Chapter 26
Georgie and Burke slipped so seamlessly into their new relationship that hardly anyone noticed it. Even Brody didn’t comment on it. And when Burke joined them for Christmas morning, he didn’t make a peep.
Cotton and Elyse came for an after-Christmas breakfast, and neither of them mentioned it. Georgette might have started to question her sanity and the new reality, if not for the subtle change in Burke. His eyes trailed her everywhere she went, hungrily taking in her proximity whenever she wasn’t near him. Or maybe he’d always done that, as Cotton said, and she’d merely failed to notice. Whatever the reason, it was nice, that bit of connection between them, as well as the little touches that signified their togetherness, touches she saw mirrored between Cotton and Elyse. She remembered when they all went out together and she’d yearned for those little intimacies as proof of connection. Now she had them, and they were as sweet as she’d hoped they’d be. Belonging, possession, intimacy. They had all those things now, along with the solid base of friendship they’d spent so many months building together.
Burke felt it too, Georgie could tell. He’d relaxed in subtle ways, opening to her bit by bit as he settled into the new status quo and began to trust Georgie with this new layer between them.
“I want to introduce you to my roommates from culinary school,” Georgie said one night after Christmas. She felt mellow and relaxed now, after the rush and success of the winter festival, almost boneless with rest and relief.
“What about Carol?” Burke asked, remembering that Georgie and Carol had been slightly on the outs since Carol dumped Brody in favor of her now husband.
“Including Carol,” Georgie replied, tone definitive. She had more grace for Carol now, since Burke, because she understood better. Brody had said he loved Carol, but he never put himself out there for her, never sought her more than the five days a year they spent together. Maybe Carol’s husband had proved his love for her in more tenable, concrete ways, more than words. Like Burke. If so, Georgie couldn’t blame her for going after what she wanted, even if it meant Brody had been hurt in the process.
“All right,” Burke agreed.
Progress, Georgie thought. The last time she had a group chat with her friends, Burke had disappeared like demons were chasing him, not reappearing again until hours later, when he was certain the call was over.
This time he sat front and center beside her on the couch. “This is Burke,” she blurted as soon as the call began.
Her friends beamed at her, delighted for her. She beamed in return. Her brother and her friends here were her ride or die, but so were these women, who had stood by her since she was an eighteen year old orphan away from home for the first time, solo in the city, her brother in Maine a world away. They had helped her take those first crucial steps into adulthood, giving her the courage it took to return home and buy her inn.
Carol’s husband popped into view, as if he’d been hovering on the periphery of the conversation. “Burke. The Burke?” he asked.
Burke leaned closer to the laptop. “Jones, is that you?”
“Yes, is that you? I thought The Colonel had you squirrelled away somewhere on a project.”
“No, I finished that forever ago. I’ve been with Georgie a while.”
“That’s fantastic,” Jones beamed.
“You know The Colonel is my dad,” Poppy inserted.
Burke glanced at Georgie to see if that was true, but she shrugged. Poppy had never talked about her father, insisting she wanted to live her own life on her terms. Georgie always assumed that meant they had a fraught relationship; she never would have guessed it was because her father was involved in Burke’s world of espionage. Was everyone secretly a spy? Lately it seemed so, or at least that no one was what they appeared to be, on the surface of things.
“Hey, why are the men monopolizing this roommate meeting?” Sparrow demanded. “Georgette, how’s your stupid brother?”
“The same,” Georgie said.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Sparrow returned.
Burke and Jones eased off screen, and the former roommates talked for a long time. When the call ended, Carol messaged Georgie. You didn’t tell me your boyfriend was a billionaire tech guru.
Georgie blinked at her phone and looked around, but Burke was nowhere around. Was what Carol said true? Burke had never said exactly what he did for the intelligence community, only that he worked on a consulting basis. And he’d won a full ride to MIT. And he’d invented some sort of super spy tech, now currently dwelling among her trash bins.
She rose from the couch, intent on finding him, no easy task in the large mansion. She felt winded from her flight up all the stairs to the attic. The door was locked. She knocked but heard no answer. She wouldn’t, of course, but if Burke were there, he would open the door. Unless he was in the bathroom. She entered the code he’d given her and let herself in, knowing immediately he wasn’t in the space. She shuffled to the desk and flicked on the cameras, searching for him outside.
There, he stood beside some of her decorations, attempting to fix one of the lights that had stopped lighting. Georgie watched him work a while, sifting the new information. Did it matter that Burke was apparently loaded? No. Did it matter that he hadn’t told her? No. Knowing Burke as she now did, it wasn’t because he was trying to keep it secret, but rather because he hadn’t felt it was important. So she didn’t view it that way, either. It didn’t affect their life, not really.
She smiled, watching as he screwed the cap back on the light and kicked it, giving a little nod of approval when it flared to life. This was her Burke, her guy. He wasn’t the most romantic. She’d joked that the most romantic thing he’d done for her was kidnap her boyfriend. He’d replied that she’d have to wait and see what felony he had planned for her for Christmas. (In reality he bought her the most beautiful copper pots that must have cost a small fortune.) He wasn’t overtly chatty, but that was okay because Georgie couldn’t hear him anyway. What he was was thoughtful, faithful, steady. Basically perfect, everything Georgie didn’t know she wanted and now realized she desperately needed.
He glanced up at the camera, his usual routine before heading inside. Georgie thought he was merely reassuring himself of the camera’s presence, but this time she noticed his lips move, mouthing something. She leaned closer, trying to make it out. Was he talking to her?
A little frantic now, she scrolled through the last few recordings of Burke, the ones that automatically deleted themselves after a few days. There. In every single one, he did the same thing. How had she never noticed before? Burke looked at the camera and mouthed the three little words he couldn’t seem to say in person, but somehow it was even more perfect to see it play out this way, a secret message just for her.
Georgie scrolled through and counted five separate times he looked at the camera and mouthed, I love you.
And she realized, belatedly, that he’d been doing it for months, almost from the beginning, since he first moved in. She had simply failed to notice, and wasn’t that the way it always was between them? How many months had she failed to notice all the ways Burke loved her?
But no more. Now her eyes and heart were opened, and this was her greatest gift, more than her copper pots, more than anything. Georgette had fought so hard to be loved by the strangers in the town who didn’t matter, and all this time she’d been loved by the man residing steps away, in her own attic. His love had been patient, tender, and loyal.
Burke entered the room and froze beside the door. “Why are you crying?”
“Because I’m so happy,” she said, swiping at her streaming eyes.
“I don’t know what to do for happy tears,” he said. “Do hugs still work for that?”
“Hugs work for everything,” she said. She stood and eased into his embrace, sliding her arms around him, returning his hug.
They held each other in silence a while, letting touch work where words failed. Eventually it was Burke who tipped back and spoke so she could see his face. “Do you know until I hugged you, I hadn’t touched anyone since I was a little boy? Hugs actually are magic, I think.”
Georgie nodded and pressed her palm to his cheek. “Do you want some cocoa?”
He nodded, took her hand, and kissed it. She realized this was the way she had secretly loved him, by feeding him, by making certain he was always housed, fed, and taken care of. How many other ways did they secretly love each other, without words? They had a lifetime to figure out and continue to find new ways.
Arm in arm, they walked down to the kitchen.
Thank you for reading Frosted and Sliced.