by Corri Lee
“When I promised to stay with you,” I barked gruffly, “you promised that you had nothing big you needed to get off your chest.” The dinner had enlightened me as to too many lies and half-truths he’d told me, and I was reeling. The part of me that believed he was nothing but honest with me had been torn from my hands.
“I didn’t lie. This isn’t a big deal because it won’t come into question. It only becomes a big deal if you can’t accept it. Is it a problem?”
“No.” I jolted up, feeling myself relax a little when I realised that I meant it and hadn’t just reacted on impulse. “I’m mad about the way I found out, and you’re damned lucky I held it together, but God knows I’d be a hypocrite to judge you on your sex life.”
Blaze looked defeated. The skin around his jaw was stretched tautly, his glorious eyes dulled with contrition and concern. It was strange that, considering all he stood to lose if Natasha had her spiteful way, I knew it was the worry that he’d lose me which hurt the most. He knew he’d wronged me to excess that night, and not knowing if he’d done too much damage put him in a zone of uncertainty he was neither familiar with or tolerant of.
Daniel, Jonathan, Esme and Chris filed out to the kitchen, leaving us sat there in the dimly lit sitting room at a pivotal point in our relationship. If he stayed with me, I’d still lose him for a while anyway, but he stood to sacrifice far more. It was only fair that he got the right to dictate how life would progress from that point.
“If you’ve changed your mind about the annulment—”
“Why would I?” His voice was so harsh with fear it didn’t even sound like him speaking. “Why would I change my mind now?”
Leaning my head on his shoulder, I confessed, “Maybe I have. I won’t be another woman who makes you sacrifice your career and public image.”
“Emmeline.” Blaze pulled me up straight and cupped his hands around my neck, flexing his fingers at my nape.
I got it. He felt like everyone had him by the throat with no sign of release in sight. I was right there with him.
“I tried to tell you before you went to New York, but without you, I have no reason to leave Natasha. Call me childish, but I need that light at the end of a tunnel before I’ll throw myself down it and for the longest time, the inheritance was that light.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me that Natasha basically blackmailed you into marrying her?”
He surprised me by releasing me and lurching away. His back hunched with shame, fists balling with self-revulsion. “I didn’t want to taint your opinion of me that way. Statutory rape is such an ugly thing.”
“Sure, when you put it that way.” Unable to stand the distance he’d put between us, I held out my hands in askance for him to pull me to him. “Please, Blaze. Nothing has changed for me. I promised I’d never leave you, and I told you I’d wait. Just tell me what you want to do and I’m behind you all the way.”
Rather than pull me up, Blaze sank down to the floor again and nestled his head in my lap, encouraging me to comb my fingers through his hair as comfort. “If you can accept me now you know, I’d just like to sleep and reassess the situation in the morning. Our beds are made up.”
“We’re still sleeping here?” I didn’t even try to hide the disdain and disapproval in my words.
He nodded against my legs. “Natasha takes sedatives strong enough to put out a small horse. I know you’re not going to be exactly comfortable with it, but—”
“It’s fine.” For all he would risk for me, I owed him, and for all Natasha had done, she owed me. “Can I tell you a secret?”
Blaze looked up at me, chin rested on my thigh, and smiled. My trust was a treasure he valued most, and to know he still had it must have been a weight off his mind. “Your secrets, wishes and veritable truths, cupcake. I’ll protect them with my life.”
I didn’t take that lightly, so I felt a little bad when the only secret I had was—
“I really fucking hate your wife.”
Thunder shook the walls. The storm had come without warning—I hadn’t sensed or smelled a trace of it and the air had been light for days. I stared up at the ceiling in a dysphoric stupor, disoriented and seemingly out of my own body. Physically, I was there, but mentally, I just couldn’t connect.
So I don’t know what it was that drove me to get up and leave the man next to me sleeping peacefully.
The cotton sheets were pulled low around Blaze’s waist, thin enough to fall around the shape of what looked to be like a painfully stubborn erection. I’d flat out refused to have sex in his wife’s house and he hadn’t pushed the matter, but I knew he’d gone to sleep frustrated.
I probably should have woken him and helped to relieve the tension for both of us, needing his closeness now more than ever, but instead I just watched him for a while. Enjoyed the look of peace on his face before storm began to seep into our lives again. He didn’t stir when I sat on the bed beside him and traced my fingers across the prominent ridges of muscle in his abdomen and the faint lines on his left side.
He’d been lucky. The scars left from his self-harm had almost completely faded. The external damage would be gone before long, but the internal? I just didn’t know. It ran so much deeper than me leaving him behind.
Natasha... She’d turned him into such a troubled soul. His life had been hard enough recovering from his father’s murder and yet she’d still spent almost seven years selfishly lying to him. It made me sick that she could take advantage of his conscience and heart of gold.
She would ruin us. If she couldn’t goad us to part ways voluntarily, she’d do it forcefully and destroy Blaze’s life in the process. His name would be tarnished for years for the sake of neediness and petty jealousy. I wouldn’t let him give up his career for me when it was all he’d had outside her but she wouldn’t let him keep it if he kept me. As long as she was around, we would always be restricted. We were backed into a corner where the only way out was separation.
Unless she disappears.
I startled when the familiar hiss echoed inside my head.
Disappear how?
Disappear for good. Underground. Six feet underground.
But she won’t die. She’s not—
I wasn’t aware of my body moving independently until I was watching lightning flash in through the high windows around the edges of the main hall. Blaze still slept in the room behind me, though my vantage point seemed a little eerie. The room around him contorted and warped slightly, the colours a little less vibrant. Dreaming, you idiot. You’re dreaming.
Of course. It had been a tough day and I had to expect that the weight of it would take root in my subconscious.
Regardless, I had to support myself on the walls and banisters as I walked through the hallways of the house, feeling the rumbles from the sky reverberate through me like wicked growls of my very own soul. My consciousness followed close behind, watching me sway past doors and stagger down the staircase with a feeble gait.
I didn’t know what I was looking for until I found it—had less idea how I’d managed to locate it. Tucked at the back of the house where I had no way of finding them, the double doors into Natasha’s ground floor bedroom stood in front of me slightly ajar.
No harm in looking.
Of course there wasn’t. My imagination was my worst enemy but whatever it sought to make me believe laid behind those doors had to be a false interpretation. Just some nightmare vision I’d concocted out of fear and insecurity.
They didn’t make a sound when I pushed them open, just swung open smoothly into the mostly open space of the master suite.
The focal point of the room was an enormous four-poster bed. An intricate fleur-de-lis was carved into the foot board, the posts boasting complex and impressive filigree. The royal blue velvet canopy that hung neatly from the solid oak tester billowed and ruffled in the breeze that whistled in from an open window.
Everything else in the room seemed to be excluded by shadows, a single point
of light emitting from the blue fabric that seemed to glow against an otherwise dreary backdrop. The occasional flash of lightning bounced off the pale, perfect face of the woman sleeping.
God, I hated her. She was beautiful and rich enough to have any man she wanted, but she had to be keeping her leash around mine. It might not have been such a bitter pill to swallow if he’d reciprocated her feelings in the slightest but he hated her, too. Maybe as much as I did.
So, resolve the situation.
What do you mean?
Come on, you know what I mean. Think how much easier it would be if she wasn’t around at all. As far as Blaze knows, she could die any minute and he’d get everything. You’d be doing him a favour by getting rid of her.
Could I? I crept closer and stood over Natasha, watching her sleep. As Blaze had said, she slept like the dead, totally still and unaware of the danger Fat Emmy was suggesting I put her in.
I’d been here before. I recognised the hatred-charged atmosphere from my nightmares but this time it had substance. I understood it—understood why I’d stood there telling her she deserved it.
Natasha was an obstacle and one so easily overcome. With minimal effort, I could put an end to her tyranny and remove the threat to our relationship. I could marry Blaze in just a few short weeks if that was what he wanted; I’d do whatever made him happy.
Would this make him happy?
Even if he mourned, he’d thank you in the end. You’d be giving him his life back.
What a monumental privilege to return to him. It would take the selfishness from the act.
With steady hands, I reached for a pillow. The movement behind her didn’t bother Natasha. She just lay on her back calmly, hair fanned out across the linen.
With the same ease with which I’d done it so many times before, I lowered the soft plush pillow down over her face...
Awareness flooded back into me suddenly enough to make me gasp. Thick beads of cold sweat dripped from my nose and my chest heaved to accommodate the demand for air.
I brought my hands to my face to wipe away the perspiration...
... And found the pillow I’d been holding in what I’d believed to be a dream.
Daring to look around the room took all the inner strength I could muster. If I’d been able to walk out and find my way back to bed without seeing what I knew would be there, it would have been easier to deny what I’d just done.
Natasha Valentine’s glassy, grey eyes wet with tears stared up at me, devoid of any glimmer of life. The nightmare I’d had for months had become a reality, and one I couldn’t avoid. I’d committed the worst and most irreversible of crimes and whether or not there had been a single ounce of pure motive behind it, how could I ever walk through the rest of my life as a murderer?
Just put the pillow down and walk out.
Obediently, I took the advice and didn’t stop walking until I was back by the staircase. In the ominous light of the storm, I sat on the lowest step, shell-shocked. What had I become?
The lowest form of life, you stupid girl.
You told me to do it.
You spend years trying to ignore me, take medication to eradicate me, but when it comes to killing a woman, I become true north on your moral compass? You wanted to kill her, you corrupt freak. You’ve wanted it so badly, you dreamt about it even before you knew she existed.
My God, she was right, and there was part of me that felt unnervingly happy to know that Natasha was gone. My actions, if I could get past them, would lead Blaze and I to a happier life together.
You really are ridiculous. You’re a murderer; you don’t just get away with it because she was a bitch. You think Blaze could ever love you after this, and if he could, do you think that would pardon you from a murder charge? You’ve fucked it all up. You still have to part ways, one way or another. Except you now have blood on your hands.
My cries echoed through the halls. The tears I shed were as much for Blaze as they were for my own guilt. In no time at all, people would find out what I’d done and I’d have to pay the price for it, and now Natasha was dead, who did he have to love him?
And my family—who I’d already put through so much heartache—would have their reputation irreparably damaged by news of me killing a woman who was already disabled just because she wouldn’t agree to a divorce. Natasha’s family would undoubtedly enforce the opinion that I was a monster when really, I’d just loved too much.
It was cruel of me to try to vindicate it that way, inadvertently blaming Blaze for what I’d done. While I’d picked up that pillow with him in mind, he hadn’t asked me to do it. He’d probably be disgusted that I had.
I had effectively dismantled and razed every aspect of my life. My friends would be implicated in an investigation purely because they were in the same house. Nobody would ever forgive me, much less understand. I would be alone.
Sombrely, I took a quick trip back upstairs to stand in the doorway of our bedroom and watch Blaze sleeping. He didn’t seem to have moved, so I couldn’t have been gone long. Tears burned the backs of my eyes, forcing me to accept that this would be the last time I would see him when our complications were no match for his love.
The idea of living without him again was so acutely painful it hurt to breathe. I’d barely survived before, but now I’d have to do it with no hope of ever getting him back. There weren’t enough scars in the world to make me delude myself enough to believe I could be excused.
I felt useless, and dirty with a filth I knew I just wouldn’t wash away. The person who could judge me most harshly would always be myself, and at that time, I was emotionally back in that college bathroom with twice as much self-reproach.
And like that seventeen year old girl who’d seen the means to an end in the end, I made my way back down towards the kitchen to pay my penance for taking a life.
Penance for loving Blaze more.
part three
the ashes
There were bright flashing lights.
There were harried voices.
And then there was nothing but blackness and quiet and calm. I didn’t realise just how much I’d been craving the silence and stillness until I was floating there, blissfully numb and unencumbered by the burdens of life.
That serenity lasted for less than a minute.
I chased the light that appeared in the distance, as small as a pin head. Despite the lack of everything around me, trying to reach it was like wading through treacle—my body weak and languid. Every time I managed a step forward, something pulled me back again, like a thick rope threaded through several points in my body relentlessly yanking me back into the darkness.
I was within touching distance when I was hauled so mercilessly back into the perpetual nothingness that the light vanished completely and left me suspended in limbo.
My selflessness hadn’t thrust me to toward Heaven. Neither had it thrown me down into the Devil’s lair. No, I was destined for the worst Hell of all; a life of denied penance.
I killed Natasha Valentine in cold blood and while I might have considered slitting my wrists in her kitchen to be some sort of act of spiritual redemption, the universe had other ideas for me. Maybe the powers that be understood how little I valued my own life or maybe they just had a sadistic sense of humour, but I wasn’t going to be allowed to die in the early hours of that morning—that would be too easy. I was going to be forced to live with the consequences of my actions.
The resuscitation team who scraped me up from a puddle of my own blood wouldn’t give up on me, no matter how many times I flat-lined. My destiny to live was as ironclad as the fact I’d resent them forever for not letting me pass quietly.
The final time my heart kicked back to life, I remember a searing wave of pain like nothing I’d ever felt before. It coursed through my body like venom and I tried to scream with it, begging someone—anyone—to make it stop. Whether or not that plea was heard, the agony levelled and I became still, a soul trapped in a body that coul
dn’t move of it’s own accord.
I went into a coma, I think. It was impossible to tell when I felt tired while I was already sleeping. It was disorientating, to hear garbled voices around me but not see the source one minute, just to slip into a dream the next. I’d have dealt with either one individually better than them both combined.
For a while, I thought I might still die. Nothing about the hushed, indiscernible voices around me sounded positive. It took a while before I realised that the fact I heard them more often meant I’d probably survive. If I’d been able to, I would have cried. Maybe they’d have understood that my death was better for everyone, not a cry out for attention or misguided deed of self-revulsion. I was beyond help or redemption. Keeping me alive would be a disaster.
The more reality began to seep in, the more sounds I started to notice. Most prominent was the monitor tracking every selfish beat of my black heart. Every beep was mocking, reminding me that I was living when I shouldn’t be.
Beep. That was a beat you don’t deserve. Beep. There was one of the many millions you stole from her. Beep. And one you didn’t even want. Beep. These beats are wasted on you.
What kind of life could I possibly have now? One straight out of hospital into a prison cell, most likely. My friends would hate me. My family would be shamed and have to tackle the negative publicity my actions attracted. I’d become a pariah, never again loved or accepted. And Blaze...