Free Blazed by Corri Lee

entirely by choice. You met a boy. You fell in love. He didn't want you. That rejection consumed your life. You left suburbia to become a self-made woman and got stuck in a depressive routine of working, drinking and rolling out of stranger's beds in a series of one night stands in a futile attempt to gain acceptance you don't really want. You don't like yourself and you want change but you don't know where to find it. When left in your hands, decisions about your life are reckless and unproductive, so you count on others, like Esme and your charming male friend in Japan to take those decisions out of your hands. Am I right?" I glared at him over my shoulder. How had he deduced so much from four short meetings with me? Was he psychic? A stalker? Had I really given so much away just by the way I looked at him? 
    His eyes shone sympathetically in the summer sun. "This is change. Besides, I left my wallet in the car, so if you chicken out on me, I go hungry too."
    In a flash, his hand wrapped around my ponytail and yanked it. Hard. Tears sprang to my eyes. "Fuck!" I spun around and, in a knee jerk reaction, slapped him hard. Pain rang through my hand and radiated until it began to tingle. It was the most physical discomfort I'd felt in years after becoming numb to all else. "What the hell was that, your idea of foreplay?" Blaze's fingers traced his reddened cheek. He didn't look even slightly shocked by my attack. Silently, he turned me back around and shoved me out into the fray with only one word as guidance. 
    "Run."
     
    AND I'd never felt so much like running in my life. Between that girl chasing me like my shadow, Blaze's uncanny ability to analyse me and the current of arrogant shoppers flooding around me, panic was the only emotion I could process. Run, yes, I could do that. I could dodge and weave through the people as though I was running from my own life, and maybe if I ran fast enough, I might actually escape.
    I felt much warmer than the sun might have made me and my skin prickled uncomfortably. I was hyper aware of everything— every voice, car, cyclist, and the fact that Blaze was nowhere near me, but somehow totally unaware of my feet moving of their own accord. I'd run like this before, relentlessly and aimlessly, and the agonising cramps in my muscles were deliciously cathartic. I liked to hurt— I deserved it and it felt productive. The overwhelming need to prolong that ache drove me to keep limping forwards, gasping for breath and eyes burning. 
    You're doing it again.  She crept up, running along side me and matching my pace.  You can't run away from him. You'll always love him and you'll never be good enough. Stop running.  I couldn't. I wanted to run until there was nothing of me left. I wanted to gain enough speed to burn up in the atmosphere like dust. If I couldn't be enough, I didn't want to be anything.
    The next thing I knew, I was on my back on the concrete, dazed and light-headed, and only vaguely aware of a throb in my forehead. Everything was quiet and serene for a moment. Not one cell in my body cared how I'd found my way to the ground until the fog in my mind cleared and the faces overhead came into my blurred view.
    "I'm so sorry, she just fell at me from nowhere."
    "No, no. It's okay, I'm just glad I found her."  One of the dark haired faces above me leaned closer, and I could immediately  smell  who it was. "I'm here. I'm sorry, I couldn't catch up with him." Blaze stroked my hair, then grabbed both of my hands to pull me to my feet. My legs promptly flagged beneath me, overused and flaccid.
    "What?"  
    "The guy who cornered you. Why did you run off this way?"
    "Sorry..." What  was  he talking about? My hand felt my way to my face and found the reason why my vision was so blurred. "Glasses," I mumbled, twisting out of Blaze's grip to search the floor for my absent lenses. The other dark haired face grasped my hand and wrapped my fingers around them firmly, his grip lingering