Blazed(29)

Still, I didn't scream and curse out loud like I was inside. Nothing good came from making a scene and I was no attention seeker. It wasn't safe for me express outwardly with my history, not if I wanted to avoid going back to that hellish ward of unhinged misanthropists. I could deal with it alone, in private. Let it go then...

"Emmeline?" A bacon sandwich appeared over my shoulder, but I ignored it. I wasn't hungry, but it wasn't me being mental. I just wasn't hungry. "Please."

"I don't f*cking want it!"

"I don't particularly care what you want right now." Enraged, I spun around onto my knees, ready to throw the phone at Blaze, but stopped as soon as I was looking at him.

This was what I'd neglected Hunter for. A selfless man who spent his whole life 'caring' for someone else but still arrived wanting to care for me in more ways than one. A man who'd put himself out for me even when I didn't want it since day one, and didn't hate me when I threw it back in his face. A man who'd thrown me into the fire like Joan of Arc but stood in the flames with me rather than leave me to stand alone.

A man who believed in me far more than I believed in myself. Maybe he understood what it was like from my perspective to be eclipsed by Hunter.

Despite not really being hungry, I took the sandwich from him and bit into it just to put a smile on his face. Blaze visibly relaxed and sat down on the couch next to me, curling an arm around my shoulders and pressing his lips to my temple.

"That was your Japanese friend?"

"He's not Japanese, he just lives there. And I don't think he's my friend anymore. We haven't spoken since the day you walked in on it and he's not best pleased."

"He really does expect you to sit around waiting for him to spare you half a minute?"

My teeth clenched and ground together at his recollection of the conversation. "He's been emailing, that's the problem. I've been too busy thinking about you to read them. He set my mother on me."

A breath hissed out between his teeth. "That's so f*cked up, Emmeline. He needs to realise that you have a life beyond him, people who are looking out for you. The world doesn't revolve around him." Except it does. Fat Emmy smacked her lips at my sandwich and mouthed 'a minute on the lips, a lifetime on the thighs'. At least he was until you f*cked it up over an easy lay. "Why do you let him talk to you like that? He clearly has no respect for you, it's disgusting."

"Because it's the only way I can have him in my life." I could hear the cogs grinding furiously followed by the distant sound of a penny dropping. He'd got it. He'd figured out my complication, my reason 'why not'.

"He's the boy." The transformation in Blaze made it impossible to look at him. His mind was working through everything and the disappointment showed in his hunched back and sad eyes. I'd given him too much to process that day and it was taking it's obvious toll. Bet he regrets saying he can overlook your shit now. "Is it the same? As... this?"

Setting the plate down on the coffee table, I knotted my fingers in front of me. I couldn't stand the defeat in his voice but I wanted him to understand. "I can't really have either of you, but that's where the similarities end. Both of you, I..." Want? Need? Love? "I have two gorgeous men in my life in a way barely tolerable and holding on to something that's just not quite enough is hell. But while that much might seem the same, you're polar opposites. You're looking out for me and he's only ever looked over me. You focus on the person I am and can be while he dwells on the person I was. I have a flesh and blood you, full of empathy and pushing invisible boundaries to put us in the same room in a way that we shouldn't be, and I have a man on the other side of the planet who didn't care enough to tell me that he was leaving until he was already there. I feel the same way about both of you but he makes it feel like something I should mourn." Christ, Hunter sounded like a complete bastard when I described their differences. Why the hell did I care about him so much?

Blaze turned to face me, frowning. "You're in love with him?" Why did that sound less wistful?

"Irrationally so. It's a nine year habit I've never had a reason to quit."

"And now?"

Ah. The crux of the matter. He needed me to tell him that he was a good enough reason to let go of my stupid infatuation and I couldn't. It wasn't that simple— I couldn't just turn it off for him. If I could, why would I for a life of no guarantees and why wouldn't I have done it sooner?

"It's like quitting drugs to become an alcoholic, Blaze. Either way, I'm damned to spending my life mooning after a man I can't have. If I erase him from my life, what do I have left when you go too? Some nice new clothes, some new scars and a few memories? I don't know that I'm not the sort of person who needs something to be reckless about. My life would lack purpose. And I know that's unhealthy and co-dependent, but—" He cut me off with a kiss.

"I have to go."

"I know. I've said too much."

"No. You said what matters. But I do have to go because you have a lunch date with your mother." Shit. In the midst of all the outrageousness and revelations, I'd completely forgotten. "I set clothes out for you. Something nice and demure to hide your war wounds."

"You're quite the domestic god." He smiled but it lacked his usual enthusiasm and sincerity. It was like looking at the first lie he'd ever told. "You hate me, don't you?"

"I could never hate you. I hate him." I could understand why. Finding out the significant woman in your life had a history of self-harm and a latent eating disorder must be tough, but for her to then say that she was dividing the love that should have been concentrated on one person— that had to sting. Knowing who he was had to be rubbing salt in the wounds.

"I'm sorry that you didn't meet a better person, Blaze. Somebody a little less colourful."

"I'm not." He leaned over to recover a duffel bag he'd stowed under the couch and quickly dressed into trousers, half-buttoning his shirt before he rose to collect his shoes from the bedroom. I didn't move, just watched him get ready to walk out of my door for what I presumed would be the last time.

He lingered a moment too long when he kissed me a poignant goodbye, cradling my face in his hands. "I'll call you."



IF he'd wanted to vengefully wound me as he left, the clichéd brush off did the job nicely.





Ten





JULY WAS TOO hot and too fickle. Even with a stupid floppy great sun hat, the heat was too much until the breeze made my skin prickle. I'd been in that state of hyper-awareness before, seeing and hearing everything that should have been hidden out of sight, sitting in some giant, isolated goldfish bowl that resonated everything, separating me from a world I still watched while it still looked in on me. Detached from my feelings, completely apathetic but still present, about as sentient as a robot.

"I'm sure he didn't mean it, love." I tipped my chin just slightly to look at my mother under the brim of my hat for some kind of clarification. The sun glared off her white silk shirt making it hard to have a conversation looking right at her.

We looked strangely alike that day, my own shirt and pencil skirt outfit almost matching hers. Two golden blonde sophisticates lunching on the terrace of a restaurant only the dirty rich could swindle reservations for. It felt shallow and disingenuous but it was exactly what I needed; something a million miles away from my usual habits and somewhere nobody would ever think to find me, not that anyone would look. As for being habitually ashamed, that didn't happen when I was out with Ivy. Her purity was as noble as gold and bloody contagious. Plus I had my hat. I was, for all definitions, intents and purposes, completely covered.

"Hunter." Knowing she couldn't see, I rolled my eyes and sipped at an intensely saccharine fruit cocktail containing a whole shelf full of spirits. "His mother spoiled him horribly, he doesn't think before he speaks. He's been very lucky unlike—" Her sentence stemmed off into an awkward and apologetic half-shrug. "He knows how to work a room but he's horribly impersonal. I imagine he's awfully jealous of your new romance." The one that doesn't exist anymore? Doubtful. Fat Emmy was feeling bitter too. He might have been the enemy but she sure liked to look at him. I raised my glass to her in a gesture of solidarity.

"Mother, he's livid about anything that might interfere with his stupid wedding. I mean, come on, who throws a sakura blossom themed wedding in January? The fundamental basis of the event is a f*cking sham."

"Emmy, language!" She scolded me but her eyes said that she agreed. Born romantic Ivy Tudor was vehemently opposed to artificial flowers of any kind, particularly when they would naturally be in bloom just a couple of months later. By her way of thinking, a fake rose symbolised fake love. I never pointed out to her the potential symbolism lurking behind the fact that real roses died. Maybe it was better if it was fake. It sure as hell wouldn't hurt so much. "Speaking of your romance, why on earth didn't you tell me that you're dating the Blaze?"