by Corri Lee
“Asking my opinion on a haircut to look more ‘respectable’ is one thing, cupcake, but looking to do permanent damage to yourself because someone else thinks it’s a good idea—”
“Sure, let’s talk about that.” The surge of confidence I needed to approach the subject hit me at exactly the right moment. “Let’s talk about doing permanent damage because someone else thinks it’s a good idea. Let’s talk about the hypocrisy surrounding that.”
Blaze stepped back quickly, arms dropping and folding across his stomach. One hand splayed protectively across his left side. “You’ve seen it.”
He looked as sick as I felt. Suddenly, it became too much to touch him or to even be close, so I darted into the lounge and sank down on the couch, hugging my knees. “Why would you do it to yourself?”
“You once said you did it as penance...”
I gaped, disgusted, though I couldn’t tell if it was directed more at him or myself. I really had inspired him to do it. “Did it help?”
“No.” He sat next to me, right on the edge of the cushion like I might push him away. I might have—I really thought about it. “It made me feel worse because I still couldn’t understand. I was desperate. I wanted to relate. I wanted to feel like I’d done something to earn your forgiveness—”
“Damn it, Blaze!” I jumped up, needing distance again. “I don’t need your comprehension and apologies. Not like that!” Pacing, I felt his eyes burn into me with guilt and regret. He had to have been crazy. It must have been so hard on him that it drove him insane. As morbid as it might have been, rationalising it like that was the only way I could handle the situation without calling him stupid and selfish. I’d been on the receiving end of that reaction.
“Do you remember sitting in Esme’s with us that first time and telling my friends that you could accept my self-harm as long as you weren’t causing it?” Blaze’s chin dropped to his chest, the point I was planning to make clearly already understood. “I can’t accept this, Blaze. I can’t accept knowing that I caused it. It makes me feel like I’m the worst thing for you—like I should leave for your own god damn safety.”
“No.” He nearly toppled the couch climbing over it to reach me, pulling me into his warm embrace to hold my head against his chest. His heart pounded so hard it was almost deafening, but it was at least reassurance that he was alive and well. “It was just once. I didn’t want you to find out because I knew you’d blame yourself like this.”
“What the hell were you thinking? That you could somehow stop me from ever finding out?”
He didn’t answer. We moved back to the couch and just sat there holding on to each other, both too afraid to weigh the other down with more verbalised negative thoughts. It was killing me to know that I had that kind of power over a man so strong but I had to be grateful that he hadn’t done anything worse.
Finally, he brushed the hair from my eyes and sat me straight. “Promise you won’t leave me again.” God, the one promise I couldn’t comfortably make. I didn’t know that I wouldn’t need to run one day—that one of us wouldn’t do something completely unforgivable. Though maybe I needed to. Maybe he needed it, no matter how disingenuously it came out. If I said it, I’d feel an obligation to uphold it, and hadn’t I wanted to feel a sense of permanence with him? Wasn’t that why he gave me the ring?
“Okay,” I cleared my throat and sat straighter. I wanted all of our crap out in the open so we could shrug it off and move past it. “Cards on the table. Do you have any more secret wives?”
Blaze’s mouth curled ruefully. “No.”
“Girlfriends?”
“No, of course not.”
“... Kids?”
He leaned back and crossed his arms again, but this time he looked more bemused than protective. “No. But I would like them one day. Is this a... possibility?”
Kids? Hell, I was only twenty-two and had spent my life trying to keep myself alive. Kids were the last thing on my mind, and definitely the last thing I’d expected to be mentioned. “Um... the fuck?”
His shoulders crept up an inch. He cowered. At me? Why? “You said cards on the table. I’m not saying right now—”
“Obviously!”
“—But is it... a possibility?”
Why did he keep saying it like that and looking so awkward about it? Surely it would have just been easier to approach it with his normal relaxed attitude and ask if I wanted kids some day. He was asking me as though it was a sensitive subje—”Oh!” Penny dropped. “Oh, you’re asking me if... the anorexia and...” Okay, I understood why he was sort of sidling up to the subject. Even I was embarrassed now. “Um, yeah all my... plumbing is in working order. So can we...”
“Yeah. Please. Sorry.”
Flustered, I stared down at my hands and tried to remember where I was going with this conversation. “Have you really never slept with Natasha?” He didn’t answer again. I knew that silences from him screamed secrets. “Please, Blaze.”
“Once,” he sighed, “when I was in college. I was a horny teen, thinking I was a rockstar and fucking anything that moved. Natasha had been shadowing me for years—just a good female friend—and she was just... there. I’ll admit that it was my mistake, but I never imagined she’d stalk me like she did afterwards. She threw herself at me and I sort of felt like I owed her for not being attracted enough to want something long term.”
Guilt. The whole marriage had been based on guilt over a one-night stand gone wrong. She’d obviously wanted him for a long time and thought that she’d got him... “It ruined your friendship?”
“The whole fucking dynamic. She was cool before; she liked the same music as me and told me I was cute. Then she went full on depressive whacko. That tactic only works for certain women,” he added dryly, referring to me.
Okay, I could accept that. He was a good man who didn’t want anyone else’s misery on his conscience and, considering I was still worried about Calloway, I really couldn’t think less of him for that. “Anything big you need to get of your chest? You know all my shit so...”
“Nothing. I promise.” His fingers crept across to my hand and I gave it to him willingly. In the same moment, I gave him all of my trust, devotion and love. I gave him everything.
“Okay, then I guess I promise to never leave. No matter how hard it gets.” Though it was hard to imagine that life had anything worse waiting for us. We’d seen more hardship in less than six months than most lasting couples saw in a lifetime—maybe more. “I won’t deny that I’ll miss New York though. That place is the shit, and I didn’t do nearly half of the touristy stuff. I promised myself I’d finally check out the Temple of Dendur in the Met in the New Year.” And I never got to see Sophie again. Undoubtedly, she’d have read enough magazines to know how my first date had gone, but I’d so wanted to tell her myself. She’d been the closest thing I had to another friend and I hadn’t seen her after September.
Blaze hummed a contemplation and toyed with my ring. “I’d like to go myself. How about we go for my birthday? It’s not like my free time is exactly limited anymore.”
“About that...” I’d been putting a lot of thought into his new abundance of spare time that day. He’d not only given up a home and a fortune for me, he’d also given up a job. Whether I’d left for New York or not, he would have gone stir crazy waiting around for me to finish work, and modelling and acting jobs wouldn’t come up all the time. “I’ve been thinking about that.”
“Let’s not.” He gripped my fingers tightly, trying to steer me away from the subject.
“No, just listen. Has anything gone to the courts yet?”
He shook his head and inched closer to me. “Not yet. I think she was hoping you wouldn’t come back.” Ouch. Dejected wife at twelve o’clock. Despite being left for another woman by a man who didn’t love her and never had, she still held out for him. That just solidified a decision for me.
“If you put in a petition for divorce now, would she even... Does she ha
ve enough...” I grit my teeth and bit out one hell of a callous question. “Will she live long enough to see it through?”
Blaze’s back hunched a little in surprise, then something dark crossed his eyes. “No. Possibly not.”
I shuffled around onto my knees and pulled his hands into my lap, tracing circles on his palms because I knew how it could calm a person. “I’m sorry I had to ask that. I’ve just been thinking that she has such a short time left and she’s not spending it with the one person she wanted. And that’s my fault. She should be spending her last days with familiar, much loved faces. And you know her routine and preferences, and—”
“Emmeline.” My nose wrinkled as I looked up from my interrupted ramble. It was just his well he’d stopped me because I would have yammered on for hours trying to justify what I was saying without ever saying it. “Are you telling me you want me to go back to caring for Natasha?”
I glanced away again. “Maybe just in the daytime. I want to fall asleep next to you every night, wake up next to you every morning, drink coffee and eat breakfast before I go to work like a normal couple.” It was a demand I’d needed to say out loud before I realised just how ridiculous it was. “Ignore me, it was a stupid idea.”
“It’s not stupid,” Blaze said quietly, brushing the backs of his fingers across my red cheeks. “It’s the most selfless thing I’ve ever heard. I’ll talk to her about it, I like the idea.” Sagging with relief, I crawled into his lap and snuggled into him. I could handle a few months of being part of a triad if she was the third wheel. In an odd way, knowing he would come home to me every night like she was the other woman gave me some comfort, and she’d owe me because I’d sent him back to her. Honestly, there was nothing selfless about it.
“But I’m still divorcing her.” Blaze cocked his head at my look of confusion. “Do you have any idea how many times she’s told me she had just a few months left then become a miracle of modern medicine by persistently living past her life expectancy? I want to marry you, Emmeline, as soon as humanly possible. I’ll take no chances on anything that can harm us. You know how I feel about you, don’t you?”
He loved me. Madly. Foolishly. Unconditionally. Recklessly. Enough to cause himself intentional harm. Enough to hold on to blind faith. Enough to give up life as he knew it.
And he loved me eternally. In him, I saw a future I never could have imagined before—I saw the man carving the Christmas turkey at the head of the table.
“I do.” Because I felt the same way.
There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for him.
Christmas had never really ‘done it’ for me before. My family wasn’t religious, so we really didn’t focus on the birth of Christ, and I’d never fallen for the myth of Santa Claus. If you didn’t have faith or fantasy, the whole holiday really was just about expense and eating to excess. You can imagine how difficult that could be for a girl who avoided food at all costs.
My most avid memory of Christmas as a child was when I was eight years old. Henry was just crossing the line into being ‘well off’ and, like many eight year old girls, I’d asked for a pony.
And I got it. And I just remember going to the paddock where he’d been hiding it, looking at this amazing white haired pony decorated in big red bows trotting around the field and thinking, ‘Well, what the hell do I have to hope for now?’
As strange as it seems, that kind of killed Christmas for me. It turned out that I wasn’t much of an equestrian, so when the next year came around, I didn’t want another pony. I didn’t know what I wanted and had nothing to ask for. My parents spoiled Tallulah and I because they could afford it, and in doing so, they took away my childish lust for the unobtainable because I kept bloody obtaining it.
I stopped telling them what my greed hungered for until eventually I stopped feeling the greed at all. By the time I hit ten, I was one seriously complacent kid and found that the only thing I could sink my teeth into was food.
It all went downhill from there.
But this year was different. The first couple of weeks back in London had been spoiled by the withdrawal effects of my medication, but Blaze and my friends had kept me distracted from the aches and pains with snowballs fights and flat-packed furniture assembly.
I worked the dreaded nine to five in an office that was designed and decorated in a record four days. The bleak white walls were painted an optimistic pale yellow, a wooden black desk with a glass top and two matching bookcases centring one wall with a massive flat screen television filling the wall directly opposite. Two soft leather couches sat either side of a coffee table right next to the windows, where I could watch a smaller world pass by while I ate lunch.
I often had company through the days. Blaze did indeed return to carer duties, but did so on a nine to five routine like myself. Natasha’s mother and sister seemed to hang around, so he found himself surprising me with a hearty packed lunch on more than half the days of the week. Esme would join me on the days he was busy, sometimes bringing Chris, Daniel or Jonathan if they were close enough to The Parr.
It shaped up to be an unbelievable life I thought only existed on television. Almost as fictionally wonderful was the flat, which looked almost as good as the New York apartment when we’d finished. The lounge was brightened with a different pastel colour on each wall, mine and Blaze’s prized collections moved into high reaching shelving units that he’d built himself. The kitchen white goods were replaced with top range appliances, complete with a coffee maker that would undoubtedly die through over use. I found animal print throws for our new three piece couch set with two recliners arranged around a glass screened ‘living flame’ heater, and the camel back was moved into our bedroom, which remained much the same, just found itself with a new much larger wardrobe.
It was a fresh look for a fresh start, and barely finished when we headed to Cardiff for Christmas.
Blaze must have always known that our plans would come to fruition. He hadn’t mentioned the visit to his mother since I’d come home, but I had been shocked when he pulled out the suitcases two days before Christmas.
“It’s not Barbados,” he admitted, “but you arranged for that time off and never used it. Use some now.”
He hadn’t needed to run that idea past me. Henry already knew that we’d be staying with Blaze’s mother for Christmas Day and visiting him and Ivy the next day for Boxing Day lunch—Tallulah didn’t even come into it—because I’d just naturally assumed that the plans were still on. Thank God I had, and found a gift for my future mother-in-law.
Blaze’s face had been a picture when I’d insisted on driving, but instead taken him around the garage that had been storing my cobalt blue Bentley. He’d stammered stupidly while I explained that I didn’t trust his Cygnet could make the distance and stared at me wide eyed when I’d thrown him the keys. It didn’t make sense to deny myself the usage of it now, seeing as I’d really dove into rich people Hell head first, and I wanted to watch him enjoy the hell out of it. He had to, because I’d put his name on the insurance policy.
I was learning to live to accept my money. The investments I’d made had been one off practical purchases and none of them frivolous. Necessities I’d deprived myself of in the name of martyrdom were no longer something I claimed to be too principled to buy.
When I looked at who I’d been before Blaze came along, I was a little embarrassed to have once been such a ‘brat’, as the significant men in my life had once put it.
Blaze’s mother, Constance, was a bright, kind-natured woman with the same sharp green eyes as her son. She’d blustered out of her modest country cottage on Christmas Eve in a tizzy, apologising for her greying black hair being pinned up into rollers, and greeted me with a hug like she’d known me for a lifetime.
She had known me for much longer than the thirty seconds I’d known her, of course. Somehow, she knew Henry and had been at some of the dinner parties I’d paid little mind to as an awkward teenager. If I had, I would have met Bl
aze far sooner, too.
I was confused when she introduced herself as Connie Valentine, and it took me a full hour to figure out what should have been obvious.
“Oh my God,” I muttered to Blaze when she’d left the quaint rustic lounge to make us hot chocolate with marshmallows like we were dopey courting kids. “You told me you started using your mother’s maiden name when you were a teenager. You didn’t tell me you’d seen to the legal side.”
He gave me a look and pulled me back against him, arms banded around my waist in ‘his’ big, well-loved armchair. “Come again?”
“Helen Rosen asked after ‘Ms. Valentine’ at the winter ball. I refuse to believe that’s coincidence.”
“Damn that Helen.” The irritation in his tone didn’t reach his face. “Yes, I had it legally changed when I was sixteen. You’re one of the select few who know my real surname.”
I felt honoured, I really did. But there was a serious issue I had to get out of my system. “Blaze Valentine? Isn’t your birthday on Valentine’s Day, too?”
Grimacing, he fiddled with my emerald ring. “You can see why I don’t make it public knowledge. I suppose you’ll be running off now?”
“Oh, almost definitely for the hills.” Grinning, I pulled his lips down to mine and kissed him with all the gusto of a school girl sneaking make out sessions while the coast was clear. “You disgust me so much it turns me on. What’s up with that?”
I really loved Blaze’s childhood home. We spent most of Christmas Eve in the lounge, which had a traditional open fireplace burning logs, photographs across the mantelpiece and mismatched furniture draped in multi-coloured crocheted blankets.
The dining table was in the kitchen, sturdy and made of varnished oak. Connie had a cast iron stove that looked almost Victorian, a walk in larder and chickens outside in a coop. It almost felt like walking out of the twenty-first century and straight into a Hanoverian time warp.