Blazed

by Lee, Corri

  "Both. But right now, mostly the help." Bowing my head, I stepped back and paced the grass restlessly. "I've played it over a thousand times in my head and I see no way out. I can't lose Emmeline now I've found her. But I've paid my dues, six years of them."

  Henry's hand clapped down on my shoulder. It was a gesture that provoked a sigh of relief. I knew that his brutal refusal came with a handshake. He was on my side. "It's a tricky one, but I'll help you, son. Anything to keep that smile on her face."

  "And in the meantime?"

  He frowned. "Tell her the truth, but I suggest you word it very carefully. One wrong syllable and she'll go down like a lead balloon. Otherwise, welcome to the family."

  His acceptance made me push out a breath I didn't realise I'd been holding. "You're sure that you're alright with this?"

  "All is fair in love and war, young man. All manner of philandering, foul play and truth stretching is fair game. You did what you thought was right at the time, and retrospect is a bitch. Just keep Emmeline out of this. She doesn't need to know the ugly details."

  A massive weight lifted off my shoulders. Like always, Henry would save me from trouble and make my dreams come true. Maybe this time I could repay him by making that beautiful daughter of his happy for the rest of her life after she'd been miserable for so long. It might just be enough his time and effort to see her happy.

  BUT when we turned back to the terrace, she was gone. We exchanged confused glances before I ran back up to the dining room and searched inside, hoping that Emmeline was there with Ivy and Esme. But nothing. Dread took over again. When she always worried that I'd never come back, it was me that worried she wouldn't wait. All the men she took home in my absence, the way she didn't chase me... I never really believed that I was enough. Now I had my proof.

  "I swear, Dad, I have no idea where they went!" Tallulah's grating bleat pulled me back out to the terrace, where Henry stood over his eldest daughter looking enraged. He didn't need to utilise years of learning her mannerisms to know that she was lying because it was written all over her face. In fact, she looked downright smug. "She just took off without touching her breakfast. Nothing new there. Oh, I lie," she turned her pig-eyed gaze on me and nodded down at the scrambled eggs still piping steam. "She did touch it. Your ring is in there somewhere."

  "What?" Without forethought, I bolted over to the table and saw the emerald glinting up at me. "When did they go?"

  "About five minutes ago." Tallulah turned back to the magazine she was reading and refused to look up. "She said something about telling you to go fuck yourself and your complications."

  I didn't understand. All she knew was that my time for her was tight. I loved her— I gave her a god damn ring so she knew. If it was too much, she should have said at the time instead of letting me announce it to the world.

  I'd find out what the hell I'd done wrong, if it meant following her through hell and back. If we were over, just like that, I at least deserved a chance to make it right. I needed it so I wouldn't let the confusion kill me. She made me crazy enough to take that path if I had to live without her. She was the only reason I had to get away from my fucking wife. Without her, I was a sucker, waiting and hating myself for it.

  Emmeline White was my reason 'why' to stop thinking about the 'why not', and I wasn't going to give her up without a fight, even if I did have to spend six days sleeping in my car and stewing before I could get close enough to get my explanation.

  She was mine. No matter what.

  Sixteen

  WHEN I WAS young, my parents had me fairly effectively shielded from disappointment and grief. Neither of them were particularly close to their families, so I never really mourned the deaths of relatives. I never had pets, so our garden wasn't pathed like an animal cemetery. And unlike so many other children on the playground, I was never encouraged to follow a fantastical illusion of characters such as Santa Claus or The Tooth Fairy. Hell, we weren't even religious, so there was never any sources of false hope to be shredded down.

  My first taste of negativity didn't come until I was a teenager and I was thrown into the throes of the testosterone fuelled rejection temple of doom that was secondary school, and even then I was prepared for it. Hope for nothing, my mother had told me since the day I had enough cognition to see 'the bigger picture', hope for nothing so that's all you expect, and anything beyond is a bonus. Of course, my mother was so painfully cynical it should have been illegal, and didn't believe for a minute that the 'beyond' was either genuine or indeed in existence. You find your partner, you marry, you mate and then you die— there were no bonuses. She was just insistent that everyone died after a lengthy time spent on one side of an ampersand and put in his and hers grave plots. By her reckoning, every person was born with half of them missing, and if you hadn't found that other half of yourself by the time they laid you in the ground, you'd failed at life. On reflection, it's no wonder I turned out so jaded.

  When Hunter became a big deal in my life, I very quickly learnt that petulance, delusion and denial could be both very good friends and very good weapons. I pretended that my heart didn't flutter when he was around and I always had a snarky comment hidden up my sleeve for any kind of speculation, no matter which direction it came from. If I believed the lie enough, it was true to me and that was all that mattered. I'd made it this long using those three tools to fool myself into thinking I didn't miss him when I really did and that I had a shot with him when I really didn't, and that proved how well they worked.

  The joy of those three immature pals of mine was that they were transferable. I made believe that Blaze didn't exist, and when my friends found out why, they were only too happy to join in the facade. As far as I cared, his incessant voice mail messages were left by cold callers, his lurking shadow in every restaurant, cafe, arcade, shop and bar was any other stranger, and the quickly scrawled out notes he shoved through my letter box every morning never needed to be acknowledged, let alone read, because they were put through the wrong door by a foolish passer-by or suitor for a neighbour.

  My work days were not spent at work. Instead, Mrs Reynolds sent me to the flat above the shop that we used for extra storage and had me invent banal and unnecessary organisation and filing systems that we would use, but were no better than what was already implemented. She was furious for me, and she didn't want to give Blaze a reason to come into the shop by keeping me in eye shot. It wasn't likely that he'd get out alive.

  Instead of drinking out in public view at Esme's, we kept ourselves hidden on the small VIPs only balcony that overlooked the club's ground floor, and had table service from the charming barman who adored his boss. If I wasn't at work, I was always in the company of at least one of my friends, never alone, never left unguarded, never allowed to change my mind.

  I'd surrounded myself in an efficient bubble that contained me and the whole world, everything except him. He was locked out of my mind and exiled to a cramped little box that held all my other nasty little monster memories that had teeth strong enough to snap steel.

  IT HAD BEEN almost a blessed week of blissful ignorance when that box burst open. There had been no note that morning, so figuring that he'd finally got the hint, I agreed to go back to my old humdrum task of restocking the shelves in Double Booked. That was my first mistake.

  It was just after my lunch break when it happened. I'd worked through it and ate on the move like old times, and Mrs Reynolds had run across the street to get us some 'real' coffee from a cafe that had opened the day before. That window of opportunity stood open to be abused by all kinds of lovelorn actors/rockstars/bastards, and it was. By a man who epitomised all three occupations in the same sadistically beautiful vessel.

  He stood next to me looking almost genuinely surprised that I might actually be working to earn my wage. His eyes were bloodshot, red ringed and surrounded by grey bags. His hair was messy and style-less, six days of stubble spread from his chin up to his cheekbones, and he was still wearing the su
it I'd left him in. It was his broken 'I got dumped by the ultimate' look and he still looked like a fucking magazine cover model. I spared him one single cold and empty look for a full two seconds, and resumed brutally shoving the poor tomes into their spaces.

  "Wow, it's kinda cold in here." Reflexively, I made an involuntarily glance down at my chest and cringed when I heard his soft satiny laugh. "I was referring more to your shoulder, but now you mention it..."

  Turning quickly and folding my arms around me to obscure his view, I forced away my scowl and blinked at him, making direct and vacant eye contact like he was a stranger. "Can I help you, sir?"

  "Are you going to tell me what I've done wrong?"

  I made a hard step past him and positioned my back in his direction. "I'm sorry, sir, I don't believe I've heard of that particular publication. Might I suggest you ask my colleague at the front desk to search the system for you when she comes back in a minute?" I hoped he heard the warning.

  "Oh Emmeline, stop being a brat." Obviously not. Had he intentionally used the insult he'd heard Hunter use on me before?

  Resisting the urge to swivel around in a rage, I groped around aimlessly behind me to my left, hoping he'd have the decency not to take advantage of my blind spot and get a good look at my bare hand. I got a firm, unhampered grip on the handle of the book trolley and yanked it so hard it nearly overturned. "Brat? You didn't tell me what you did wrong so why the hell should I let you exercise double standards?"

  He stiffened behind me— I felt it— and his voice took on a harder edge. "Double standards? You think I'm being dishonest? After you failed to tell me that your parents are loaded? I never lied to you."

  It was true. I'd never asked specifically if he had a wife. Our 'relationship' wasn't concerned with honesty and openness, just acceptance of what we gave up voluntarily, so even if I'd thought of it I probably wouldn't have asked, the same way I hadn't asked about his freakish intelligence or mystery dead father. Besides, I was trying to play at pretending it had all never happened— I'd been in love with Hunter for as long as I could remember and had wanted him inexorably before all this. I could go back to that hopeless cause, so I shouldn't have cared. Blaze was just a pretty diversion from my failing mission to find completeness at a dead end.

  But I had never been so irrationally dependant on another person to feel happy as I had been in the moment I found out Blaze belonged to someone else. However occasional and irrational our bond may have been, it clung to me like a heavy perfume— or more aptly the smell of smoke— and refused to release it's grip. The fire he'd sparked in my blood was a blessing and a curse. Blaze was a complication that was likely to set me back off down a reckless road, and for that reason, I had to quench those embers.

  "The roots of my gene pool are not the same." I argued. "And I never lied either."

  His eyes flared. "The same as what?"

  "Don't harass me while I'm at work, Blaze." The sudden meekness of my voice was a poor and ineffective way to dismiss him. The moment my words came out with no conviction, I knew it wouldn't be as simple as him leaving then and there. Part of me didn't want him to go. The same part was happy he'd chased me. But it didn't want to explain what he should already have figured out and have to put words to it. It hurt so damn much to say it. You're already married to someone else.

  "Where would you like me to harass you then? Because you haven't taken my calls for six days and have your rock-dumb friends as a meat shield whenever I get close.

  ""Don't harass me at all." My legs set on a non-negotiable trail for the stockroom where he couldn't reach me before I finished my thought. "Go harass your wife."

  That was my second mistake. The moment I got to the stockroom door I was trapped up against it by six foot three inches of solid, furious looking male. I might have been scared if not for the fact I could see the fear clouding his eyes, that lacked their usual sparkle and gravity. "You look like shit, Blaze."

  "Who told you?"

  I tried to force my gaze away but it was stuck to his. "Tallulah."

  "What the fuck..." He stepped back and ran his hands into his hair. Hating that my body was still betraying me by burning up and bowing towards him, I mirrored the gesture and squeezed my palms into my eyes under my glasses until I saw spots. "Why the hell didn't you tell me who you are?"

  "I did tell you! I told you everything. Nothing about me changes because my family is well off. God knows if it did I'd be poncing around in a bloody Bentley telling people to fetch me coffee and wipe my arse. I'm as fucked up as the day you met me and no amount of money changes that." And then I realised what he was doing and I hated that he was trying to deflect the blame. While the opportunity was open, I reached for the door handle behind me, hands trembling, and darted behind it before he could stop me.

  I grabbed a spare chair to jam under the handle just as it started to rattle. "Emmeline! Damn it, let me in!"

  "I won't let you turn this around onto me," I shouted through the door, "my secrets don't hurt anyone— yours do."

  "Cupcake." Blaze ended his attempts to break in and I could imagine him leaning his head against the door frame, splaying his hands across the wood like it would bring us closer. It hurt more now that'd I'd seen him and how lost he looked without me. It hurt when I saw the panic when he knew that I knew. It hurt most when I realised that he'd never intended for me to find out.

  "I'm at work. I don't get paid to beat down bigamists."

  "Please don't send me away. I've been trying to get you on your own for six days, Emmeline. Six fucking days. People are dumping spare change in my coffee when I walk down the street."

  "Use your fucking travel mugs." I pretended not to hear his quick gush of a laugh, resentful of the fact that he'd dared to do it, but I knew it was choked with tears.

  "I was going to tell you, Emmeline. I just wanted to do it right."

  "Not telling me at all was not doing it right. Any point in the three months I was unwittingly your mistress would have been the right time." Steeling myself, I slowly slid the chair back and opened the door so he could see my face— see what he was doing to me. Like I'd imagined, Blaze had his head against the frame, but straightened the moment he saw me. He looked sorry. Ruined. He knew that keeping his complications secret and letting me believe that he was perfect was the biggest mistake he'd made. Turning up at my workplace to verbally beat me into submission until I told him was just a supplementary faux pas.

  He reached for me and I stepped back further into the stockroom. "Emmeline..."

  "You're the only person who's gotten real tears out of me in five years, Blaze. Please don't make me shed them here. We'll have this conversation when you admit that I did nothing wrong."

  "But you—"

  "My family is not the same! And even if it was, how is it worse that I didn't tell you my dad is a multibillionaire but I won't touch his business or his money because I abhor his attitude? Please, enlighten me because I am really struggling to understand why I'm a bad person in this case." My face bunched up tightly into an expression of torturous pain as the first burning tear slid down my cheek. "Just get out."

  He advanced towards me, not stopping when I backed away. When I was pressed up against the wall, he cupped my face in his hands and kissed the tear, nuzzling me in a way I couldn't stand because it was so sweet and desperate, like he was savouring me for the last time. "I'm sorry."

  "So am I. I'm sorry that you didn't respect me enough to tell me the damned truth and I had to find out from a sister who told only because she wanted to stick the fucking knife in for all the attention, praise and love I get for being a victim of my neuroses." He winced, but ran a thumb across my lips, pulling the bottom lip down with a slight groan. I knew what he was planning, and if he did it, it would be too much for me to bear. "Please don't kiss me. I'll forgive you if you kiss me and you can't make this go away with sweet nothings."

  "Emmy?" Mrs Reynolds appearing in the doorway gave me a much needed opportun
ity to push away from Blaze while he was distracted and put some distance between us. I couldn't forgive him— I didn't want to, but there was no way to fight him if he was right up close to me. It made me remember the other times he'd touched me like that and what else he'd been doing at the same time, all the times we'd had sex just to be closer to each other. God, when he was wrapped around me I wanted to scratch myself open so he had a way to crawl inside me for good.

  "Y-You need to g-go." My chest started to shake, holding in what I knew would be a shameless storm of tears and wailing. Sending him away was better in the long term, but my god, was it killing me to find the strength to do it. The clean break would have been better. He could have just taken the hint.

  "Emmy, love." Mrs Reynolds pulled me by the arm out into the shop, leaving Blaze inside the stockroom swearing to himself. She sucked on her teeth looking in on him and sighed sharply. "Go home. Talk this out with him."

  "But—"

  "It hurts like hell, I know. But he had to have a bloody good reason." Sure, because he wanted to have his cupcake and eat her. I didn't vocalise that acerbic notion, choosing instead to regress into miserable teenager mode in protest. If I took him home we'd end up in bed together and that was not the right direction to take from there. Nothing he said would change the fact that I'd essentially been an extra-curricular sex toy and he'd probably been double dipping. That's why he really went weird when I said he could stay overnight properly— shit! It was all starting to make sense. He needed that excuse to creep away so his wife wouldn't twig onto his affair. So why be seen so publicly with me? Why give me a ring? Why tell my friends and family he'd marry me? None of it made sense.

  "Stop asking yourself questions he has the answers to, Emmy. If nothing else, go and get some closure so you don't waste your life on 'what if's'." I swallowed convulsively at the same words I'd heard from the mouth of the man in that room and hoped he did have a damn good explanation. She was right, the unanswered questions would drive me insane and I was too weak a person to not end up blaming myself. I didn't know that the penance I set for myself wouldn't be a cost too much.