Blind Fools: Chapter 32

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Chapter 32

As dawn peeked over the horizon, Ophelia finally got tired of lying there, so she padded into the tiny kitchen to hunt down a coffee maker. Fifteen minutes later, she lounged in a deck chair down by the lake, watching the sun make it's first appearance of the day and pressing Lucky to her heart. For a secluded hideaway to gather her peace of mind, this was kind of the perfect place. She knew the boaters and fishermen would be out in force in a few hours, making the water ripple against the shore and polluting the quiet morning with loud motors and blaring music, but for now, she breathed...and the silence felt good – not peaceful, just good.

The squish of wet grass alerted her to a visitor. Ophelia glanced over her shoulder, and there stood Ian, still dressed in his tuxedo, guided by Bruno down the grassy slope to where she sat. “I'm burning it,” he said, first thing. “You were right. I was wrong.”

Ophelia turned around in her chair and gazed sadly at the water while her fingers tightened around her coffee mug. She knew he'd find her. There really wasn't any doubt in her mind. For a person who couldn't see, he continued to seek her out with amazing accuracy. But Ophelia wasn't ready to run into his arms. He could say all the right words, but in the end, the damage was still done. Two hundred pairs of eyes saw her naked body.

She heard Ian speak to Bruno, telling the driver to wait by the limousine, and Ophelia wondered that if she walked up to the house without speaking to him, would he follow her? And if he did, he might get himself lost doing it, and she couldn't do that to him, no matter how much she despised his presence right that moment.

“Ophelia...”

“Go away, Ian,” she said, setting her mug down on the deck next to her and tucking Lucky under her shirt. “I came here to get away from you. How did you find me anyway?”

“Your cell phone,” he said, sitting down in the wet grass where he was. “Noah traced it for me.”

“That's it,” Ophelia muttered. “He's doing his own laundry from now on.”

“Can we talk about this?”

“I tried to talk about it last night,” she said. “But you didn't want to hear my side. 'It's art.' Well, I've been thinking about that. I told you I never gave you permission to carve me naked. And your contract may say one thing, but never once did I get naked during our contracted time. I could sue you.”

He sighed heavily and ran his hands through his hair. “Yeah, you can...and I wouldn't blame you. I'm sorry, Ophelia. I really didn't mean to hurt you this way...I thought I was proving to you how much I loved you...”

“Oh, Ian,” she said, hating how her heart kowtowed to him when she really just wanted to stay mad at him for a little bit longer. “You never had to prove it to me. It's been obvious for a while. I know you loved me.”

“Love you,” he corrected. “I love you, and that won't ever change.”

“But you betrayed me, and I can't ever forgive that,” she said, looking off across the water again. Her arms hugged her middle and she felt empty inside, with him so close and not holding her and her half-wishing he would hold her and make the pain go away, and yet still wanting him to leave because the pain of having him so close hurt so much.

“What is it going to take for you to give me another chance?”

“I don't know, Ian,” she whispered. The silent seconds stretched into minutes, and he stood up. Ophelia looked over at him, tears making the pain more excruciating instead of washing it away. He held his cane in front of him, perceiving it, and then cocked his head toward the lake.

“This may sound arrogant, Ophelia, but I know for a fact that you can't live without me, and I can't live without you. I love you too damn much to let you go.”

“You don't really get a choice, Ian,” she said softly, and frowned as he tossed aside his cane and tugged off his tuxedo jacket. “What are you doing?”

“I'm not giving you a choice either,” he said and struck off toward the water. His longs legs traveled down the grassy hill too fast for her comfort.

Ophelia jerked to her feet. “Ian, stop! You'll fall into the lake!”

“I know,” he said sadly and kept walking. Ophelia rushed after him, putting both palms on his chest to make him stop or plow right through her.

“Stop it, Ian! You're scaring me. You know you can't swim without someone with you.”

“Then come back with me, Ophelia,” he said. “Love me as much as I love you.”

“Ian, really! I'm not falling for this antic a second time. You walked into the street to get me to go out with you, but drowning yourself won't get me to admit that I love you. Stop being foolish!”

He grinned. “So, you do love me?”

“Oh, for heaven's sake!” She threw her hands in the air and stomped away to gather her coffee cup and go back up the hill. “You know what?! Throw yourself in the lake! See if I care!”

“But you do care, don't you, Ophelia?” he asked, coming away from the lake and walking straight at her. She could never get over how he always knew where she was, like there was some imaginary string tied to her.

“Ian, please…”

“No, Ophelia,” he said, reaching his hand out to caress her face, but stopping just shy of her cheek. His fingers hovered there, trembling slightly. “I can’t…I just can’t let you go. You have to see how much I truly do love you, and if I have to, I’ll call you up on that deal you never honored.”

“What deal?”

“You once said that I could have you until the stars stop twinkling in the sky. I didn’t get to fulfill that agreement, and I’m not leaving until I get another shot at it.” His hand dropped to his side. Ophelia stared at him. The sun rose over the tree line, shining in her eyes and blinding her momentarily.

“That’s not how this works,” she told him. “You just can’t show up here and start cashing in on old promises.”

“Oh, yes, I can, and I will. I want twenty-four hours, Ophelia. If I can’t convince you to take me back and that we belong together in that time, then I’ll never bother you again. That I promise you.”

“Dang it, Ian!” she huffed and stomped another few feet away. “You had three weeks! Three weeks to convince me of that, and you failed! In the time it took for that sheet to fall away from that sculpture, you lost me. You lost me before that when you refused to let me see the damn sculpture beforehand. If you’d only done that, I would have told you I didn’t approve.”

“I know,” he said, walking to her again. “And I’m sorry. Please give me another chance.”

You– don’t – get – another – chance!”

He dropped to his knees in front of her. “Please!

“Oh, for Heaven’s sake,” she said, grabbing his tie and hauling him to his feet. “Don’t grovel. This isn’t you, and I don’t want you if it is. I’ve always like the fact that you never needed anyone or anything. I love that you're self-reliant and always go after what you want. So stop acting like a fool.”

He actually grinned at her. “I’m only a fool when it comes to you, sweet Ophelia,” he said in his huskiest voice, and she couldn’t help it. She smiled, then she shook her head and sighed.

“Ian, I don’t want any more games between us. Endangering yourself, the begging, the bargaining...I want you to look at me and make me believe that we can have something special.”

He towered over her silently, his wide shoulders blocking the sun from her face, reminding her of the first time she ever saw him, standing next to her in her bookstore as she dug around for Lucky. Then she thought of all the other times, he stood before her, and then that one night -- the night she hid in his bathroom -- she felt like he truly spoke from his heart, not just saying the words that described how he felt, but actually pulling them up from the depths of his soul and voicing them as though he’d die if he didn’t.

“You know I can’t look at you,” Ian said in a tired tone. “If I could then I would, Ophelia.”

“That’s not what I meant, Ian,” she said, reaching up to caress the prickle of stubble on his jaw. Normally, he kept a very smooth face, so seeing him like this was a rare treat for her. “And you can look at me. You’ve done it before.”

“Please tell me what you want, Ophelia,” he said, pressing her hand against his cheek with his own. His eyelids closed, soaking up the feel of her touch, and she blinked, startled, as a realization hit her. There’d been thousands of times like this one, where the simplest of touches seemed to give him more pleasure than even a kiss. These were the moments when the games and schemes fell away, showing her just how much she meant to him. She noticed those emotions on his face before, but did she really see? Did she really look past what she only wanted to see?

She thought about Love’s Perception. Still disgusted by the fact that he carved her practically naked and then displayed that to the world, she closed her own eyes and drew a picture in her mind of that sculpture. She remembered how the eyes smoldered, because there’d been real heat in that wooden gaze, and she thought about how he could have known if she’d ever looked at him that way. How could he have whittled out such an expression of raw incandescence when he’d never observed that like sighted people could?

Then she recalled how natural and authentic her naked -- deep breath, get past it -- body looked in that sculpture. Concentrating on the lines and angles of her memory, she realized that he paid more attention to her than she’d always thought. She’d have to go back and look at it again, but she was fairly sure she remembered seeing the mole on the sculpture’s right shoulder and the tiny scar on her knee from an ice-skating incident when she’d been twelve. Then there was the way she liked to keep her toenails very short but her fingernails at exactly a quarter-inch. He even managed to depict the cowlick over her left temple accurately.

Ophelia opened her eyes and looked at Ian, seeing him again for the first time. She wished she could go back to that day in her bookstore and promptly say yes to his dinner date, then there would have been no more games between them, and they wouldn’t be standing here, lost in a tangle of What if’s.

“Ophelia,” he whispered to her, so softly and so agonizingly desperate, “anything you want...you only have to say the words.”

“Ian, remember that first night in your apartment?”

His eyelids came open and he frowned and smiled at the same time. “How could I forget?”

“I want that,” she said.

“You want to start over from there?” he asked. “Sure...I can do that. Bruno can take us back to the city right now.” He tugged on her hand up the hill.

She tugged back. “No, Ian. I want you, standing naked in front of that bathroom door, scratching at it nervously, trying to tell me that you loved me, but getting so choked up you can’t get the words out.”

“Okay,” he agreed slowly. “I can do that, too. Come on.” He pulled on her hand again.

Ophelia exhaled sharply. “No, Ian...I want the sincerity from that one moment. I want the honesty and the innocence and the passion you put into that one moment in time. No more ploys to win my heart, no more schemes to get me in bed, no more modeling contracts to get me to spend more time with you.”

The corner of his mouth quirked up. “I thought that one was kind of clever of me--”

She smiled in return because she couldn’t help it. She loved him. And when he smiled at her like that, her resolve cracked apart. “Yes, well...I wouldn’t be surprised if you were responsible for that Raul fiasco, too.”

A look of pure innocence and I-have-no-idea-what-you’re-talking-about came across his face. Ophelia groaned. “And even if you were,” she continued, “it’s probably best if I don’t know about it.”

“Probably,” he said with a full-blown grin, and then it vanished. “Ophelia...I’m not sure how that one time was any different from all the other times we’ve been together. I’ve been sincere about everything. You are beautiful to me, and I do desire you, and I’d spend every second of the rest of my life with you, and every time I’ve told you I love you, I meant it. I may have devised a few schemes to get you to take a chance on me, but that was only because you were being so dang stubborn, and I knew from the first time I passed you on the street -- before we ever met -- that we could have something special.”

Ophelia remained quiet. She started getting that funny feeling in her stomach again, like the night he first told her he loved her, so she let him speak.

“Then I got to know you, and I discovered that you’d been cheated out of so many wonderful things between a man and a woman and I thought that even if you’d never love me back, then I could at least give you those things. And yes, I used those times together to fuel my imagination in my art, but I guess I took it for granted that you already knew that about me. We spent so much time concentrating on you, that there are things about me you should have realized.”

She blew out a soft breath. “I know...Tiki tried to tell me, too. That’ll be hard for me to understand, Ian. I was never very artistic, and though I can appreciate it when it appeals to me, I just don’t think like that. I’ve never used my everyday life and feelings to create something before.”

He bent forward to lean his forehead on hers. “I’m sorry for exposing you like that. From now on, nothing from the neck down will ever be shown in my art.”

She gave a little laugh and wrapped her arms around him. “Oh, Ian...I may not know diddly squat about how an artist thinks, but I do know I’d never corral you like that. It’s your point of view, and I can respect that. All that I ask is that you never hide that from me again. It was more the shock of seeing it for the first time along with all those people. I wasn’t prepared.”

“Are you saying that you’d let me use you for my sculptures again?”

“Of course,” she said with a smile, waiting for the question she knew was coming.

He swallowed roughly, his throat making a hollow plunk sound. “And is that all? I only get you as my model?”

Ophelia thought it would be hypocritical of her to play word-games with him, since she put up such a fuss about his games. She’d have to save that for later. “No, Ian. That’s not all you get from me.”

He hugged her tightly, seeming to wait for more from her. When she didn’t add to that statement, he grunted, “Ophelia...are you really going to make me ask?”

“No,” she said, tipping her head back and raising up on her toes. With her mouth hovering just in front of his, she said, “I’m going to make you claim.” Then she sealed their lips, and he kissed her back, seizing and sucking her heart out of its protective chamber and breathing life into it.

“I love you,” she told him when he allowed the kiss to relax.

“I know,” he said with a devilish grin, “but I still like hearing it.” And he kissed her again, and she led him by the mouth up the hill and into the cottage.

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