Blazed Trilogy

by Corri Lee

  Besides, who doesn’t love an excuse to get laid?

  If it had been up to me, we never would have left the dream house, but with our belongings still in the hotel and business for us both to take care of in London, we had no choice to go back.

  Eventually.

  I wanted to stay there for as long as possible until it was absolutely necessary to leave, totally caught up in the sense of being completely isolated with only Blaze for company. He was my world and I needed nobody else. I could have even stood to dump all my old belongings and buy them anew.

  Unfortunately, his endless stacks of comics and graphic novels were as much a part of him as his teeth, and he had meetings booked with notoriously hard to reach people that were probably too close to rearrange in not only a different town, but a different country. For the amount of concessions I’d made in the past, what was one more?

  We went back into the city to fetch in enough groceries to last the four days we’d have before his meeting with his director. While out, we were photographed. That didn’t phase me; cameras had been shoved in my face since youth and it was an occupational hazard of being with Blaze. But this time would lead to a confusing gossip story speculating over the reason why we’d be in Wales when we had a wedding to plan.

  Some thought we were eloping. Mostly, with my adolescent struggles a matter of public record, they assumed that I was back under psychiatric care.

  All I could think about was how my mother would freak out. Blaze didn’t want her to get excited over the prospect of us moving closer to the Tudor family home again before I’d found out about the place—he’d admitted as much—and he knew that she wouldn’t be able to resist dropping blunt hints I’d twig onto and decide I wasn’t going to move before I’d even seen it. I was just that kind of person. Ivy would latch onto the eloping theory before she really considered that there was a better explanation and I’d end up with a hysterical mother on the phone.

  “She thinks we should have an engagement party,” I told Blaze between bites of breakfast the next morning. “She seems to think it’ll stop the press pitching a fit over not getting access to the ceremony.”

  “She’s got a point, I guess. They need their romance fix and if they’re being deprived, they’re going to look for news in other places we don’t want them seeing—some of them not so romantic.”

  Precisely. I knew I wasn’t just over-thinking it. Somehow hearing him say it settled a niggle of uncertainty I hadn’t realised was there.

  “How is it that when you suggest it, it sounds completely reasonable and responsible, but my mum comes up with the idea and it just sounds like a publicity stunt?”

  “It’s a talent.” He grinned and took my plate to the sink. We’d eaten omelettes sat up on the breakfast bar—a very disrespectful way to eat in a disrespectfully fantastic house. “One of many hidden talents I plan to reveal slowly over the coming years.”

  Detecting the undertone of promise, I rocked forward and bit my lip. “Have you been holding out on me, stud?”

  “Of course. Have to save some skills for the honeymoon.”

  “I need a demo.” I dropped down to the chequered tile floor and tugged at the waistband of his low hanging torn jeans. Dishes would wait. I couldn’t. “You wouldn’t want me to be disappointed with the consummation, would you?”

  “I dunno. Am I destined for a life of having my inner clean-freak quashed by your demands for sexy time?”

  “If you’re good.”

  He could be so easily deterred. With no more coercion, he threw me over his shoulder and raced up to the second floor. If I’d known he’d take me to Connie’s for a surprise visit—one so unexpected she cried—an hour later, I might not have insisted he worked me over quite as enthusiastically as he did. There again, there’s a good chance that I still wouldn’t have cared.

  Everything in my life at that point was completely fucking perfect. I should have known then that it wouldn’t last.

  “Emmeline! Jesus, shit, Emmeline; wake up!”

  My eyes didn’t open, even when I felt cold ceramic at my knees. Reaching out for stability, I opened my mouth and threw up noisily, knowing Blaze had set me down in front of the toilet.

  We’d been back in London for just over two weeks and since the first night back in the hotel suite, my nightmares had returned. It was almost the same dream I’d had about killing Natasha, but I’d lift the pillow to see I’d suffocated Blaze.

  It came every night. My fear of it snowballed. Knowing it would come when I fell asleep made it difficult to drift off and when I could, it got harder to see it. Replaying the initial parts of creeping into her room brought back the memories of doing it and I was becoming more and more convinced that it hadn’t been the overdose that had killed her. Getting away with murder didn’t mean I wasn’t going to pay the price.

  My subconscious was screaming at me that I’d killed a piece of Blaze and inflicted the punishments it saw fit. The clusters of bruises—ugly bright red bruises where the vessels had ruptured—caused by pinching, scratching or biting myself while I slept was starting to get embarrassing. With the wedding inching ever closer—only four weeks away—I was genuinely concerned that they wouldn’t fade in time. The dress I’d designed while Blaze napped away a lazy afternoon in Cardiff exposed my arms and the majority of the damage was on my biceps. I was ruining everything.

  It didn’t help that I’d developed a nasty bout of stomach flu. For ten days, I’d barely been able to keep down water and had been running a fever so high, I spent much of the day incoherent and the rest of it passed out and delirious. Blaze told me of the silly things I’d said while half-conscious and most of them made me laugh. Sadly, laughing made me throw up. I was a real mess.

  “I’m worried about you.” He rubbed his hand rhythmically up and down my back. Blaze was naturally a hot-blooded man and that showed in his human-radiator-like qualities, but his touch was so chilling it made me ache. “These nightmares are getting out of hand and you’re losing so much weight. I’ve a right mind to have you hospitalised but I don’t want to be away from you. I don’t know what to do.”

  Drained and feeling disgusting, I flushed the toilet and leaned my head on my knees. “I thought you doctors knew everything.”

  “I’m a doctor of the skies, cupcake. And like many cosmetologists, I may want to see a dying star up close, but I’d prefer that star to not be you.”

  “I’m not a star.”

  “Science would disagree. You’re made of a lot of the same stuff. Billions of atoms of—”

  “Hot air, yeah. Carry on.”

  “Jeez. You’re as unique and you shine as brightly—”

  “And I’ll shine at my brightest when I’m about to burn out completely. Keep going.”

  “Emmeline. Honestly. How’s a guy supposed to deliver a compliment around here when you keep burning down the courier depot?”

  He was right. I looked like shit and he didn’t have to be nice to me, so it wasn’t fair to make it overly difficult for him. It wasn’t his fault that I was ill and crazy. He was the best thing I had in the world so it was ridiculous to be pushing him away.

  “I want to go home,” I complained. “Back to Cardiff. I don’t feel like I can relax here anymore.”

  “I know but we’ve had this conversation.” My head jolted up, sending pain shooting through my temples and neck. As much as I scoured my mind, I couldn’t recall having spoken about leaving London. Blaze at least had the patience to explain it again. “Once we’re married, you’re not going to be seeing much of anyone for a long time. There’ll be the honeymoon and then we’ll be preparing for Chicago. When we come back, neither of us are likely to want to keep travelling back and forth. You should use the next few weeks to bid your friends a deserving farewell.”

  I wanted to argue that my friends would come to visit but realistically, only Daniel and Jonathan would. Esme hadn’t spoken to me since my verbal throw down in the hospital and Chris had been a
round but not particularly verbose. Heartbreaking as it was, I was forced to admit that my friends would likely abandon me when it became too much effort to keep the lines of communication open.

  “Plus there’s no way we’d get you back when you’re like this. The drive would make you too sick.”

  “You’re right.” Shivering, I battled to my feet to limp back to bed. Fevers were the symptom I hated most of illness, rivalled only by a runny nose. I felt like all the heat had left my body and I wanted it back. I was so fucking cold.

  Blaze helped me into bed and crawled in behind me, wrapping his arms and legs around me until the tremors started to subside. The kisses he peppered across my neck were by no means a cure, but they seduced me into drowsiness.

  “I’m calling Dr. Downes in the morning. See if she can’t make some sense of why you’ve been sick for so long.”

  “She’s a shrink,” I mumbled, not that I cared. He could call an exorcist if it stopped me throwing up.

  “Psychiatric specialist,” he qualified. “She still has the know-how and you’re still her patient right now. She gave me permission to call any time.”

  “Seems like a good reason to go back to Cardiff.”

  “Nice try.” Blaze arched over me to kiss my nose and rested his cheek against mine. Every cell of me strained towards him wanting to kiss him but, limp and weak, my body wouldn’t move. From one extreme to the other, I felt my skin getting uncomfortably hot and clammy everywhere he touched me. Rebelling. Repelling. “Sleep, beautiful. The world will wait and your dreams can’t hurt you. I’m here to make sure of it.”

  Strangely soothed by his words, I gave in to the drowsiness until I felt feather-light. If Blaze kept me anchored I’d be okay, because he could ward off the phantoms that formed from what I’d done.

  I had done it. I’d killed her. I was so sure of it—maybe ninety-nine percent. I only needed a little nudge for the full one hundred...

  Murderer.

  With a gasp so sudden and sharp it made my teeth ache, I sat up bolt upright in bed and searched the room for whoever had spoken. It had sounded so close and so familiar; who knew about Natasha? Where were they hiding?

  Why are you still alive, murderer?

  “No...” Heartbroken, I paced to the bathroom to wash my face in the hope that it would clear away the remnants of a bad dream. I really wanted to believe that voice was a dream.

  The fact I felt considerably better bypassed me completely, as did the dressing on the back of my hand. I was desperate not to be that mental chick who heard voices again, particularly when it was my worst critic.

  Too bad. You look really fat in those pyjamas.

  I’d give her that. They were ages old, faded and tight around the waist. A skeleton would have looked chubby in them.

  A skeleton wouldn’t have that ungodly overhang you’re sporting. Been trying to disgust Blaze to death, have you?

  I just didn’t understand. There was no need for her to be back. Why now, so close to my wedding day was this happening to me? It made no sense and it wasn’t fair—it wasn’t like I was pathologically adverse to being finally happy. Being ill had sucked but my head was straight enough. I knew what I wanted, knew what mistakes I’d made and what I’d have to live with. There were no uncertainties or anxieties. I was okay with it, I thought.

  Okay? With being a filthy murderer? That’s more abhorrent than the fact you did it.

  Why are you back?

  I never left.

  But you stopped talking.

  No. You stopped hearing. You’re already a fat, ugly murderer. Don’t be an imbecile, too.

  Stopped hearing? God, if only it was that simple. I’d spent endless days wishing I could drown her out, hating that she knew how to get to me. She was a stronger force within me I couldn’t fend off and I’d always buckle to her pressures. Her will was more passionate, thriving on the massively self-depreciating side of me. She made vacuous little snipes I took to heart but at the same time, she could be my only real friend.

  Fat Emmy was poison in my veins and no amount of my sister’s blood would flush her out. The only thing that ever had was—

  “Oh my God.”

  Figured it out, have you?

  He’d been drugging me. In charge of my care and medication, Blaze must have been slipping me anti-psychotics without me knowing it. After all my body had been through, I neither knew or really cared what was in the cocktail of drugs he gave me after breakfast every morning and ultimately I didn’t mind that he’d been giving me dopamine-inhibiting tablets. It was the fact I didn’t know and I thought I’d gotten past that stage of my life...

  Pissed off, I stormed through to the lounge and found him sitting there, irritatingly gorgeous, and looking like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. Wearing only Batman lounge pants, he had newspapers spread out across the coffee table, which wasn’t like my technophile at all. It was hard to stay angry when I realised he was cutting out articles about us for a scrapbook.

  “Hey!” He dragged his eyes up from one of our wedding announcements and rested his chin on his palm. “Don’t you look better? Just in time, too. Busy day today.”

  Something about the way he said that made me check the time and date on my phone. My last conscious memory had been from the early hours of Wednesday morning. Now, it was almost Friday lunchtime. “Have I been unconscious for two days?”

  “You’ve been conscious for some of it.” Pushing up from the floor, Blaze made a slow pace to the kitchenette and started rattling cupboards and crockery. He’d done a good job of keeping all my pills hidden ‘just in case’ but I swore I heard the telltale clattering of pharmacy bottles. So my stash was in there...

  Do it. Find them. Do the job properly this time.

  “But you’ve not really been sentient. How are you feeling now?”

  Lied to. Betrayed. “Better, I guess. Has Dr. Downes been here?”

  Blaze came back in with a mug of steaming soup and reached for a hand I wasn’t completely happy to surrender. His thumb skimmed over the tender skin underneath the dressing, making me acknowledge it for the first time. “She sent a nurse. You’ve been on intravenous antibiotics, just to get them into you. You’ll take the rest of the course as tablets. They wanted to sedate you but I wouldn’t let them.”

  “Wh—” I cut myself off quickly. I knew why he didn’t want me sedated. It was like tempting fate to put me in the same state Natasha had been when she died—or at least how he thought she’d died. The memory was too close to home for him. Fair enough, there really wasn’t any way to argue with it. It was just a shame he couldn’t have been a little more considerate of my feelings when he decided which drugs I was or wasn’t allowed to take.

  “What’s wrong?” Ever-sensitive to my mood, Blaze dipped to catch my eye. I didn’t want to look at him. Couldn’t. I’d forgive him. “Emmeline?”

  “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “No? Why don’t you just drug the truth out of me? That seems to be your forte at the moment.”

  He sighed softly and dropped down into the seat behind him, pulling me down with him to sit in his lap. Despite his best attempts, I didn’t give in to the desire to curl up against him, just sat there stiff and resilient and defensive. He wasn’t going to understand. I knew that much. He’d defend his actions and there’d be no convincing him that he’d been wrong. He was as stubborn as a mule.

  “You figured it out. More than a week of not being able to keep anything down, I suppose it was going to happen. Are you okay?”

  “She’s back.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the last five words I ever imagined I’d be hearing.

  “You can deal with her.”

  I had to turn to stare at him to be convinced I hadn’t heard wrong—that she hadn’t become a ventriloquist as well as a hypocrite. Why the fuck was it okay with him to control my life this way?

  “You can sneak me drugs to get rid
of her but now she’s back you’re going to hold out on me?”

  Blaze cocked his head. “Are you not mad because I gave you the pills without telling you?”

  “Yes.”

  “But now you’re mad because I won’t give you them to you even though you’d probably refuse to take them anyway?”

  “I—...” Shit. Would I really have refused them?

  You know you would have. Don’t you remember the last time? You need me.

  She was sort of right again. The last time I’d shut her out, I’d ended up in a relationship with Calloway Ryan, one of America’s most notorious narcissists. Without her warnings, I’d put myself in a potentially dangerous situation, who was to say that it wouldn’t happen again?

  There again, she’d made me a murderer.

  Blame me all you want. You wanted to kill her.

  No, I didn’t.

  You did. You craved it—lusted for it. You’re so selfish, nothing would ever come between you and happiness. You’d do it again. You’ve thought as much yourself. No regrets.

  I do. I regret it.

  Really? But isn’t life better now? You have Blaze, you can marry him and you got away with it. You made life better.

  Did I?