chapter 8

There was some strange humour in the fact that Bradley Pierce's office, a place Blue hadn't been in since she was ten, had quickly become her favourite place to slip away and lose herself in some intensive tonsil-tennis and pre-marital sex. Almost just as strange was the fact that Vincent, a man she hadn't met 10 days ago, was being invited over more and more by Marian to keep the fast-ageing woman company during the times Bradley and Richard inevitably snuck off together as though they were the married couple. Perhaps if Blue wasn't so occupied, she would find the time her father and the man she was supposedly going to marry spent together strange... but she hadn't even noticed, let alone given it any thought.

Blue found herself laughing rather loudly. "You've taken this exact shirt off three times already and you still get stuck on the buttons?" The words fell between lips almost sewn to her own, and though she chuckled with the playful spirits she would sooner die than abandon, she found the legs crossed around the denim-clad hips of a man she hungered for so dearly drawing his groin against hers. She needed something to satisfy the urges waiting so impatiently to be sated, if Vincent dry-humping her was all she could get with the man's hands stuck on the mere second button of her blouse, she'd take it twice over.

"I can't say I care all that much for this shirt," Vincent's lips broke from hers before she could take a hold of his face and prevent the tragedy — and before she could put in place another specific method of prevention, she found the seams of the shoulders digging into her armpits as Vincent tore the shirt open and tossed what had been three hundred dollars of silk to the floor before Blue could curse his name in surprise.

All she could do was let her mouth fall open in shock and her brows knit in a frown betrayed by a chuckle from parted lips, "What the hell am I supposed to wear at lunch?"

"That's a problem for you to sort out," and with the devilish smile Vincent offered and the warmth of his hand as it slid between her legs, she couldn't bring herself to tell him off for the action which would inevitably force her to dart to her room shirtless. In fact, all she could do was gasp as she found the very fingers that had torn a shirt she hated, regardless, pushing aside her underwear impatiently and slipping inside of her with little more warning than a hand sliding through her hair and his mouth covering her own. "I've decided I want to watch you cum today," he murmured the words almost lost in the sound of a broken, long groan from Blue's lips just as he traced the depth of the girl he had come to know well...

"But I want your you," Blue tipped her head back in an effort to break his kiss, just as his eyes followed her hand dropping from his shirt and instead gripping the edge of the desk — but as she watched the man from the tip of her nose, his hand shifted from the base of her neck and tangled through the peak of her skull. In less than a second, he pulled her lips to his.

"Well you can't always get what you want, can you?" though his voice was soft, and his kiss was relatively gentle, she found his hand to be aggressively curious in that he moved with a swiftness that had her hips rocking against his wrist as his fingers curled. He was warning off her attempts to quicken his pace with an inch in any direction of her hips and her groin alike. "Let a man be selfless once in a while," Vincent spoke with an edge that half-heartedly warned Blue to pinch her lips before he spread his fingers... and just like that, she found herself victim to a moan of pleasure and pain alike as a sound somewhat of surprise... With a sinking heart of impatience, she knew that Vincent would keep her like that for a while before he really let her have her climax. Why was it that he got to tease?

Blue gripped his shoulders for a sense of support he gave willingly as an arm slipped from her hair and wrapped affectionately around her shoulders... "You're not being fair," She found herself mumbling the words from their broken kiss as her head tucked beneath his chin and his own closed eyes focused on the flesh he'd named home... He entertained a fear that he'd forget the feel and detail of how it felt between her legs if he wasn't careful. And in the darkness of his hidden stare he fixated on the sound of her gasps.

"Life isn't fair, sweetheart," He found his mouth twisting into a small smile as Blue rocked back to meet his gaze, wide blue eyes begging for any kiss. The same eyes clouded with disbelief when met with the ringtone she had come to know all too well.

"Don't pick it up," She watched as Vincent reached into the pocket of his jeans with a challenging, twisted smile and met her gaze after a moment far too long...

"It's a very important call, Blue,"

"Don't pick it up," and as she spoke she twisted her hands in his shirt as though it alone would keep him from breaking away... yet she filled with a sense of regret as she watched the blissfully dampened fingers lift to his mouth and the phone lift to his ear-

All she could do was groan in dismay and fall back onto the desk, feeling the absence of his hand all too luridly and the rush of air over her chest all too bitterly without his embrace to keep the air conditioning at bay. Never in her life had she felt more sexually frustrated — and she had been experiencing said frustrations for some five or so years. At least as her head rolled to the side and she watched him pace, she could admire his ass and the way his arms poked from his shirt the exact way she had told him she loved.

...She found herself doing various things to fill her time whilst she watched Vincent take his call — sitting in the armchair and staring vacantly out the window, pacing the length of the desk with her arms crossed as though Vincent would pick up on just how angry she was, assessing the damage of the blouse she was rather glad to be rid of... And most recently, leafing through the drawers of her father's desk in search of some evidence which would provide her with juicy entertainment; a receipt for a transfer of cash to the mother of his bastard child; a bag of marijuana; adoption papers for a girl named Blue.

When she fished a paper from the desk with just as many text spaces as there was writing, she truthfully expected divorce papers. In all truth, how had her parents been married for so long? Bradley worked far too often to have a functioning sex life and Marian treated her husband awfully... they were the perfect candidates for lengthy couples therapy and an inevitable divorce. And yet as she scanned the papers she couldn't fully comprehend what it was exactly until she found herself attempting to read over the page a second time in vain through tear filled eyes. A title and two pencilled in spaces was all she needed; "marriage", "Blue Lee Pierce", "Richard Carter".

She found herself stumbling into a seat on the very armchair she had taken to sitting on moments before and in much higher spirits.

"Look, I'll email you the contract by nine tomorrow but I'm going to have to end things here because I've got another call waiting..." Blue looked up from the papers to meet the gaze of Vincent who seemed to be staring straight back in waiting. "You too, bye," and with that, she watched the man's swift approach and an even timelier crouch by her feet. Before she could take a hand to her eyes and hide the fact that she had, in fact, been on the brink of tears, Vincent took the back of her head in his hand and offered her the gentlest gaze she had ever seen from such a man. "What's wrong? Did something happen?" he murmured the words in much the same volume he had taken to when he had his hands between the girl's legs not too long ago — and yet there was something different about the tone the moment he had coaxed her eyes to his; his voice was gentle and low for the sake of comfort. He was intimate not because he had some part of himself inside of her but because he was putting so much care into how he handled her. He was reserved and sincere in a way she hadn't yet seen from him. Without a pause, Blue thrust the crumpled paper towards the man who had joined her... and she watched eagerly for the same change in an expression she herself had had. Never in her life had she thought she could be so upset to see a marriage licence. She had hoped it would be a moment she would enjoy. "Do you think it's real?"

"Last week, after you came upstairs with me, my mom sat me down and I thought she was gonna' tell me off because she knew I wasn't at home that night-" Vincent watched the girl bury her face in her hands as she shook her head — and in that moment, he really wished she had a shirt to put on. "-but she started going on about how it's my responsibility to marry Richard and take care of this family,"

"Is there any chance Richard won't agree to the marriage?"

"He's obsessed with me — when we went out for dinner, he cornered me in the bathroom after he saw us in the car and said that I 'owed him a favour' because he didn't tell my mother," Vincent, truthfully, felt his heart sink into his stomach. Why hadn't she mentioned that Richard had followed them just to corner her? How long had Richard been asserting himself in such a way? How did her parents manage to forge her signature? "He's probably elated that I have to marry him," Regretfully, Blue found herself letting out a sob in a way she had promised to never let herself do in the company of a man. In the very same way, her toes curled, and her shoulders shook — this was it. This was the end. "I'm going to be my mother; I'm going to get married in a month and be in the family way in two and then before I know it I'll start wasting away for the rest of my fucking life,"

"It's okay, it's okay, we can stop this,"

When Blue looked up from the cup of her hands, her eyes failed to conceal the frenzy they had been taken by. They were wide and wild, her lips were set in a frown, her hands shook and her voice broke. She looked angry in a desperate, disbelieving way. She looked overcome by so many emotions she felt she could never name. It was a strange, strange thing indeed. How she felt so confused and yet so deep in grief she was torn from the inside... strangely, she wasn't surprised at all. How strange would it be for her to say that she had expected Marian to do something exactly like that her whole life? "How? How can we possibly stop Marian, the woman who always gets what she wants, from getting what she wants?"

Vincent appeared to be overcome by a certain sense of determination as he licked his lips and ran a hand through his hair... Just as he did, Blue waited eagerly. What could he possibly have to say? 'Let's shred it'? It's a licence, surely it's been signed and approved and filed away and photocopied into oblivion. 'Let's legally change your name'? Despite the pure mockery that came about with being named after a colour, she had come to quite like the colour. She liked the way Vincent said it with such an affection — the way he called her 'B' as if that in itself was her name; the way people looked at her when she introduced herself... with the very look that she'd never be forgotten... that girl named 'Blue'... The very way Vincent looked at her.

"Marry me instead,"

Blue's heart sunk. Again. Just how fucked was she if possibly one of the most intelligent men in the world's best and only idea was changing the rules ever-so-slightly. What kind of victory would it be to solve the problem of getting married when she didn't want to by just marrying someone else? It wasn't a victory. The only reason Marian would never see it coming would be because she was so sure her daughter had some wits about her — so sure that her daughter wouldn't make rash decisions to get out of a situation sooner rather than better (for the want of a better word). What would marrying someone else to get out of a marriage go towards, working smarter or working harder? Surely it wouldn't be smarter, there's nothing smart about it — and it's not hard work at all. The devil works hard but Marian Pierce works harder. "Don't be ridiculous, Vincent, we're strangers."

Vincent took Blue's wrists in his hands and knotted his fingers with hers with a care she had never seen when he was nailing her from behind... Before she could look away, he held her gaze with a strong stare of his own and smiled distantly in an effort to comfort the girl. To a certain degree, it worked. "They can't make you marry Richard if you're already married — right now, your only two options are me and Richard, so you have to make your decision,"

"It's my problem, not yours,"

"Blue, you're my girlfriend, it's very much my problem," He watched intently as the girl shook her head. Though he had reluctantly agreed that there was no soothing the girl just as there was no easing her worry, he pressed on in a way that made Blue feel as though she was truly cared for. As much as she hated to admit it, there were worse people in the world to marry. But was she ready for marriage? Was he ready for marriage? "I'm not going anywhere... I would very much like to date you and if I have to marry you to do that, so be it," Blue shook her head again. "Richard is a scumbag and you're the most important person in my life, I'd die before I let him marry you," She shook her head again. "Besides, I could think of worse things in the world than having you as my wife," Finally, she looked up.

And with the eyes he had come to know so well and the gaze of affection and wisdom, he felt all made sense in the world. The centre of his world was Blue, everything else was an add-on. What would he do without the girl he had known for half of a month? Would his affections grow with time to surpass even what he had been feeling already? He watched as she grinned and laughed, though through tears and angst, and all he could do was squeeze the hands in his as search her eyes affectionately... "So, this is my official proposal... what do you say?"

Though the expression didn't produce the sweet tones of her chuckle, Blue found herself falling prey to a grin as she broke one hand from Vincent's and wiped away at her face — "Yes, I'll marry you," Again, though not the sound of a chuckle, her voice was just as sweet. Though marriage wasn't something she truly wanted when she was only freshly an adult, it wasn't the worst concept in the world to be married to a man she had feared would dump her any day for a new fling. It was the kind of guy he was, or at least she had thought him to be. It was the sort of guy he looked to be; well-groomed, a car only big enough to fit one-and-a-half people, both spare bedrooms of his apartment filled with storage boxes, two seats at his dining table... How could he really be ready for marriage?

More importantly, where would they live? Would they keep it a secret? Would she run off and cut all ties to be married to this man? If she would, why couldn't she just do it without marrying him? Surely these were the questions a smarter Blue would say before saying 'yes, I'll marry you'.

"Okay, and how does this Saturday sound? I have a conference in LA on Sunday... how about I book a hotel, I clear my schedule for next week and we have the most sex-filled honeymoon you could ever imagine," Would she take his last name? Would she keep her own? Would he make her sign a prenuptial agreement? Would she even need to? His apartment was the most sparsely furnished apartment she had ever seen, it seemed the nicest thing he owned was his car — or was that just a part of his bachelor act?

"How are we going to plan a wedding in two days?" Would she get a ring, or would they skip that particular formality altogether? Would he buy her a ring later? Would he let her pick the ring for herself? Would the marriage last? Would they get divorced one day and look back at how stupid it was in the first place?

"You're overestimating how hard it is to get a marriage licence, dress, suit, cake, venue and two witnesses over eighteen," Vincent watched. He simply watched as Blue's eyes searched his own rather fondly just as her shoulders rose and fell with a sigh. Though there was no smile that came with the expression and no hint of any goodwill towards the matter at all, Vincent found a small comfort in the sigh. It was a sigh that expelled any stress with it; a sigh of acceptance; a sigh that took with it all the anxiety and tension that she had seemed to draw through her hands from the godforsaken paper.

Blue, slowly, did smile. "Blue Carmichael... sounds a bit odd, doesn't it?"

"It sounds beautiful," before Blue could ask for the very gesture Vincent seemed to offer all too often, she found the man's hand smoothing over the back of her head delicately and his eyes sliding between hers as though searching for any reluctance he would never find. Never in her life had she been so sure about something so completely stupid — and there had been plenty of bad decisions she ought to be surer of. "I won't ever let Richard go near you, Blue,"

The girl, shirtless and still slightly aroused, found herself laughing half-silently despite the circumstance in a sound rather unwarranted. "Put that on paper so I can sue you and get some money if he does," She watched as his eyes narrowed with a broad smile of his own and he shook his head ever so gently. He was cute to the extent a full-grown man with roughened features and a forcefully quickened ageing process could be. It wasn't that he was balding in the way Richard was, but instead the fact he had harsh lines in places she would never have imagined to be soft. The fact his skin looked so rough and weathered in the most intriguing way... it was one footnote which reminded her how little she knew of the man she was going to marry. Would the rugged countenance be explained through gang affiliation or old school chain-smoking? Would the man have a hidden duality like Jekyll himself or would his subconscious be as clean as any regular middle-aged man luring a barely legal woman into marriage? "Now, I need you to have another good idea—" Blue pushed aside all comedic pretence to hold the man's eyes in a rather firm stare. Though her wild brows and soft eyes were no match for the cold stare of a man who surely spent time practising a stony gaze, Blue's hardest efforts weren't exactly feeble. Her eyes in themselves took the sense of leisure from their banter as a whole. Her face lacking the cheeky grin she was seldom without gave Vincent no reason to smile or chuckle or shake his head or smirk as he quite usually would. "What am I going to do now that I don't have a shirt?"

"We'll go buy you a new one,"

"And how are we going to do that?" Blue watched intently as Vincent shifted and dug into his pocket. Strangely, though she had not felt the certain protrusion when she was dry-humping him not too long before, the man pulled out his keys. Most specifically, his car key. Were they going to make an escape? "Now we're back at square one, how am I going to leave this room without a shirt on?"

Vincent rocked back, eyes lingering on the bare chest of the girl he'd admittedly hate to cover up and found his feet far more easily than Blue ever could. With a small smile, he murmured the words no one but the girl could hear even if he screamed them at the top of his lungs. "You're going to do what you do best – climb out of windows when you know you're not supposed to – and I'll meet you at the car,"

"Shirtless?"

"Shirtless."

Though Blue felt a flood of brief anxiety rush to her face with a wave of blood and subsequent colour, she felt her lips twisting into a half-smile before she could fight it off. "Why do I feel like you're going to enjoy watching this?"

"Because I am," The man paced forwards so easily and took the girls hands in his. Before she could place any bets on what he would do – would he kiss her hands, would he squeeze them, would he sink to a crouch again, would he... he tugged the girl from the armchair with a hybrid of care and haste and lowered his mouth to hers where their lips didn't quite meet... "The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can pick up where we left off," Though Blue's hands gripped the collar of his shirt and she rose on her toes to beg his mouth to hers, their lips only brushed and met at the corners — he was teasing her; he made her dizzy in a way she never had been.

"Now you're just bribing me," Before she could talk herself out of it, she slipped a hand through the overgrown, dark hair that mingled with the collar of his shirt and pressed her open mouth against his in a way she found she'd always long for.

—

"You got along with Vincent quite well at lunch yesterday," When Marian spoke, Blue found that it was best to listen to each word carefully. Blue could lie only so long as she wasn't lying about lying; if she said one misplaced 'what' or 'pardon' that prompted Marian to ask the child what she was hiding, she would be instantaneously in a world of trouble. The listening carefully, of course, wasn't as much of an issue when the word 'Vincent' was thrown into the sentence. In fact, anything that sounded even remotely like the word would catch Blue's attention from a mile away.

As she stabbed at her bacon and dug her nails into her thigh in an attempt to hold a glare at bay, Blue gave her best efforts to appear as though she had no real emotional connection to the word 'Vincent'. And as far as her lying skills went, she did a stellar job. "That would be because he's the first person to not treat me like a tumour, mother, you should try it,"

"You're delusional,"

This time, Blue did glare. She simply couldn't help it. "No, I'm your show pony — if you want me to so desperately marry rich, you should set me up with him," Delusional was a trigger word for any hormonal female — that, and 'crazy' or 'nuts' or anything of the like. And hormonal is exactly what she had found herself to be in recent times. Let it be her change in birth control brand or her declining appetite, she couldn't seem to get a grip of herself.

"Absolutely not," Blue's heart skipped a beat as Marian shot her a glare. She had spent all night planning the way she would bring up the fact she was engaged to Vincent. One of which involved sliding the topic into a conversation about Richard. Marian's reaction along killed that dream, Blue was sure of it. It seemed she would have to go back to the drawing board; the drawing board being 'notes' on her phone.

"He's an awful man, Blue — he should be in prison for the things he's done, let alone the way he treats people," When Bradley weighed in on the conversation was one of the many clues it was a serious topic. Blue had found that her father was more of an extra than a side character in the short film that was Marian — a short film due to the sheer fact it was rather lacking in substance and character — and rather incapable of forming an opinion of his own. The thought alone lead Blue to form one judgement as she chased her scrambled eggs around her plate with a fork and attempted to breathe through her mouth to hide from the nauseating smell alone; either Marian had cared so deeply about the topic that she had convinced her doting husband of her judgement, or Bradley found it grave enough to consider for the short time it would take to form an opinion. And for Bradley, time was money.

"Over my dead body will you marry Vincent," Marian's gaze softened as she cast a look to Blue's amused smile — in a second, she deduced that her daughter's comment had only been a joke. Because of this, she didn't mind taking her claws out of the poor child. "Besides, Richard is nice, and he does well for himself — he has a clean record and he is one of the most respectful men I've met... aside from your father,"

Blue cast a pleading look to her father at the sole suggestion of marrying Richard; a look her father didn't seem to care much at all for. "I would tell you to stay away from him, Blue, but I'm afraid you have no choice,"

Tearing her eyes from her father, Blue glared at the woman she felt didn't care enough to listen to her pleas, let alone consider them. She knew it was a losing battle — it was exactly the reason she had chosen her own ring with Vincent right after he bought her a whole new wardrobe entirely... she was out of options. "And since when did you care about my well-being?"

"We both care about that and the fact that if you married someone like Vincent and brought his name, record and his reputation with the two of you, you would ruin everything we ever worked for," Like Marian had worked a day in her life for anything they owned.

"There's the catch,"

"I don't know what you mean,"

"I mean that you don't care about me, you care about what people think of me," Blue kicked out her chair in a tantrum she let take a hold of her before she could reason with herself. With a wild glare and a raised voice, she flattened her hands against the table's surface and squared up to her mother in a way she had never thought she'd have the balls to — but this was her fiancée they were talking about. What a strange word... "What has he done? Let's just pretend I have any interest in him, and you have to convince me not to like him anymore,"

"I can't tell you that," Blue found herself turning wildly on her father as he spoke through the silence. Just as quickly as she did, she caught the very flicker of shame she regretted she had ever seen. "If I did, I'd be in just as much trouble as he would," The ring was huge, it was a wonder Marian hadn't spotted it glinting challengingly on the table's surface between the trio up until that point... but Blue, no matter how pretentious the diamond was and no matter how many karats of white gold she had been left with, truly knew nothing about what she had gotten herself into.