by Corri Lee
“It’s a letter to you.” Shaking my head, I reluctantly scanned the words. He wouldn’t have been trying to make me read it if there wasn’t a point to it, I knew that. It wouldn’t be one he didn’t think I could handle. “Please. Or I’ll read it aloud.”
“Jeez, all right.” That was the only way knowing all his feelings could be worse.
My love, Emmeline,
Please don’t leave me. I’ve done horrible, unforgivable things I don’t regret but if I’d known the cost of them was you, I’d have lived a righteous life since the day I was born. I’ve wanted to believe that love is a good enough reason to do anything, that I’ve done more good than bad to still deserve you.
Please don’t prove me wrong.
My life lacked reason until you staggered into it. I had no need to act out against all the unfairness done to me. Until you, I had no reason to leave Natasha and her lies, and didn’t see that spite was no good reason to stay. You gave me hope and you gave me freedom. You made me see that there was more to life than getting my back-pay and proving that I could be the bigger man.
I’ve lost you once before and in doing so, I lost myself. Knowing that I was responsible hurt more than anything, so to know that I’ve done it again...
You would be my only regret, Emmeline. I was so obsessed with bringing about changes that would make our lives perfect that I completely missed how perfect they already were. There had to be a better way to have everything, a way better than making you feel dejected, out of place, insignificant and alone. I understand those feelings now because they’re all I have. Everyone knows it was my fault and even though they’re hiding it, I know I did you wrong. I did so much wrong last night, even though I’d convinced myself it was right. And of everything, driving you away was the worse thing I’ve done. Ever. Because without you, the rest was pointless.
Forgive me. Open your eyes and tell me it’s okay. Tell me I could never do anything that would cause me to lose you forever. You don’t even need to say anything, just wake up. If you can do that for me, the rest of my life will be devoted to you and giving you reasons to stay. The moment the cherry blossoms fall, I will marry you. That I promise. I won’t leave your side for a single second, lay down across puddles for you and more than anything, I will never do anything to hurt you again. If I do, I won’t stop you from leaving me. I’ll even pack your bags for you. Just give me one last chance to prove that you can trust me with your heart the way you can trust no other. I’ll never make you doubt me or feel like you’re second best to anything. I love you too much for that to be true.
Blaze.
P.S.
You woke up. And I wasn’t there. I’ve failed you already.
But that doesn’t mean you have to die. You have so much to live for that doesn’t involve me, as much as I wish it did. You are everything and everyone in my life but I am such a small part of yours. People love you because you have a pure soul but you are the only person who’s ever loved me in spite of my blackened and broken spirit.
Maybe I did too much last night. Maybe losing you is what I deserve. But again, you don’t need to die! As soon as I know you’re okay, I’ll leave and I’ll never come back. The smallest sign of life, and I’ll go. I promise. But I don’t want to live in a world that doesn’t have you in it.
“Unpromise that.” Tossing the letter down, I glared at the side of Blaze’s head until he looked at me. “Unpromise that you’ll leave because I survived. A retracted promise is better than one broken. Unpromise it now.”
“Emmeline...” Shuffling towards me, he lifted me into his lap and brought my hands to his lips. “I unpromise it because there’s no way I can keep it. When I walked into that room and saw you on the floor with that bed coming towards you, I knew it was my fault. You woke up again without me there after I swore I’d never leave your side and the world tried to take you away because of it. You came back from the brink and there was no room for mistakes, yet I made them anyway. And I keep making them. Pushing you out of bed, making you think I dreamt of Natasha and not being attentive this week...” He sighed and buried his head in the aching crook of my neck. “I can’t leave when I’m just so lucky to have you. Every time I screw up, it feels like I’m asking you to cheat death again by asking for forgiveness. As long as you keep giving me chances, I’m going to be here to take them. And one day, I’ll get it right. I hope that’s today. I just want to make you happy.”
How was it that we could be so similar? Both of us wanted nothing but joy for the other but both of us felt like we’d committed an unforgivable ill that made us undeserving of the chance to bring it for them. Even when completely different, our motivations were exactly the same and we clung to each other desperately because we felt like we had nothing else. In the unhealthiest of ways, our relationship was ideal. Our wants and needs were the same and synchronised. When I’d been told that we shared a mutual co-dependency, it hadn’t been entirely wrong. But if that made Blaze happy, that was fine.
Because God knows I couldn’t bear to leave him when I’d been blessed with an unmerited chance, either.
Our relationship felt like it had resumed it’s pre-Natasha stride after we spent the rest of the day having a cosy reconnection session. I gave his soup a second try and let him pick our evening meal; he let me choose the television channels and sent someone out for the snacks I craved.
To be told by the nurse who arrived to remove my stitches that all my injuries were healing well was a relief. In fact, she’d praised me gratuitously for plodding on down the road of recovery when many others would have relished the excuse to lay idle in bed. Getting up and about quickly had actually given me the best chance of getting completely back to normal someday soon. I’d done myself the world of good.
Blaze pretended not to hear the compliments, I suspected it was so he didn’t have to admit that he’d played no part in my physical rehabilitation. He’d no less than dissuaded my stubbornness, actively seeking to keep me bed bound. After reading his letter, part of me wondered if he’d purposely wanted me to remain incapacitated so I couldn’t leave him if I’d wanted to—if he wanted me to have no choice but to stay and be loved.
He also didn’t return to our bed that night, preferring to stay in the other room. As disappointed as I was, I suppose I understood it. My previous tumble had scared him. Every aspect of us was more fragile than it had once been and it would take time to rebuild. Time was something we had plenty of. We each had our reasons to hold on to the other and it would take a miracle to make us loosen our grips...
Or maybe just one secret I felt horrible for keeping when he’d been so honest with me.
I knew I should tell him what I’d done but the words wouldn’t come. Not even knowing that he was glad Natasha had died made it any easier to admit that I was the one who’d granted him that freedom. For the first time in years, he was his own man. Telling him the truth about that night and forcing him to keep it a secret would be a whole new prison I’d impose, if he didn’t immediately turn me in. It would have been cruel of me to do that to him when he finally seemed... Happy.
Blaze found great joy in showing me all the wedding arrangements he’d already made. With his wealth of connections, it looked like our mid-April nuptials would be the wedding of the century. Just as I’d fantasised, he planned to wear an ivory waistcoat with a red cravatte, fitting with a generally bold theme of cream undertones with lavish splashes of crimson.
But that wasn’t my fantasy anymore. The redness reminded me of the blood I’d spilled on an otherwise pure and perfect thing. It spoiled the serenity, creating a lingering hostility I’d feel on the day. Every red rose in a button hole I’d see as a drop of blood that had flown and hit my family and friends, marking them as evil for playing a part in something totally corrupt. All he needed was to add some black candles and lilies, and it would be a wedding fitting for the residing bride of the Anti-Christ.
He caught me looking at flights to Europe the next morning
and mistook my travel interests as honeymoon shopping. In truth, I was looking for a way out. I wasn’t sure I could maintain the charade of being an excited bride-to-be much longer, keeping my mouth shut while he planned a day I hated every bit of. Henry had villas and chalets all over the place. All I had to do was pick one and hide, maybe acquire a secret identity, coloured contact lenses and an offshore bank account...
“Pretty sure the honeymoon counts as wedding planning.” Blaze lifted my laptop away from me and closed it down, pulling out his own tablet to check his emails. “And it’s already booked. Shouldn’t you be getting ready for your meeting?”
His sudden eagerness for me to work and sudden cessation of coddling made me suspicious. Scowling, I took an unhurried walk back to the master bedroom and found myself confronted with the reason why he was being so pleasant and amenable.
Bridal magazines in their dozens were strewn across the bed, the articles covering everything from dresses to hosiery, hairstyles to seasonably acceptable make-up choices. I gave them a contemptible scoff and walked straight past them into the bathroom, just to find myself surrounded by reminders that were much more difficult to avoid.
Every flat surface had a cleverly displayed quote about the persistence of love and fleetingness of time. Even the leftover steam on shower screen was artfully disturbed with a line from Romeo and Juliet. On the mirrored medicine cabinet that, of course, didn’t hold my prescriptions bottles, Blaze had stuck the torn out page from a year planner, circled the date of our wedding and written, ‘Seven weeks, cupcake. Time’s a-tickin’.’
“Okay, I get it,” I called through to him. “You want me to shop for something. Can’t imagine what.” He didn’t respond, which I took as an admission of him knowing he’d gone a little overboard.
He did, however, win back a few Brownie points by laying me out the perfect outfit for my meeting. The blazer was a gorgeous sheer black with cut off sleeves that made no effort to hide my wrists, and the t-shirt he’d chosen was my age-old Green Day Basket Case skinny. Full marks for satire and it made a shameless statement; I’d hit a bump in the road of life and I wasn’t ashamed of it. If only that had been true.
Dressing for the day helped to dull the annoyance further. For the first time since I’d been wheeled out of Natasha’s house on a stretcher, I’d be setting foot outside. I was nervous, almost excited to see if the world had changed as much as it felt to me or if the smog was as dense and dysphoric as ever. How much would being given a new lease of life change my perception—how different would I feel stepping foot on the streets of London as a murderer? Maybe it would be no different at all. Maybe I wouldn’t be able to stand going outside ever again. Stepping out into the wider expanses of a life I shouldn’t be allowed felt dangerous and risky. I was almost invigorated.
I took that exuberance with me to Blaze, hoping it would make what I knew would be a stupid conversation a little less unbearable. It wasn’t like finding a wedding dress was going to be hard. Long. Floaty. White—or a close alternative. I could get it done in an afternoon.
Taking the seat next to him, I sat quietly and challenged him to follow up his publication abomination with a raised eyebrow, nothing more. When he just smiled and refused to speak, I goaded him with, “So... Seven weeks, huh?”
“Yup. Seven weeks of intense planning.”
“And all I have to do is find a dress.” Smirking to myself, I took my laptop back from the cushion next to him where he’d stowed it. “Give me seven minutes.”
In two, I had a few hundred eBay listings up in front of me and honestly, some of them weren’t half bad. All I needed to do was send my measurements off to some strange little man hiding in the deepest reaches of Hong Kong and bingo! A dress in four to six weeks. “Got a tape measure?”
“You are joking?” Tutting, Blaze handed me his tablet. It was almost too weird that he had the contact information for a seamstress stored. “You can’t buy a generic dress, Emmeline. You’re the daughter of Henry Tudor; women will want to lust after your dress and have a cheap copy of it for their own weddings. Magazines will want exclusive photographs—designers will be queuing up to make it for you once your mother leaks the news. You’re supposed to have the unobtainable. The wedding of the year calls for the dress of the century.”
“Magazines, designers—what? It sounds suspiciously like our small, intimate wedding is becoming a media circus.”
“With a dad and fiancé like yours, that’s the way the coin drops, cupcake.”
Jesus Christ. Like it wasn’t bad enough we’d be putting up rockstars, there would be a receiving line of reporters crowding up the back of Connie’s garden. So many people crowded into one place at the most perfect moment for my secret to be revealed...
“But that’s not what I want.”
With a quick, sharp exhale, Blaze took his tablet from me and rested it on the arm of the couch next to me. With all the patience of a saint, he shuffled around to face me and took my hand. “What do you want?”
No wedding. None of the fuss at all. I wanted the past couple of weeks to be erased from my life, maybe kicking off again from the point where we were walking back through the arrival lounge in Heathrow after an awesome trip in New York.
“Just you, Blaze. You, our nearest and dearest, and if you must insist on marrying me, a registrar at sunset in your mother’s garden like we planned.”
He was quiet for a minute, and then looked vaguely disheartened when he murmured, “You want to get married in secret.”
“I want to get married in private, Blaze. Without a bunch of people I don’t know and smiles that aren’t genuine. I want it to be normal, not some big charade of happiness I won’t necessarily feel.” That sounded completely selfish and like I wasn’t happy to be with him, so I added, “And unless you’re asking Esme to wear a mask all day, the media can’t be there.”
Blaze winced and scrunched his eyes up like he was in pain. “Esme...” Clearly, he’d forgotten that my best friend’s anonymity was a sticking point in her life. After running away from home as a teenager, she’d found success as a faceless voice actress and had turned down acting work to protect herself. Nobody even knew if Esme was her real name. One picture was all it would take to bring her abusive mother to London looking for a payout.
“Things are hard enough between us without me telling her she has to hide at the ceremony, Blaze.”
“I know, I know.” He scrubbed a hand over his face and gave my fingers a squeeze. “I got caught up in the idea of having the wedding I couldn’t before with a woman I actually love, and forgot. I’m sorry. Of course we can’t ask her to be uncomfortable or not attend, she’s like family. No media, no fuss, I promise. I should call Chase and let see if they’ll still come without incentive of publicity.”
“They agreed to play?” I felt horrible. They were mid-tour and had to have done some serious negotiating to carve out time for us. All that wasted effort because I wanted a quiet affair...
And it was Blaze’s day, too. I really had to force myself to remember that when I was so close to getting my own way. For whatever crazy reason, he really wanted this and he’d bend to any demand. But what kind of precedent did that set for our marriage? I didn’t want to manipulate and dictate like Natasha had. I wanted him to be happy.
“I think they’d be wasted on a bridal march anyway. They’d get a lot more at the reception.”
Blaze’s eyes slowly moved up from my fingers to my face. He had that look about him—the same one I’d had when he was down on one knee in front of me. “Is it... safe to get excited right now?”
“Well, I’m saying I guess it’s okay if you want to make the gazebo a circus tent and go nuts after the meal. Esme can wear a wig. I’ll get drunk enough to tolerate cameras in my face—”
“I love you.” With no preamble or consideration, he flew at me and knocked me on my back across the couch. I loved him, too, when he was kind and lenient, romantic or philosophical, but most of all w
hen his sensibilities were rendered redundant by passion. He’d always been weak for me that way, throwing caution to the wind. He continually took chances on me that nobody else did. It was only fair that he got something good back from me.
“Take me now or lose me forever, Valentine.”
His eyes glowed with the heat of lost control. “You asked for it.”
I stepped out of the shower and caught sight of myself in the foggy mirror. My gaze lingered briefly over the cluster of love bites over my collar bone before snapping down to the floor in a daze.
Something Blaze and I had always done so well had changed in a way I couldn’t stand. After a week without it, the sex had been awkward, like two teenagers fumbling and fondling underneath their school uniforms, determined to make the most of a precious half an hour of privacy before the parents returned home. I doubted that clumsy rush had anything to do with our time constraints.
He had to have felt it. There was no way Blaze couldn’t have felt what I did—that desperation to give a deeper meaning to physicality. To start off with, we used carnal attraction to mask the scary, forbidden feelings we really held for each other. It felt like we’d just tried to prove to each other—and ourselves—that it was still the case now. Unsuccessfully, it seemed.
Not that I hadn’t rocked his world. He was a man—a few thrusts and he could lock down any surfeit of emotions to make space for his caveman instincts. I, however, cursed with a woman’s conscience, struggled to keep my mind on the task and stop thinking about what I was feeling from the neck up instead of focusing on what was going on from the waist down. Was I failing him by not being into it? Was he as hot for me as he’d once been after seeing me die four times? Would we ever be the same?