Blaze (Virtues & Lies 3)

“How did you know her?” I ask him, as he delves under the bed.

“We grew up together, until she started getting…ummm…” He clears his throat as he stands, giving me the envelope. “Grace had always been mercurial in temperament. One minute she would be okay and happy, and the next the world would be ending, and everyone was against her.”

“She was sick.”

“That’s how everyone labelled it, but it was her quirk. Your mother was so smart…” He trails off with a pained sigh. Eyes focusing on the silver box in my hand, he adds, “Beautiful…like a rose. She had her thorns, but it didn’t make her any less incredible.” The smile that cuts his face is a bit forced, but there is so much fondness and love behind it that it calls back my tears.

There’s tantamount comfort and hurt in his words. I shouldn’t like them. I shouldn’t like the glaze of his eyes…but I do. No matter what it means, it feels good to talk about her. Something my father never really let me do after she died. He was meant to love her, but…

I hold Lucian’s gaze, and I refrain from asking him the words burning at the tip of my tongue.

Did you love her? Did she love you?

I swallow down the questions and look back down at the trinket box in my hand replaying his words in my head.

Beautiful like a rose.

She was. Like one of those perfect dark roses I traced over Casper’s skin.

Why couldn’t you love me?

Inhaling as deep as I can, I try to staunch the bleakness trying to overtake me again. It’s pointless though. As if Lucian knows that I’m trying to hide, he tips my chin up so that we’re staring at each other. And I see it. The pain and hopelessness I feel with every part of me…I see it reflected back at me.

Tucking my hair behind my ear, he takes me all in. And I wonder if he sees her when he looks at me. We were so similar. I didn’t get a single thing from my father. I look like her, and sometimes, I think I’m turning into her. It’s scary. The thought frightens me, but I’ve always been too grounded to be like her. To share her sickness.

“We’re leaving in about an hour. Wait for it to get a bit darker; it’s easier to move at night.”

“Why are you here? Helping me?” I already know why, but… “You don’t know me…and you’re not—you’re not…”

“I’m not what? A good man?”

I don’t reply.

“None of us are good men. We all have different demons. We make different mistakes.”

Lucian shakes his head with a dry chuckle, and before I can argue with him on it or ask him what he means, he leaves.

I’m so confused by him. I’m confused by what I know of him and what I’ve seen first-hand. They’re two completely different men. I don’t get it, and it makes me curious. But not enough to ignore what’s in my hands.

Uncertainty over what to expect shrouds me while I open it. Maybe I’m wishing it’s some kind of hope. A miracle. I don’t know.

My stomach is twisting, and I’m chilled to the core. I’m waiting for comfort and warmth, but there isn’t any as I look inside and pull out a small black velvet bag with a rolled-up paper sticking out of it. It’s a tad crushed, and I’m shaking so much that the more I scramble to pull the bag open, the more I crease it.

Time seems to stand still as I stare at the rolled-up scan image in my hand. I’m not sure how long I sit there looking at it, but by the time I’m opening it up, I’m struggling to breathe.

The words are blurred at first. It takes me too long to focus on them. When I do it takes me far too long to make sense of the letters and words enough to read it. I’m overwhelmed by the mere sight of Casper’s handwriting. All neat and equal-sized and spaced uppercase letters. Masculine and clean like him.

Trouble never gives up. It doesn’t quit. The more you fight it, the stronger it becomes. Trouble is defiant. Trouble is brave. Trouble is never alone. Even in the dark, trouble is seen and heard. Trouble is never forgotten and never underestimated. It’s full of surprises and exceeds all expectation. It finds you when you least expect it, and it leaves an eternal mark.

Trouble is you.

Mine.

I’m falling and drowning. Again and again and again. And I feel so sick and angry, with no idea why because my heart is beating so fast with every syllable of his words. And I keep turning the image in my hands, hoping to make sense of them.

Are they for me?

Are they for her?