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“I won’t get in the way,” I add as he peers at me, parking in his usual spot, right in front of the house.
“Georgina, you’re never in the way. You’re not an obstacle or a problem. These things…” Freddie sighs as he kills the engine. “We don’t know what’s waiting for us. It always gets intense, and…I don’t want you to get caught up in anything remotely dangerous.”
Reaching across the centre console, he grasps one of my hands tightly, toying with his ring on my thumb. There’s something about having it on me that is like constantly carrying a piece of him with me.
“You’re going to have Cooper and Ryan at the house along with both of their detail teams. You’re going to be safe, and as soon as I’m done, I’ll be home.”
Nodding, I squeeze his hand in mine. “Okay.”
I focus on the feel of our fingers laced together and try to push all the worry out of my mind. Even if I am afraid, I am not letting it dictate how this goes. Fleur’s right—if I don’t allow it to have a voice, it can’t control me.
“There are cameras throughout the house, and the alarm system sensors are impossible to get past, so you have nothing to worry about.” We sit for a tick of silence outside the house as Cooper and the rest of the team do their thing. “Keep your necklace on, and here, take this.” He reaches into the footwell, and when he sits up again, he holds out his knife to me. “You’re not going to need it, but if it makes you feel better…safer.”
I take the knife and fist it in my hand as I pull him towards me. “I love you, and I need you to promise me that you’re not going to get hurt.”
“Georgina…”
It was a silly request, I know it, yet it still doesn’t lessen the weight in my chest or loosen the lump in my throat. It doesn’t make watching him go any easier. My grip on the knife gives slightly as I cup his face and kiss him. It’s not soft or sweet as my tongue pushes into his mouth and his teeth scrape the underside of my lip. A hand moulds to my waist, and while his tongue licks over mine, Freddie groans.
The sound rumbles through me as I clamber across and straddle his lap with my heart beating wildly in my chest, equal parts terror, need, love, and sadness. I never want to let him go, and yet I know that I have to right now.
“I love you.” He gives me the one promise he can. “Always. Forever, Swan.”
“You will not leave me behind again, Frederick Emsworth,” I breathe into his mouth. “I will never let you go. In this life and the next, I will haunt you. I will find you in your dreams. I will linger in your thoughts. You will never be free of me. No matter what.”
A deep inhale fills his chest, pressing it to mine as he nods and replies, “Ditto.”
There’s an overwhelming desire to make him feel all the things that I’m feeling. I wish that I could somehow open myself up and cloak him with all the things that are rampaging through me.
“Mercy, salvation,” I whisper as I touch my forehead to his, reminding him of all the things we mean to each other. “Hope and peace. You are everything to me. Sangre de mi sangre.” Blood of my blood. “That’s what you are.”
It’s not something that will be one day; it’s what has always been. Why we have never been able to stay apart. His blood is my blood, and it yearns, calling to each other through distance and time. He is my soulmate in every possible definition of the word.
“Georgina,” he rumbles, low and soft. Too gentle for him and so reverent that I do feel like the goddess he claims me to be. “Stop saying goodbye.”
“That’s not…I’m not…”
Freddie gives me a knowing look. “One of the things that isn’t so bad about being me is that I tend to be perceptive. Feelings don’t really cloud my judgement.”
It’s not entirely true. If it were, he wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to “save me” from himself and all the other shit around us. I also think that his judgement isn’t all that clear when it comes to Lucy. Out of sight is not out of mind when it comes to her, and a part of me is dreading the possibility that he’s going to push me aside for her.
“I’m not going anywhere, and I know that you never got to say goodbye to your friend, but you will never have to do that with me. In case you’ve missed it, I’m pretty good at stalking. You go, and I follow. Always.”
“Now isn’t a good time to be funny.”
A lopsided grin cuts his face as he brushes my hair back. While he holds my stare, Freddie leans forward, biting the tip of my nose.
“What is it that you always say? Funny because it’s true?”
“It’s usually right. Maybe I’m spooked and it’s getting to me, or it really isn’t all that ha ha.” A subtle nod bobs his face closer so that our noses are squished together, and when he puckers his lips, they brush mine. “She’s going to need you. Isn’t she?”
It takes him a moment to decipher my words. When he does, his hands grasp my face.
“And you’re going to be there for her…again.”
“Lucy is not your competition. She never has been. We were friends once—”
“Friends?” We both know they were more than that.
