All the reports point to it being an accident. Just a fucking accident,” Benedict grits out, staring at his daughter with the same anger that roils through me at the thought that I could’ve lost her. “The truck has been taken apart, and we’ve run the number plate and even the unique identifier number.”
“We’ve done everything by the book and otherwise,” Francis adds as a full stop to the list of what they’ve done. “It was an accident. Unfortunate and—” With pity, he fixes Georgina with his attention. “Catastrophic. I am deeply sorry for your loss. If there was something we could do to right this, Georgie…you’re family, and we would do it in a heartbeat. No matter what.”
