When you learn something so vast and important about someone, it is impossible to forget. I have been somewhat in awe of Freya ever since Orison told me her story. I think I will always feel that, but tonight I have remembered again why I love her—and why she needs me.
George invited her out to dinner tonight, but she turned him down, citing a headache that she did not have. This intrigued me, and so I lingered even after she had finished her shower and settled down on her sofa. I could see that he was on her mind, though I could not quite make sense of her thoughts and emotions.
Apparently neither could she, for after a while she sat upright and addressed the air. “I like him a lot,” she said, as if continuing a conversation she had been having for the past hour. “He’s funny, he’s intelligent. And he is in no way…intense.”
“Intense?” I repeated, though I knew that she could not hear me.
She answered as if she had, and I had to remind myself that of course she would be thinking along these lines—she was trying to sort out her own thoughts. “Because Ryan was intense in his own way. It was like…there was always something underlying everything he said and did. It wasn’t frightening, it wasn’t explosive, it was just…intense. And I could feel it and I—it scared me.
“And Peter made me intense,” she continued, falling back against the arm of the sofa. “I fell so hard and fast for him, and it was so…that feeling was so big in me that I was over my head before I even realized.”
I thought about George, his casual demeanor, his easy smile, his quick wit. “You like that George is not intense.”
She sighed, pressing her hands against her face. “I really need someone who is not so intense,” she mumbled into her palms.
I crouched next to her, shading her with one wing. “Love is intense,” I said softly. “Is that the reason you draw back from it?”
She shook her head and pushed upright, going to pace by the window. I stayed where I was, waiting to see if this was an answer, or simply the next step in her ruminations.
“I’m not scared of intense,” she said after a while, staring out into the street. One of the streetlights out there was flickering, which provided her something she could frown at. “I want intense. But not now. Intense is the last thing I need now.”
I could see then, the line of thought that was coming clearer in her mind. “And you believe George could become intense, and you do not want that.”
“I don’t want to lose what we have,” she murmured. “I don’t think what would come next would be as good as what we have now.”
I went to her then. “Then you should tell him so,” I said. “Before it is too late for him to save his heart from you.” I thought in the same moment that it was far too late for me to save my heart—she has it, this woman whose soul burns with greater intensity than I have ever seen.
She turned, and for a moment she seemed to look right at me. No—she did look at me, I know that. She may have thought she was talking to herself, but some part of her knew I was there, and listening.
I can still feel the warmth of that lovely thought. I have never wanted to be known by a human as I do with Freya.
She will talk to George tomorrow. Having made the decision, she will act on it, with the fortitude I admire in her. I believe he will take it well—at least as well as anyone can, when facing the prospect of such a woman keeping them at arm’s length.
But I know that even to be at a distance from such a person is worthwhile. I do not have to stand close to feel the warmth of her soul.