by Lee, Corri
"I... I missed you, Blaze." He nodded once sagely and kissed me, appreciating how difficult it was for me to admit that he had that kind of control over me. I tended to keep my thoughts and feelings internalised, even to detrimental effect, but I know that wasn't going to be an option when he saw right through me.
His tongue teased mine gently, tenderly lapping but making his self-restraint obvious. "Eat with me, Emmeline. I won't be able to leave your side if you fall asleep here. I don't want to—" I pressed my finger to his lips to silence him and slunk back, eagerly waiting for him to fill my plate. Somehow, this 'first date' premise was as important and monumental to him as it was to me, and even if I didn't know why, I wouldn't spoil it for him.
My work-drink-fuck-sleep cycle would remain, but in a way I wouldn't protest. I'd just have to reorganise my schedule to eat too.
"I TOLD YOU so." I rolled my eyes at Esme's goading whisper as Blaze vanished across the bar's floor headed in the direction of the men's room, but a smile hit the corners of my lips. Despite Chris' oozing disapproval, Blaze had rejoined us for our usual drinking binge like he'd never left and kept one arm around my shoulders, possessively brushing his fingers across my skin while he divulged details of work further afield he'd arranged while he had an open calendar. By all accounts, photographers had fallen over themselves to find out he was in a position to travel, some even hoping to snag photo-shoots including myself. I was grateful that he'd declined on my behalf, still lacking the self-confidence to make an exhibition of myself the way he could. Besides, I had absolutely no discernible talents that could justify that kind of publicity. Being the daughter of a smug, rich bastard was no talent.
Smiling into my glass, I gave Esme the words she was working for. "You were right." The admission came with her jubilant air-punch and self-satisfied grin.
"I was there when he turned up you know, sorting out those bags for the charity shop. It took all my self-control to not call you and let you know."
"You spoke?" I sat up rigid, inexplicably thrown off by the news. "Please tell me you didn't tell him anything embarrassing."
"Embarrassing?" She teased me with her question, cocking her head thoughtfully side to side until I shoved her insistently. "I didn't tell him anything. What he said, however—"
"Esme, you're awful." Daniel shook his head at her across the table, looking almost amused. "She's having you on, Emmy. She was leaving as he arrived, shot him the daggers and pulled the door shut behind her so he had to faff around with finding your spare key."
She shrank down bashfully and gave me the smallest of shy smiles. "Someone had to stick up for you."
"Oh, Esme," I crooned, pulling her into a hug, "you're like the sister I wish I could trade mine in for."
"You have a sister?" Blaze startled us both with his rapid return, but appeased all with the tray of cupcakes he carried. They'd been something I couldn't stand to look at for the other four days of that week, but now provoked a smile that came with the memory of my pet name.
"I hope you washed your hands." He retook his seat and shot me a pointed look that reminded me of all the places his hands had been when the remaining contents of the picnic basket were repacked and stuffed into the boot of the goblin car. I gulped down a large mouthful of my wine to remedy the dryness that came to my mouth. "Yes, I have a sister. By blood only, I assure you. There's no love on either side." I cared for my sister the same way you might care for a house cat. You got used to her lurking in the background, she only ever came to you when she wanted something, I'd miss and remember her when she died but ultimately, she was a superficial factor in my genealogy. Even though only two years separated us, we had never been particularly close, even as children. "Do you have siblings?"
"Only child," he muttered as he shook his head, "my dad died young and my mum never got over it."
"I'm sorry." I immediately felt bad for prying, even though there really was no way I could have known. "Was he ill?"
"Murdered." A stony silence befell our table, an eerie sadness matched by our vacant spaces like we took a moment to mourn with him. "It was a random attack," Blaze went on, seemingly forcing the matter out of the ether, "wrong place at the wrong time. They stabbed him repeatedly in the left side before they realised it was the wrong person."
I felt all eyes burning into the point where all my scars converged, and withered. What were the chances that I'd pick the same place?
"I'm sorry," I said again, feeling ashamed tears burning the backs of my eyes. I carried a reminder of something terrible around on my body and that made me need to put some distance between us. Pushing up from the table, I excused myself and rushed out for a gulp of heavy summer air, not feeling as refreshed as I hoped. Plenty of people had tried to urge me to feel guilty about what I had done to myself and it had never stuck. Blaze achieved his results effortlessly, seamlessly and unintentionally.
"It's just coincidence." His voice rasped behind me, weighted with a kind of bitter sweet affection that made my skin crawl. "I don't think about it." But I would. Every time he saw me nude, I'd worry that the recollection of being young and suddenly fatherless would spring into the forefront of his mind.
"Do you remember him?"
"No. I know that he walked in the wrong circles and that's why he was caught in the crossfire, but my mother loved him enough to give me his stupid surname." He stepped up behind me and wrapped his arms, settling one hand over the scars that marred my side. "Do you still do this?"
Turning in the circle of his arms, I drew in a breath and traced the V neckline of his charcoal waistcoat that met in the middle of a black tie, the darkest point of the monochrome three piece suit he'd dressed back into after washing himself clean of the smell of reconciliatory sex that afternoon.
Honesty was something I had difficulty with, not because I was a pre-dispositional liar, but because I didn't like to verbalise the ugly thoughts that swarmed around in my mind, the ones that reminded me what a good idea it had been at the time. The only time I'd given him anything meaningful had been in times he'd given me the once over and the endorphins rushing around stopped me caring if my words had any negative impact. I knew that it was a bad habit I had to grow out of— to use his own words, it really wasn't convenient to bend me over and prod the truth out of me when I was being defensive by rote.
"I don't tend to pencil it into my daily routine." I coughed the satire out of my voice when he arched an unimpressed brow. "Sometimes. Not often. There are times where I feel so numb that I need to hurt physically to feel human, or I can't forgive myself for not being good enough without feeling like I've paid some sort of penance. It doesn't hold the same relevance it did when I was a teenager. That was punishment, this is... coping." It seemed ridiculous to try and justify it, but I wanted him to understand that the compliments and respect he paid me weren't redundant, that I didn't necessarily feel fat and in need of a serious diet in spite of them. His kind words had a healing affect that came from nobody else, an ability to make me see light where there was once nothing but darkness.
" 'Good enough'?" He raised his hand when I tore my eyes away from him, showing me that he didn't need the clarification. "If it makes you feel better, you're perfect for me. I wouldn't change a thing."
It did. Regardless of everything else that had happened since our night at The Roses, he pulled me out of the eye of the storm into the swirling winds of the squall that would toss me around like a rag doll until such a time it spat me out and let me crash back to ground disgracefully. I had a feeling that Blaze would be crashing with me.
Twelve
I GROANED, PLEASANTLY stuffed, and fell lax backwards into my seat. The first part of Blaze's working holiday aka 'wildfire season' had passed too quickly, without dramatic incidence and at great penalty to my waist line. A further shopping trip had been necessary and had played out exactly the same way as last time, minus the fraught recollection of scattered wits and scuppered self-imposed trends. Blaze had picked out
my second new wardrobe as he had the first, compensating for my lack of fashion sense, and dressed me almost every day in a way that made me look quite the model's glamorous girlfriend. It was a miraculous transformation I only ever could have dreamed of, coupled with the comfortable adjustment to what some might have called a fairly average life.
The warm fuzz of wine I really should not have been drinking in my lunch break made the man who sat across the table from me in the inconspicuous Italian bistro almost glow incandescently. He looked mighty fine in a fitted dress shirt and smart-casual pinstripe trousers he'd donned purposely to drive me crazy. And as ever, he was wolfing down food like it had gone out of fashion, barely pausing for breath to notice me contemplating him, one finger running in circles around the haloed rim of my wine glass.
"You're such a voracious eater." He swallowed his mouthful before grinning at me, eyes flaring with recalled scenes of eating something that didn't appear on the bistros menu. The heat behind his look forced that familiar blush to my cheeks, which made him grin wider.
"Food is a passion of mine that comes second only to you, Emmeline, though the line where you end and food begins often becomes blurred."
"I'd noticed." I coughed through the lump that knotted in my chest every time he gave me that molten glare. I'd learned to stop apologising after being told repeatedly from multiple directions that I was reading it wrong. When I saw it now, it seemed almost like he forced himself to soften for my benefit. Whatever thought came with the look, I knew he was reigning himself in.
This lunch date had been one of many over the past two weeks and was rapidly becoming a hot commodity. With Hunter still incommunicado and sulking, it had been easy to push him to the back of my mind and focus on the one remaining man in my life. Being 'with' Blaze was a surprisingly easy pill to swallow, made easier by the fact he had his own plans some evenings to give me the breathing space I still sorely needed to fend off the feeling of suffocation.
That didn't stop him messaging me through the separation though. With free time in the week such a rarity, he wore himself ragged trying to catch up with absent friends and entertain me all at once until I told him to relax. Coming from one of the most highly strung bachelorettes in London, he knew that it wasn't an order to be sniffed at. We had a finite amount of time together, even if it was just weekends most of the time, and I needed him fighting fit. I made unfair demands on his body as he did mine, and feeling what I did for him could be draining at times. I didn't know if that much was mutual, but I knew that I was falling deeper in love with him with each passing day.
I was at least at peace with being a part time lover. Full time was probably too much. Still, this wasn't quite enough.
"Stay with me tonight. Properly." I spoke so quietly it took Blaze seconds to decide if he'd heard me properly. Leaning over to pull my glasses down my nose, his mouth twisted ruefully as he checked for signs of deception or narcotic euphoria.
"Fuck my life." He sagged back in his seat and regarded me with interest, confusion, and that twang of hunger that always graced his emerald irises when I was in his line of sight. "You're my Big Bang, Emmeline."
"Explain."
"Well from the moment we met, you were a statistical anomaly. The conditions had to be perfect, a once in a lifetime experience." He tried to frown at the amusement I took in his flowered up compliments but couldn't. Making me smile was a supplementary third on his list of great passions.
As ever, I was riveted by the way he could turn the simplest of comments into a complex, poetic metaphor that left me drooling slightly from the mass exertion of my brain cells. "So how is that like the Big Bang?"
"You created a handful of little orbs of opportunity and spread them so sporadically through the universe that it takes a lifetime to travel between them, and then complicated it by sticking bloody great fireballs in the middle of them. Shrink it down to our particular solar system and how long is it before the sun expands and starts burning up planets? How many of those opportune sparkles does it destroy before it fizzles out completely?"
I rocked back onto the hind legs of my chair. "Kinda sounds like you're saying my universe revolves around you there, sport."
"Just this particular section." He sighed and ran a hand through his hair, which he'd left un-styled. It was almost too long, starting to cover his eyes and taking the 'business' edge from a casually urbane look. He'd almost definitely gotten more scrumptious since we'd met, but I tried not to put credence to his previous beauty theory on this occasion. "What I'm really saying is I have plans tonight but don't know when you're going to let your guard drop enough to extend that invitation again. Remember how long it took CERN to recreate the Big Bang? Maybe I should have called you my Higgs Boson..."
I forced an accepting smile despite being disappointed by the rebuff. No matter how nicely he'd tried to break the news, it had taken me a long time to get to a point where I was ready to wake up next to him, confident that I wouldn't go arctic the next morning.
Our time of 'normality' had come with a mess of last minute dashes and close calls relying heavily on my tendency to sleep through alarms. The nights we drank too much together saw him passing out next to me when I'd drifted into a peaceful post-coital slumber, springing up like a jack-in-the-box at the sound of the first of my five alarms and ready to dazzle and conquer. He was much more reliable than me like that, ready to spring into action as soon as his eyes opened while I preferred to hit the snooze button a handful of times and bury my head under a pillow.
When he had plans or a job the next day, he stuck to the soft drinks and left for home to catch a few hours sleep as soon as my eyes closed.
The signs that he was starting to flag manifested in the reddening schleras of his eyes and the yawns he tried to stifle to save me the guilt. I had to be costing him work and his patience had to be waning. Sometimes I woke up not long after he'd left and the bed would still be warm where he'd lain not long before, the sheets crumpled underneath the place I suspected he'd taken a moment to watch me sleep. Every time I rolled over into the space he'd left in a bed that had only been touched by us, I felt that emptiness reflected in the irrational stab of disappointment that he hadn't tried to challenge me by staying anyway, despite my vehement insistence that he needed to leave.
I was ready. I wanted the morning sex and coffee experience with him— every day if I could. I wanted him to bully me into staying awake and share my morning shower, dressing me for work and then mentally undressing me as we ate breakfast together. Seeing him every day wasn't enough. Not taking someone else home on the nights he was out, holding onto the tantalising soreness he'd driven into me before he'd left, wasn't enough of a sacrifice for me. I wanted to give him everything.
Christ. I wanted the full package I couldn't have, but took some comfort in knowing that he wanted it too.
Still, I respected that he had plans so I acquiesced. "It's an open invitation, Blaze. It doesn't have an expiry date." His face flooded with relief and he swept his brow with a light-hearted 'phew' to inject a little humour into what teetered on the brink of becoming a serious moment. He really was humbled that I'd made the offer at all and it was plain on his face for all to see in the softness that hit his eyes like I'd lifted a weight crushing his foot— not crippling but hardly bearable.
Righting myself on the chair, I picked up my fork to shove at my pasta. I really wasn't hungry anymore, but I needed something to distract me from the urge to pry. Fuck it. I wanted to know what was so important that it was stopping him from doing something he'd been gunning after for weeks. "So... are your plans important?"
Blaze picked up his own fork and began to dig back into his meal, smirking as he speared a ravioli parcel. He knew exactly what I was doing. "Imperative." He winked conspiratorially and tortured me with the time it took to chew and swallow his mouthful before he offered any elaboration. "I'm heading out to Birmingham as soon as you're back at work."
"Oh." That seemed like a long
journey and a definite 'no' stamped over the question of whether I stood a chance of him changing his mind.
"I'm coming right back but I owe a favour to a photographer friend. She needs a hand setting up a venue for a function tomorrow."
"A photographer is holding an event?" I hoped that I was appropriately disguising my bite of jealously over the fact he'd be with another woman while he was not pinning me into my mattress.
"She modelled first."
"Oh." Not helping.
He had the nerve to laugh and lean over to wrench the fork from my fisted hand. "Relax. Nelly is very much in love and I am... also into some chick with a very cute jealous streak."
"Some chick?" He gave me his most disgusting shit-eating grin and puppy dog eyes— a lethal combination that forced a smile to crack through my steely resolve. "Best give me her name so I can kill the bitch."
Checking the time on the impressive leather strapped watch that bound his wrist, Blaze tossed his credit card down on the table and grabbed the legs of my chair to pull me closer. It was starting to scare me how often he glared, a look I so often tried to mirror to no effect. I don't think he knew how small and boxed in it made me feel, confused by his tenderness but squashed down by the force behind his eyes. "You still have tomorrow off work, right?"
"I do," I swallowed the hard lump in my throat, "free to be at your disposal for the entirety of Emmyday." The low growl he made promised that he'd ensure I made good on that claim. "You should probably sleep in. I plan to." Something in his almost predatory stance told me I'd need to.
"No need, Miss White," he drawled, stroking a fingertip just under the hem of my skirt, "you'll sleep for a season when I'm done with you."