Blaze (Virtues & Lies 3)

“It’s going to be okay,” she tells Fleur.

I’m completely taken aback by what follows. Against my stronghold, Fleur climbs down from my arms. Clumsily, but with a resolve I can’t overrule. Arabella is looking between us when Fleur cups her face, finding purchase on my sister’s shoulder with her other hand to roll onto her tiptoes.

“I’m sorry,” she tells her, thumb stroking along Arabella’s cheekbone. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“It’s not…please…I…” Arabella looks up at me. I think she’s as much in awe as I am. “Please don’t apologise,” she tells her after taking a deep breath. “It’s not your fault. I-I’ve never thought it was. I told you, you can’t be judged for another’s sins.”

Fleur kisses her cheek, or at least I think that’s what she’s doing until I hear the blunt, hurried whispers and Arabella’s stare widens.

I snatch Fleur back when they stand staring at each other as though they’re making a pact or promise. I don’t like it because I know my sister, and I know Fleur. I know how they think and how deep they love. And just as I’m willing to break every rule, commit the darkest of sins…so are they.

Arabella cleans the blood from her face with the cuff of her white sweatshirt. A haunted smile stretches her lips when she takes in the stains.

“Mum and Dad are on their way,” she sighs at me like this is a normal conversation.

Wrapping my arm around Fleur’s shoulders, I start towards the bedroom, calling behind me, “Tell Ryan I need to see him. Now.”

I don’t miss the way Fleur stiffens, and when we get to the bedroom, she turns to me. Tear-streaked cheeks redden with her deep inhales.

“It’s not his fault.”

“What isn’t his fault?” I stalk closer to her, and she steps back.

Her arse hits the edge of the desk. I close in. Our breaths fill the silence around us.

“You were dead…I thought you’d left me forever,” she breathes, looking at my chest, her hands flattening to my stomach. “I was so angry at you that I wanted to hurt you like you were hurting me.”

Our breathing grows louder, faster, and madder. And as furious as I am with her, all I can think about is bending her over and burying myself inside her. I want to mark her inside out until she’s screaming my name and begging me for more.

“It was just a kiss, and it was all me. He did nothing wrong.”

But he did. He looked at her like she could be his. As though she is the sun bringing life to his world.

It’s obvious she knows it too. She’s jumping between us again, protecting him.

Regardless, Fleur is mine. And he needs to know. There will be no doubt of who she belongs to.

“I’m sorry.”

“Are you?” I trace the V of her dress with my fingers.

“Yes.”

Taking her left hand, I stare at my ring on her finger. It’s big and masculine, but it looks so perfect on her. As though it was made for her even before either of us existed.

Some things are simply written into the fabric of the universe. We’re not fate. We’re not some coincidental conclusion. From the moment I first saw her walking into the Sinclairs’ home, something inside me recognised something inside her. Even before our eyes met through her overgrown fringe, with her short pigtails and little madam attitude.

She was five and I was fifteen, wondering why the fuck this kid was any more interesting than my baby sisters. It’s always been her smart mouth, I’m sure of it.

From her very first close-guarded and attitude-riddled remark when she found me staring at her that day, through all the sass I’ve endured throughout the last eighteen years.

Fleur is one of the few people I’ve never grown tired of. Even when she deliberately antagonises me, I have never wished her away. I’ve never wanted her to change. But this fucking situation is eating through her, and although I know I’ll love every version of her, I can’t fathom a world where she is a docile creature.

She’s too big for her own skin to be contained by all the shit surrounding us. When she looks at me with those dark chocolate eyes of hers, I feel the bones holding my chest open crumble.

I want so much more for her. For our daughter. I want them to have a life beyond this, and I need her to understand that. To know that every decision I’ve made has been with them in mind because they’re the only things that matter anymore. She’s not my sun, she’s my entire fucking universe.

Linking her fingers with mine, she looks up at me. “Why would you leave me like that? Make me hurt the way you did?”