BLAZE

Veronica
Stefan shifted his gaze from my grandfather to me, but his eyes revealed nothing. My hand rested in his. His thumb drew circles in my palm.
The longer he took, the heavier the silence grew, the more tears welled in my eyes.
This was it.
Stefan and I were finished.
My grandfather cleared his throat and rose from his seat. “Five minutes, or the offer expires, and you can take your chances on the payout.” He buttoned his jacket. “I’ll be outside.”
We didn’t watch him go, and we didn’t speak for an eternity after the door closed.
Stefan stood and went to one of the two windows. “I thought you were dead,” he said, his back to me.
“What?” I started, swallowing the lump in my throat.
He faced me but remained where he was. “I have this nightmare-I’ve had it for six years now-where I keep seeing the fire at the house, keep running inside to save my mother, and keep finding her too late.”
A weight heavy as a pile of bricks settled in the room with us.
“Well, it changed over the last few weeks.”
He ran both hands through his hair, then tucked them into his pockets and gave me a strange sort of smile.
“It wasn’t my mother I kept finding anymore.”
He paced to the other window, then seemed to force himself to look at me.
“It became you, Veronica. It was your body I’d find minutes too late.”
Warm tears spilled from my eyes, and I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came, not for what seemed like a very long time. And when it did come, I sounded strange, not like myself.
“Stefan, it’s a dream. A nightmare. It’s not real.”
“The fire was real. You almost died.”
It felt like I was hearing his words one at a time, slow to process their meaning. Not wanting to.
“I meant what I said at the church. That I’d let you go. I thought that was the right thing to do.” He stopped, took a deep breath in. “I still do.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he held up his hand to stop me.
“But you need to know something first. I lied to you, Veronica. I promised you truth, and I lied to you.”
“Stefan-”
“At the church. What you said-when you told me you loved me-it caught me off guard. I didn’t realize…”
He drew something out of his pocket. It was my ring, the one I’d left in the bathroom.
“This is ridiculous, isn’t it? Fucking ring of thorns.”
I had no words.
“But they fit. Being married to me, Veronica, you will always have the thorns, only there is no rose.”
I stood, but my knees buckled, and I fell back into my chair, choking on a sob that came from somewhere deep inside me.
I knew what he was doing. And I was right. This was good-bye. He would sign that contract, but he wouldn’t be selling back my freedom. He’d be buying it from my grandfather.
And this time, it was so much harder than at the church. This time, it would destroy me. Because telling me he didn’t love me, as much as that had hurt, this was worse.
He slipped the ring on his thumb and came to me.
“I love you, Veronica, and almost losing you-” He shook his head, rubbed the scruffy two-days growth on his chin. “I’m fucked up and angry, and I can’t keep you.”
“No.”
He knelt before me and took my face in his hands, wiping away tears with his thumbs.
“No matter how much I want to, I can’t keep you. Your grandfather, he’s got one thing wrong about Moriarty. He won’t stop. He won’t care about this piece of evidence. His hate for me, it puts you in too much danger. The other night was evidence of that. No matter what, we would always be looking over our shoulders.”
“No. Not with the evidence.”
“Even if it weren’t for him, Veronica, I should never have brought you here. I should never have started this. Punishing you to punish your grandfather? Look what came of that.”
“Don’t I get a say in this?”
He rose to stand, bringing me with him, and with my face in his hands, he kissed me. It was a rough kiss. A final one.
“I love you, Veronica.”
His gaze bore into mine as if he would memorize every detail of my face.
“I love you too much to do this to you.”
Before I could even respond, before I’d even processed his words, he pushed me aside and picked up the pen lying on the table and signed his name to the contract. I watched, stupefied, as he scrawled his signature on the sheet, then set the pen down and placed my ring beside it.
With one more look at me, he reached for the envelope containing the memory card, tucked it into his pocket, turned, and walked out the door.
After Stefan left the office, I stood in the room, staring after him. Staring at the space where he’d just been before falling back into my chair, my legs unable to support me.
I wasn’t sure what would be easier, thinking he didn’t love me or knowing the truth. Although I guess I knew there was no easy. This would hurt. It would hurt for a very long time.
My grandfather and the attorneys walked back into the room. No one seemed to take notice of me. Grandfather set the ring and pen aside and checked the signature on the contract.
“It’s done,” he said, handing it to one of the men who slipped it into his briefcase then clicked it closed. No one sat back down. “Gentlemen, thank you. I’ll be in touch.”
They were shaking hands, almost at the door, when I spoke. “Why did you want the marriage consummated?”
They all stopped. Someone cleared their throat. My grandfather turned to me, a coldness in his eyes that chilled me, then shifted his attention back to them.
“Forward official copies electronically and in hard copy.”
The men left. Grandfather closed the door behind them and faced me but remained where he was.
“What an inappropriate question to ask in front of our attorneys.”
“What an inappropriate request to make.”
He walked over to me. “I did this for you.”
“You also did this to me.”
“I told you, I was making amends.”
“Tell me why you wanted it consummated?”
He studied me. “Because I didn’t think he’d go through with it. Because I thought when faced with an unwilling virgin bride-”
I flinched at the words.
“His morality would stop him. End this. Hell, maybe I thought you’d cry rape.”
My mouth fell open. He was willing to go that far? No. God, no.
He stepped closer and cocked his head to one side, any weakness I’d thought I’d seen when we’d first come into the room vanished.
“But you weren’t unwilling, were you, Veronica? You whored yourself out to that man. Just like your mother did to your father.”
I breathed in tight breaths and, collecting every ounce of courage, I rose to stand. “Don’t you dare call her or me a whore, old man.”
He did something then that he’d never done before that moment. For all his coldness, for all his distance, he’d never raised a finger to us. Not until today.
The sound of him slapping my face reverberated off the walls, snapped my head to the side, and sent me stumbling backward.
I touched my cheek. It throbbed, growing hotter under my hand.
“Don’t you ever speak to me like that again, understand?”
The door opened just then, and one of the attorneys returned.
“Sorry, I forgot-” He stopped short. “Excuse me.”
He made to walk back out, but before he could, I spoke.
“You’re a vile old man,” I said to my grandfather. “You’re a selfish, greedy old man. You never forgave my mother for falling in love with a man you didn’t approve of when you never should have had any say at all. You used me like a pawn. You treated me no differently than your enemy. You’ve been stealing from my sister and me all our lives. It’s about time this ends.”
I turned to the attorney.
“I want Kingstonnship of my sister. Draw up whatever paperwork I need-”
“And you’ll support her how? With what money?” my grandfather asked. “The state will never allow it.”
“If you stand against me, I’ll go to the authorities with what I know. You’ll be investigated. You’ll be arrested. You will be imprisoned.”
For the first time in all the time I’d known him, my grandfather didn’t speak. He stood there, color draining from his face just a little.
“Walk away, and you can keep what you’ve stolen,” I added.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he started, opening his mouth to continue before I stopped him.
“Are you willing to take that chance?” I asked.
My grandfather’s cell phone rang just then. I imagined the relief he must have felt, the gratitude for the distraction. He stepped away, taking it out of his pocket. When he did, I scooped up the ring Stefan had left on the table, dropped it into my purse, and walked out.
I didn’t know where I was going. Didn’t know if my credit card even worked anymore, didn’t have any clothes. Luckily, I had my passport. And I needed to get out of there. Get out of that stifling room, that building, before the walls crushed me. I walked out the front doors into the heat and noise of the busy city and lost myself in the crowd, somehow managing not to fall down, not to break into tears as I walked farther and farther away, not knowing where I would go, needing to disappear.