by Corri Lee
“Morning, Mona. Is Natasha there? It’s urgent.”
“She’s still asleep.” I knew that was bullshit. Tasha rose with the sun and it drove me nuts. “Can I help?”
“No, I just—”
“Oh, Mummy don’t tease him. Give me the phone. Blaze?” Ah, man, she was in a good mood. It would have been less harsh to tell her when she was in an arse because I wouldn’t feel responsible for the sudden flip in temperament. “Something wrong?”
“Sort of. Can you not be in the same room as your mother right now?”
“Uh oh.” A door clicked shut. “Something’s happened.” It hadn’t yet, but it was about to.
“It’s Emmeline. She... found out about you.”
“Oh. How?”
“Her sister somehow knew. Needless to say, she isn’t exactly happy.” The memory of seeing her look at me with all that pain forced a lump to my throat. God, how could I have done it to her?
“Your relationship got out of hand. If she’d have reacted any differently I’d be asking you what’s wrong with her. Are you all right? Anything I can say to make you feel better?”
There it was, my opportunity mention the bombshell I’d called to drop on her. “Say you’ll divorce me so I can be with her.”
Thick silence crossed over the line before she said hoarsely, “What?”
“She’s too precious to lose but she’s a good person. She won’t be with me like a willing mistress and I can’t ask her to wait. I...” I took a breath, feeling like a monumental prick, “I have to think of my future.”
“What about the house, Blaze? The money?”
Growling at myself, I balanced on a suitcase and rubbed at my pounding head. I’d earned this house. I deserved that money. But... “That stuff belongs to your family. Look, I’m not going to leave you up shit creek, Tasha. There’ll be a new nurse to take over as soon as you get home.”
“I don’t want a new nurse. I like having you as my carer. She can’t seriously begrudge me that.”
“She begrudges you nothing. She hates me for this. I had to corner her at work before she’d talk to me.”
“So how do you know this will even make a difference?”
“I don’t.” I rubbed at my chest over the ache that formed every time I wondered if I’d done too much damage to our already fragile relationship. “Some risks are just worth taking.”
The flat was empty when I arrived, and so much like someone had turned off a light nobody had known was flooding the room. I usually felt Emmeline there, whether she was home or not, so it was strange that the place seemed so hollow and abandoned.
It didn’t look like she’d been home. Her coffee cup from the previous morning was still unwashed on the breakfast bar and the cushions on the couch still off-kilter where she’d made love to me with such finality. When I peered into the bedroom, our bed looked the same as it had when I’d been determined to make sure she knew that when she said it was over, she hadn’t had the last word.
I loved that she’d bought a new bed for just us—the symbolism of a fresh start.
It was still early for her, so I straightened out the flat and drove over to Daniel and Jonathan’s loft with my cases still in the car. Leaving them in the flat was presumptuous and potentially damning. Penny to a bucket of shit if I unpacked, I’d be packing it all up again in an hour. Still, I was too impatient to wait to see her.
Jonathan answered the door with a frown, though it didn’t seem to be too directed at me. Without a word, he stepped back to let me in, leading me through to the lounge where I found Daniel, Esme and Chris staring despondently into their coffee cups.
“Where’s Emmeline?” Nobody answered me. “Seriously, guys. I have a car full of my shit out there and I need to see if she’ll accept my radical apology.”
Esme looked up at me tearfully. “What?”
“I left her. I left my wife. Emmeline was right; what I’ve been doing is wrong and I can’t ask her to play gooseberry. So I’m not going to. She has me completely, no complications.”
“You’re shitting me...” Esme chewed on her fingernails for a minute before she looked back up at me and said, “She’s gone, Blaze.”
“Gone...?”
“Gone, gone.” Jonathan put his hands on her shoulders when she started to shake and stared at me miserably. “She stayed here last night. We thought she was okay. If we’d thought she wasn’t, we would have gotten up with her when she woke us up in the throes of a nightmare. But when we got up a couple of hours later, she was gone.”
I sank down to the floor, barely registering my knees hit the hardwood. Gone... my cupcake had gone. I was just another man that hurt her; one she had to escape. She was so delicate and easily hurt.
My stomach hurt when I thought of how she’d reacted to hurt before. “She wouldn’t...” I stared at her friends pleadingly, unable to say the words.
“No, not this time,” Daniel muttered. “Ivy won’t leave her side if she thinks that’s a possibility.”
“She’s with Ivy?” Jumping to my feet, I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my phonebook to Henry’s number. “Where are they? I’ll go after them.”
“No.” Chris grabbed my arm and shook his head. “Emmy needs time. You do owe her that much.”
“But—”
“Dude. We’re not going to let you fuck her up. She left you yesterday saying goodbye. She had to detach herself emotionally from you to do that. You need to give her time alone to miss you and build herself back up to climb this mountain with you. We’ll make sure she knows what you’ve done for her.”
“No. I want to be the one to tell her.”
I wanted to be the one to explain what I’d done for her, so she’d know that I hadn’t walked away from my old life just because she’d left. But in the interim, I wanted her to know that I’d loved her from the moment I saw her.
So I sent her pictures of the love notes she’d joked about having her fan club write. I walked around the building she lived in every evening to see if the lights were on in the flat. I even called her phone every day, knowing it would be turned off, just so I could hear her voice on the voice mail message.
Every day she was gone, a little part of my heart died. I watched the hope that she’d return drain out of her friends, though they assured me that it was just a matter of time. I understood how she must have felt to know that the person she loved was out there having a wonderful new life without her. Sometimes I hated her. But mostly I hated myself.
Without the centre of my universe, I was just a dying star drifting out in a void, never knowing if I’d collapse before we would collide again. In a hell of my own making, I couldn’t even burn.
She’d taken all my fire with her, and Jesus, did I hope she felt it.
“You... left her for me. Before I was even off the runway.” My stomach felt like it’d been filled with concrete which had solidified into a hard jagged lump. All I’d had to do was read one of the twelve messages he’d sent while I’d been sat with Daniel and Jonathan, and I’d have known this. My own stupid, stubborn mind had kept us apart. “I’ve been needlessly punishing us both for three months.”
“No. God. No, Emmeline. There was nothing needless about it.” Blaze pulled me to him and I let him, resting my head on his warm chest over his fluttering heart. “Tell me you wasted a single minute in New York”
I tried, but I couldn’t. I’d worked constantly to make The Tudor Initiative’s employees feel happy, productive and secure, and Calloway had almost seemed like a crusade I’d had to play my part it. “Tell me you didn’t waste any of yours.”
“I wasted a lot of my minutes,” he admitted, rocking me slightly as the thickening snow fell around us. “I spent weeks drunk and hostile, sleeping on your friends couches watching daytime television wrapped up in a blanket.”
“Oh, God,” I groaned. “Don’t tell me that.”
“But that gave me a lot of thinking time, Emmeline.” He began to nuzzle at
my temple like he was marking me with his scent. “My life became a monotonous blur of waking up, drinking and door watching; the same life you had with me.”
I pulled back to look at him with a frown. “I didn’t see it like that.”
“No.” Blaze urged me back to him. “You didn’t. You never worried about it because I told you I’d come back and, despite how cruel life has been to you, you trusted me.” He sighed and buried his face in my neck. “Maybe it’s not the same, but I got a taste of that life and finally learnt to appreciate how strong you have to be to put that faith in a person when you have no idea where they are, what they’re doing or who they’re with. It was unfair of me to let you live like that.”
It wasn’t until he made the points that I realised how true they where. It hadn’t seemed so at the time, but our relationship had been exhausting with all the uncertainty over when or if I’d see him next. Knowing he was a carer helped to lessen the paranoia, but the distance had still sapped at me when it had a big question mark overhead. Once, it had even made me ill.
I rested my head against his and closed my eyes. “When you put it like that, you were a pretty shit boyfriend in an unconventional way.”
“When Chase told me that you thought I hadn’t come after you because it meant more that I got Natasha’s money... God!” One hand caught my head and the other grabbed my waist with almost painful possessiveness. “You had to go for me to actually realise why you left when you did. I hate that I asked you to go along with it for even a second. If the shoe were on the other foot, I could never share you like that.”
I felt the wetness of tears on my neck. Pushing my hands underneath the waistcoat, I splayed out my hands and gave him the comfort I suspected would only suffice when it came from me. Blaze made no sound, just trembled slightly between breaths, and I knew it had nothing to do with the chill outside.
We had both made mistakes. And that was okay. What mattered was that we could admit where we’d gone wrong, take a step back, and figure out how to go on.
When he’d regrouped, Blazed straightened and ran his fingers through the front of my damp hair. “You’re cold.”
I smiled wryly. “In comparison to a sun, yes. I’m okay, but if you want to go back inside...” All the breath rushed from my lungs, leaving me dizzy and flagging against the six foot three inch vise clutching me to his chest.
“I’m going nowhere without you, Emmeline.”
“You wanna come to the morgue? Because that’s where I’m going if you don’t let me breathe!” I staggered back with a whimper and rubbed at my ribs. “Bloody hell, did you take up fighting titans while I was gone?”
“Did I hurt you?” He began fussing over me. Spoiling me. Trailing his fingers across my arms and shoulders like I’d vanish the minute he stopped touching me. “Don’t leave me again, please. I swore that when I’d get you back, I’d never let you go again.”
“That’s not fair,” I whined, thoughts skittered from the joy of having him close again. “You can’t ask me to commit to anything when you look so god damn awesome and you’re distracting me with this... touchy feely shit.” Growling, I held his hands in mine and took a sweeping look over him. It already felt like the hardship of separation had passed. We were always so attuned and connected, so synchronised that we ticked like two cogs in a clock. We worked together—we had to work together. If one of us stopped, the other would no longer turn either and time would stand still until we were fixed.
Still, New York was my home and I’d put down roots there. Much of what I owned now sat in a Park Avenue apartment. Appointments were booked for the New Year. I’d formed a rapport with many of Henry’s state-side clients and associates. And of course, there was Calloway.
“It’s not as simple leaving New York as it was to leave here, Blaze. I have a life over there, one considerably more productive and substantial than the one I have—had—here.”
“Then I’ll come there with you,” he crooned, stroking my face. “I have nothing keeping me here.”
Hell, that had the potential for disaster. Cal had made his distaste for Blaze more than clear from the start, and he would likely go to my apartment and find us when he arrived back from Boston. I didn’t like the idea of having both men in the same room. “I don’t think my ‘piece of ass’ would appreciate that somehow.”
Bristling, Blaze muttered, “Fuck it,” and arched a brow so I knew he was referring to a past conversation we’d had about taking chances on our relationship. “If he’s really known all along that you were still mine, he’d have prepared himself for this possibility.”
“He has.” I rolled my head around my shoulders, then let it drop back. There were two likely outcomes from this evening, and both ended in me being with Blaze. During our time outside, he’d begun to transform back into the man who’d turned my life upside down, thrown me into the fray, and grafted me into a stronger person who had it in her to do something completely outrageous and out of the ordinary.
He wouldn’t walk away from all that hard work.
“You look shattered, Emmeline. Let me take you home.”
Smirking, I put my hands on my hips and tutted at him. “Fiend. As much as I would enjoy you curling up inside me,” I fluttered my lashes innocently when his mouth twisted to resist a grin. “I really shouldn’t leave yet. Technically, I came back here for my friends and I haven’t been a good prodigal nerd tonight.”
“All right.” Blaze held out his arm for me and rested his free hand over mine as we stepped back into the foyer. “One thing, Emmeline.”
My chin lifted, then my eyes. I squeezed his arm when I got hit with the full impact of one of his burning hot looks. But because I understood, I shifted closer to him and hummed with satisfaction.
A lot of Emmy White still existed. There was still enough of her in me for me to panic if he said the words too soon, and I was glad that he still understood. He would know when I was ready to hear it, and until then, I had his eyes to tell me.
The Roses was suspiciously quiet when we were stood in the foyer right by the auditorium, which was dark but only held a low murmur of voices and tinkle of glass on glass. Knowing Esme too well, I crept backwards slowly into the bathroom to try and dry my hair under a hand dryer and chewed over the many options that could transpire over the next five minutes.
Unsurprisingly, the hand dryer wasn’t exactly what you’d call helpful. I gave up when I realised I looked more like a scarecrow than a sophisticate and dabbed at the lines of my remarkably undisturbed make up. I didn’t look half as good as I had when I’d walked in with Hunter, but with the most important person in that room already won over, did I really have to worry?
Even knowing that he was mine again, seeing Blaze standing in that foyer made me skip a step when my heart ached. It couldn’t possibly be real that he was standing there, right in front of me, snow-sodden and a little dishevelled. The redness in his eyes and the fear he hid behind them came out now that I knew it was there. And yet, he was waiting after pleading for another chance.
He held out a hand when I was close enough and gripped it. All kinds of tension passed between us in the split second it took to pull me to him. “You really do look amazing, Emmeline. But you’re missing something.”
“What?”
“Me.” He kissed me. I didn’t know he was there, on my lips until my hands were in his wet hair. My body swelled and relaxed, my weight shifted up to balance on tiptoes just so I could get impossibly closer to the man who had been too far away for too long.
When he stopped, I shivered. One single inch was too far to be away from him now I had him back. “Your cheeks are a wonderful shade of pink now, cupcake.” And they got pinker at the sound of my pet name. My eyes burned with unshed tears of gratitude that I could hear it again.
Weaving his fingers with mine, Blaze pulled me into the auditorium, where all eyes immediately fell on us. It seemed obvious that they would have been waiting on us, conspiring inside and making
guesses at our progress.
Like there was any way this could have gone differently.
Esme rushed through the crowd to us, eyes wide and bright with alcoholic vigour. “Well?” Blaze pulled my linked hand up and waved it like a trophy. “Yes!” She screamed, grabbing Ivy from Henry’s side and luring her into a bizarre pogo-dance of celebration. “I knew it. I knew you’d get back together.”
“Oh, we’re not back together.” I shook my head severely and leaned away slightly. “My New York mister is kind of bad in bed and I just need a few good orgasms before I head back to him.” That was only partly true, but I was both amused and insulted when her jaw and eyes went south to the ground. What did she think I’d become? “Oh my God, Esme. I was joking.”
She looked up at me through her lashes. “I know.”
I almost got whiplash from the force with which she shot her hand out, wrapped it around my wrist, and dragged me and Blaze across the room to the dance floor. Everyone parted to let us through, blessing us with smiles that had seemed to avoid me all night. My real welcome home seemed to have been suspended until everyone knew—or thought they knew—that I was back for good.
That was a conversation Blaze and I needed to have in the not too distant future, though admittedly my deadline had been extended. I wouldn’t be going back to Calloway, so I didn’t need to fly out so soon to make Barbados. Guilt festered and churned in my stomach.
“Hey.” Blaze lifted my chin with his fingertip and set a soft kiss on my lips. “May I have this dance?”
“Of course. I—”
My jaw dropped when the stage curtains drew back onto a seventeen-piece big band that crescendoed into New York, New York as soon as a sliver of them could be seen.
Of course, music like this was exactly what I’d expect from my swing lover, Esme. The track, however was in poor taste.
The band had no singer, so I worried that either me or Blaze would be called up to take the stage. As much as I loved to watch him perform, I wanted to hold on to him a little. Somehow, I felt morose for having him back, not really believing that I wouldn’t be going back to New York alone in a couple of days as planned. I’d end up stuck in that lonely place between lovers again, trying to find my next identity in a foreign land.