by Corri Lee
“I think I love you more.” I nestled into him, folding my legs underneath me so I was just a little ball of a person for him to hold. “One day, I’ll prove it.”
We sat there for the longest time, needing no words to reiterate the peace and completeness we felt. We sat until the hotel manager politely asked us to leave so he could close the restaurant and relocated to one of the squashy armchairs in the lobby, not wanting to move far. Staff refreshed our drinks without asking, even passing us our new glasses so the closeness never needed to be disturbed. The sour memories of that afternoon, the previous day, even everything that happened before that in our prelude, became a distant memory.
I drifted off into a fantasy of our future. It started off with our wedding in Constance Valentine’s garden. Perfect.
I wore ivory, Blaze matched it with his waistcoat and a blood red cravat.
It morphed into the wedding night. More perfect. The honeymoon, a big house with the white picket fences he so hated to see in the eyes of the adoring women who could never catch him, our children—plural...
Perfection was spoiled by angry whispers above me.
“You can’t be serious.”
“I’ve never asked you to do anything for me, lad, nothing except be honest with my girl and that comes so naturally to you.”
“But this... this is really pushing the limits of my temper, Henry.”
At first I thought my dream had slipped into a nightmare. Only the awareness of the restless tightening grip around me, harder in my thigh and arm, made me realise that I wasn’t asleep.
“He has nowhere to go.”
“I don’t care if he has to walk barefoot to Kumamoto and work as a farmer’s bitch for the rest of his life. He tried to take Emmeline away from me. And that means he tried to take her from you, too.”
“What’s going on?” Pain seared through my skull as I tried to open my eyes. It had been easy to ignore the progressing migraine while I’d been awake, but it hit me with a vengeance on waking. “Argh, it feels like my brain is falling out.”
Blaze’s hands stroked my face, his lips touched my forehead. “Still bad?”
“Yes.” I batted him away and rasped, “What’s got your proverbial goat?”
“Hunter is here.”
“Oh.” My eyes snapped open regardless of the head pain and quickly scanned the lobby. No Hunter in sight, thank God.
“He’s outside in the car, love.” Henry crouched down in front of me, red faced, heavy eyed and with a large bruise beginning to bloom on his cheek. What the hell had we missed? “Understandably, Siobhan doesn’t want him back. Hunter needs to come home with us.”
I scowled. “When you say ‘with us’...”
“He wants him to come back on the jet tomorrow,” Blaze snapped, cradling me in his arms as he hauled to his feet. “Wants to take him in like a mangy pup. I’ve been asking him if I look like I should be in close proximity to the bastard.” I didn’t even need to look at him to know that putting them in the same room was a very bad idea. It wasn’t even worth the risk. My concern was less for the damage he might do to Hunter, but more for the consequences of it.
Henry sighed and rubbed circles on his temples. “He has nobody else. Helen is currently homeless, too, and Samson left shortly after you two did.”
“He should have thought about that before he alienated everyone.”
“I’m with Blaze on this one.” I batted at his arms until he let me stand on my own and released me. “What Hunter did today was humiliating and selfish. I don’t want to see him, let alone share a flight with him.”
Immediately relenting, Henry dug into his phone for his pocket. “All right, love. I understand. I’ll get you seats in first class whenever you want to go.”
My eyes crept over to the hotel entrance, then up over my shoulder to Blaze. His jaw ticked where he was grinding his teeth. “We want the next flight. We miss London.”
“So do we.” Daniel and Jonathan paced towards us with Esme and Chris in their wake, and none of them looked best pleased. Dan gave me a quick, terse hug, rocking me slightly. “I’m sorry, Henry. I’ve spent all day trying to be sympathetic but I just can’t. The whole time he was standing there making a fool of himself, I never thought ‘poor Hunter’. I was thinking ‘poor Emmy’.”
“We should pack.” I reached behind me for Blaze’s hand and looked up apologetically at my father. “I’m sorry for being awkward.”
“Never apologise to me for doing the right thing.”
Blaze kicked open our suite door, breathless after insisting on carrying me even in the lift. I did try to point out that my legs weren’t the issue but it fell on deaf ears, my protest muffled by lips that moved a little quicker. Obviously someone was glad to be going home.
Dropping me on the bed, he grabbed my empty suitcase and pointed at me severely. “Stay right where you are and relax, Miss Tudor. I got this shit handled.”
“ ‘This shit’ being my packing?” I hated packing so I wasn’t about to complain, but I wouldn’t play fair, either. Ignoring his argumentative look, I stood and let the terry towel robe drop to the floor. “Well, I can’t take that with me. Hotel property.”
With one predatory leer, my knees weakened. “Don’t distract me, cupcake.”
“Who’s distracting? Don’t you think we’ve racked up enough for incidentals already?”
His head jerked to the bed. “Sit down, shut up and look sexy.”
“Okay, okay. Sitting.” I sat down and leaned back, arms folded behind my head. “Shutting up.” I winked. “Looking sexy.”
It was suddenly easy to understand why he liked to sprawl out naked in front of me. The power that came from knowing every clumsy fumble and misplaced hand was fortifying—a physical display of how easily he lost himself around me.
It was a comfort to know that I wasn’t alone in feeling helpless sometimes.
Still, when he dropped his own robe to even the playing field, there was no way to deny the fact that I was the one mesmerised. He was something new every day, never boring to look at. From the shoulders down, he looked brutal and fierce thanks to the play of hard muscle looking like it might burst free of the freshly tanned skin stretched tightly over roping veins and sinew. Watching him get to that physique had been a treat.
But the softness that washed over him when he looked at me made it clear that he was strong only because he was my protector. Physical threats he could ward off with a punch, the mental he could tame with a menacing stance. To guard me so stringently was his life, and to have him do so was my honour.
“While I have you quiet,” Blaze glanced slyly up from the clothes he’d picked up from the floor and started to fold neatly, “I want to confess something to you.” He made me wait until he’d packed all the clothes into the case and collected everything from the wardrobe before he went on. “I thought I’d lost you today.”
What? Resisting the urge to speak, I mentally screamed at him to elaborate.
“When Hunter came out with that belter, I thought you’d go with him. That’s why I jumped up so quickly; to remind you what he did as much as to remind him. Earlier, I told you that he’d underestimated us. Well, I did, too, and I’m sorry.” His hands stalled mid-fold, settling on the dress I’d worn to the ceremony. “It would have killed me, but I would have let you go.”
A chill unfurled in my belly and spread outwards through my body. As much as I hated it, I didn’t believe that the claim was an exaggeration; if I’d left him for Hunter, it would have killed him. Maybe if I’d gone of my own accord on my own, he might have gotten past it. But in this scenario... Well, seeing how bad he’d gotten while I was only temporarily lost put the fear of God into me.
When it seemed safe to speak again, I reached out for him. “I promised you that I’d never leave you.”
He stared at me. “But if it would have made you happier—”
“It wouldn’t.” Warmth replaced the iciness—he really would be that
selfless for me. “It’s you, Blaze. Always will be. Might have been since before I was born.”
“But you loved him.”
“Did I?” My fingers threaded together in my lap. I’d been thirteen years old when we met—I hadn’t really understood love until that afternoon so how the hell could I have understood it when I was just a child? “Look how fast that faded when you came along. The idea that love is transferable... I can’t believe I ever entertained it. I don’t think I ever did really love him.”
That we should have this conversation whilst naked was fitting; both of us laid open and exposed to each other in more ways than one. Every barrier that had once been between us had gone and it showed. The aura surrounding us was sensuously moody—darker than the skies outside but piping hot with the raw emotion of the day.
Blaze dropped the shirt in his hand and crawled across the bed, prowling over me like a beast starved. His mouth sealed over mine and with no preamble, he pushed into me with one swift lunge that made us both gasp. At a time where making love was the last thing we should have been doing, we did it anyway, craving physical closeness that still wasn’t close enough.
Our eyes were locked together the whole time, except for the moments we kissed. Fingers interwoven, we let each other see how completely we were possessed, how utterly devoid of life we were without the other and how it would never be enough. Every moment together would never be enough. The need was finite.
Shuddering, Blaze stiffened, then slumped down replete. I tenderly stroked his back as he burrowed into me, pushing out a contented sigh. “I love you, Emmeline.”
“I love you, too. I don’t think I recognised it because this is so much bigger. To surmise it into a four letter word devalues us. You’re more than love. You’re my whole heart and soul staring back at me, looking for a place to crawl inside and complete me. My fire. My reason. My Blaze.”
He looked up, eyes narrowed. “Do you really want to say sweet things like that while I’m still inside you and we’re on a time limit?”
“Want me to take it back?”
Scoffing, he grabbed my hands and pulled me up, shifting us both so I sat in the fold of his cross legged. When our bodies separated, I felt empty already. “Not on your life. You know, you’ve grown a lot since we met.” I chanced a look down at my chest and he laughed. “Not just there. Inside. I’m not scared to screw up any more.”
Contemplation shadowed his eyes—a kind of thoughtfulness mingled with crystal clear clarity. “You’ve stolen my scheming look.”
“I have,” he admitted with a grin, “but I’m keeping this one to myself.”
Henry was waiting in the lobby when we found our way down, dragging our suitcases behind us. I didn’t know the time for sure but it had to be near midnight, evident from the way the hotel seemed eerily empty and dark though there was no less light than there had been before.
Daniel and Jonathan were already waiting in the car; Esme caught the same lift as us and Chris was close behind.
His eyes were shrewd and assessing when he said, “I thought you had a migraine?” I knew I should have showered. The heady scent of sex clung to me, incriminating for it’s potency. Chris shoved me with his elbow, tutting with no real outrage for our poorly timed fumble.
Blaze passed me the flight details Henry had given him and nodded towards a pile of gifts that had obviously been sent over from the wedding. “Do you want to take back the painting?”
“Good God, no.” That would have been weird. It wasn’t like I’d hang it up on a wall in the flat and provide a constant reminder of the scene I’d helped to destroy. “Burn it. Shred it. Let him keep it, but it’s not coming back with us.”
“I was hoping you’d say that.” Guiding me out to the car by the shoulders, Blaze tsked bitterly at the gifts making some sort of cathartic jibe about Hunter I really didn’t hear over my own distracting thoughts of guilt. I couldn’t help feeling like I should have spoken to him again. Made sure he was okay and apologised, even though I really shouldn’t have had to for being truly happy for the first time in my life.
I might have just explained that he’d been too late, and that if he’d stepped forward with the proclamation a year earlier, I would have jumped at the chance to be with him. But wouldn’t that have made him feel worse?
Keeping my distance the way I had, had probably been right after all. I was surely the last person who should have been trying to provide comfort and reassurance, knowing that I’d walk away and go with Blaze anyway. That was like prolonging the length of time the knife was still stuck in his back.
Blaze caught my sombre expression and pursed his lips. “You feel sorry for him.”
I shook my head, knowing that what I felt was empathy rather than pity. “I feel bad for him. As much as I’ve loved to say that I’ve been alone, I’ve always had people there to talk me through my drama. He’d call, I’d cry, and my friends would help me pick myself up. If the shoe had been on the other foot today and I’d been the once who stood up in that garden, I’d have gotten some grief but my family and friends would have been there for me. As resistant as I’ve been to admit it, there’s always been a team of people behind me, trying to council me through my obsession.
“But he’s had no one. He’s forced himself to suffer in silence and now he’s alone.” Alone like I had been once. Alone like Blaze, too. At some point in their lives, the friends I was closest to had felt isolated before, like the last person on the earth, but had begun to find their way.
Hunter was playing catch up with us. He’d have to rebuild himself up from ground zero like the rest of us, finding a new place in the world with a new job, new friends and a new home.
But unlike Blaze and me, Hunter had no scars. Really, I didn’t know him well enough to know if he’d tread a dangerous path of self-destruction like the rest of us, and I prayed that he didn’t and could find his hope without hurting physically, too. Prayed that, for his sake, he didn’t mope for years like I did and make some bad lifestyle choices.
Hoped that he’d realise I’d been right when I said the first love wasn’t real, and that I was just a childish fixation from his heyday. And hoped his blaze was waiting to engulf him and make today, and me, look like silly trivial little details in a grand scheme of better things to come.
And I hoped someone would let me know when it did.
“Bloody hell, is this the same place?” Daniel took the same sweeping look around the Park Avenue apartment as the last person to visit it had. He remembered the same sterile, pristine abode he’d come to a few times with me over the years—the way it always looked cold and brittle no matter how brightly the sun shone in through the wide arched windows.
Now he was walking around an apartment still full of all the personal touches I’d added during my time in New York and apparently approving.
It had been an abnormally normal three weeks since we flew back from Japan. Nobody would have guessed what kind of pasts we had looking in from the outside—watching us go to work, eat, sleep and socialise like anyone else in the world. Nobody could possibly imagine all that we’d faced already, and all that laid ahead.
That normality didn’t sit well for us. We’d purposely picked our flights so we could fly in and land over the New York skyline at night, able to watch the twinkling city approach through the plane’s windows with wide-eyed childish delight and noses pressed to the Plexiglas. That alone had to be a good way to break from the norm.
I’d been assuming that the trip to New York for Blaze’s birthday had just been for the two of us, so had been surprised to walk in on him booking a flight for six. He had to have checked with Henry that there were enough bedrooms first, which meant I was the last to know. I’d had to swallow down my feelings of disappointment and annoyance, reminding myself that it was his trip and he was perfectly entitled to invite who he wanted, even if that included my friends, who were his friends, too—another sobering reminder of how alone he’d been before we’d met an
d the sacrifices he’d made.
Despite the time I’d spent there, it all seemed novel and new, not at all like the home I’d planned for it to become. The streets outside were fresh with rain and a slight chill of the remaining winter. Many of the shop fronts were decked out with roses and bobbing red, heart shaped helium balloons to remind us that, like anyone could forget it, Valentine’s Day was just around the corner. The lover who had become as essential to my life as my own feet would hit the big three-oh, putting an embarrassing eight years between our ages. I felt like some dumb kid with a sugar daddy.
I was grouchy and out of sorts. My recurrent nightmare had become a nightly fixture and had gotten so vivid I’d started to wake up screaming. Blaze went through a phase of blaming himself because he’d confiscated and flushed my medication but soon overcame it, I suspected because he still really wasn’t sorry he’d done it. I’d been wary of falling asleep on the plane, so was over-tired to the point of being wide awake and pissed off about it.
Feigning happiness, I paced into the kitchen, which still carried the redolence of the citronella candles I’d burn while cleaning, liking the zesty scent. It was still early enough to go out to eat, though I’d rather had done anything but.
“So then, Mr. Valentine. It’s your week. What do you want to do?”
Blaze caught me by the breakfast bar, the same place I’d been caged once before. Feeling me tense, he stroked his hands up my arms to my shoulders and started to kneed at the muscles. “He’s not here, Emmeline.”
My head fell back against him. After a week of repeated phone calls to the poor assistant, Matilda, I’d successfully ascertained that Calloway Ryan would be in Orlando with his most recent bit of fluff for Valentine’s Day, not due to return until a few days after we left. Apparently being abandoned by me had done wonders for his love life, though I doubted that he’d be showering me with flowers and muffin baskets of gratitude if we crossed paths.