by Chloe Liese
“Here, Elodie.”
I took it from him and fought tears. I’d been alone for weeks, run-down and spent. And now he was back, fussing over me once more, ensuring I lacked for nothing. Still, I didn’t know if that was for one last time tonight, or forever.
“Thank you, Lucas.”
He dropped onto the chaise. “Come here.”
I climbed on, nestled between his legs and set my head against his shoulder. Gin and tonic propped on his knee, he stared up at the sky. Could he see the stars? Perhaps only in memory. Night had forced the reality of blindness on Lucas for years now, as shadows swallowed moonbeams and flattened his world to a curtain of indecipherable dark.
“Orion.” He gestured with his glass in the general direction of a messy collection of stars. They were unrecognizable to me, because I’d only seen summer and fall’s constellations during our countless nights of stargazing. He’d dragged me out after dinner and set me between his legs on the chaise. My back to his front, the heat and desire of his body evident behind me, as he made me wait hours for him, and tortured me with esoteric myths, comical renderings of their stories.
“Orion the Hunter?” I asked. “What’s his story?”
Lucas smiled. “Well, as Hesiod tells it, Orion was a bit of a wanker. The son of Poseidon, god of the sea, Orion could even walk on water, so you can only imagine how highly he thought of himself. Arrogant, proud, the man loved being the apex predator—indiscriminately slaying animals and running the place under his tyranny. Well, one time he took things too far. Orion got gazeboed, did a horrible thing and drunkenly raped a woman, for which the woman’s father blinded him…”
I stiffened. Lucas squeezed me inside his grasp and kissed my cheek, whispering against my skin, “The sun god, Helios, healed him. A true mercy bestowed upon Orion, but alas, he did not learn. Once again, he got a bit too comfortable on top of the food chain. Threatened to kill every beast on earth. Well, Mother Nature had quite enough of this talk of carnage and Orion’s haughty demeanor, so she sent a giant scorpion to do her bidding and kill him.”
“No,” I whispered.
He sat back. “Yes. It’s all rather sad. But it’s a good lesson about what an unrepentant life gets you. If you don’t change, you stagnate, and that only leads to one thing. Death. But to me, the story has a happy ending, for Zeus memorialized Orion, placing him among the stars with his companion, the dog Sirius. And so forever now, Orion is content to watch the earth unmarred by his violence, at peace with his canine companion as they illuminate the night. In his way, Orion is redeemed.”
I understood what he was trying to say. How Lucas saw himself in Orion’s pitfalls and vindication. Lucas was telling me he knew this hadn’t been easy—there’d been hurts and failings, but there was also hope and healing to be found.
I stared at the stars, then at Lucas. Saw the moonlight illuminate the sharp angle of cheekbones and jaw. The way it glanced off the flop of his hair that I loved to slide my fingers through. Despite how hard it was for him, Lucas had always tried to find ways to talk the deeper things—sticky stuff—as he called them. That’s why night after night he’d pulled me outside and into his embrace. He’d been showing me his heart in a way that he could. He was trying even harder now.
Gratitude swelled inside me. In his arms, I’d discovered a reverence for the massive night sky. I’d fallen in love with Lucas, the beauty of his mind and heart.
“What’s your favorite constellation, Loulou?”
He pressed a kiss to my hair and sighed. “Virgo. Who comes in springtime. Just like you did for me.”
I craned my head to look up at him. “Tell me?”
He smiled gently and glanced up at the sky. “Virgo is often said to represent Persephone. Daughter of Demeter, goddess of the harvest, Persephone, or as the Romans called her, Proserpine—which I always thought made her sound like…?” He loved to quiz me on odd English words.
“Oh, oh! That spiky animal…a porcupine!”
He grinned. “Well done. So I’ve always favored the Greek version of her name, as well as the myth. It goes that long ago, eternal spring graced the earth, until the greedy god of the underworld, Hades, stole Persephone for himself and dragged her to his kingdom.”
Lucas took a sip of his drink and set it back on his knee. “Demeter was beside herself, grieving her lost child, and in her despair neglected her fecund duties to the earth, cursing it with London weather.”
I snorted. “What? Six months of frigid temperatures coupled with sunless skies and rain, followed by—”
“One hundred point five days of sweltering heat with not a breeze in sight.” He smiled and tipped his face my way. “Exactly so.”
I smiled as our eyes met, and the air between us crackled.
Lucas swallowed and returned his gaze to the night sky. “Well, as you can imagine, the human race put up quite a stink over this year-round London weather and the distinct lack of fresh produce—”
“None of them were English, then. I’ve yet to meet an Englishman who gives a rat’s arse about fresh produce,” I said.
“We like our veg just fine, thank you very much. We just so happen to prefer it baked in sheets of buttery dough. Which along with rampant repressive tendencies, of course, explains the epidemic of heart issues in our country, but that’s for another day.”
I smiled and nestled deeper into his arms.
“So Zeus took pity and intervened. King of the gods—the older brother, mind you.”
I rolled my eyes. Lucas was the eldest of his siblings, and the amount of rank he pulled over Kai and Sarah was comical.
“Zeus knocked on Hades’s door and demanded the pervy sod release innocent Persephone to the world of the living. Zeus warned Persephone that she must eat nothing until she returned to the land made fruitful by her mother, but Hades gave the girl a pomegranate, knowing she would thirst and hunger on her journey home.”
“What? Why?” I sat up, engrossed in the story.
Lucas’s fingers ghosted along my neck, across my sternum, down my arm. His hand grasped around my thinner wrist. He frowned as his fingers connected around the circumference of it.
“Because every day she spent captive in the underworld, Persephone starved and wasted away in grief. So she sucked on a single seed, and in eating the fruit of Hades, bound herself to him for a quarter of the year.”
He released my arm and brought his hand to his hair, where it tugged and pulled the errant strands. “And so now, humankind must endure three months of winter, of frozen earth and icy air, as Demeter grieves her daughter’s return to the underworld.”
He glanced over to me. “Thus Virgo drifts toward the horizon in autumn and disappears from ours through winter.” His eyes turned toward the sparkling stars above. “Until she rises again to the sky in spring.”
I stared at the dome of crystalline lights above us and sighed. “What’s it mean, Loulou?”
He took a long drink from his glass, then set it on his propped-up knee. “I think…I think it means that none of us are immune from suffering. That innocence is a false construct, predicated on an expectation that bad things don’t happen to good people.”
I blinked at the stars and wiped away my tears.
“Which is rubbish,” he muttered. “We all suffer. We all grow weary and weak. We’re fallible,” he whispered, glancing down at me. “But as we stumble and err while we walk the road to our dark end, we discover within ourselves the light that illuminates our way.”
He sat forward abruptly, dropping his long legs on the pavers, and turned me toward him. “It’s a journey of self-discovery, that not a single other soul can walk.”
I palmed my tears away as I met his eyes and barely managed to whisper, “I know.”
“I frightened you with my denial, my negligence of my safety and our future.”
I nodded furiously, and he laughed softly as he stared down at the ground. His hands threaded my hair and turned me toward him. Snow began
to drift as the night air swept through empty branches and evergreens.
Lucas and I shivered as he drew me closer. “Elodie, what I’ve done…it was so I could know myself once again as a capable and autonomous man, your lover and protector, provider and partner to you, even though there’s a part of me that makes us unequal in the eyes of the world.”
“Fuck the world.”
“Yes, well, good on you for knowing that so robustly. But, I needed time. And I’ve used it, I swear to you I have, Elodie. I need you to know though, what it’s going to be like—”
My hand silenced his mouth. “Don’t,” I whispered. “Don’t you dare give me some bloody itemized list so I can weigh and measure whether you’re worth it—I know right now, Lucas. You were always worth it. You always will be. I will always love you, and a life with you is the only life I want, no matter what awaits.”
He exhaled raggedly, covering his face and I wrapped my arms around him. “There is nothing conditional about our love, Loulou, and you know it.”
He nodded. “Yes,” he said hoarsely, “but to hear you say it. To feel like I actually believe you…”
I kissed his cheek, cupped it tenderly. “It took you long enough.”
He laughed and wiped his eyes, but then his face sobered. “I know I’ve given you lots to be wary of, Elodie, but I promise you, you’ll see, in my daily actions, that I believe in myself, in us, as I haven’t since…since I knew I would lose my sight.”
I stared at him, holding my breath, heart thundering in my chest. Tears ran down my face and Lucas thumbed them away, his features twisted with remorse.
“I’ve done my due diligence,” he said. “God, I hate using financial terms, but you know what I mean. I’ve done risk sensitivities and forecasted the hell out of it. And I know now, without a shred of doubt, that I can and will take this on boldly and healthily, because I cannot live without you, Elodie…” he choked.
“Lucas—”
“I will do whatever is required of me to remain a man that I believe you deserve—one who takes on his hardships with courage and honesty, with a fair examination of his limitations and needs.”
Sobs left me, pent up from weeks of wanting him, months aching to hear these very words.
“I’m going to fuck it up sometimes, darling.” He leaned in, peering at me closely, even as his sight frustrated him. “And you’ve got to let me. I don’t mean my old avoidance and you giving me leeway—I’m talking working my arse off at my independence and new skills, and you letting me struggle as I gain competence. You’ve got to let me be a man who cocks it up and makes it right on my own, understood?”
“Yes, Lucas, I promise. I don’t want you to be perfect. It’s probably demented, but I love your stubborn ways, that persistence and pride.” I scooched closer to him, taking his face in hand. “Because it’s part of you. And I love every part of you.”
“Still?” he whispered, his mouth parting softly. All I wanted was to kiss him.
“Yes,” I whispered as tears poured freely, “still.”
“Come here.” He tugged he into his lap, and I sank against his chest like he was a long-awaited warm bath. He pressed his lips to my cheeks and rubbed the tension from my shoulders. “Tell me everything.”
We spent an hour on that chaise, frigid yet happy, while we talked, curled up close like we used to. Lucas’s long legs bracketed me against the night wind as he pulled the blanket tight around us.
I hid inside it, and Lucas helped me free the myriad sparkling stones from my hair, then undo my braid. I glanced up at him watching the heavens, his head fallen back on the chaise, and marveled at my Adonis. Such a beautiful profile—errant dark blond hair dropped on his brow, a fan of lashes, long straight nose and smooth lips. Barely dimpled chin, round Adam’s apple jutting from the column of his throat as he swallowed and met my eyes.
I’d told him about my weeks alone to my thoughts, in which I took care of only myself, worked long, slept hard, and did little else. How I’d settled in the knowledge that this was where I belonged. That this was my home. How I’d spent dinners with his parents, nights with Gina. How I’d realized that Lucas and I had already built a world together that was both ours and individual.
Lucas told me how he’d began to understand how he could do it all and learn in darkness without fearing it. Described his formidable O and M instructor, who I demanded to meet, because no one other than me had ever handled Lucas Edwards how she’d managed to. He told me how she taught him to trust and seek his other senses, to think of them as his new sight. His hands drifted up my arms, slid across my chest, and traced the neckline of my gown. Then he told me how he was seeing me now.
“Lucas,” I whispered.
His hand cupped my breast, then his fingers traced featherlight over my nipple. My thighs pulled together involuntarily, and I arched into his touch.
He smiled against my neck and kissed it. “Yes.”
“Are we…do you…”
He chuckled. “You’re having a bit of a hard time stringing a sentence together, darling, should I stop?”
My hand flew up and cupped his neck, holding him in place. “Please don’t stop, Loulou.”
His tongue swirled warm against my skin, kiss after kiss scattered across my chest and neck. My body sang for him, ached for more of his touch. I’d missed him so much.
“Then, what did you want to ask me?” he whispered. “Can it wait?”
I shook my head. “No, I…I wanted to know, are we still—”
“Together?” He stopped kissing me and straightened. “Engaged? Full steam ahead on the marriage train?”
I nodded.
Then finally, passionately, he kissed me on the lips. “Abso-bloody-lutely.”
A cry of relief hurtled up my throat. Lucas kissed me once more, then sat back. “Sweetheart?”
I was shaking, relief cresting inside me like a double wave. “I wasn’t sure. I was frightened you were going to break it off.”
A growl left Lucas as he hauled me against him. “Now listen here, Bertrand, and I’m only calling you that because it’s not going to be your name much longer.” He tipped my chin so our eyes met, even in darkness where it was so difficult for him to find me. “You are mine. And I am yours. There’s nothing more to it than that. For as long as I live, our lives are by each other’s side…” He sighed and blinked away tears. “On a road that will be shadowy and difficult, and yet illuminated by love. By your love, my Elodie.”
Another kiss that became potent pulled us taut together. My fingers clawed his hair, his hands sinking into my jacket and yanking me against him. He stood and swept me up, then looked into my eyes. “When we get inside, I’m not going to talk about anything except your body and how much I love you for about three hours, so speak now or forever hold your peace.”
I gaped at him. There wasn’t really a flashy way to tell him. I didn’t have a scan printout or a nappy or tiny clothes to cue him. I just had me—a bit gaunt and tired, and not too far from another round of vomiting.
“Well, I might need a little time first before we fall into each other’s arms.”
He scrunched his nose. “Whatever for?”
“Loulou, I’m…I’m pregnant.” I felt my own wide grin brightening my face.
He stared at me, stunned, until slowly his face transformed into absolute joy. “Elodie!” His voice cracked with emotion as he held me tight and kissed me deeply. When he pulled away, he was grinning even wider. “We’re going to have a baby, darling!”
“Yes, we are.” My stomach churned, and suddenly I knew time was not on my side. “But first, I need to vomit.”
Thirty-Two
Elodie
Six months later
“Lucas?” I called from the sofa. I wiggled my feet, trying to shake out my restless legs, another uncomfortable side effect of advanced pregnancy.
Lucas walked quickly into the room, face etched in concern. “You all right, love?”
I
patted the spot on the sofa next to me. “Yes, I’m fine, I just need those big arms wrapped around me for a little while.”
Lucas dropped down gently next to me, barely able to lie on his side because my big belly and I took up so much room. Planting a soft kiss on my head, he pulled me tight inside his arms, one hand rubbing gently over my swollen stomach. I smiled up at him and gave him a gentle kiss.
“You’ve been so busy,” I said. “I’ve felt neglected.”
Lucas grinned down at me, kissing the tip of my nose. “I was making you those ginger scones you like, and some tea. I like taking care of you while you deal with the little tyrant.”
Rolling my eyes, I fought a smile. “Lucas, the baby’s not a tyrant. He or she is just doing what they’re supposed to.”
He frowned, hugging me close to him. “I dunno, I’ll prefer it when they’re on this side of you. You’re too fragile still, so tired and not round-arsed enough. You’ve barely been able to keep your nutrition this whole while.” He sighed, pressing another kiss into my hair. “Not again. I won’t have you go through this again.”
I shrugged. “I think we should keep that conversation for another day. Besides, we still have weeks left, and I just want to enjoy them as much as I can, get things ready—”
Laughing, Lucas shook his head. “Everything’s been ready for weeks now, darling, and you know it.”
“I know.” I nestled against him and sighed happily. “But I just want to be prepared. It feels nice to have everything in order.”
“Says the reformed slob,” he muttered, trying to dodge me as I whacked him on the arm. “You’re going to be a brilliant mum, Elodie, slob or no, you know that, right?” Lucas whispered against my ear, kissing my neck.
I grinned as I reached back to slide my fingers through his soft hair. “Thank you, Lucas. You’ll be the best papa—doting and funny and protective and demanding.”
“Demanding?” He poked me gently, sounding indignant. “What’s that mean?”