by Corri Lee
How had I never figured out from all those phone calls that he was in love with me?
“Never mind all that, anyway. It’s fucking good to see you. How long are you sticking around?”
I did a quick mental check and winced. “I have to be back in six days at the absolute most. I have a wedding to attend.”
“No kidding.” His brow rose. “Whose?”
“Ah...” Awkward... “That would be mine.”
Hunter gave me the all knowing look he’d been able to use to see right through me for years. He knew the implications of me hiding away in another country less than a week before my wedding, and knew exactly what he thought I was thinking. But to be sure, he asked me—
“When did it all go wrong?”
“About seven weeks ago when his wife died and I tried to kill myself on the same night.”
“Righto,” he muttered brightly. “I’d best open a tab.”
We spent several hours catching up on what Hunter had been doing since his late January marriage disaster. It turned out that he’d done as little as me, preferring to wallow rather than use the opportunity for self-improvement and making amends. He’d been living in the villa’s beach house for nine-nearly ten weeks, so must have come overseas almost as soon as he’d set foot on British soil.
He’d tried to talk to Siobhan but she’d been ignoring his calls since the wedding day. Hunter had been basically alone apart from the townspeople and, consequentially, had been forcibly given a lot of time to think.
Even though he didn’t say it, I could tell that he was secretly wishing I’d say we could just run off into the sunset together. And it would have been such a simple thing to do. He was still gorgeous even when he was a little rough around the edges, still infectiously cheerful once I coaxed it out of him. We could abscond to somewhere far away and nobody would ever find us. Natasha, Fat Emmy—they could have become negligible memories.
“So, let’s address the big pink elephant, shall we? How’s Blaze?” Trust Hunter Rosen to bring up the one thing that ever had and always would be the only obstacle between us.
“He’s... We’re...” I sighed, wishing I didn’t have to talk about it. “I really don’t know. I admit, I’ve been obsessed with my own feelings and I’ve tried so hard to put him first in everything I do, but I... I don’t even know what’s on his mind. Attempted suicide, public palavers with Esme, passing out in The Roses after making a scene—I threw a paperweight at him, for fuck’s sake. I don’t know if he even wants me to go back.”
“Tried talking to him?” I shot Hunter a look that said everything. Of course I hadn’t, because sensible, logical ideas like that just weren’t my thing. He rolled his eyes at me, opened his mouth to speak, and then quickly shut it. “... This is none of my business. I have no right to offer my thoughts.”
“Oh no, Hunter. By all means, use your total lack of expertise and knowledge in the area to assess my relationship.”
“I hear your sarcasm and raise you an honest opinion, Emmeline.” He gripped my fingers and squeezed them. “You’re too hard on yourself. You’re not a bad person, so you don’t deserve a bad life. Stop thinking you do.”
Oh, God, if only he’d known... “What if I am a bad person?” Hunter shook his head, laughing softly. “What if I’d, like, killed someone?”
“Be serious, Emmeline.”
“I am!”
“Okay...” He leaned back from me and stroked his chin in contemplation. “You know what? I don’t think I’d care. Hell, I’d probably help you hide the body.”
“Don’t patronise me.” He couldn’t offer acceptance on a hypothetical whim if it wasn’t what he’d really do. It was cruel.
“Who’s patronising you? I’m not. I know you’d never maliciously harm someone, but if you did, I’d back your corner.”
I studied him, trying to remember the last time he’d said something as nice to me. In retrospect, he’d only ever been there for me, trying to keep me level. I’d just always misconstrued his words and actions as demeaning and disrespectful.
Now there he was, saying all the same things but in a way that didn’t seem hostile. The conversations I’d spent many years wanting to have with him were happening. He was the Hunter I’d met at my mother’s dinner party, the same thirteen year old boy she swore my soul should mate with.
And he loved me.
“I’m starting to remember why I fell for you.”
Hunter stared at me for a second, blatantly deep in the throes of an emotional dilemma. “You think you should maybe stop thinking about the descent and instead remember what cushioned the landing?”
Blaze... “I haven’t forgotten about him. Of course I haven’t.” How could I? He’d been a bigger influence on me than my own parents. He’d changed a lot about my life for the better and I truly, deeply loved him. “I just... We’re supposed to be on the same page. I know how this story goes; I wrote the fucking book. It shouldn’t be this hard.”
“It’s as hard as you make it, kid. And right now, it seems like you’ve got it iron clad and encased in a steel cage. Let go.”
Said by a complete martyr, naturally. He hadn’t ‘let go’ enough to fix one of his own fuck ups. I couldn’t blame him; he’d always been golden boy and any mistake could be turned around if his mother, Helen, threw enough money at it. There was no quick fix this time and he hadn’t put in any of the legwork.
“You make that sound really easy for a guy who lost everything he held dear.”
“Oh, Emmeline, Emmeline, Emmeline...” Raising a finger, Hunter paused to take a sip of luke warm coffee. He loved drama and suspense before he said something relevant and profound. “The ironic thing about having to let go of something like that is, quite often, it was never yours to hold in the first place.”
Oh, well done. That was arguably the smartest thing he’d ever said to me. Odd, since I’d always rated him on his intelligence. “You got wise, Hunter.”
“Yeah. That tends to happen when you lose everything you hold dear.”
“But you just... Right. That was a joke. A joke I didn’t get because I have no sense of humour.”
More hours of idle chit-chat passed between us. As soon as it hit dinner time, we hit the spirits and the quality of conversation started to get stupid.
Somewhere along the way, a tourist recognised me as the iconic miracle woman who’d gotten the fabulous Blaze to settle down, and there was a town-wide toast in my honour, it felt like. It was the best night out I’d had since he’d taken me to The Roses—a renovated theatre he’d had no idea I owned—and introduced me to his former band mates of the British rock group, Monday’s Miracle.
And I was sharing it with a man who should have been permanently removed from my life; a man who’d caused me endless heartbreak for nine years; a man who’d ruined his life over a confession he’d left too late to make.
A man I’d wished I could have these spectacular nights with, and a man who looked like he was having the time of his life.
The life I’d wanted more than love itself was being handed to me, finally, but in the worse possible way. Worse yet, I actually started to think it would be better off this way. I could stay and have live out my teenage romantic fantasy in the sun or go back and be with someone who was really good for me, bogged down by a massive secret. What was massive guilt and doubt compared to constant fear and over-compensating, really?
As the night faded into a fuzzy drunken blur, I found myself thinking less about the people I’d left behind, and more about the strangers who seemed like lifelong friends. Friendships and relationships were fleeting; I need only look at all the break-ups and arguments that happened around me that night to be sure of that. And if it was all just sand in the wind, there one minute and gone the next, maybe it was my time to leave London for good and put down more solid roots elsewhere. I had everything I needed...
The next morning, the sun felt hotter and harsher than the days before. The heat was so extreme it
made my head ache, skin burning under the intense light.
A moment too long of that made me shoot up from bed and rub away the sunspots, before looking around at my surroundings.
Not the villa. I was acutely aware of being in a place much smaller in size, far more cramped. Sure enough, I saw the stacked up boxes and organised chaos of someone who’d been living out of suitcases for a while. Parts of the room looked lived in, the rest of it sterile and spotless. Clusters of life were everywhere, not all of them entirely healthy.
“Morning sleepy-head.”
The familiar voice from behind me was a shock, propelling my shoulders up to my ears. It took a few seconds to piece together the very few jagged fragments of memory from the night before; we’d done tequila slammers, danced on the beach, gone late night swimming...
Oh. I vaguely remembered things getting kind of deep and meaningful, and shortly afterwards, we were drinking in the beach house. It didn’t take an idiot to figure out we’d slept in the same bed. But...
“We didn’t... Did we?” Cringing, I turned to look at Hunter and saw the topless bastard grinning.
“Didn’t what, Emmeline?”
“You know what, Rosen. That thing you’ve only done with one woman, and didn’t do until you were seventeen.”
He paused thoughtfully. “... Acid?”
“No, not— ... Wait, what? No, I mean...” Acid? Really? “At any point, did you put your penis in any part of my body?”
“Bloody hell.” Still grinning, Hunter sat up against the headboard and hugged his knees. “You and Blaze must have some freaky pillow talk going on. Who said romance was dead?”
“Hunter! I’m supposed to be getting married in five days!”
“Nothing happened, Emmeline. And that look of relief on your face right now—that’s why.”
I hadn’t even been aware of the tremendous sigh leaving my lungs or my shoulders falling lax. God, if ever we’d, you know. Gotten intimate. How would I ever go back to Blaze and look him in the eye knowing I’d been unfaithful, let alone with Hunter?
“Seriously, you could look a little less happy about not having sex with me.”
“It’s a complication I don’t need given current circumstances.” I quickly turned around and stuck my bottom lip out. “No offence.”
“None taken,” Hunter laughed. “Even if you’d been in a fit state, you cock-blocked yourself by telling everyone you’re getting married in a few days and talking about your fiancé non-stop.”
“Wow.” Was I always so insensitive when I was drunk? Jesus, if I was, that made me an even worse human being. “I’m really sorry for being so inconsiderate.”
“It’s cool. It was nice to see you like your old self, before the anorexia and schizophrenia.”
“Schizophrenoform disorder.”
He cocked his head. “Seriously?”
“What?”
Rolling his eyes, Hunter unfolded his legs and shuffled across the bed closer to me. It was then I noticed his weight loss rather than gain, and his sad, reddened eyes. He was in a bad way, and no amount of alcohol would help that. “Never mind. Anyway, your drunken ramblings made me realise something.”
“That I’m a retard?”
“Yeah, but not just that. It made me realise that I actually really love Siobhan.” He gave a helpless little shrug. “Not the same way I love you, but you don’t spend that much time with someone and sleep next to them every night without developing some kind of emotional bond. It feels like part of me is missing.”
“Yeah, your vagina.” I joked but I felt for the guy. He’d spent years with Siobhan, giving up a whole life and jumping countries, always hoping to stop loving me and never realising how much love had grown between them. Given the tiresome time I’d spent mooning over him, I could relate entirely.
“Emmeline.” Taking me completely by surprise, Hunter grabbed me by the waist and hauled me over into his lap. Immediately, it struck me how different it felt from the times Blaze had done the same thing—how foreign and unwelcome it was. Being that close felt wrong, too intimate and frankly awkward. “I don’t understand why you seem to repel happiness. I never have. But I know that you love Blaze and that you should be with him. You’ve never seen the way light up every time you hear his name. Considering all you’ve already been through, don’t you think you can survive anything together?”
“Sometimes ‘anything’ can be ugly, Hunter. There are things even I couldn’t forgive.”
“You don’t give him enough credit. He stood there while another man announced his feelings for his girlfriend, who’d loved him back in secret for the longest time. It takes a special kind of guy to jump in and defend a woman’s honour in that situation without seeing her reaction first.”
Now he mentioned it; no, Blaze hadn’t checked to see my reaction before he jumped up, all alpha male like. “I don’t think he even thought about it.”
“No, probably not. Because he was that secure and had that much faith in you and your relationship, whether he was aware of it or not. It would have been so much easier for him to just step back, watch his world fall apart, and let you run off into the Japanese hills with me. But he knew that your happiness laid with him, and he wasn’t wrong.”
I smiled crookedly. “A piece of you died admitting that, didn’t it?”
Hunter squeezed me like a cobra and planted a firm kiss on my forehead. “Like you wouldn’t believe. But I had my chance and I blew it. Retrospect is a bitch.”
It was a good job his phone rang because I didn’t think I had anything else to say. We both loved other people, and we’d both contributed to the rift that pushed us apart. And that was that.
I didn’t like to eavesdrop, so I wandered through the messy beach house to find the kitchen. It looked as though most of the one storey hut was untouched, as though Hunter had been staying in one room. I knew that I’d not unpacked anything in the suit because I knew it was only a temporary home. Maybe Hunter had been sitting on a little more hope than he realised—I hoped there were no scars to match.
The skies outside were a bright blue, as always, the spread broken only by the small, moving dots of aeroplanes. Looking up at it through the windows of an overheated shack, it wasn’t half as inspiring or soothing. In fact, the stuffiness and stifling heat sucked all the joy out of such a merry vista. Henry Tudor had a cruel side, it seemed. No big revelation there, then.
“That was Siobhan.” Hunter walked in close behind me and headed straight for the fridge. The first thing he pulled out was a can of lager, followed by a suspiciously crusty looking sandwich. I wasn’t exactly filled with optimism for that phone call.
“Oh?”
“Three damn months I’ve been waiting for that call.”
“And...?”
Hunter spun on the spot, stared at me, and fluidly threw the lager and sandwich in a nearby bin. “She’s pregnant.”
“Oh.” Ye gods, a mini version of her... “It is yours?”
He promptly swept up a damp cloth and threw it at me. “Fuck you. Yes, it’s mine!”
“Then, congratulations! I think. Is it?”
“She wants me to go there to talk. Today.” Nodding, I made my way to the coffee machine and set it to work. Nobody wanted to fly on a hangover and he was going to need all his wits about him.
Hunter Rosen. A father. Jesus Christ, the mind really boggled but man, it was huge news for him.
“I hate that you look so scared to be happy about it.” The Hunter I thought I knew would have been jumping around, calling everyone he knew. I’d have slammed the phone down on him and sulked for days over it.
“I just need to know I’ll be a part of it first.” Hunter collapsed into a chair and held his head in his hands. He looked utterly heartbroken when he should have been elated, yet I felt completely detached from all his anguish. What was wrong with me? “What if she wants to talk court cases, custody and restraining orders?”
“Then you fight. Don’t be the
man your father was and let your child’s life pass you by. You do whatever you have to, to fight for what you want, even if you have to play dirty.”
“Will you?” As fast as he’d sat, Hunter jumped to his feet and gripped my arms above the elbows. Unshed tears glittered in his eyes, the overwhelming frustration of an uncertain future manifesting in the vein protruding from his temper. The only time I’d seen desperation like it was when Blaze had nightmares. “Will you fight for what you believe in, even if it kills you?”
Yes, I’d fight. And as for killing me, it would undoubtedly try.
“Hi.”
“Hey, cupcake.”
“Everything okay? I called yesterday and your phone was off. I left a message.”
“Oh, yeah. Sorry. It slipped my mind. Plus you called at like, four in the morning here.”
“I did? Man, I suck with time zones. But everything’s okay?”
“I’d be lying if I said your mother isn’t an irritating wreck but... I was moving everything out of the hotel yesterday and setting up rooms in the house for everyone. Chris, Esme, Daniel and Jonathan are camping in with me—extra hands for finalising everything, you know.”
“... I’m glad you’re still doing wedding stuff.”
“You said you’d be back in time and I trust you. It’s hard work, is all... Hard work made so much worse by uncertainty. You are coming back, aren’t you?”
“Blaze...”
“I have to believe that you’re coming back. Do you understand that? I have to believe that at this time in five days, we’re both going to be wearing wedding bands.”
“I made you a promise and I’ll stick to it. You’ll see me before you even know it. You’ll just walk into a room and be like, ‘Shit! Emmeline?!’“
“Please don’t joke around about this.”
“Who’s joking around? Look... Where are you right now?”
“Home. Just about to have a quick shower before we all go out to dinner.”