Chapter Thirteen
?
A darling dove and her wicked crow.
Malcolm
“This is the single worst date idea for someone like me that I can possibly think of,” Azalea exhales, staring with trepidation at the paint-your-own pottery storefront in the Vexillum Western Mall.
“You mustn’t have a very vivid imagination. I can think of at least ten things you’d hate more,” I say, ushering her inside via proximity alone. It’s great. With every inch I move, she takes a step away as though she’s being chased.
“Hello!” the cheery attendant at the front counter greets us. “Welcome to Perfectly Painted Pottery. I’m sorry to say, but we’re fully booked for the next few hours.”
“We’re the two-thirty reservation for Swallow.”
The attendant’s lips part, and she says, “Oh. Welcome! Have you been here before?”
“No, this is our first time.” Coolly, I eye my reluctant partner. “Hopefully, not our last, though.”
Azalea glares daggers at me.
I, innocently, adjust the lightweight linen scarf hiding my bruises from view.
Her eyes widen a fraction, and she tames, standing patiently beside me while the attendant goes through explaining how we select our pieces and get our paint. Once left to our own devices, Azalea and I peruse the shelves of the quiet shop.
It’s quiet, it should be noted, because I reserved every space left a week ago and paid extra for each seat we wouldn’t actually be using so they’d be kept empty.
Only a handful of people who placed their reservations before me scatter the seating area, talking beneath the dulcet pop station playing in the background.
“Dove.”
Azalea stiffens, dragging her attention to me. An alluring sparkle of worry greets me in her pretty blue eyes.
I ask, “Is there anything I can make for you that you’d use?”
Her forehead wrinkles, but she rakes a scanning look over the bleached white pieces awaiting color. Plates. Mugs. Figurines. The selection covers several center displays and numerous shelves along the walls. Her gaze locks on something, so I follow it.
To a bird.
A bird.
My heart seizes, and I realize—not for the first time—how dearly I love this woman. The idea that we might exchange a painted dove and crow leaves me breathless, tense, and yearning. Weak, I say, “Please.”
Her grip on her purse tightens.
Low and urgent, I implore, “I am begging you, Azalea. I’ll do anything if you make me a dove.”
“Anything?” she whispers, turning. “You mean what you’ve already promised you’d do for me?”
Hopeless, I look down at her and offer a breaking smile. “Maybe…I shouldn’t have told you so soon the lengths I’m willing to go for you.”
“It certainly puts a damper on your manipulation efforts now, doesn’t it?” She peruses an egregiously gaudy ornament.
“This isn’t manipulation; it’s pleading.”
“It really is.” She sets the ornament down. “I’m ashamed to say I rather like it.”
My heart pounds. “Would you have me make a scene?” I ask. “Do you wish me on my knees in a show of public humiliation?”
“I’d so dearly rather not be included in that, but…keep talking.”
I get closer, keeping my voice steady and deep beneath the music. This time, she doesn’t flee even as my breath no doubt skims her ear. “I would cut myself open if it meant you’d paint a little dove for me, Azalea.”
“Tempting,” she murmurs. “And I suppose you’d paint me a crow and expect me to accept it?”
“Everything we paint will go through hours of fire before it touches us again.”
“Reassuring, that.” Her eyes cut my way, and she fidgets, as though realizing for the first time that we’re an inch apart. She stops breathing.
“Please,” I beg.
“They’re neither doves nor crows,” she states. “Those are generic little songbird figurines.”
“I don’t care. We’ll know what they are to us.”
Unrest rampant in her gaze, she searches me. “You’re…disconcerting.” Pulling away, she plucks one of the birds from the shelf and selects a table as far from everyone else as she can possibly get.
Elated, I follow her and wait as she wipes down the space before tentatively setting the bird in front of a plastic chair. As though it’s a great ordeal, she beholds the paint selection station on the other side of the room.
“You can do it,” I say.
“Don’t patronize me,” she mutters, gliding across the shop. I follow my angel and fill my palette with dark shades that contrast her pale ones. The softest of pinks, the barest of oranges, the purest of whites. Her pastels battle my deep ebony, dark violet, and navy blue.
Starkly opposite, we begin, dipping dainty brushes and coloring our palm-size birds.
“What’s your favorite color?” I ask.
Azalea doesn’t look up. “What kind of a question is that?”
“A genuine one.”
“You first.”
“Black.”
“Crazy.” Surgically, she finishes her first coat of white, refraining from so much as grazing the damp portion of her dove with her gloves. “I couldn’t have guessed.”
“You’re leading me to assume your favorite color is white, but I’m not convinced.”
“I’m not leading you anywhere. You’re the one who dragged me here. Against my will. And under duress.” She tenses when someone on the other side of the shop coughs.
I watch her breath hold as she begins to count the seconds she must withhold air from her lungs. I say, “I hope you’ll choke me again after this date.”
Breaking her count, she sucks in a breath. “What?”
“I said, it’s far cleaner here than the theme park you picked.”
“You did not.”
“Didn’t I?” I watch her, skeptical, and proceed, merrily dropping my attention back to my bird.
“You’ll have to forgive me if I’ve picked a poor excursion.
I suppose I assumed you were trying to expand your horizons.
I mean, truly, what other possible reason could you have for wanting to bring me to a theme park? ”
Her lips part. “Right…well…it was…” She buffers. “…an impulse.” Her lips pinch as she lies, “I’ve always wanted to go there.”
All adoration, I murmur, “And you trusted me to make it safe for you.”
She goes still.
“Thank you.”
Achingly slow, she lifts her attention to me.
“I’m honored,” I say, sincerity incarnate.
Even though I know this is malarkey. And she knows it’s malarkey.
And we both know not a single cell in her has ever aspired to go to a theme park nor has even half of one ever trusted me.
Still. I’m at least ensnared in the illusion.
Focusing on my bird, I proceed in the poppycock.
“I’ve always thought your coldness toward me hid deeper feelings.
I’m grateful to learn that I was right. I’m glad you know I’ll take care of you, no matter where we are. ”
Moments of calculation meld with rampant disgust and slip into the space between us.
Voice tight, she finally concurs, “Yes…” Agony undertones her syllables.
“Exactly…that…what you said. I guess. It’s more than revenge that I feel…
” Harsh, she forces herself through the statement. “…when I’m with you.”
Oh, if only.
If only I were a better person.
If only my personality were more palatable.
If only I didn’t crave chaos and power and pain and mental gymnastics.
I could treat her so well. So right.
I could.
But I won’t.
Because I’m corrupt and wicked—a monster who thrives most when it’s toying with emotions and minds.
My disposition works well in business where the goal is getting what I want. It works less well in forging healthy relationships. Which is why, at some point amid the soul-breaking work that is tax season, I decided.
Why be healthy?
Why not use my usual exorbitant methods to obtain love just like I use them to obtain everything else?
The obvious answer is: because instead of love, you may accidentally create a fictional scenario in which the woman you’d die for believes she’s an accomplice in a scheme to kill you.
But.
Well.
Whatever.
I’ve already come to terms with that having its own charms.
Being hated to the point of pre-meditated murder means there’s only up to go from here.
And turning that kind of hatred into love means nothing will ever be able to take it from me.
Once Azalea is mine, she will be mine. She will have come through every last reason to turn me down. She will be helpless against me.
And she may not even know why.
Once she’s accepted me for what I am and claimed me as hers, there will be no going back.
Steadily, she will try me until she falls under the spell of my unwavering devotion and thinks what’s it matter if he’s wicked, so long as he’s mine?
Proving my point, Azalea stares at me, suspicious and tense and wary, and then she tests me. “My favorite color…is blue.”
My breath catches. “What shade?”
Her eyes lower, rise, and she points at her irises. “It’s…safe. The only color I can remember that ever has been. So. Specifically. It.”
This feels like a secret only I know. “Why do you want to wear gold to the Flag Day ball, then?”
“Want is such a dramatic word, don’t you think?”
“Is it because you think of gold as closer to yellow, which is closer to white?”
Her jaw locks, and I can tell she regrets not only sharing something personal with me but also the fact I’m proving I know her better than she’d like me to.
I say, “I could find you an ice blue gown in the exact shade of your eyes, if you’d like.”
Breath leaves her in a constrained, steady stream. “You keep using such strong language.”
“I love you,” I say, offering her the strongest language I know. “Gold or ice blue. Which would you like to try?”
She scowls at me, expression distinctly saying neither, but when her eyes close, resignation consumes her. She dips her brush in the orange to begin careful work on her dove’s beak as she says, “Ice blue.”
Progress. It looks lovely on her.
“Ice blue it is,” I confirm, dipping my brush in the navy to add highlights to the feathers of her crow.