She looks up. There’s a small pause. “Hi.”
“Can you come talk to me for a second?”
Her eyebrows lift slightly. “Should I be worried?”
“I… Uhh.”
Clara watches this entire exchange with the sort of undisguised delight normally reserved for reality television.
Freya slides out of the booth. “Back in a minute,” she tells the table.
I take her hand by instinct without really thinking about it. Her fingers curl around mine easily as we walk through the hallway toward the small party room at the back of the pub. The door clicks shut behind us. The noise from the main room softens immediately, replaced by a quiet hum of music through the wall and the faint clink of glasses somewhere in the distance. Freya turns toward me. “Well,” she says gently. “This feels ominous.”
I laugh quietly. “It’s not.”
“Good.”
There’s a pause. Her hand is still in mine. I realise I haven’t let go. Neither has she.
“I needed to talk to you,” I say eventually.
Her expression softens slightly. “Okay.”
My thumb brushes against her knuckles without thinking. “I’ve been trying to figure out how to say this all evening,” I admit. “And the truth is I’m not entirely sure there’s a neat way to do it.”
Freya watches me quietly. “You can just say it,” she says.
Right. I take a breath. “You scare me a bit.”
She blinks. “Romantic.”
I laugh under my breath. “Let me finish.”
“Okay.”
I run a hand through my hair. “It’s not you exactly,” I say. “It’s… what you mean to me.”
Her fingers tighten slightly around mine.
“I spent years with Sienna feeling like I was trying to live in someone else’s life,” I continue slowly. “Everything about it feltslightly off. The people. The expectations. The way she wanted things to look.”
Freya doesn’t interrupt.
“She didn’t leave me out of nowhere,” I add quietly. “By the time she found someone else we were barely even together anymore. I just never really… showed up properly.”
“Why?” Freya asks softly.
I shrug. “Because I didn’t feel like I fit in that world. And the longer it went on, the more I convinced myself that I wasn’t enough for it.”
The words feel strange out loud.
“But with you,” I say, meeting her eyes again, “it’s the opposite. You fit,” I say simply.
The room is quiet. The music through the wall fades to something softer.
“And that’s terrifying,” I admit.
Freya’s expression shifts. “Why?”
