Blazed (6 page)

"So you're kind of self-destructive?" What the hell kind of question was that to ask a woman he'd just met?
 

"I got in a car with a total stranger and you're only just realising this? Sure, I'm 'kind of' self-destructive like the Pope is 'kind of' Catholic."

He didn't answer until he'd finished cleaning my grazes. "What would it take to change that?" 
Why the hell do you care?

"Crack." As much as he tried, he just couldn't resist laughing at the dark joke, making it somehow clear that he knew I wasn't that kind of person.

"You always drink at 
Esme's?
"

"Yup. The five of us
— we're a coven. We call the corners every night and substitute the virgin's blood for red wine because we're strict vegetarians." 

His brow arched with wry amusement. "Do you ever stop being 'on'?"

"No, I'm like a wind turbine. Or a solar powered calculator." 

After removing the skates and replacing my shoes, he pulled me up to my feet and guided me to the passenger seat by the small of my back. In just ninety minutes, it had become like he'd been in my life forever. He was easy to be around, too easy. His little touches and secret smiles felt special and gifted to only me, and he was going to have to knock that right off. There was no space in my head for another man. Hunter, Chris, Daniel and Jonathan had my 'platonic penis' quota covered. "You never actually told me why you don't socialise with women."
 

Blaze looked at me like he'd known the question was coming and was glad I'd finally cracked. "Honestly? Without sounded conceited, it's impossible to find a woman out there who doesn't want me to fall in love with her and whisk her off to my ivory tower. Better to steer clear of temptation. I can't get attached."

"Can't or won't?"

"Can't. And neither can you." He turned to me, catching me in a gaze so shimmering hot it was like watching magma bubble, and it burned right through my resistances to the truth inside me. I'd never felt so much like an open book to someone. "I told you, I've got you pegged. I don't know the why's, what's and who's, but I knew last night that when you looked at me, you wanted nothing more than to screw me senseless and send me packing. Not a single white picket fence in sight in that scorching hot fucklust stare of yours."

"Fucklust?" I settled back in my seat, impressed by the new expression I was definitely going to add to my vocabulary when he was out of earshot. "So why all this rollerskating bullshit? Why not just invite yourself back to my flat and have done with it?"

"Well for a start, you set yourself on fire and left pretty quickly," he smirked and started the engine, pivoting in the car park to head back in the direction of
 
Double Booked
. "And I'm not a misogynist. I have no objections to forging friendships with women who don't pose some sort of threat of wanting 'more'. But you know, with this face,"—he pointed—"it's difficult to avoid running into complications. Better to steer clear completely and avoid the stress."

Nodding to the sentiment, I rested my head back and narrowed my eyes at him. "That doesn't explain the rollerskate torture. Are you seeking petty vengeance on the inherently clingy womankind through me?"

"Shit no. I like rollerskating, it's fun. I like to have fun with friends and the people I hope will become friends. I get the impression that you're at your best before you've swapped bodily fluids. I'm in no hurry to become disposable to the first woman I've felt comfortable being around in a long time."

That hurt because it was true. With a few minor exceptions, my attitude towards a lover had a tendency to cool significantly after I'd kicked them out of my bed or made a dash for their front door. It wasn't intentional, just a method of self-preservation that stopped me from getting too close to anyone who wanted to chase a commitment. Blaze couldn't have been more right when he said I
 
couldn't
 get attached to someone. It simply wasn't an option. 

But I didn't know if adding him to my circle of friends was either. Could I simply socialise with a man who screamed SEX, not succumb to weakness and not turn arctic like I could with only four others? I didn't trust that I could.

ESME'S JAW DROPPED when her eyes fell on my bloodied slacks and raw palms. She seemed so appalled that she didn't stop to eye-fuck Blaze, who lingered in the doorway to my flat after insisting that he had to make sure I made it inside without falling over. In fact, she glared at him icily and demanded an explanation for me looking so dishevelled, which he volunteered casually with no hesitation while he walked aimlessly around my small open plan flat, stopping occasionally to check out my disp
lays of movie and video game memorabilia.

"Rollerskating, are you fucking kidding me?" She spat her words like venom, tugging the knot of my shirt free because she how crazy it must have driven me. "Who does that? You take a woman out for a nice meal, maybe a drink if she's not hungry, then if you must sate your libido, a cheap hotel for a quickie."

"What can I say, Esme? I'm out of practice." Blaze raised his hands like she had him at gunpoint and edged over to the dining room table to set down my bag and sketchbook. "She'll deny it, but she had a great time. Isn't that right, Emmeline?"

"No," I lied, but he saw my betraying smirk. There really was no denying that a part of me was disappointed to come home, even if he did insist on using my full name like some kind of manager or scholar. "Just promise me there'll be no extreme sports next time."

He cleared the space between us in five strides and grabbed my hands, pulling them up to his lips and staring into my eyes with faux-seriousness. "I swear to never put your life in danger again. I have something way better in mind."

WHEN he left shortly afterwards, I had no expectations of seeing him again. We hadn't traded numbers and I didn't know his surname, age or anything people usually discussed early into a 'friendship'. He knew my name and where I lived and worked, but what use was that if he'd decided I was too much of a klutz to be seen with? 

Our
Hyde Park disaster obviously got snapped, but thankfully I wasn't named. That didn't stop me being recognised by the 'coven' who ribbed me mercilessly for the petulant scowl permanently etched across my features. Esme still didn't believe the whole affair hadn't been a disaster, and those pictures and Blaze's prolonged absence didn't really encourage her to change that opinion.

But not even my nearest and dearest had the attention span to pick something to death. We went back to our usual routine of working by day, drinking by night, and spending our free days at Daniel and Jonathan's swanky loft watching horror movies and munching popcorn. Esme went back to her own flat above the bar after four days and threw herself into a new cabaret project, auditioning burlesque dancers and big bands. By the time a week had passed, my knees and elbow had healed enough for me to not think about Blaze when I looked at them.

And if I wasn't thinking about Blaze, I was thinking about Hunter. Talk about being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

"You sound like shit, Emmeline."
 I rubbed my chest over my heart that broke every time he called me. The nine hour time difference between us was brutal, and I knew he'd taken the evening shift so his bitch of a fiancée couldn't listen in on us. Unlike me, Hunter wasn't too proud to abuse the opportunities of family connections and had taken a job in Tokyo at his father's hardware company without a second thought so his 'woman' could be near her family. How the hell he'd expected me to take it well, I had no idea. That's probably why I didn't find out until he was already there.

"It was payday yesterday. You know what it's like."

"Yeah, you go out and get drunk with those reprobates."

"They're good friends, unlike some." I heard him wince. We knew how to hurt each other too well. The occasional phone call and email wasn't really enough for him to earn the privilege of still being what I considered my best friend, but I gave it to him anyway because I loved him enough to see past the distance. Why couldn't he extend the same gesture to me? I knew I was only a minor blip on his radar.

"I deserve that,"
 he confessed, 
"work has been insane. Siobhan is being insane. I'm sorry, I really can't deal with any more crazy."
 Story of my life. He never had time for 
my
 crazy. Nine years of my life spent agonising over him and not once had he made the time I needed. Never said the words I needed to hear. There was only so much Daniel could offer in lieu Hunter and whatever it was he had inside him that drove me to the limits of my sanity.

"Yeah yeah, I get it. But you can't expect me to sit around on my tod staring at my phone waiting for you to spare me a minute. Reprobates or not
— and I'm not denying that we are— they still accept me, even knowing what they know."

"You're not a reprobate, you're just confused."

"Fuck you, Hunter. I'm not confused about anything and that's what makes it so god damn hard to deal with." I took a breath, knowing that if this discussion continued, I'd end up doing something reckless. He kept me sick— I knew it and I'd never get past it. There was nothing in the world that could take away the power of something self-inflicted. Couldn't live with him, couldn't live without him. I'd be messed up over him for the rest of my life. "Maybe one day we'll talk about why I collapsed in that gym."

"Don't bring that shit up. You have no idea how much I hated seeing you like that. You're my best friend, Emmeline, I love the bones of you."

My stomach churned at how he used the L word with me. No matter how many times he said it, it was never enough. Loving me like a friend was nothing. Not even loving me like a sister could satisfy me. I wanted him to look at me like he wanted to be inside me in every way, possessing me heart, body and soul— the way I looked at him. But it would never be that way because he was wasting 
my 
love elsewhere.

There was a loud snap that made me jump. I looked down to see that the pencil in my hand had split and splintered after being pressed so hard into a sketch I had no idea I'd been drawing. Two cartoon versions of me were torturing a cartoon Hunter in all gruesome manners of disembowelment and garrotting wire decapitations. All of my fraught conversations with him could be documented by the disturbing images that subconsciously formed on the paper when I wasn't really paying attention, like a medium who drew the faces of death she channelled. Not really trusting that the behaviour wouldn't earn me another sectioning, I'd never told a soul that I couldn't control the impulse to picture him suffering horribly for what he'd done to me without even knowing it. I loved him enough to hate and resent him.

"So why are you really calling?" I asked, pushing the sketchbook away and changing tack. 

"Come on, Emmeline, you know why. I want you to come to the wedding."
 I suddenly wished I was still drawing. 
"Give me one good reason why you won't come."

"I could give you a whole cart full," I snapped evasively, knowing that telling him the real reasons why wouldn't help my 'crazy' case, "but mostly I just really fucking resent flying over to Japan because the bitch demon won't get married over here. It's your wedding too, Hunter, why the hell did you give her carte blanche on location?"

"I know how to pick my battles. Are you saying you'd come if we got married at my parents house?"

"No. You asked me for one good reason and I gave you
 one good reason."

"You're such a god damn brat sometimes, Emmeline. You can't always have it your way. You can't click your fingers and relapse to make the world revolve around you. Sometimes you have to accept that other people matter more than you do and make some compromises. If you have to grit your teeth and fake a smile to get through a wedding you don't want to be at, you should damn well do it because it means something to me to have you here. You're not hurting yourself this time, you're hurting the people you're supposed to love."

"Hunter?" I sucked in a deep breath and tried to gather myself before I launched a tirade in response. He was the most selfish person I knew, without a doubt, and nothing I ever did was right by him. Even when we were still in school, he had me by the proverbial balls every minute, trying to groom me into a miniature version of my mother. As much as I loved her, I had too much spirit to be a kept woman, something I still clung to by not accepting Henry's money. I had too much spirit to be downtrodden by elocution and deportment classes. I used to have too much spirit for a lot of things.

But when I really took a long hard look at myself, I knew that, despite his insinuation that I used my ill thoughts and actions to manipulate people, I'd hate myself for driving him away. So I simply said, "sayonara, you self-righteous, egomaniacal pedant," and hung up. Sometimes it was just easier to be the one who stepped back and let him think he'd won, and then pretend the conversation had never happened, than find out what would happened if I bit back.

I just wish I'd realised that I had company ear-wigging.

MY EYES TRACKED up from the varnished wooden cash desk of 
Double Booked
 up to the midriff of a man standing directly in front of me on the other side. His fingers slowly brushed along the oak towards me and casually flipped open the cover of my sketchbook.