Blaze (Virtues & Lies 3)

“I fucking hate cake,” he spits, sitting beside me.

“I think the sugar was meant to go in said cake.”

He elbows me. “Shut up, dickhead.”

“You realise you’re in a church?” Christopher reaches behind me to smack the back of his head.

“I hadn’t noticed,” Leo bites back at him.

“I don’t know why you’re pissed. You’re the one that dropped the cake.” I take Grace from Christopher and grab her bottle from the baby bag.

I’m hoping feeding her an hour earlier than usual means she’ll shit earlier too.

“I didn’t drop the cake. Christopher knocked it out of my hands.”

“Technically it was Arabella.”

“Whatever. The two of you need to be fu—”

“Ah-ah-ah…” Christopher cuts through his curse.

“They need to stop…conjugating all over the place. I don’t need that…excrement in my head.”

“Not my fault you were at the right place at the wrong time.”

“You’re a lawyer—didn’t they cover indecent exposure at uni?” Leo snaps at him.

“The two of you need to pack it in. You’re screwing with my Zen, and you’re unsettling Grace.”

Christopher is vibrat

ing with laughter as Leo sits stewing over the cake debacle and whatever led to it that I really don’t want to know.

After Grace is fed, I hand her to Leo for winding while Christopher and I put out all the smaller candles to save them for the ceremony in…I check my watch.

“Shit, we have to be ready in under an hour.”

The three of us head back to one of the spare rooms, dropping Grace off with Mum and my grandmother. They have her dress and everything else Fleur got for her.

I’m dressed and ready with some time to spare. Christopher is outside on the small balcony overlooking the chapel and the old stables where they’ve set up for the dinner.

I’m about to join him when I pull on my suit jacket. Smoothing down the lapels, I feel the lump over the left side. When I reach into that inside pocket, I pull out what’s inside.

The envelope is small; it looks like the ones Fleur had on her desk this morning. And from the scrawl on the front, I recognise her handwriting. It’s slanted, elongated, and loopy.

I don’t waste time opening it, catching my ring in my palm when I pull out the off-white paper. It smells of her. And the scent alone is enough to make my heart race. It seems silly that I miss her after a handful of hours away from her. But I do.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, I unfold the note and take in all the words and how beautiful they look in her scroll.

To you,

My lover. My protector. Friend…husband to be. Eww, that sounds weird when I say it out loud. Anyway…

Before time runs away with itself. Before things get ahead of themselves. Before we get carried away.

I want to thank you. For being you. The man that doesn’t always get me, but humours me, nonetheless. The soldier that left everything to protect me. The killer that will shoot first and ask later to save me. The father that will spend the night on the floor with our daughter so that I can rest.

You are everything I never knew existed. Nothing I saw coming.