Title: Blue
Author: Ivory Quinn
Genre: Erotica
Series: Darkness Falls Series #3
Rating: ☆☆☆☆.☆
Gabriel's Point of View
Scroll down for the song he was listening to
**SPOILER ALERT**
Don't read if you haven't finished Obsession
Shadows lengthen across the floor as the sun dies, a martyr to the horizon. They swell and fill the room, much in the same way as they’ve swallowed my heart. The house feels so empty without her in it; a mausoleum of echoing silence, bereft of the radiance of her love. I can’t believe she isn’t coming back. Even thinking about it leaves me reeling with a vertiginous daze. I’m standing on the precipice of never.
Her words assault me at every turn.
“I’m saying that this has been about trying to fix yourself. All this time you haven’t been looking for someone to control, you’ve been looking for someone you couldn’t break. You’re still looking for that lost, scared, hurt, damaged little boy. You keep thinking that someone, some day is going to be stronger than you, someone that won’t let you down. But you’ll never find them, Gabriel. Everyone breaks eventually. Even me. I can’t be trusted not to let you kill me, and until you can accept that, I’m only going to hurt you.”
Was she right? Had I just been trying to find a facsimile of myself to break in some perverse parody? Had I played like a God of old, making her in my own image? The ache in my chest certainly felt like I could have torn out my own rib.
Pressing my forehead against the cold glass, I faced the bleak truth that even if she wasn’t completely right, she also wasn’t completely wrong.
Since the moment Jax had carried her broken body from the house, it has felt like my world has been spinning wildly out of control on an unstable axis. I’ve staggered from heartache to heartache, drunkenly sober with grief, unable to find anything to ground me. She was my tether to sanity, my dark matter, my invisible strings. The strings have been severed and without her I’m a lifeless marionette.
In the distance the city is lighting up as night falls. The sight, so beautiful, fails to move me and for one aching, solitary moment I hate her. I hate her with the ferocity of a nine year old boy, drawn back into his nightmares. She saved me and then she cast me out. The hate burns fierce and hot and then it flickers out. She didn’t save me. I wouldn’t let her. I couldn’t. Hating her for saving herself seems like a betrayal of all we were and all we had.
The sad thing is that this isn’t even about Noelle really. It’s about Her. The breathing nightmare that spawned my seething darkness. She set me at war with myself and Noelle was the collateral.
Everything I stand for, everything I am, it’s a lie. Noelle was right.
“Gabriel, it’s not about control. It’s never been about control. If that’s what you think, you’ve missed the whole point of what dominating a submissive is all about. Through all of those times in the playroom, you never had control of me. I had the safe word. I had the power. It was me that was in control all along.”
My whole life is one grand, fucked up illusion. I walked away at sixteen thinking that I was finally my own man, but I’m not. She’s still controlling me, still determining the course of my life with the scars She left on my soul, and the realisation that I am becoming Her spikes through my bones like splintered ice.
I was making Noelle in my image. As a child I could have spoken up; I could have told someone. I didn’t. It doesn’t matter that She was clever or manipulative or how strong the precedent for the silence of abuse victims is. I could have said something to anyone at any time. Here I am, almost two decades later, forcing somebody to walk those miles in my shoes. Noelle could have stopped me; she could have safe worded, but she didn’t. She let me break her. She let me. Just like I let Her.
I control nothing. My life is not my own and hasn’t been since a small, scared nine year old boy heard Her voice for the first time.
Madness surfaces with pristine clarity and I know what I have to do.
***
“She’ll be angry.” I hate what I’m doing to Noelle, but I have no choice. I’ve ruined her life enough. Beresford quirks an eyebrow at me as I sign the sheets of paper. “She’ll think I’m interfering in her life.” I explain. “But it’s my fault she’s lost her job.” I’d heard that on the news. Jax was still too angry to speak to me about it. “The next few years will be hard on her. Work will be hard to come by. It’s the least I can do.” I force a nonchalant grin. “It’s not like I’m hurting for money.”
“Surely a trust fund would make more sense than a will?” He asks and I wonder if he’s somehow divined my intentions.
“I’m making separate arrangements with the bank to have money transferred into her account.” I lie, the falsehood sliding glib and smooth on my tongue. “I just wanted to ensure arrangements are in place in perpetuity.”
“Gabriel, as your solicitor I have to advise you against this.” He sat back from his desk. “You have the band. You have family. You have the church. It doesn’t make sense to leave the entirety of your significant assets to a woman that doesn’t want anything to do with you.”
“She is my everything, Beresford. And I will be hers, whether she likes it or not. It’s all I have left to give.” My fortune, at least, was my own. My gift had come from God and not even She could take that away from me. I had to believe it was God’s work that I had used my gift to the enrichment of my life and the lives of those around me.
“If you are certain?” He is disturbed, but I calm my gaze and look him in the eye.
“I’m certain it’s the right thing to do, Beresford.”
“As you wish.” He calls in a witness and my last will and testament is signed and sealed. The cursive scrawl lifts a smothering weight from my chest. Noelle will never want for anything again in her life. I can’t bear to imagine her rage when she discovers what I have done. She’ll feel like I’m trying to control her, but that is not my intent. I just want to care for her in the only way I know how. God knows my love is worthless to her.
I try not to imagine her grief. Unbidden, I hear the whisper of her voice and goosebumps ripple across the back of my neck.
“Gabriel, I know you love me. God knows I love you back. It’s just that sometimes love isn’t enough.”
I can’t quite still the small flash of satisfaction I feel at the thought of her pain, because I know it will only be a reflection of the gaping wound she tore in my chest when she said she wasn’t coming back, but I quell it with self-recrimination. It’s a horrible thought to have and she deserves better.
***
I sit at the piano, still hands on silent ivory. I have one last song in my heart. I can feel it swelling beneath the surface, waiting to give voice to my last breaths on this earth, and so I wait. The words tumble and accumulate, half whispered premonitions of a ghost song. It has a gospel echo, a deep and rich soul. The first notes sound and I play the refrain, filling it out until it calls forth the lyrics from the depths of my chest.
So here we are,
A breath ago we were standing on the edge of forever
And then I sank our love and let it drown.
Now I’m standing on the precipice of never
And God knows it’s a long way down.
Please, Lord, let me roll back the oceans,
Let me quieten the furied waves.
Make our orbit a harmonic motion.
Disinter our love’s watery grave.
For I was there,
Just a breath ago, standing on the edge of forever
And I can’t bear that I let our love drown.
Now I’m standing on the precipice of never
And God knows it’s a long way down.
Oh, Lord, grant me grace in my never
Grant me peace in my raw-edged soul
Lord, grant me the strength now to sever
A love, not enough to keep us whole
And I won’t weep
For that breath ago, standing on the edge of forever.
I won’t fight the oblivion in which I drown.
For her, I’ll leap o’er the precipice of never
Even though it’s a long way down.
And God knows it’s a long way down.
I play it once, twice, and then I turn on the digital recorder and play it again. It’s rough, but the raw power of it takes my breath away. I hope she hears it one day. I know she will.
The music recorded, I leave it with the rest of the demos that are stockpiled in the music room and make my way to the window in the bedroom. It’s where I feel closest to Noelle. I hadn’t noticed before but there’s a hand print there, catching my eye in the bright morning sunlight. It’s too small to be mine. It has to be hers. I place my hand over it, imagining the warmth of her clasped beneath. She has such tiny hands. They’re adorable.
I want to savour the moment for a lifetime, but it’s pointless to stall. I have other memories, warmer ones, to carry me over into the night and there is only one task left to do.
Sitting at my writing desk, I draft six or seven letters to her before I crumple them all up and decide to go with simple and heartfelt.
Kitten,
You were right. I always knew you were the one; I just thought it was for a different reason. I didn’t know you’d be the one that saved me from myself. Please don’t be angry with me that this is how I have to deal with it. Just once, this one time, I wanted to be in absolute control of my destiny. I know you’ll understand. I wish things could have been different. I wish that love was enough. I wish I was a better man, but I’m not. By the time you get this, I’ll be gone. I love you. I always have.
I blot the ink carefully, reading the lines over and over again. It has to be perfect for her. She has to know how much I love her, even in the face of what I’m about to do. My life has spun out of control and I need to take it back before I lose my sanity, but our love was a beautiful madness for the time that it lasted. It just wasn’t enough.
With the letter written, I open the drawer and pull out the small box that’s been sitting there for weeks. Flipping the lid, I admire the play of the light on the diamond surrounded by clusters of emeralds. They remind me of the day I first got to taste her, the day I took her to dinner. She wore that stunning green dress that made her look like some goddess of spring. It’s a memory I’ll always treasure.
Maybe one day she’ll wear this ring, if not as a symbol of our love then at least as a reminder of it. I cannot and will not believe that our love hasn’t changed her as seismically as it has changed me. I set it on the edge of the note, perfectly squared to the crisp lines of the paper. She will know it’s for her.
There’s nothing else to do. I rise and, for the first time since making my decision, I feel the silence in the house as a tangible presence. Music was there when I came into this life and all through it. It seems fitting that I should leave life with something beautiful to ease the passing.
I flick through the rack of discs until I find one of my favourite pieces of choral music. Slotting it into the player, I let the first bars of Allegri’s Miserere wash over me. It’s a gorgeous recording by Tenebrae that I’ve had for many years. It’s fitting.
I wander through the rooms of my home one last time. There is no life in them. They’ve been a living morgue for all the time she was not in them and I am grateful to be leaving. Someone else, someone better, will make this place a true home, a warm home. The rightness thrums through me as I head to the kitchen. I selected a knife and sharpened it especially this morning in preparation. I’m not going to fuck this up as I’ve fucked up so many other things in my life. It will be sure and quick and clean.
The music echoes in ethereal wisps, brushing my senses as I head for the bathroom and light the candles. Naked I came and naked I will leave. My clothes folded neatly on the chair, I fall to my knees beside the tub.
“God, if you can hear me, I’m sorry. I pray for peace. I pray for salvation. I pray that you soothe all those I leave behind in their time of sorrow. Be with them. Bless them with your grace and joy. Grant them long and fulfilled lives and forgive me for what I’m about to do, to them and to you. Into your hands I commend my spirit.”
The tub is cold as I settle into it, chilling my skin with a premonition of the grave. A soaring soprano descant arcs over me and it’s so beautiful it brings me to tears. I sit and weep for all that cannot be until a sense of peace descends. It’s time and I’m ready.
The knife bites deep and the pain is a welcome bittersweet counterpoint to the glory of release. It bites again and the crimson wash is stark against the enamel. For a moment I stare at it, fascinated by the incredible richness of the colour. I had no idea that life was so beautiful as it drained away.
The music washes over me and I smile. It truly is gorgeous. If all I’m facing is oblivion rather than heaven or hell, I will have left this earth graced by the touch of angels. It’s getting quiet now, the sweet deep hum of the bass rolling like distant thunder in the Promised Land. It’s my cue to go and I am still, filled with the deepest peace.
Closing my eyes, I sink into the night.
Donna's Thoughts:
Ah Master Blue! We finally learn what makes you tick and your real name. I really enjoyed this book and considering how much I didn’t enjoy the second book in this series, I was very relieved. This book picks up about a year after book 2 ends and we see what has transpired with Noelle. Blue re-enters the picture and we learn where he came from and get a glimpse at his journey into his Dom life. We also know that with Noelle unattached now, he is going to do whatever he can not to lose her again. There are most definitely some OMG moments not to mention some hot sex!! I give this book 4.5 STARS and 3 hands down the pants.
About the Author:
Ivory Quinn is an author of indeterminate youth, living in a land where the sun rarely shines but the mist makes everything magical. She likes men and books, but doesn’t think either makes a great sandwich filling. Unmarried and living with other creative types, she has a healthy relationship with her bed. She wishes that writing was her day job, but sadly has a large percentage of non-writing time, made bearable only by classic rock and lots of caffeinated things. Her favourite things are fan mail, cake and men in kilts. She does not see these things as mutually exclusive.
Author links:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Ivory-Quinn/533166043392982?ref=hl
Twitter: https://twitter.com/IvoryQuinn_
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7023735.Ivory_Quinn?from_search=true
Blog: http://alylonna.wordpress.com/
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