Page 86 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

“Jesus, it’s freezing. You come back inside!”

“Just give me a minute,” Bridget said, shaking her head. “I need…”

“Bridget, it’s so cold.” She had her arms wrapped around herself, her silken dress useless against the weather. She didn’t go back inside. She approached Bridget instead. “What are you doing out here?”

It was all too much, suddenly. She couldn’t keep it in.

“Did you ask Bowen to talk to me?” Bridget asked, over the noise of the driving wind. “Did you tell him what’s been going on?”

“Yes.”

Bridget’s hands clenched into fists. “You said that talking about it would help.”

Gwen was within touching distance now, but she stayedthere, a couple of feet away. She dragged her hair away from her eyes, blinking, her skin already white from the cold. “It didn’t help?”

“No,” Bridget said, suddenly feeling so full of despair she could have fallen to her knees right there on the parapet, and never gotten back up. “He said it can’t be fixed.Ican’t be fixed. He said I should retire.”

“Well…” Gwen struggled for words for a moment. “Should you?”

“You can’t be serious,” Bridget choked out. “You actually think I should give up? You think that would be good for me?”

“I don’t know, Bridget. It might help, if you just—”

“How could you say that to me?”

Gwen looked thunderstruck for some reason. Bridget didn’t think she was talking that loudly. “What? Bridget… come inside, please. I can’t talk about this properly out here. I can’t even hear myself think.”

“This is who I am!” Bridget shouted. “This is who I was always meant to be. Thereisnothing else for me. If I can’t fight, can’t better myself, serve the realm, protect people—I’m nothing. It’s why I’m like this, why I’ve always been like this. It made sense of everything. It’s what I’mfor.”

Gwen was staring at her, hair whipping in the wind, eyes streaming. She looked concerned in a way that made Bridget feel about a foot tall. She didn’t understand. Why had Bridget thought that she would understand? She’d always been a princess. Bridget had molded herself into a knight; beaten it into her body like a blacksmith laboring over a sword, finding the shape that had always been hidden inside, the potential to be a weapon, and refining it to a sharp point. Nothing had ever felt more right than sliding on her gauntlets, raising her blade, hearingSir Bridgetspoken with respect.

Things were supposed to be getting better—Bridget had been trying sohard. But all that talking, the sharing offeelings, had just led her here, to the worst she’d ever felt in her life. It had all been for nought.

“I think you’re brilliant. I think there are lots of things you could be,” Gwen said eventually, and Bridget shook her head again, utterly miserable.

“Then you don’t know me at all.”

Thirty-Four

The first time round with Arthur, Gabriel had sleepwalked into him.

He’d been taken completely by surprise by the whole relationship, having repressed his feelings for so long that it was almost like he didn’t have any. His only childhood crush—or childhoodcuriosity, more than anything—had been on one of his father’s friends, andthatwas so confusing that he’d never spoken to the man again. Arthur had crashed into his life, forced him to question almost everything about himself, and after the strange and terrible whirlwind of that summer, he had been left standing in the wreckage, trying to piece himself back together out of things that were irreparably broken.

It really did feel different now. He wasn’t asleep. None of this was happening by accident, or due to circumstance. He wasmakingit happen.

He was dancing badly, catching Arthur’s eye, smiling when he laughed. Watching Arthur link arms with other people,light on his feet, and always, inexplicably, come back to Gabriel in the end. Prince Owain insisted that Gabriel share one dance with him, the leaders of two countries swinging each other around the room like fools, and Gabriel thought of his father, and knew that if he’d somehow been here to see it, he’d have laughed and laughed.

During a break in the dancing, Gabriel found himself standing next to the archbishop, who had, miraculously, stayed.

“I suppose this doesn’t bode well for my immortal soul,” he said breathlessly, and Cardinal Richards sighed, peering down into his drink before he answered.

“What is God to you, sire?”

“Umm…” Gabriel’s brow furrowed. “I suppose I tend to see him as a slightly disapproving grandfather. Probably because my grandfather was very pious, and from what I can remember, didn’t like me at all.”

“I see,” said the archbishop wearily. “Well, we’ll have to work on that. Go on, Your Majesty, go back to your…” He waved his hand, and then put down his drink and excused himself.

A singer came out to perform a ballad, and Arthur appeared by Gabriel’s side, whispered, “Come on,” took his hand and spirited him out of the hall.