by Corri Lee
I needed more than a weekend. I’d want more than a fleeting fling and I could never learn to cope with the fact he was married for financial gain. The strange irony of it was, despite the fact they’d helped me become a stronger person, New York and Calloway had made me needy and weak.
“I’m more beautiful because I’m more damaged.” His sigh hit my head in a gust. “It hurt like hell being away from you—hurts like hell being with you. I can’t hurt any more.”
“It hurts me, too, to know that you had to go so far to get over what I did to you.”
“You didn’t come after me,” I griped. “I know Chase or Scott would have told you where I was.”
“I tried, Emmeline. I was at The Bystander Effect Halloween gig in Birmingham when I got the call.”
I shifted to look up at him. “They’re touring again?”
“One off. I got you a ticket just in case. I sold it outside the venue to some guy who turned out to be Amelia Marsh’s psycho childhood boyfriend and the father of her nine year old daughter.”
I stopped in my tracks and gaped. He’d completely glossed over the serious conversation we were having but hell... “The shit you miss.”
He nodded. “I know. I left as soon as Chase told me what you said before you collapsed but Henry caught me at the airport and confiscated my passport.”
“What?”
Blaze stroked his hands over my shoulders, down my arms to my hands. Other dancers still moved around us, yet we were stood still right in the middle of them all. “As much for my sake as yours. If you’d seen me...” He trailed off and pulled me back up close to dance again. His mouth curved slightly when the music in the room switched to Panic! At The Disco, and I knew it had been done intentionally when I caught Esme winking at him. The band was a mutual favourite and Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off seemed like a strangely apt choice, both for it’s lyrics and the fact that I’d be lying through my teeth if I said that I wasn’t still madly in love with the man in front of me.
“So did you enjoy New York?”
“It’s all right.” What the hell was I saying? I was crazy for New York. “It was great until it got cold, but I’ll escape the worst next week in Barbados.” Pre-emptively flinching, I braced myself to impart the news that had been kept from him. He deserved to hear it from me. “With my boyfriend.”
His grip around my hand tightened fractionally before his stride picked up in pace. “Does he love you?”
“I don’t—... Yes.”
“But you don’t love him.” I didn’t answer because there was no need. Blaze had me ‘pegged’ from the start and knew exactly what was going on in my head. “And you don’t love Hunter. I hated that he was allowed to come for you but I wasn’t—that he could dictate when you’d had enough time despite all the damage he did. I hated that I did my best to show you how I felt and yet you came here with him.
“But I loved that fucking frog analogy, bitter sentiment aside. I loved that I got to see for myself that he doesn’t have you that way anymore. And if your new piece of ass in New York doesn’t have you that way either, that means I do. Because you need someone to be reckless about.”
He’d remembered. Every word I’d ever said to him had been heard and absorbed. After three months, he still understood how I worked, even though I’d been trying to train myself out of it. I was transparent to him, so easily seen through.
And he knew just where to hit me to hurt me most.
“How the hell did you think I’d feel when you left?”
“I... You... I thought you’d be sad for a little while but get over it when you realised I was just a complicated fuck.”
He froze completely and I worried that my honesty had been too brutal for the man who found it almost physically impossible to lie. “This says more about you than it does about me, Emmeline. I did all that I could to make you see how I felt and still, you think badly enough of me to seriously believe that I could look at you that way. Do you still think that?”
Yes. I did still think that, though I didn’t say as much. We were a tryst that got out of control. How else could he explain picking me up from the book shop when he was married? Even waiting until she’d died and seeking me out afterwards would have been better than this if he’d wanted me so badly.
“For crying out loud. For a smart woman, you’re despicably dense. See this?” He pointed at his eyes, which glowed with the same kind of atomic aggression that had put the fear of God in me while we were together. “You should know what this is by now. Letting you go that night was my mistake. I should have kept you there and screwed you until you either went blind or understood.”
The end of his sentence came at the perfect moment for him to grab me by the waist and hoist me up so our noses touched, mouth the lyrics ‘you know it will always just be me’ in time to the music and send me spinning outwards, our hands tightly locked together.
When I turned to spin back, he had gone, my hold on him as easy to lose as my own grip on my sanity.
He was at the table with the blonde when I sat, but ignorantly blanked me like we’d never met. Left cut open and unguarded, I downed the rest of my champagne and Hunter’s. He admonished me with a ‘tsk’ and pulled the flute from my hand.
“Don’t worry about it, I’m leaving anyway.”
“But you—” He tipped his head towards Blaze and bore into me with his eyes. “Don’t go.”
“Look at him,” I muttered, breathing through the unpleasant roiling in my stomach. “He hates me. Like, violently. I’m amazed I don’t have ice burn from the cold look he gave me out there.”
“The one he gave you when he pointed at his face?” I cocked my head at him, waiting for the point he was obviously trying to make. Surprisingly, he laughed at me and handed me another drink. “You obviously need more of this, Emmeline. Yes, that look might have burnt you. It was violent, irrational, insane and maybe a little unjustified.”
“Maybe?”
“Maybe, because you’re acting like a dick. Don’t you know love when you see it?”
Rendered silent, I stared blankly in Blaze’s direction and saw him looking right back at me, still with that look in his eyes. Love. No, I didn’t know it when I saw it, but now I’d been told what it was, I couldn’t stop seeing it, and I understood why I’d mistaken it for hate.
What I saw now was a man who’d wanted me so much it had left his life skewed. We’d both disrupted each other’s routine and I’d become so vital that he’d had to throw all caution to the wind to be with me. A man who’d fallen for me so spectacularly, he’d been pushed to adultery. A man who’d given up everything to meet up to my expectations, after telling me that it was something nobody should ever have to do to be loved, and been left with nothing to show for it.
A man who could still look at me like that after three months apart, a large dose of heartbreak and hearing that I’d moved on. I thought I was nothing to him when really, I was too much.
“Why didn’t he say anything?”
“I can’t say I blame him. He goes home to take care of some shit and comes back to your flat the next morning to find you’ve got the first plane to New York to escape him. Three months later, you come back as this amazing new person. He probably doesn’t want to face the rejection after you went so far beyond to make a point that he couldn’t have you.” Hunter held out a hand and led me over to one of the bars for a stronger drink. “Hell, the guy emailed you every day and you didn’t even mention it.”
“He did what?” Not waiting for a response, I rushed out of the auditorium to find the managers office, where I knew I’d find a computer. I’d only used my new work email account while I was in New York—which Blaze wouldn’t have—and never checked the account I’d used to talk to Hunter.
I was floored by over two hundred emails sitting in my inbox, more than half of them from Blaze. Every email had a picture attachment. The first was a huge pile of hand-written love notes
bearing my name.
Emmeline. I promised you love notes. Here are the ones I’ve written every day since we met.
The rest of them held smaller images of the note he’d written out for the day. I clicked at them haphazardly and at random, noting that he hadn’t missed a single date. Many of them begged for my location or reassurance that I’d be back, while other simply recalled things he’d seen that reminded me of him.
Every day.
I left the office shaken, trying to understand why I’d never checked my personal inbox when I’d complained so heavily that Blaze had never reached out. All the comfort I’d needed had been right there waiting for me.
“Hey!” Esme scurried over to me, carrying a book of cloakroom tickets. “We’re raffling a—... Are you okay?”
“Emails,” I said simply. “Why did nobody think to tell me to check?”
“Oh... That was his choice, Emmy. The point wasn’t that you read them. The point was that he’d sent them.”
God. I limped over to a bar and propped my head up on my arm. I didn’t have the energy or inclination to take any more mind games or hear about how I’d left the shell of a man behind. I barely had the energy to stand. It was a miracle I could look up when I heard Blaze shout my name and walk towards me.
Nerves gripped me first, followed by fear and confusion. What could he possibly have left to say?
When he was stood at my side, he said nothing.
“Blaze?”
“What?
“I thought you wanted me.”
“For what? You’re just a fuck.” Are you kidding me? He’d walked over to me just to mess with my head.
Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the medication. Maybe it was both combined. Maybe it was nothing more than the fact I felt pissy after a bad night, but my hand swung back and balled into a fist before I could control it. I felt my knuckles crunch when they made contact with Blaze’s jaw, hard enough to stagger him.
“Fuck you and your reverse psychology! Maybe they kept us apart because they can all see your mean, empty, blackened heart.”
“Emmeline, what’s going on?”
“You!” I spun around and raised a finger to Hunter’s approaching face. “You can fuck right off, too. You’ve been making me second guess myself for years and judged me for the same mistakes you’ve made. Fuck your nine hour time difference, fuck your incessant need to make me comply to your every demand and fuck what you think about everything. He might be a philanderer but he’s never made me feel like I had to be someone else. No matter how far down the path of recovery I get, you’re always there to remind me that I was broken once.
“Maybe you think that I’m not capable of living well without your help, but I have news for you. I’m alone, and I have been for a long time. The only time I wasn’t alone, you tried to ruin that for me, too. It took me a long time for me to realise that you weren’t the most important person in my life, and now, just because you’ve come running to me for companionship in the midst of a domestic, doesn’t mean you have any more right to input on how I’m living. If I want to run away to New York and sell my soul for a fresh start, I will do it. I don’t need a fucking referee to cut in and tell me I need to stop. I am capable of making my own decisions and you pushed me into one I wasn’t happy making that has led to me feeling humiliated. You are the only person who can’t let my past go, Hunter. Let it go, get over it. I have.”
Shaking with rage, I headed for the door to the sound of applause and cheers. I felt invigorated and free for getting a good old fashioned rant out of my system, all but for the hand that closed around my wrist.
“Emmeline, stop.”
“Get the hell off me before I hit you again.”
“Emmeline.” Blaze yanked my hand so hard I fell back into him and felt my skull judder at the impact. He caught me deftly and held me against him, pulling a blue handkerchief from his breast pocket to wipe away the sweat beading on my brow. “Jesus, are you okay?”
“I think—... No.” My head started to pound so I closed my eyes. “I need some air. I have a... stress thing.”
“Chase told me. Come on.” Shrugging out of his jacket, Blaze led me towards the foyer with a hand between my shoulders. I wriggled it off, feeling like he was infringing on territory that no longer belonged to him, so he wrapped the jacket around me and put an arm around my waist.
The cold winter air was a wake up call I needed. The snow still fell in flimsy sleet that melted as soon as it hit the fine black fabric of the jacket I wore and Blaze’s waistcoat.
“God damn waistcoats...” He winked at me knowingly, which led me to believe he’d worn it on purpose.
“I’m sorry about what I said in there. It was out of line. I just hate that I made you feel that way.”
“I’m sorry that I didn’t know about your emails.”
We stood for a long time, facing each other but watching the streets become progressively whiter over the minutes. London was unusually quiet. No cars broke the wintery stillness and no voices echoed down the alleys. We were alone, despite the buildings crammed full of people just a few metres away.
“Come back to me, Emmeline.”
I looked at him for only the length of a heartbeat before I stuck my gaze to the floor. “I can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
Remembering the way he delighted in embellished metaphors, I pursed my lips and took a step back to lean against the wall, hoping that making a point close to home would make all the difference. “Let me put this in a way you might understand. Sun met Earth. Earth was beautiful and unique in the way it could carry life despite being so harsh and volatile beneath the surface. Sun didn’t care how many cracks and volcanoes Earth had because it just wanted Earth there. They grew closer until Sun started stripping away the layers that protected Earth. Earth started to burn for Sun getting hotter and hotter until it burned up completely and scattered like ashes. It didn’t matter how much they cared for each other because they just weren’t meant to be that close. Maybe if it was a different galaxy, it could have been different. Maybe Sun wouldn’t have burned so brightly or Earth might have been a little more hardy against the solar flares. But it isn’t, and how selfish would it be to put Earth and all the little people that live on it at risk for something that’s already caused too much damage?” It wasn’t just us that would hurt when it soured between us, which it undoubtedly would. There was enough collateral damage done to our family and friends for me to know that it would be worse for them next time, too.
“Kinda sounds like you’re saying your universe revolves around me there, sport.” He tearfully coughed the words I’d once said to him back at me. He was making jokes—I could have cried. “I’m not a sun, Emmeline. I just look like it from the height of that stupid pedestal you’ve put me on and I don’t belong on it. Do you know what should happen when you put us together, just you and I?”
He had that look on his face so I humoured him. “Go on.”
“Uranium iodide.” Oh, God help me, I had to fall for the scientist. “But in all seriousness, tonight should end with me taking you back to your flat—which I walked past every day since you left just hoping you’d be back again, by the way—watching you sleep and taking you up on that offer of waking up next to you. You never told me that the invitation was revoked. It’s the only thing that’s gotten me through the past three months. Please, be sophomoric for once in your life. Stop thinking ‘I should’ and think ‘I want’. You’re still wearing my ring, Emmeline, tell me you don’t want it to mean more.”
I growled at him because I did, but it wasn’t like me to be selfish. Even if it was, there was the sticking point that had driven me away in the first place. “But you’re still married.”
“On a technicality. Things have changed.” I shook my head, not understanding and sick of hearing how things had ‘changed’ with no elaboration. “Let me explain...”
“Was it such a waste if it led you to me?”
>
Emmeline’s words echoed in my mind as I zipped up my suitcase. The night had been tough on us and we’d both spoken and acted out of hurt, but I knew that it was a point she could win on. I just hoped Daniel was taking care of her, which is why she hadn’t answered her phone.
She wouldn’t go back to her flat tonight. If I knew her friends, they’d be getting her drunk and watching movies all night. She’d be collapsing in a heap on their couch right around that time, passed out and dead to the world until the next afternoon.
There was no way I’d fit all my stuff in the car. It would take two trips at least to get it all moved to Emmeline’s flat, if she’d let me move in with her. I told myself that there was a damn good chance since I was taking the ultimate step for her.
I was leaving my wife.
It was too late to call and let Natasha know that I couldn’t carry on this way. As much as the woman owed me for the way she’d ruined my life, my love meant more than settling scores. It was a sacrifice I had to make for something I was lucky to be blessed with—something I imagined would bypass my life completely.
Exhausted, I collapsed into my bed for the last time, ready to face the tough day that lay ahead.
I had no idea.
The alarm woke me at eight, and I was alert and prepared the moment my eyes opened. All night, my dreams had been full of my beautiful girl and the way she rolled her eyes at me when she knew I was watching her. That’s all I’d done all night—just... watched.
After one last run of the house to make sure I had everything packed, I grabbed my phone and dialled Natasha’s number. My hands shook more with excitement than nerves.
“Hello?” Oh crap, Mona. Natasha’s tastes and habits always made me feel as common as muck, but her mother was the one who made me feel worthless and stupid.