by Holly Martin
He thought about what Bella had said about love, that it was this warmth that spread through her every time she thought of Isaac or he did or said something nice. It was this powerful feeling that had hit her so hard and so fast, that was so much more intense than anything she had felt before.
He thought about what his mum had once said about falling in love with his dad. How she had felt so much excitement about getting to know him, about having him in her life. Somehow knowing, after just a few hours, that this was forever for her.
He had felt these things. He had felt them for the last two years. The warmth he had felt in his chest when he thought or talked about her. The affection he had for her whenever they spent time together. He had made sure Freya knew she could stay in the flat as long as she wanted, rent-free, because he didn’t want her to ever leave. He had started really looking forward to going to work because he would get to see her and spend time with her, so much so he remembered actually being excited about going into the studio, going to work earlier and leaving later just so he could spend more time with her.
He really had been in love with her for two years and he’d just never known before? As Dougie had said, he had been waiting for some light bulb defining moment that would prove to him that he loved her when it had been there all along.
He wanted forever with her. He wanted marriage and children with her and the excitement of spending the rest of his life with her filled him.
Freya glanced over to him, obviously aware he was just staring, and she had the biggest grin on her face.
Her smile slid off when she saw how he was looking at her.
He leaned over and hooked an arm round her waist and pulled her onto his recliner with him.
She giggled. ‘You’ll tip us up.’
‘I won’t let you fall,’ Rome said and, under the light of a million stars, he kissed her.
Rome couldn’t stop smiling as he lay in bed waiting for Freya to come out the bathroom later that night. Life couldn’t be more perfect right now.
He had been going to tell Freya he loved her as soon as they left the observatory but he had stopped himself. He wanted to get it right, he wanted to use the right words, at the right time, maybe in some big sweeping romantic gesture so she would know how much she meant to him. He would come up with some kind of romantic date tomorrow and he would tell her then and after he would bring her back here and make love to her. For now he would just enjoy spending the night with the woman he loved wrapped in his arms.
Right on cue, Freya walked into his room wearing only his t-shirt. As she climbed into bed next to him and he turned out the light, he felt like he was the luckiest man alive.
He rolled her into his arms and pulled her t-shirt off so she was completely naked. The feel of her skin against his was heaven and the desire to tell her he loved her was so strong, but he wanted to do this properly and telling her he loved her when she was naked in his bed seemed closer to lust than to love. He didn’t want there to be any misunderstanding.
He would just content himself with kissing her until neither of them could remember their own name.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Rome was sitting on the beach with Freya, looking out at the sunrise. She was cuddled up against his shoulder, when he realised there was a dark shadow standing over them.
His heart suddenly thundering in his chest, he looked up to see the same cloaked figure that had plagued his dreams for years. The cloaked figure suddenly made a grab for them but, instead of grabbing him, it seized Freya and started to drag her away from him. He leapt up and started to push the grim reaper away from her as Freya fought against it too, screaming and reaching out for Rome in desperation for him to save her.
In the struggle, the hood fell from the grim reaper’s head and, sure enough, the cold dead eyes of Paige stared back at him as he tried to stop her from taking the woman he loved.
No matter how hard he fought against Paige, he couldn’t get Freya back. He was going to lose her.
‘Paige, no, please,’ he begged but it was no use.
He turned to Freya, grabbing her hand. ‘Please don’t go.’
But she was snatched from his grasp and dragged away from him and there was nothing he could do.
He woke with a jerk, his heart thundering in his chest so hard he could barely breathe. It was dark but he knew he was in his bedroom and to his utmost relief Freya was next to him, stroking his shoulder and trying to soothe him.
‘It’s OK,’ she whispered, in the darkness. ‘It was just a dream.’
He gathered Freya to him, holding her tight and kissing her hard, a desperate need for her erupting inside of him.
‘Let me make love to you.’
‘Of course.’
That was the only encouragement he needed. He rolled on top of her as he kissed her again and as she wrapped her arms and legs around him he slid inside her.
‘Christ, I thought I’d lost you,’ he said as he thrust inside her. ‘I dreamt you were taken from me, that I’d lost you and it destroyed me. I love you so much, I always have and I always will. You need to know that.’
He felt her still beneath him, he had never meant to tell her like this but he needed her to know. ‘I love you. You are everything to me. There will never be anyone who means as much as you do to me. I love you so much.’ Two years of not saying it and now he couldn’t stop. ‘I love you.’
God, sex had never been like this with her, this was frantic and desperate and filled with fear over losing her and a relief to find he hadn’t. It was hard and fast and urgent and he knew it wasn’t going to last long. He slid his hand between them, stroking her and coaxing her over the edge, and as she shouted out his name, he lost his grip on any kind of control he had been clinging to. As he came inside her, all he could do was shout out ‘I love you’, over and over again.
Freya watched as Rome slept peacefully. One arm was around her shoulder but he wasn’t really aware she was there now. He had a big grin on his face and she presumed he was dreaming about Paige again. Only this time he was clearly thinking nice things about her, probably the sex he’d just thought he’d had with her.
She slipped from the bed and quickly got dressed, wanting to be out of the house before she burst into tears.
He didn’t even stir.
She left him in bed with his dreams and exited the house, running along Buttercup Beach back towards her house.
She played the last half hour in her head over again. He had been having a bad dream, that much was clear. And she had tried to comfort him but then the words he had shouted out turned to ice in her veins.
‘Paige, no, please don’t go.’
He had obviously been thinking about Paige dying. It had broken her heart to hear him begging for her to come back. It hurt her to see him in pain, but it hurt for herself too, knowing he would never love her as much as he loved Paige. When he had woken up and started making love to her, she had thought he was looking for comfort from her, but it turned out he thought he was with Paige the whole time.
‘I thought I’d lost you. I dreamt you were taken from me, that I’d lost you and it destroyed me. I love you, I always have and I always will.’
A sob tore from Freya’s throat. He hadn’t been making love to her, he had been making love to Paige, thinking that the pain he had gone through over the last few years had just been a dream – that’s why the sex had been so different, so frantic, just like he’d said it had always been with Paige.
Freya had said she would wait for him, that she would be patient, but in reality he was never going to get over Paige.
A shadow loomed out of the darkness towards her and she leapt back.
‘Freya, it’s me,’ and she recognised the voice of Dougie a few moments before her eyes adjusted and she could see him. He was the last person she wanted to see right now, with his sarcastic remarks. ‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine,’ Freya sobbed and tried to get past him but he caught her shou
lder.
‘No, you’re not. Where’s Rome, have you just come from his house?’
‘He’s in bed fast asleep. I need to go.’
‘What happened? Are you hurt?’
She couldn’t stop herself from bursting into tears. To her surprise, Dougie suddenly hugged her, holding her tight and rubbing his hands down her back as he tried to soothe her. ‘Come on, let’s go back to Eden’s house.’
‘It’s the middle of the night,’ Freya protested.
‘And she would want to know if her best friend is upset.’
Dougie guided her back onto the road with his arm round her shoulders, making sure she didn’t run away from him. He let them back into Eden’s house.
‘Wait here, I’ll just go and get her,’ Dougie said, gently.
She sat down on the sofa and Dougie disappeared upstairs. She heard soft voices and a few moments later Eden came running down the stairs.
‘What’s happened, are you OK?’
Eden enveloped her in a big hug as Freya cried against her. It was over. She didn’t think there was any going back after this.
Rome woke to a hammering on his door. He looked around and realised the bed was empty and, judging by how cold it was, it had been empty for some time.
‘Freya?’ he called out, but there was no answer.
As the hammering on the door came again, he quickly pulled on his jeans and ran downstairs to answer it.
There was Dougie standing on his doorstep. It was still dark outside. What the hell was going on?
‘Did you and Freya have a fight?’
‘No, where is she?’
‘Currently at Eden’s house sobbing her heart out. I couldn’t sleep and went for a walk and I found her on the beach running away from your house. What did you do?’
Rome’s heart leapt with fear. What had he done? He had been so careful not to screw this up with her and somehow he’d messed it up anyway. What had happened? He’d had the bad dream about Paige taking away Freya, he’d woken up and made love to Freya, told her he loved her and then kissed her until he had fallen asleep. What could possibly be wrong about that? He had told her he loved her. It wasn’t supposed to come out like that but surely it was a good thing?
Suddenly he felt sick. The way they had made love had been so different to how he had made love to her before, it had been fast and hard. Christ, what if he had hurt her? He quickly grabbed his trainers, pulling them on, scooped up his keys and stepped out onto the street.
‘I need to talk to her,’ Rome said.
Dougie gestured for him to go ahead, knowing that he probably couldn’t keep up with him when Rome was running flat out.
Rome arrived at Eden’s house a minute later and banged on her door. Eden opened it straight away.
‘She’s gone back to her flat, she said she wanted to be alone,’ Eden said before Rome could even get a word out.
Dougie came running up behind him.
‘Please, if she’s here, I need to talk to her,’ Rome said, urgently.
Eden shook her head. ‘I promise she’s not. I could barely get a word out of her. She kept mentioning Paige but then she said she wanted to be alone and left.’
‘And you let her?’
‘What did you want me to do, tie her up?’
Rome sighed. He just needed to talk to her.
‘Thanks, both of you.’
He quickly ran down the street towards the shop and let himself into her flat and then ran up the stairs.
He heard crying coming from the bedroom and he quickly walked in there. His heart dropped into his stomach as he saw Freya. She was sobbing uncontrollably as she moved around the room and he could clearly see that she was packing, throwing any clothes and belongings that she could grab into a suitcase. She was leaving and panic ripped through him at that prospect. He couldn’t lose her but what the hell could he do to stop her?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
‘What’s going on?’ Rome asked and Freya looked up from her packing, tears filled her eyes again as she saw him.
‘I need to go.’
He stepped towards her. ‘Go where?’
‘Anywhere, I just need to get away from you.’
She heard him gasp softly. ‘What did I do? Did I hurt you when we were making love, was I rough with you?’
Freya shook her head, throwing the last few things into her suitcase and zipping it up. ‘It’s not that.’
‘Then what the hell is it, what did I do?’
Freya grabbed her bag off the bed and hoisted it onto the floor. ‘I need to go.’
Rome slammed the bedroom door, trapping her in the room. ‘Not without giving me an explanation. You owe me that much.’
‘I don’t owe you anything.’
‘Wait a minute. We’re friends, you’re my best friend, and before we started seeing each other, you promised me that that would never change. So before you walk away from us, you at least need to tell me why.’
A sob tore from her throat. ‘Because you’re still in love with her.’
Rome looked confused for a moment. ‘Who?’
‘Paige.’
He looked alarmed. ‘No I’m not. I don’t think I was ever in love with her actually, but I’m certainly not in love with her now.’
Freya shook her head. ‘I was in love with you for two years, and I kept waiting and hoping that one day you would fall in love with me too. Just like I hoped Jake would one day fall out of love with his ex and fall in love with me. But you still love her.’
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘You dreamed about her.’
Rome paled and then he nodded. ‘Yes. I did.’
‘You called out to her, begged her not to leave you and then you woke up and thought I was her. When you made love to me, you were really making love to her, telling her you were scared that you had lost her, telling her how much you loved her, that you’ve always loved her and always will,’ Freya sobbed.
He looked horrified. ‘Wait, that’s not what happened. I was making love to you, I knew it was you the whole time. When I said I was in love with you, I meant it. I love you Freya.’
‘Bullshit. Why would you say that you’ve always loved me? I told you I loved you and you never said it back, despite knowing how much it hurt that you didn’t say it back to me, but now you’re telling me that you’ve been in love with me for two years.’
He pushed his curly hair from his face. ‘It’s complicated.’
Freya shook her head. ‘This is all lies. You just don’t want me to go so now you’re saying anything to keep me here.’
She moved to the door.
‘I didn’t know,’ Rome blurted out. ‘I didn’t know I was in love with you because I never felt like this with Paige. I thought I was in love with her, I was going to marry her, so then when I fell in love with you, I didn’t know this was what love was really supposed to feel like. Everything with you was so much better, so much more wonderful. We were closer in the first few weeks of our friendship than I ever was with Paige. I thought what we had was friendship in the beginning but it was so much more than that. I thought it might be lust but it was more than that too. I’ve been asking people how they knew they were in love and I realised I have all of that with you, I always have. I realised at the observatory that I’ve always been in love with you.’
‘But you never told me.’
‘I wanted to do it somewhere romantic, I didn’t want to just blurt it out, or mention it in passing. I wanted to do it right.’
‘But you called for Paige in your dreams, you begged her not to leave.’
‘I was begging you not to leave, not her.’
Freya shook her head at the lies, opened the door and stepped out into the lounge.
‘You really want to know what my dream was about? What it’s always about. You really want to know how messed up I am? As a child I had nightmares about the grim reaper taking me away. They stopped when I got older but when Pa
ige died the nightmares returned, but this time when the grim reaper comes, it’s always Paige. You want to know how I remember my ex? I see her as bloodied, mutilated zombified corpse and she comes to take me away. Sometimes she has even come to take away my loved ones instead of me: Eden, Bella, my parents or, in the case of tonight’s dream, she came to take away you. In my dream I was begging her not to take you and then I was begging you not to leave me. Just like I’m doing now. You have to believe me. I love you and that dream messed me up so badly because I cannot cope with the thought of losing you.’
Freya hesitated for a moment. It sounded so implausible.
‘But this isn’t really about me not being over my past is it, this is about you not being over yours,’ Rome said. ‘Jake never loved you. He couldn’t have if he was sleeping with his ex the whole time you were together. He betrayed you and you’ve never got over that, which is why you are overreacting about my dream.’
Anger boiled up in her. ‘I’m not overreacting.’
‘You’re leaving here with a suitcase filled with jumpers during one of the hottest summers we’ve had in years. You have no place to go to and you don’t think you might be acting a little irrationally? Why are you so quick to believe I’m lying to you? I have never lied to you since I’ve met you. You just need to calm down and think about what I’m saying, and if you need space to do that, I can give it to you, but please don’t leave. This is your home.’
‘I can’t stay here hoping one day you’ll love me as much as I love you. You love me as a friend but you’re not in love with me. Real love is not something that takes you years to realise, real love hits you with the force of a ten-ton bus, it takes your breath away, you can’t sleep at night because the other person is all you think about. You’re fond of me, you like working with me, that’s as far as it goes. Now it’s time to let me go. Let me move on and get over you once and for all.’