by Malcom, Anne
“In case you didn’t notice this about me, I don’t care about money,” I hissed at him, trying to mimic that detached and harsh tone that he’d adopted. “And now I have more of it, it changes nothing. I like this apartment.” I gestured around the small and cozy space. “I like this neighborhood. It’s me. I fit. I certainly don’t fit in some skyscraper downtown or a townhouse in Beverly Hills. And I’m proud of that fact. And I don’t even know why I’m explaining this to you since it’s none of your business. You made it very clear that I’m none of your business.”
His eyes darkened. Blackened like the clothes he was wearing. “You’re my business, Polly,” he murmured, his voice low and dangerous.
My skin prickled.
“You’re always my business. Primarily because my business is security and you’re in desperate fucking need of it since you were accosted by your ex-fucking-husband two hours ago and he almost hit you, had you not fucking tased him!” He was not murmuring anymore.
“How do you know that?” I asked, voice flat, finding that strange calmness come over me in the face of Heath’s anger as it had with Craig’s.
But Heath’s anger wasn’t the same as Craig’s. It wasn’t full of menace, of the desire to hurt.
Well, not physically at least.
“How do I know?’ he repeated as if I was a little slow and should’ve realized he was all seeing and all knowing. “I’m in the business of security, and about six different people posted the fucking whole thing online. We got our Amber Alert within fuckin’ minutes.”
I screwed up my nose. “Amber Alert? That’s only with kidnapped kids.”
He continued to glare. “And for three women from Amber who have a habit of gettin’ kidnapped, shot at and stabbed,” he bit out. “We’re not too keen on havin’ that shit become somethin’ of a general occurrence, no matter how determined Rosie and Lucy seem to be about that.” His face flickered. Something soft, something almost tender lay underneath his fury. For a moment at least. Like sun glare on a road, when you stared at it for too long, you saw it was an illusion. “But not you,” he said. “You’re not getting caught up in that shit. You’re not like Rosie and Lucy.”
I resisted the urge to flinch at this.
But he was right.
I wasn’t like Rosie and Lucy. They were fighters. They were their own knights in shining leather—in Rosie’s case, and in Manolos—Lucy’s.
They were definitely my knights on occasion.
I’d always known this was true. I’d been okay with it. Because I knew it wasn’t in me to fight like they did, not in my DNA. I’d accepted that.
Until I heard it from Heath’s mouth. Until he faced me with the fact I was helpless.
Or at least in his eyes.
“I thought you never wanted to see me again,” I shot back, impressed I was able to talk through the pain. I was using my yoga breathing. And sheer force of will.
His eyes emptied. “I didn’t,” he said flatly, the words themselves had enough of a point. “But I was the only one in the office when I got the alert, and Keltan is my friend. Didn’t need him having to see this shit, having to deal with his pregnant wife dealing with it. You know who I’m talking about, right? Your sister? Don’t you fuckin’ think you’ve put her through enough? Gettin’ married to some asshole after knowing him a couple of months, getting involved in a drive-by, divorcing that asshole then disa-fuck-appearing for a year.”
He paused.
I struggled not to double over. He was hurling the truth at me like bombs. His aim was true. And fatal.
“I missin’ anything?” he asked, voice cold.
He was.
He was missing a couple of huge fricking things. Some of those things Rosie knew about. And the worst of it, no one knew about.
Because he was right. The people in my life didn’t deserve another Polly disaster on top of everything else. Lucy had almost died a couple of years ago. Rosie ran off too, but I doubted it was to volunteer on an olive grove like me. Considering it chased her back here and kidnapped her.
Now they were happy.
Getting shot at a lot less.
Pregnant.
Heath was right, they didn’t deserve more of the kind of thing that got them to their happiness. That wasn’t going to lead me to mine, considering he was glowering at me with electric hatred.
He was right, but it didn’t mean it was right to say.
“That’s cruel, Heath,” I whispered. I just didn’t have it in me to raise my voice. To yell like Rosie and Lucy would have. I knew that they did a lot of yelling throughout their heartbreaking courtships.
They still yelled now, of course.
But it wasn’t to disguise their pain.
But they were stronger than me. Heath was right.
So the whisper was almost beyond my strength.
He folded his arms, his eyes not betraying an inch of reaction at my broken tone. “The truth is cruel, Polly. You should know that better than anyone. You sure as fuck taught me that.”
I flinched.
He didn’t react.
Silence was heavy and uncomfortable in the small space between us.
“He hurt you?” he finally snapped, eyes roving over me, searching for injuries.
He wouldn’t find any, of course, unless he had an emotional x-ray machine.
“I thought you didn’t care,” I replied, my response childish and voice much the same.
I hated that I was being reduced to such petty remarks. That whatever we had between us had been whittled, carved, broken and disfigured by time and circumstance. By my actions. The ugliest thing in the world is whatever love turns into when it doesn’t work out. Something more than hatred. Something less.
I wondered if there was some weird parallel universe where all of that organic, lost and original love went. Where it flourished and didn’t rot like it had here.
But of course, that was a Polly thought.
In other words, not something that would survive in the outside reality.
Heath didn’t answer my petty question. Because he had all that strength and willpower not to engage in something that would turn into an ugly fight.
Or maybe he simply just didn’t care enough to go to the effort to create a fight. Because I’d created enough little cuts in his feelings for me to drain out every piece of emotion he had.
“No,” I said quietly. “He didn’t hurt me...tonight.”
It wasn’t a lie. He hadn’t hurt me tonight. Hadn’t put a finger on me, in fact. But I was hurting now. From a different man who hadn’t put a finger on me either.
But he didn’t need to in order to crush me.
Something flickered in his eyes at my words. “Tonight?” he repeated, his voice low and almost feral.
Crap.
I totally forgot how perceptive he was. He had the ability to analyze everything I said, and what I didn’t say. My young self had thought it was because of some crazy connection that had him in tune to my very emotions since we met.
The older and slightly less naive version of me knew it was because of his military background and because he was...Heath. He was an intense guy.
I didn’t answer, because my aversion of a lie and the aversion from the truth was battling it out right now.
“Polly,” he growled, stepping forward to grasp my forearms in his hands, the grip tight enough to bruise if he held on long enough.
Please let him hold on long enough.
“Did he fucking hurt you before tonight?’ he demanded.
There was no longer a blankness in his tone, in his eyes.
No, there was murder in them.
I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt right then, that Heath would kill Craig if I told him the truth. Of course that was not something that made sense. For starters, Heath didn’t care about me anymore. He’d made that clear. And even if he had something left from our battered non-relationship, it wouldn’t be enough to kill a man.
I knew he
had enough in him to kill someone.
But still, it didn’t make sense why he’d kill for me.
Not now.
Still, I knew that’s what would happen if the truth came from my lips.
I didn’t like Craig much. Or at all. But I’d loved him at some point in my life. And there was nothing I could do to change that. I didn’t want him to come to harm. I didn’t want anyone to come to harm. I didn’t believe in capital punishment—an extremely unpopular opinion within my family, specifically with Rosie and Lucy—I hated any form of violence being used to solve a problem. Again, another thing that disgusted Rosie and Lucy. So I wouldn’t want any human being to die because of a truth I’d uttered about them.
“No,” I said, little more than a whisper, trying to focus on the situation and not the beautiful pain of Heath’s hands grasping my arms.
“He didn’t hurt me...physically, at least,” I lied, trying to sound convincing. “He was drunk. Hurt. People do stupid things when they’re hurt. Stupider things when they’re drunk. The combination was bad.”
He eyed me before taking a large step back.
My arms throbbed from the force of his grip, and from the absence of it.
“Seein’ you on a date couldn’t have helped that,” he said, folding his arms and widening his stance as if he were anchoring himself to the floor so he couldn’t move to touch me again.
His voice was back to that cold and foreign tone.
My mouth dried out.
“It wasn’t a date, it was—”
He held up his hand. “Not my business who you fuck, Polly,” he said.
I flinched again.
It wasn’t the cursing that did it, I grew up around Lucy and Rosie for goodness sakes. And bikers. Swearing was not something that shocked me.
But I’d never liked that word used to describe the act of making love. I always found it so ugly and harsh. And it was all the more harsher and uglier coming from Heath’s mouth.
“I’m not—”
“Not my business, Polly,” he repeated.
The underlying sentiment was there.
I wasn’t his business.
My vision blurred.
My throat burned.
Such a reaction was ridiculous. I’d known this. I’d actively participated in this. Heck, I’d created this whole fricking mess.
So why did it feel like my heart was being torn up through my ribcage, yanked out by Heath’s blank stare, empty tone, and harsh words? Why was it mangled and bloody at my feet, taunting me with the truth of this mess?
He didn’t speak. Didn’t betray any ounce of emotion that he knew what this was. He just stared.
I stared back. A thousand things to say but nothing that would make a difference. Not now.
“I came as soon as I heard!” a voice all but screeched in the deadly quiet of the apartment, I jumped at a slamming of the front door.
My eyes went to Rosie.
“You tased him!” she shouted. “I brought cake to celebrate.”
I looked to her empty hands.
Luke entered behind her.
She rolled her eyes. “Well, Luke is actually carrying it, because the pregnant woman cannot possibly hold something dangerous and heavy as cake. It’s akin to lugging a nuclear weapon up eight flights of stairs,” she said.
Luke didn’t say anything, instead he placed the cake on the counter, moving to yank her into his arms and rub her small belly.
Rosie’s body softened at the easy touch.
My throat burned with a jealousy so fierce it took me by surprise.
Rosie’s eyes went between the two of us. “Shit, we’re interrupting,” she said. “We can go—”
“You’re not interrupting anything,” Heath said. “I was just leaving.”
And then he did exactly that.
Without another word to me.
Without another glance at me or the mangled organ that he’d ripped out and laid at my feet.
The door slammed shut.
I stared at the empty air where he had been standing, blinking rapidly.
My face was wet.
I was crying.
“Fuck,” Rosie whispered.
“I’m okay,” I croaked to no one in particular.
Rosie snorted. “Yes, and Luke is an appropriately protective husband.”
Luke might’ve reacted to this.
But I was too busy bursting into tears.
Rosie caught me.
Because that was what she did.
That was what everyone did.
Apart from Heath.
* * *
“Why do I always fall in love with men that don’t treat me right?” I asked, spooning another sickening amount of ice cream into my mouth.
Yes, I was that freaking cliché.
Crying over the guy who you were in love with, who you lost your virginity to, lost him for half a decade, found him again, only to marry another guy and then have that guy beat you up so you divorce him and leave them all behind for a year and come home to a mess.
Okay, so maybe not exactly the cliché situation. Because I’m Polly. And I never do things the simple way.
Even heartbreak.
Especially heartbreak.
But maybe heartbreak was that simple for everyone, no matter how it’s brought about. The pain is the same.
Excruciating.
And we try and cope with all sorts of different things, but women usually start with sugar and wine. We didn’t have the latter out of respect for Rosie not being able to partake. But Luke had all but run out the door when I’d began crying and returned with a plethora of treats.
Rosie kissed him. “I knew there was a reason I married you and am now carrying your baby,” she murmured.
He smirked. “So it wasn’t just for my body?”
“Oh, yes, that’s the rest of it. As soon as you let yourself go, I’m onto my next husband.”
He shook his head, yanking her in for a rough kiss.
It was nice, seeing them like that, after years of seeing the mutual pain in their eyes. Agony. And somehow they’d made it to this.
It was enough to give a girl hope.
But for this girl, maybe I’d reached my quota on hope.
So instead I had ice cream.
Rosie squinted at my question as if trying to see the answer in the faded yellow wallpaper. “I don’t know, I think it’s nothing to do with them, but all about how we don’t love ourselves enough to see we deserve better. To demand better. If we loved ourselves more, we wouldn’t let assholes break our hearts because we would hold them too precious to give away to someone not worthy of them,” she said.
I gaped at her as she sipped her soda.
She drained it and pushed up to refill her glass. She shrugged. “Also, because assholes seem to be prominently hot.”
I thought of Craig. He was hot. Definitely. Not so much tonight.
But Heath was more than pure hotness.
And if their hotness was directly conclusive to their ability to break my heart, then it made sense.
But it didn’t help.
Ice cream didn’t help.
Words and support from one of my favorite people in the world didn’t help.
Nothing did.
Maybe time.
But that was another cliché.
Chapter Ten
I stopped short at the entrance to the homeless shelter. Literally stopped in my tracks like I’d walked into a wall. And I had hit a wall. Just not one you could see. Or not one that other people would feel.
Not unless there were other people who were madly and horribly in love with the man in the black leather jacket with the perfect beard and hair tied into a bun at the nape of his neck.
He had to do a man bun, didn’t he? It was like he was trying to torture me. And his expression underneath his glasses told me that he wasn’t trying to do it in the good way. No, he was glaring at me like he didn’t want to be near enough me in order
to torture me.
I struggled not to drop my bags of groceries.
He didn’t move.
He just continued to glare.
Another thing that gave me pause.
The old Heath would’ve moved. Would’ve snatched the bags from my hands and not let me carry such a load. He was like that.
But chivalry, in this case, was dead because I’d killed it.
“What are you doing here?” I asked when I recovered enough to speak if not to move.
His jaw ticked as his sunglass stare leveled me to the spot. “I’m here because no one else could cover you,” he bit out like the words were acid.
I blinked, jostling my bags slightly, my arms were already screaming with the short trip from my car to here, and they were turning red at the fingers as I was sure I was cutting off circulation.
Not that I was going to ask for help. Not that Heath would give it.
“Cover me?” I repeated when I was sure I wasn’t going to drop canned soup and vegetables everywhere.
He nodded once, still gluing me in place with his glare. “Yeah, we’ve got a team on you. Small, one-man tail, rotating basis.”
I stared at him. “Is that supposed to be an answer to my question? Because I don’t speak military man, Marine.”
It just popped out. The name from the past I hadn’t uttered since...since he was inside me.
Blush crept up my neck. My stomach dipped.
He stiffened, reacting to the word, but not in the same way I did.
“For fuck’s sake,” he hissed, pushing off the wall he’d been leaning on to stalk toward me.
I couldn’t even scuttle back because I was afraid I’d lose my center of balance and me and all this food would go sprawling. I wasn’t worried about my fate—I could survive a header on the pavement, hopefully— but this food was intended to feed people who maybe hadn’t had a meal in days. I didn’t want them having to wait because I couldn’t handle myself in front of the man I’d lost my virginity to and almost left a man at the altar for.
A man I loved.
A man that hated me.
The bags were roughly snatched from my now numb arms before I could figure out what was going on.
He didn’t offer me an explanation, didn’t smile or even acknowledge my swift intake of breath that was a response to his presence, his arms brushed against mine for a beautifully painful split second.