Chapter 17

CHAPTER 17

FREDDIE

“ A re you serious?” I could not have heard that correctly, but Boo-Boo just grinned at me.

“Yes, I’m serious. I told you about the water jet that Rome took me on.” At the moment, she was going through different items she’d had delivered today. There were batons and boots. Some of it looked like costumes, but…

“You want to set yourself on fire?” How was I supposed to wrap my head around that?

Pivoting, Boo-Boo faced me. “Yes.” Then she tilted her head to the side before adding, “And no.”

“Thanks for clearing that up for me.” I folded my arms as I stared at her. It kept me from indulging in my urge to take the stuff out of her hands until she explained this to me.

“I want to fire dance,” she said. “It’s not about setting myself on fire, it’s about dancing with the fire. While I get that it probably sounds like a lot, if you do it properly, it’s very safe.”

Eyes narrowed, I studied her. Was she yanking my chain right now? “Most of the things you do have to be done properly, but if you make a mistake with fire—you get burned.”

“Yes.” The response wasn’t flippant nor was she ignoring me. She set the boots and baton aside before closing the distance between us. “Freddie, if I miss a twist or I lose my grip on the silks, I can fall. I’ll get hurt that way too.”

“Except you know how to fall,” I said, not that I cared for the idea that much. She rarely used a net when she practiced or performed. The stronger and more confident she became, the less inclined she was to ask for the net, even when testing a new routine. “Then again, depending on how high you are…”

“Exactly,” she said, then held her hands out to me. I gripped her hands in mine. “Freddie, I get it, all the new routines are a little scary. The bow and arrow is still a little clunky. I need to work on that. But the fire dance? That could add a little magic to the performances. I wouldn’t want to do it inside, probably safer to reserve it for outdoor performances.”

“You don’t do many of those.” I squeezed her hands. I couldn’t quite shake the nightmare of her getting burned or worse, actually catching on fire. “Have you actually talked to the others? Doc?”

Maybe throwing Doc out there was a bit of a low blow.

No, definitely a low blow.

“Fuck, sorry, Boo-Boo.”

“You don’t have to be sorry,” she said, tightening her grip on my hands. “I will talk to all of them but first, I need to know if it’s even doable. Sully and I discussed this a few times and he reached out to some other fire dancers for ideas.”

“Wait, so what are we practicing if you don’t know how to do it?”

“Well, I wanted to start with twirling the fire baton for the heat and before you yell—” She let go of me and raised a hand as if asking for patience. After retrieving the baton, she held it up. “I want to practice with the baton, then the ribbons. Once I have those down, I add fire.”

“Then you add the fire.” I sounded like a parrot, yet I was rubbing a hand over my face. “Boo-Boo, you remember that I’m the red hot mess in this relationship, right?”

Her wide smile didn’t settle my heart down nor did the way her eyes softened. “Trust me?”

The guys were going to kill me.

“What do you need me to do?”

A week later…

“The whole block?” This was about more than just adding new challenges to the shows. Rehearsals for the next leg would begin in just a couple of weeks. Vaughn, Rome, and I had sat in on her video call with Sully. I wasn’t sure who seemed more stunned by the long list of changes she wanted to the routines.

No, correction, Sully was definitely the most stunned. We’d at least had front row seats to what she was planning and practicing. But now? She wanted to buy this whole block?

“Yes,” she said, pivoting to face me. “I know it’s a lot. Okay, it’s really a lot. But I’m pretty sure I can afford it and I want to do something good with the money.”

All of my earlier objections blew away as I stared at her. “Boo-Boo, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But the Sharpes did. I was a Sharpe for a very long time.” Old pain and darkness coated those words. “I know that I was a Hardigan, and that I was adopted. That I had no choice in who raised me.”

“Who abused you.”

She sighed. “Yes, who abused me. That I can say that aloud without fear of reprisal is a good thing, but at the end of the day, I wanted to be proud of being Emersyn Sharpe. Even when I was hiding all the ugliness.”

“That’s not your fault,” I protested. “Boo-Boo, your uncle was the monster. Your father was a weak, spineless man who deserved so much worse than we did. Your mother—” Here, I hesitated. We knew the story, we knew she’d also suffered . But she’d left Boo-Boo with that monster even knowing what he was capable of.

Maybe Boo-Boo could forgive her. I wouldn’t.

“I know what she did,” Boo-Boo said with a sigh, arms folded as she hugged herself. I hated being the one who made her defensive. “But that’s the thing, all of that money, all of those holdings—Liam has been cleaning them up, from the money to the companies, to everything, but nothing erases where it came from.”

“You don’t want it.”

She shook her head. “Liam took control of all of it because he thought someday I might want it. He’s made me learn about it because he never wants me to be dependent on anyone. Just like he taught me to fight or Kellan taught me to shoot and drive, and you taught me how to use a knife.”

“We want you safe.” No arguments. Even if she couldn’t win every fight, we wanted her to be able to survive long enough for us to get there if we weren’t already.

“You also want me to feel safe.” The emphasis on the verbiage had emotion clawing at my throat. “All of you do that for me. You make me feel safe being who I need to be, whether it’s taking my show on the road, doing stunts that terrify you?—”

I frowned but the way her lips quirked promised it wasn’t a complaint.

“You let me be me, even when I’m trying to figure out who that person is or can be. Maybe especially when I’m evolving.” She turned to look down the length of the block. The buildings were decrepit, old trash, leaves, and broken bottles cluttered the gutters.

Beyond the tagging on the doors and the broken windows, there was just an air of sadness. Sagging roofs, and crumbling facades as well as cracked pavement with grass fighting its way up to split it further were all testaments to the abandoned area’s decline.

Hardly something new in Braxton Harbor. Sadly, more and more of it was beginning to look like this.

Sliding an arm over her shoulders, I tilted my head to meet her gaze. When she leaned into me, some of the tension in both of us eased. “You want to evolve with this particular block?”

“Maybe,” she answered, not dismissing the question. Instead, she just leaned her head against my shoulder. “Braxton Harbor is my home. It’s our home. I want to give back to it.”

“Okay… still think that buying a block might be overkill.”

She lifted her shoulders in a suggestion of a shrug. “Maybe it is. But then—it wouldn’t be taking a risk, if it wasn’t?”

“Boo-Boo?” I frowned down at her. “Tell me something?”

“Anything. What do you want to know?”

“The stunts, the new routines, the dancing with fire…” I wasn’t sure my heart was really ready for that to become a regular reality, like ever. “Now buying this block… Why? Why now? Why push so hard on so many different things?”

I wanted to understand.

“Is there something else wrong?” I got a little crazy when I was using, but I didn’t think that was an issue here. She didn’t have the problems with drugs I had. Though she’d admitted to using at one point, not in a long time and I didn’t think her life meant she needed to run from anything.

What the fuck had I missed?

Boo-Boo turned toward me, and pressed a hand to my chest. The nearness used to make sweat prickle along the back of my neck. It still made my heart race, but not from fear. I liked the way she felt against me. The softness and the curves. I liked even more that she would lean on me like I could take care of her and wasn’t the one who needed fixing.

“Freddie.” There was just a way about how she said my name. “You’ve been pushing yourself to step outside of your comfort zone. You are taking new risks with me every single day. Kisses… which I really like by the way—” the swiftness of her smile and the warmth blossoming in her eyes sent a wave of raw affection through me. “—the dancing, the cuddling, even letting me rub your back a couple of days ago.”

My back had been sore from something, hell I didn’t even remember why and she’d scooted over on the sofa to sit right behind me. I was damn near a puddle when I realized she’d started relieving the knots in my spine and slid past every single defense I had.

The moment that occurred to me though, I’d tensed and she’d backed off. No comments or complaints. She would have moved away, but then I’d leaned against her leg and she’d stayed there for the rest of the movie.

“You’re taking risks because I am?” Wonder unfurled in me. “You don’t have to do that… Boo-Boo you took all the risks when you told me what happened to you. When you asked the guys to push you, you were amazing… I want to be more like you.”

A shyness crept into her eyes as she ducked her chin. It was a shyness I’d never seen before. “And I want to be more like you.”