Blaze (Virtues & Lies 3)

Everything hurts. Head, body…everything. Hosing myself down in the bath, I trace the lone stretch mark that’s suddenly appeared at my side. It looks oddly translucent compared to my pale skin.

A reminder that all this is coming to an end. That our baby is growing. My baby. She’s my baby now.

“It’s just you and me,” I murmur, and as though she understands, she wriggles.

I get out and get dressed as quickly as I can, picking out a pair of leggings and Casper’s hoodie that’s more like a dress than anything on me.

I’d wondered where it had gone. It was there one night, and the next morning when I went to put it on, it was gone. He’d told me I’d probably misplaced it and that I’d find it along with the other bits and pieces that had gone missing over the last few weeks w

e had together.

Tears fill my eyes again. I’m not sure how I have any left because my eyes ache at this point. My tear ducts burn like they’re producing acid.

The reality sets in some more. We were always doomed, and Casper knew it. He prepared for it. Rifling through the duffle, I empty it all out onto the bed. It’s the first time I’ve done it, having pulled what I’ve needed from the top the last few days.

In the candlelight everything is a bit hazy, like my dreams. The nice ones where he doesn’t leave me. They’re the worst because I wake up expecting to find him beside me. But he’s gone, and I live through all that’s happened a tear at a time.

I’m throbbing all over, breaths seizing in my lungs and swelling my throat.

“I thought it was…cute,” he says with a scrunch of his nose. The word cute sounds odd coming from him. “I had one similar to it.”

The memory of his voice makes me smile in spite of the hurt it spikes through me. Pulling the bunny from the bottom of the bag, I hold it up to me. Like he did, I stroke through the soft fluff. When I hold it up to my face, I swear it still holds a hint of his scent. And I breathe it in as deep as I can, warmth filling me as though I’m coming back to life.

For that moment I can forget everything. I can have him back. My heart beats. Painfully, but it beats like it hasn’t in an eternity.

“I love you,” I whisper with my eyes screwed shut. “I love you. I love you. I love you so much.” I fall on the bed, crossing my legs. “I should’ve told you, and I should’ve made you love me back. I should’ve made you love me forever.”

Afraid that my tears might erase his scent from the bunny, I set it between my legs as I pull out what’s left inside the duffle.

The few baby outfits, along with a plastic bag sitting right at the bottom. I’m being suffocated by my sobs as I look inside it to find the sketchbook and charcoals he bought me on one of his first trips to the village.

I flick through the first pages of sketches, nothing really. Trees and windows and ocean views. All seemingly meaningless things until the rough sketch of his hands. They’re the last thing I ever thought I would love about a person. But Casper’s were beautiful. The tattoos and the warmth. Their weight and the thick veins that pulsed when I traced them.

Just hands. Hands that held me. Caressed me. Pleasured me. They protected me and killed for me.

I can almost feel the way the callouses grated over my skin. The way he touched me, as though that’s what he was put on this earth to do. If there even is such a thing as being born for the sole purpose of something as transient as touch. Because if that is a thing, then I wholeheartedly believe that I was born to love him. To want him even if he didn’t reciprocate.

Why couldn’t you love me?

I know what’s coming as I turn the page. Still, it doesn’t make it any easier.

“Stop fidgeting!”

“I don’t fidget.”

“Except you do.”

“Why do you want to draw me?” Casper asks, pulling my feet up onto his lap and taking a deep breath before he goes back to watching the telly and I get back to drawing him. “Stop wiggling your feet.”

“Stop tickling me, then. And I’m tired of drawing landscapes, they’re boring. All you have to do is watch the TV, rub my feet, and feed me the occasional chew. Not difficult.”

“Aren’t you the pampered pooch?” His chuckle is low and sexy, making my insides vibrate with a heat that pools between my legs.

“If you’re going to call me a bitch, at least don’t be a pussy about it.”

“You? A bitch?” Tickling me, his fingertips trail up my bare legs, to my thighs. With his sculpted bottom lip sucked into his mouth, he looks deviously up at me.

My breath catches in the back of my throat. I’m lost in his gorgeous gaze.