wedding tonight. What kind of asshole does that? And now your grandmother is telling me that I have to give up the last piece of the person I used to be, the person I recognize, and without Nick here to bring me back to myself, I am losing. My. Mind.”
“Bloody hell, Bex,” Freddie said. “How did it get this bad before you talked to anyone?”
I gave him a helpless look. “Who am I supposed to I talk to? My mom is still grieving. I can’t put this on her. Lacey and I aren’t speaking. Cilla works for me. And everyone has other stuff going on that’s just as important. I feel so weak and awful and embarrassed that I can’t deal with this on my own.” I took another quivering breath. “And the worst part is, I find myself getting angry with Nick about it. Like this is his fault. I was scared he’d resent me if I told him not to go, but now I’m resentful that he went. And I hate that. I hate feeling that way. But I do. And sometimes…”
I fought for what I wanted to say. Freddie was frowning, as if he were trying very hard to process everything I was dumping on him. My pressure valve had blown off and hit him squarely in the chest.
“…Sometimes I just want to get out,” I said. “Which is something Nick said to me once, years ago, and I thought I understood him then, but I really do now. When most people get engaged, it’s a love story, and I used to feel that way, too. But now it’s more like a business transaction. I spend every day working for the good of a company that doesn’t seem to like me very much, fighting for approval I will never get, dieting for a goal weight they will always lower, and sometimes I catch myself thinking, Why the hell did I take this job?”
Freddie put an arm around my shoulders, looking increasingly upset—not with me, but for me. “Bloody hell,” he said again, to the wall.
I started crying again, in earnest. “How can I even feel that way? I love Nick. But I sometimes hate what loving Nick has led to, and I catch myself wondering what it would be like if I just got up and ran. And I hate those feelings most of all. Because I can’t tell which of them are real, either, and it doesn’t matter anyway, because I can’t run, and I just…I just…I can’t.”
Freddie looked at me with nervous intensity. In the quickest of flashes, he tipped up my chin.
“What if I told you that it does matter?” he asked urgently. “What if I told you that you can run? And what if that was with me?”
“What are you doing, Fred?” I breathed.
“You once told me I’d never had my heart broken, but it’s not true. Mine felt like it smashed the day I helped Nick make that bloody lasagna, because I knew I’d missed my chance,” he said. “If I’d known when we kissed how much it would kill me not to do it again, I wouldn’t have let you walk out of that bloody little room.”
I could only blink.
“I tried staying away from you. I did stay away from Lacey, because I didn’t trust myself not to make things worse.” He inched closer. “But there’s something here, Bex. You can’t pretend there isn’t. I’m not saying I know what it is, or what it means, but we jumped at each other that night when we only had us to think about, and I’ve been reliving it ever since.”
He took my face in his hands. “Tell me you don’t feel it,” he whispered.
Then his lips were on mine. Unlike the fire and madness of a year and a half ago, this kiss was slow and powerful and tender, his hands stroking my jaw, my hair. There wasn’t the hunger, but there was just as much need.
Freddie pulled away, then kissed me again, so lightly. “Maybe it’s crazy, but it’s not impossible. Not for us,” he said, touching his forehead to mine. “You can be free, Bex, if that’s what you want. Let me save you. Let’s save each other.”
Long ago, I reminded Nick that he had the power to turn a life of being in-waiting into a life he wanted to live—that he could still be in charge of himself. So could I, and so could Freddie, and running away was