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“I love you.”
“Don’t ever forget that.”
“Never,” she replies. “No matter what.”
“I love you, Belles.” He hangs up and has another sip of his drink before he asks me, “Do you hear that?”
It’s impossible not to. “She’s scared.”
“No, Freddie, she’s terrified.” A tense silence settles around us while he watches me make myself a coffee. “She’s already had a child taken from her, and with everything kicking off, she’s petrified it’s going to happen again.”
“It’s not.”
“The doctor doesn’t think she’ll be able to go the whole way.”
Oh fuck. “Why?”
“Her body’s under a lot of strain, and Arabella’s struggling. She’s in constant pain, and because of that, she can’t sleep. Which means she’s not only hormonal but also exhausted, and her head is spinning with worry and stress. And your actions…”
“You’re going to put that shit on me?” Snatching my coffee from the machine, I turn to face him. “That’s how you’re going to choose to play me?”
“Play you? You think I’m fucking playing you?” The strain in his voice stops me in my tracks. “Your actions have consequences for all of us. There’s no one I trust more on this earth than you and Bella. I let you fucking drown me to prove a fucking point.”
“No, you let me do the dirty work so that you can be who you are. That’s all.” There’s no point in him romanticising it into something special. It’s nothing but duty. Christopher can’t be weak; he can’t put his life above his duty.
“You can’t put your life above your duty,” I repeat out loud as my head starts spinning.
You would feed me to the wolves for all of this. Lucy’s words come to mind, and I don’t know how I didn’t think of it before.
“Do you remember what Grandad used to say about wolves?”
“What?” Christopher looks at me, perplexed, his anger and fear darkening his eyes. “Are you going to use him to excuse your—”
“Beware of the coyotes amongst wolves. He said that all the time.”
“And?”
“She told me that I would feed her to the wolves for all this.”
Holding his drink up to his lips, he shakes his head down at it. “You just can’t go one fucking minute without bringing her up, can you?”
“You want this to be over, don’t you? Isn’t that why you’re here? Why you trust me so fucking much? Because you know that I’ll get. The. Fucking. Job. Done. I always do!” Hot coffee sloshes onto my hand, and I focus on the burn of it as it drips onto the floor, so I don’t throw the mug at his fucking head.
Without taking a sip, he puts his drink back down on the table beside his phone. “Sit down, Fred. I’ve had a shit fucker of a day, and quite frankly, I can’t be bothered to argue with you because at this point that’s all you’re after. Something to distract from the fact that you fucked up. You’re still fucking up.”
My anger bristles at his statement, making my hand clench tighter around the hot mug. Meanwhile, my insides wince at the maddening pound of my heart as it struggles to keep up with the relentless throb of my head.
“Maybe you don’t see it…or you’re choosing to ignore it. Either way, I’m going to say it because I owe Georgina that much.”
“Don’t.”
In spite of my warning, he tells me, “You’re going to regret walking away from her. Not because of this.” He gestures around us. “Not because of Casper or anyone else. You’ll regret it because she chose you. She chose to stick with you. Georgina was never going to leave you.”
Regrets aren’t something I do. I could count all of mine on two fingers, and now there’s a third. And I’m not sure whether it’s letting Georgina get close or whether it’s pushing her away. Maybe it’s a combination of both. Or maybe they’re two separate regrets, and all this time not only has she gotten under my skin and hammered my defences, but my swan has fucked me completely. In every possible way.
Georgina has ruined me beyond remedy. It doesn’t matter that I forced myself to let her go. Or that I condemned myself to watching her from afar. None of that matters because from the moment she first kissed me, she took my power away, and I can’t get it back no matter how hard I try to control this thing between us. The pull. The heat. The need. Most of all, the fact that I care for her—about her—in a way I’ve never cared about anything or anyone else.
“At some point you’re going to hit a dead end. All this effort you put into being alone…” He pauses, studying me as though we’re strangers. “Not everyone tucks their tail and runs when shit gets hard.”
