I sat up, my head spinning, and chugged half the glass of water before wiping my lips ingloriously on my arm.
“Did you know we can’t invite both the Duke of Albany and the Earl of Norwich because they’ve vowed to duel if they’re ever in the same room again?” I hiccupped.
Freddie frowned. “Who?”
“Or that the Duke of Bridgewater proposed to Eleanor three times before she married your grandfather, and everyone thinks he’s still hot for her?” I barreled on. “Or that I spent weeks memorizing five facts about each of the eight hundred people on the guest list for the Wedding of the Century, only to find out Eleanor had already cut two hundred of them and added fifty others and never told me?”
Freddie just shook his head. “Gran would be much easier to get along with if she let old Bridgie get a leg over,” he said tastelessly, to get me to crack a smile. Instead my face crumpled.
“And did you know Barnes holds weekly meetings to discuss my facial expressions and what’s wrong with them? And that The American’t has a whole category devoted to my man hands?” I kept going. “Or that Marj weighs me every three days and has a folder called Nancy’s Accent? And I had to kick Lacey out of the wedding? Oh, and Nick maybe settled for me because he had to, and Eleanor wants me to renounce my citizenship?”
“Wait. What?”
“And I can’t talk to Nick about any of this because he’s offline all the time, and it sounds whiny, and I can’t freak him out while he’s off fighting pirates or whatever,” I said, my hysteria cresting. “I am an idiot. I told him to go on this extra deployment even though everything inside me was crying for him to stay home and save me.”
“Save you? From what?” Freddie asked, still nonplussed.
“From everything!” I waved my arms around my bedroom. “From myself, from Eleanor, from Marj, from Lacey, even. From failure,” I said, starting to cry again. “I’m an unsuitable American, and your family acts like I’m a defective model that needs refurbishing in a hurry before anyone notices I was the last-ditch option. But it’s too late. Everyone knows it.”
“Bex! I told you, The Royal Flush is—”
“You and I both know that where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” I said.
Freddie was silent.
“I can’t tell what’s true about anything anymore. I don’t even know what’s true about myself. I am wearing fucking pantyhose, Freddie!” Another sob surged out of me. “I haven’t felt like me in I don’t know how long. I couldn’t even keep it together at my best friends’ 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 not taking charge; it was just running. Besides, if I’d ever really wanted to leave, I wouldn’t have needed Freddie to open the door. I would have saved myself. My heart’s decision was made and sealed in a nondescript love nest in Windsor Castle, where, surrounded by the trappings of Nick’s station, he and I had found a way. The optimism we kindled that day had flickered, but it hadn’t died.
Freddie saw it in my eyes without me saying a word.