Page 43 of Embrace Me Forever

Georgia-May stops in her tracks, then slowly returns to sit beside me, maintaining a careful distance. “I’m sor?—”

I raise my hand to stop her. “Please, don’t say sorry. And again, don’t try to read into it.”

She exhales sharply, frustration and resignation coloring her tone. “Fine. You’re merely my bodyguard. If that’s even the right word for it. So, your past and everything else don’t matter to me,” she declares, a dismal acceptance that slices through any pretense of personal connection. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

As she stands to leave, a deep sense of regret crashes over me. The ache in my head throbs in time with the relentless beating behind my ribcage. My reaction to her simple apology was raw and unrestrained, and now I’ve catastrophically sabotaged a moment that might have allowed our emotional barriers to dissolve even slightly.

She seems to have accepted the bleak reality of our situation, but I’m left to grapple with the sensation of plummeting into an abyss.

14

GEORGIA-MAY

I told him nothing about him mattered.God!Everything about him matters. That was the worst lie I’ve ever spoken. But what he asked me was absurd. He said that his wife was dead, then he expected me to just take it and go to bed?

As I calm myself down, slipping into my pajamas, I can’t stop thinking about his confession, analyzing it despite his warning not to. It was just one line, and he almost didn’t want me to see him as he said it. But he couldn’t hide the pain he held. It tightened his features and shadowed his usually guarded eyes. I was about to say sorry, but his response? He rejected my sympathy.

The sting of that dismissal burns hotter than I expected. It wasn’t just the rebuke itself that annoyed me. It was the brutal reminder of how far he was from letting anyone close. The man was encased in his sorrow, shielded by a fortress of something more than grief I’m not sure I can ever breach.

The truth is, despite the walls he puts up, every single thing about Blake matters to me. His rare smiles, the way his eyes crinkle when he lets just a little bit of his joy show—andeverything else that comes with them, his past and his present. It all draws me in, piece by painful piece.

Anne quietly knocks, and I let her in.

“I can’t sleep,” she complains in a whisper.

“Because there’s a man in the house?”

“Maybe. I barely remember how to act around one.” She chuckles, then silently coos at my little girl, who’s nestled under her favorite Minnie Mouse blanket—the one Anne gave her for her first birthday.

I marvel at the serene expression on Coco’s face. “It looks like she’s smiling in her sleep,” I whisper, my fingers caressing her forehead, tracing the delicate curves of her brow.

Anne draws closer. “She’s always a happy baby, no matter what. Just like you when you were little!” She elbows me.

“You were only three when I was a baby. How would you know!”

“Dad told me.”

I probably inherited that trait from him. How I miss him!

Anne continues, “But I must admit, that smile—” She pauses, full of affection, pointing at Coco’s curved lips. “—is a smile I’ve never seen before.”

A lump forms in my throat as I absorb the pure joy etched on my daughter’s sleeping face. “It’s as if she’s found a piece of heaven in her dreams,” I whisper. Perhaps the Alaskan bears Blake mentioned over dinner had woven their way into her slumber.

Anne and I exchange a glance, silently acknowledging what we both know. Coco has taken a shine to Blake. Her ‘love you’ was just part of her routine, but the ‘daddy’ part? That threw me. She picked up that word from my stories about Sebastian. I can only hope Blake brushed it off. If he expects me to forget about his late wife like yesterday’s weather report, he should be able to handle this.

But no matter how innocent Coco’s words were, I wouldn’t be surprised if Blake was the one who lifted her spirits tonight. Maybe it was his deep, resonant voice—a sound Coco had never heard before—or the way he held her and looked at her.

My sister pulls me away toward the other end of the room. She leans against the doorframe, her eyes intense. “Honestly, seeing Blake in person makes me think you’ve been hiding him under a bushel. And what a waste of good shade that is!”

I meet her bold declaration with a half-gape, caught entirely off guard. Until today, my descriptions of Blake had been succinct. A forty-year-old man on Hartley Marine’s payroll, recently assigned to ensure my safety. I had sparingly used adjectives that conjured ‘attractive’ when speaking of him, cautious not to ignite my sister’s imagination, which often wandered into the realms of her beloved romance novels.

She continues, a grin spreading across her face. “And I don’t think he has any bad intentions with you.”

I raise an eyebrow and cross my arms. “Oh, is that so? Even after he insisted on keeping things professional right after our mile-high kiss?” I couldn’t help bringing up that little scandal. The fact that she’s managed to stay civil with Blake so far is a testament to her soft spot for him.

Anne nods emphatically, suppressing a chuckle. “Now, let me enlighten you with my own reverse psychology,” she says, her tone dripping with the mischief of a conniving older sibling. “Only a man hopelessly in love would utter something so ridiculous to backpedal after a moment of passion.”

“You’re on his side now?”

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