by Corri Lee
Compared to the house, the garden looked like it had been spliced in out of a story book. Rosebushes lined a high fence that spanned right down to a grand old walnut tree right at the back of a long stretch of lawn spattered with stepping stones. A large formation rock naturally created a waterfall feature into a frozen-over pond that looked to have carp swimming around under the ice. Around it was a veranda covered in trails of holly and mistletoe, where I dragged Blaze to kiss. My breath caught at the view from there, looking out across the rolling hillsides that could be reached by simply jumping a fence.
“Let’s get married here.” I blushed when I realised who I was and what the hell I’d just said. Wedding talk was still so far out of my comfort zone; any mention of it made me feel a little knot of dread in my stomach.
Natasha was refusing to sign anything, though nobody understood why, and it seemed like our union was doomed to purgatory, at least for a while. I didn’t mind it, but I was pretty sure Blaze did.
He wrapped his arms around me from behind and rested his chin on my head. “You like it here?”
“It’s beautiful. And very peaceful.”
“It is,” he agreed, “it’s even better in the spring. There’s cherry blossom trees hiding in the roses.”
“Cherry blossoms.” I had to laugh. Hunter’s fiancée had insisted on a sakura themed wedding but had been far too impatient to wait until they blossomed naturally in Japan. “Siobhan might not have been able to kill me off with words, but I’m sure she’d find something heavy and blunt to hit me with if I got natural flora.”
“Can you really imagine getting married here?”
I turned to burrow into him and sighed. No, I couldn’t, but only because I couldn’t imagine being a bride. I’d never imagined myself married and committed, especially not to a man who looked to have been gorgeous for his entire damn life. “Can you?”
“I can. I always hoped that I would. My mother would be over the moon to see a wedding here after hers was cancelled.” He must have felt my frown, because he tightened his grip and went on. “My parents were planning their wedding here, too. They didn’t have the money to do it for a long time, only my father’s ‘work’ brought in the income. It was planned for the month after he died.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“It’s all right. Do you like her?” I looked up for elaboration. “My mother.”
“Oh.” I nodded against his chest. “She’s lovely. She looks very happy to see you.”
“I am.” We stepped apart, red-faced when Connie walked out into the garden wearing nothing but slippers on her feet and a thin trench coat for warmth. “It’s been too long, hasn’t it, lad?”
“Ah, Mama...”
She trudged over to us and put her hand over his heart. “I know it’s not your fault. But look at how you’ve come to see me; so handsome and with a beautiful bride-to-be.” Turning to me, she clasped her hands to her chest. “You did turn out to be a beautiful young lady, Emmeline. Your father was overjoyed when he knew you were coming into the world.” I tried not to startle at knowing our families had known each other so long. How exactly did history connect us?
Christmas Day was, for the first time since I could remember, exciting. Blaze had woken me early by bouncing on the bed, shoving a stocking at me before my eyes were really open. He’d spoiled me, of course, with silly little trinkets like sew on patches, Rubik’s cubes and ridiculous, badly moulded action figures.
I’d done much the same, although I denied it at first. His haul of goodies had been hidden in the car and I didn’t let on until halfway through our turkey roast.
“You’re mean,” he’d complained, but grabbed me and tried to kiss me while I had a mouth full of turkey. Connie seemed to light up brighter than her Christmas tree watching us, though there was a sadness in her eyes that told me she missed love in her own life. I wondered if I’d never truly be able to move on if I lost Blaze for good.
She’d loved the big tulip shaped vase I’d painted with roses and lotuses, and Blaze loved the autographed comic book that had been nigh on impossible to keep hidden from him for so long. I’d secretly found it during my first few weeks in New York and picked it up because it reminded me of him. That should have been the only clue I needed to realise that I wanted him back my life.
We ate far too much Christmas pudding, drank far too much mulled wine and laughed until our sides cramped at the jokes inside crackers that really weren’t that funny. Years of lost festive spirit hit me all at once, making for a day I wouldn’t soon forget.
Connie left us close to midnight, barely able to stay awake through the buzz of the television and the sounds of celebration carrying across the fields from the closest village. Blaze watched me from his armchair as I warmed my toes in front of the fire, nursing my last glass of wine before I followed Connie’s example.
“Thank you for coming here with me.”
“Thank you for inviting me.” I choked up at the last couple of words, overwhelmed by the urge to cry for no good reason. The day had been so wonderful so I had no excuse to get emotional. If it had been any more perfect I might have spontaneously combusted. “Okay,” I sniffled, “unexplained tears means too much alcohol. I should go to bed.”
“Hold it.” Blaze pulled me up from the floor onto his lap and passed me a small wrapped up box. “Merry Christmas, Emmeline.”
“You already gave me my gifts.” And I had no idea how he’d fit them all in his suitcase.
“This one is special.”
I rubbed at my eyes before I took a breath and tugged at the slender red ribbon tied around the box. My head dropped onto his shoulder before I snapped up it’s lid to find two shining white stones embedded in satin. “Pearl earrings?”
“They come with a matching pearl necklace if you want it.” He snorted at my unimpressed look and took the box from my hand. “My father brought them for me to give my mother on her birthday just before he died. I tried to give them to her back then, but she told me to save them for the woman who meant as much to me as she did to him. A lot of people have called me a lone wolf in the past, but what they don’t know is that wolves mate until death do them part.”
Not wanting to kill the moment by pointing out that he’d done plenty of mating before me and was already bound until ‘death do him part’, I twisted around to straddle him and pulled his arms around my waist. “Then for life it is, Mr. Valentine. Thank you for the earrings; I know just when to wear them. I...” I took his face in my hands and stared into his eyes. I still couldn’t say the words out loud, but I was screaming them at him from inside, hoping he understood.
But he didn’t. He didn’t hear that I loved him. My eyes didn’t say it the way his could. I sank down into him, face between his pectorals and wept. Mourned how I couldn’t make him see it.
“Emmeline.” He lifted my head and kissed the tears away, then sloped down to the floor with me. We sprawled out on the worn out rug in front of the hearth and he looked down at me, the hot flames reflected in his eyes. “Don’t cry, you beautiful, sweet girl. I know what’s in your heart.”
“Are you sure?”
“Cupcake, I’ve never been more certain of anything since the first night you blazed for me. I’ve seen it every time we set each other on fire since. I saw it in every photograph of you in New York. I even see it when you sleep. And I’ve never seen something so pure and genuine.”
We showed each other just how we felt all night in front of that fire, and drank more wine than decent until the sun came up. We retreated into Blaze’s childhood bedroom somewhere along the way, and spent the night talking about nothing in particular.
When I fell asleep in his arms, it was to the sound of him singing and the feel of him tracing patterns on my skin. When we left a tearful Connie the next morning on a promise to return soon, I felt so high and happy that I didn’t process a single thing that happened in my parents home.
Not a single ounce of fuck was given that day.
“You’re painting.” Blaze’s hands pushed down on the couch cushioning on either side of my head, taking the weight as he crouched to kiss my cheek. January had whizzed past far too quickly, speeding us towards a date he had been dreading.
“It’s been known to happen.” Grinning, I passed him the piece I was working on; a manga interpretation of Hunter and Siobhan standing under a bamboo arch as they would on their wedding day. I knew he’d appreciate it more than she would, and that was all I really cared about. “Think it’s unique wedding gift material?”
“Well, it’s certainly not a fruit bowl.” Knowing that he was feeling a little down, I set the canvas down on the table and patted the seat next to me, offering myself as a cushion for him to cuddle into. He didn’t refuse; he moved so quickly he was almost a blur. “Are you really going to his wedding? I mean, I owe the guy for bringing you home, but he’s treated you so badly.”
“Of course. I owe him, too, Blaze, for exactly the same reason.” I smirked to myself and jabbed him in the ribs. “Plus I want to see the smug bitch’s face when I roll up with the Blaze.”
He tutted, burying his head between my breasts. “I’m just arm candy to you, aren’t I? I’m just going to curl up and die right here.”
“Of course you’re not just arm candy, you’re also very good in bed.”
“Can’t talk. Dead in boobs.” He pulled a face when he sat up and pulled my legs across his lap. “Do you have to go so soon before the wedding?”
He knew I did because I’d explained it a thousand times. I so rarely got to see Hunter, who really was a dear friend, and those opportunities would become far less with my new hectic work schedule and his big old ball and chain weighing him down. Besides that, I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend more than a day flying back and forth to Japan just to only stay there for a few days. Everyone else would be flying out the day before the wedding because of work commitments, but I was still owed Barbados time.
Still, I reiterated the lengths I’d go to while I was away to set him at ease. “It’s only a few days apart, and I’ll be meeting Henry’s Tokyo clients most of the time. You have the number for the hotel, I’ll always have my phone on and I’ll video call you every day. What’s the big stress?”
“It’s five days,” he huffed, dead-eyeing the idle television, “and the big stress is that I have to be here without you. Six nights sleeping without you and five mornings not waking up next to you.”
God damn it. A lot of the time his neediness was sweet and endearing. But at times like these, it was a serious pain in my backside. I didn’t want to have to justify taking a few days out to sate my wanderlust. It’s not even like it was going to be all fun and games.
“It’s not like I could run off again even if I wanted to—which I don’t. I’ll be available to you twenty-four seven, just not in person. Please, Blaze. Can you just trust me here? I don’t want to fly out tomorrow morning on a bad note.”
“Fine.” He stood, not caring about the way my legs fell quickly at an angle to the floor and nearly took me with them. “Good to know that I get stuck in limbo because that bastard said jump and you asked how high.”
“Hey,” I objected, scrambling to my feet. “It’s not like this is news to you. You’ve known for nearly two months.”
He turned, spared me a quick head to toe glance, and stomped towards the bedroom. “How does that matter? It’s not exactly like I got advance warning before the last time you left me.”
I was barely aware that I’d grabbed the pot of water I’d been using to clean paintbrushes and hurtled it at him when I realised his back was soaked and paint spattered. The resentment that he was bringing up New York to guilt trip me into staying caused a rage that blinded me. That was completely different to now, and he was hardly a fucking saint with his clandestine nuptials.
“Is this what you want me to commit my life to? Being manipulated and sacrificing friendships because I left you once and you left a wife for me? Because I seem to remember you leaving me a lot and never letting me know when you’d be back, and I seem to remember dumping a boyfriend via email for you. You know that if you got a big modelling job in Zimbabwe for a month, I wouldn’t stop you going. And I sure as hell wouldn’t bring up Natasha as a means of persuasion.”
“I’m not—... Cupcake.” Blaze came back to me, pulling his sopping t-shirt off as he walked. The scars on his side were barely noticeable anymore, which gave me some comfort. He obviously hadn’t been trying to cause himself serious damage, just acting irrationally. Like he was over this wedding.
“I don’t want to spend my days point scoring against you.”
“Neither do I, Emmeline. I just...” He made a small grunt of frustration when I went to him and rested my head against his bare chest. He smelled of shower gel from our morning scrub down and a slight musk of sweat after I’d kicked his ass at a dancing video game. Just his natural scent was a drug that would ensure my forgiveness, filling my senses with a euphoric calm that erased all the harsh words between us. “You know when you just have a bad feeling? I don’t think this wedding is going to turn out well, Emmeline, I just... don’t.”
“What do you mean?” When he didn’t speak, I tilted my head to look up at him and stuck my tongue out. “Who cares if their wedding fucks up? It’s not our wedding. Ours will be perfect and nothing is going to stop it happening.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. And I have a pretty wicked track record for keeping promises.”
Blaze spent the rest of the day acting like I’d be leaving for a year. He sat patiently by my side while I finished my painting, took me last minute shopping for clothes, then treated me to dinner in a very expensive restaurant. I planned to stay awake through the night and sleep on the plane over, and despite my insistence that he should get a few hours so he could be on top form for his ‘job’ the next morning, he was adamant to stay up with me.
We double-checked my suitcases, passport and airport check-in details together in the bedroom—or rather I did and he dictated the list of essentials he had committed to memory. It might have been helpful if not for the fact he wasn’t wearing a stitch. He’d started taking care of his body, like really taking care of it, and it was too damn difficult to keep my eyes away from the hard slabs of muscle sheathed in taut bronze flesh. Fat Emmy made a quick reappearance to say nothing but—
You lucky mother-fucker.
I was inclined to agree.
The closer it got to my flight, the more I began to question how much Hunter really meant to me. I’d told him for over a year that I wouldn’t go to his wedding, and they’d still gone on with the planning. Would he really refuse to go through with it without me there? If I didn’t go and he backed out, I’d blame myself and so would everyone else. But if I didn’t go and he went ahead, his temporary split with Siobhan would have been over nothing. Still, if I went, he could still back out and that wouldn’t be my fault.
Did I really want to take that risk? It seemed almost like I had to go to make sure he got down the aisle like a true best friend would.
But I really didn’t want to leave Blaze. I’d told myself that it wasn’t a big deal but it was. It was huge. We’d lived in each others pockets since I came back to London and as unhealthy as some might have seen it, that worked for us. Asphyxiation hit some people’s hot buttons and mental suffocation hit ours. We relied on each other so heavily, like the other would remind us to breathe if we missed an exhale, and I was removing our mutual lifeline for the sake of a few extra days in Japan.
But I really wanted to go to Japan for more than three days.
I flipped the top of my suitcase down and zipped it, ordering myself to stop being so co-dependent. Neither of us should be feeling so scared to be alone and the space could do us good. We ate together, slept together, lived together and socialised together. Blaze had cultivated so few friendships of his own, so our friends were the same. My name was stuck firmly on one side of an amper
sand and craved to be independent for a while. He’d enjoy it, too, if he just gave it a chance.
“So you’re all set?”
“Yup.” I paused and unzipped the suitcase to check that I’d packed a comb and toothbrush in my toiletry bag for the millionth time. “Who’s going to do this with you in a few days?”
“My case is already packed,” he announced smugly, nodding to a small suitcase by the wardrobe. I wasn’t really surprised to know he’d done it well in advance; he was so well organised it put most anally retentive OCD-ridden white collar housewives to shame. “I talked to Natasha about the divorce.”
My hands froze during their exploration of my case. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to have this conversation at a time when we already felt so weak, knowing that they never came with good news. “But she still won’t sign. Is that why you’re naked; to break the bad news?”
“What?” Blaze smirked down at his body. “No, that’s because I love watching you get wound up when you know I’m just sitting here, ready to be ridden without the inconvenience of clothing.”
“Oh!” I threw a balled up pair of socks at him and they bounced off his nose. “That’s mean!”
“Punish me later.” Oh, I would. I’d punish the shit out of him so hard I could still hear his groans halfway to Japan. “But she wants to meet you.”
My gaze snapped up from the suitcase. “She wants what?”
“I think she’s curious about you.”
“Blaze, you deal with curiosity by flicking through a magazine. You do not deal with curiosity by inviting your husband’s mistress to brunch.”
“Actually, it’s dinner. And I do wish you’d stop calling yourself that.” He followed me through the kitchen when I turned abruptly to seek out some much needed coffee. Meeting Natasha—was he positively mad? How could he even think that was a good idea?