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It occurs to me that he’s never been overtly soft with me. Even when we’re tame, there’s always a level of roughness. Something I didn’t know I enjoyed until him.
“When we’re together and you spank me, or you use your belt on me…is that why you do it? Because you need to exert your anger? On me?”
Disappointment is ready to seep into my soul at his answer. I don’t want to be a coping mechanism. I want to hold his hand and be there with him, but I want our relationship to be more than that.
Freddie smiles, clearing his throat as the ruddiness in his cheeks deepens. “When I’m with you, even when I am feeling angry or frustrated…it’s never about drowning out the chaos. When I’m with you, I feel things differently. You’re my focus, and when you are overwhelmed with the pleasure I give you, it makes me feel alive. My senses are alight, and every beat of my heart yearns for the next. My lungs burn and ache with this urgency to breathe all your air.”
Christ, my entire being is on fire from those words alone, and they’re by far the least suggestive we’ve shared when it comes to our proclivities. But they are exactly what I feel when he lets loose on me.
“I like it when you get rough with me. I like that to you I’m not breakable. That you know I can take what you give me, and as silly as it is, you make me feel powerful and strong because that’s how I see you.”
He turns to face me, lifting my legs as I twist towards him too and resting them on his lap. His hands rub my ankles in silence. It’s obvious he’s overwhelmed by the conversation, and as much as I wish I could move on to something else, this is a big part of who he is. And I am selfish enough to want it all. Not because I’m scared of what the future might bring, but because I want to own all there is of him. I want to care for him in the same way that he cares for me at every opportunity he gets, even when he is struggling.
“None of this changes that. If anything, it makes you a giant among men. It makes you a fucking god, Freddie, because the strength you possess is unlike anything I’ve ever known.”
“I will never harm you. I’ll never hurt you to make myself feel better. Please understand that it wouldn’t work. You have to understand that.”
“Do you have some good memories? Of your dad?”
“I used to. Believe it or not, every moment we got together was an adventure. It wasn’t until he was gone that I saw them for what they were. Small rays of light.” There’s a hitch to his breath as he keeps rubbing my legs, never going past my knees, as though there is some invisible line that he won’t cross right now. “They were nothing but cruel teases of what our life could’ve been like if he wasn’t so…I don’t know…damaged? Or broken. If he wasn’t so sick.”
The conversation we had by the lake is making more and more sense. Especially his fixation on preserving my memories.
“You must have something that you remember about your dad that’s not all shrouded in dark clouds.”
“Not really. Not anymore. A lot of the time when I think about him I…I just wonder why? Why did he do it? You know? It all went to shit so quickly after my mother left. And I picked him over her. I picked him because I thought that it would make him better. That it would make him happy. It didn’t though, and after he died, my mother picked her new life over me. The new life with her new husband and her new baby.”
Taking one of his hands in mine, I play with the cufflink engraved with the same crest that’s on his ring.
“Alice pushed him over the edge. She didn’t want to be burdened with our family anymore, but she went and landed herself a new one in record time. We weren’t good enough for her, but Carmichael and Astor were worth giving everything outside of us up for.”
Hate blooms in my chest for this woman I don’t ever remember meeting. I was probably too young. However, if things were that tenuous, I doubt my parents would’ve given her the time of day. A part of me is glad that they probably didn’t support her.
“My most vivid memories of my dad are from that morning. We sat in his office with the doors open to the orangery. It was a warm day, and he used to open the roof up so that birds would come inside, and you could hear their song echo around you.”
“That sounds nice.” I smile, and he checks his watch, no doubt wondering where the food is because it’s been a while. However, the pub is busy; the bustle behind the curtains is audible. In a way it feels like a comfort blanket shielding our time together.
“Botany was his thing. He knew all there was about any plant you could imagine, or at least that’s how it seemed back then. It was a few weeks before my thirteenth birthday, and I remember him telling me that I should return to London with Francis and Penny.”
The look on his face affirms the suspicion that it was his father’s way of saying goodbye. My heart stops at the low gasp that pushes from his lips, and while I know that it isn’t enough to alter history or remove the stain it’s left on him, I rest my hand over his on my knee.
“He had my present on his desk,” he whispers, staring at our hands as though they are the most fascinating thing ever. “He was smiling. I thought…I thought that he was okay, Georgina. I thought that we were fine because he never smiled. Not really. And he was making plans for my birthday. I was stupid. So naïve.”
“Freddie—”
“I thought that picking him would make him better. Happier. That it would be enough…that I could be enough to keep him going.”
I see it then, that awful place that he’s trying to show me. I feel that awful darkness, and I can see how hard it must be to keep pushing through it. To keep moving forward when you are being dragged back by all that hopelessness and grief. In a way, if it wasn’t for Jordan, I don’t think that I could fully grasp it. Not the way I do right now. All I want to do is hold him and pull him through.
Shuffling forward, I squeeze between him and the table, wrapping my arms around his shoulders as I press a kiss to his cheek.
“You were thirteen. It was not your duty to make him happy or to keep him living. It was his duty to keep doing it for you. Like it was your mother’s duty to protect you and to put you first.”
A scoff shakes his entire body as his arms envelop me. This time it doesn’t feel like he’s holding me afloat. It feels like he’s holding on for dear life, and all I can do is embrace him as tight as I can, until all my joints complain with the force of it.
“I saw him walk out into the woods at dusk. He had his gun in his hand, and I don’t know why, but I thought he was going to shoot squab for the next day because Francis and Penny were coming for dinner. When I went into his office the next morning, he wasn’t there, but my present was right where he’d left it. I knew that was it—in my gut I knew. That’s why I went out to look for him.”
Fuck. “And you found him?”
