by Malcom, Anne
I didn’t have a soul designed for darkness. But darkness didn’t mind the design of a soul. It just destroyed it.
I didn’t say this of course.
“I like to think everything happens for a reason,” I whispered. “There is a plan for everyone. And maybe some kind of deity made it up, I don’t know. But this world is far too weird and wonderful to not have a plan for people, you know?”
I sucked in a breath.
“But I guess I just don’t really know what the plan was here.”
Rosie kissed my hair. “I don’t know either, Pol. I really fucking don’t. Maybe to show us that the strongest of us all has the softest and most beautiful heart?”
I didn’t say anything because Rosie was grasping at straws more than anything.
Plus my heart wasn’t soft or beautiful. It was hardened. Calcified. Ugly.
But she didn’t need to know that.
No one needed to know that.
* * *
I was waiting for Heath when he got back.
He had a key, I didn’t ask him how he got one since I hadn’t given him one.
Then again, I’d never locked my apartment before.
Nor did I have the three separate locks on it before either.
But that was before my ex had waltzed right up and kidnapped me.
But he was gone now.
And now I had all those new locks. As if someone else might waltz up and do the same thing all over again.
I didn’t think that was the case. But Heath was looking for something he could control, looking to put some order in this, so I didn’t say anything about the extra locks, the key, the fact I always had a babysitter.
“Hey,” I said, letting myself exhale with whatever small safety his presence offered.
There was pain in it, in his gaze. The way he braced when his eyes met mine. Jolted a little with both relief, presumably that I hadn’t been kidnapped again, and something hard and agonizing to look at.
Love.
That was it.
He frowned at me.
Or more accurately what I was doing.
He was in front of me in less than a second, mostly to do with the short distance between the front door and the stove, but also because he was Heath. He didn’t hesitate to cross the distance between us after a long absence.
Or what had become a long absence in this past month—a handful of hours.
When before all of this, we’d gone years.
“Baby,” he murmured, hand at my neck, searching my eyes.
I counted to five for the sickness from his touch to go away. It did. He chased it away. It was nice now. I just had to get through the horrific five seconds when it wasn’t him touching me.
He didn’t speak for a beat, his eyes running up and down me. I was used to this by now since it happened every time he saw me. He needed a moment. To touch me. To see me. As if he needed to make sure this was real.
I let him because I needed that too.
Even if sometimes—most of the times—I wished this wasn’t real, those moments when he held me in silence, in prayer, I was okay with it being real.
Then he jolted with the sizzling coming from the pan.
He moved me with a gentle touch to my hip that sent heat to my stomach and a chill to my bones. My body battled between its instinctive reaction toward Heath, and then its instinctive reaction toward touch.
I was tucked into his shoulder as he took over cooking.
“Baby, you shouldn’t be cooking this,” he said, voice hard.
“Why? You like steak.”
It was true. He loved steak. He told me this right after I’d told him I was a vegetarian. We’d laughed about it. It was pure, that laughter. Easy. I’d never appreciated just how rare and complex such easy laughter was.
It was lost to me now.
I might laugh again. Surely I would. But not like that.
Heath loved steak but hadn’t eaten it in the whole time he’d been here. Because most of my friends brought food. And my friends knew me. So all of the food was vegetarian, healthy plant-based.
Heath was the only one who’d eaten without complaint. Rosie and Lucy had protested loudly about the “health of their babies,” but they’d eaten it too.
For me.
I’d decided that Heath was not going to be doing that anymore.
“Baby, you spent an hour telling me, in detail, how a steak is produced, and what an animal has to go through for me to have my New York Strip,” he said.
“Yes, and I do not eat meat for that reason,” I told him as I moved from his arms to get plates and salad. I ate more out of habit than anything else, not hunger. I was never hungry. Most of the time I had to force the food down without retching.
But I did it.
Because Heath watched me like a hawk. As did the rest of them. Me not eating, me fading away to skin and bone—like I urged to do—would hurt them.
So I ate.
“I’m not going to deprive you of something you love because of my beliefs,” I continued, pouring us both wine.
Wine was something that I didn’t have to force down. I did have to force myself from chugging a bottle of it down in one sitting, though. It dulled everything beautifully.
Heath turned from where he’d gotten my eggplant bake from the oven, placing it down with an intense gaze.
Though all of his gazes were intense.
He placed both glasses of wine down and yanked me into his arms with a roughness that told me he’d forgotten about our unwritten touching rules.
I held my breath.
“Sunshine, the only way you’re gonna deprive me of something I love, the one thing that matters, is if you stop breathing,” he rasped. “And you’re not gonna do that. Not anytime soon. I’ll be making sure of that. So I’ll handle the eggplant and the cauliflower for the rest of my life, happily. What I won’t do is have you doing something that you hate. Like supporting the cruelty and brutality of the meat industry.”
I wanted to smile at the way he was parroting my words from six years ago back at me. My mouth might’ve twitched. But I was still trying to hold my breath at the contact.
Something moved in Heath’s eyes as if he were realizing just now that he’d pressed his beautiful and hard body against mine. His grip loosened and he stepped back, clutching his glass of wine and handing me mine.
“Well,” I said, exhaling. “That particular steak was grass-fed, organic, and the kindest version of murder I could find. So I’ll bear cooking it.”
Heath looked at me. Then he smiled.
And then he chuckled.
He didn’t laugh.
Because I suspected he didn’t have that ability anymore either, but he chuckled, and it was real.
I smiled in the face of such beauty. It was real too.
“What?” I asked, sitting down as he served the plates on my small dining table.
I learned that it was impossible to try and help Heath, and he liked doing little things like these, so I let him.
He placed the food down in front of me and kissed my forehead before sitting. “Only you, my Sunshine, could talk about the kindest version of murder in regards to my steak,” he said, still smiling. “But, baby, I don’t want you to just bear cooking. Or just bear life with me.” He lost his smile now. “I want you to find joy in it again. I’ll do anything and everything I can. Anything. And right now I know that means understanding that bearing things is all you can do. Just want you to know I’m gonna be making sure that changes. I’ll be here to make sure that changes.”
I blinked at him. This was the most he’d said about the elephant in the room since I’d come home.
He was making promises.
All kinds.
Kinds that were too heavy for my delicate emotional state.
He squeezed my hand. “Your eggplant is getting cold,” he said, voice soft. “And considering on what that shit tastes like hot, I’m thinking you better eat it now.”<
br />
That was his version of telling me I didn’t have to respond. Deal.
So I ate.
And so did he.
And we both tried to ignore the big elephant in the room.
And we both failed.
* * *
Three Days Later
I had planned on telling Heath to leave the night of the steak. It had been a big thing. I even had a speech rehearsed
But I couldn’t do it.
Not after the meal when he topped off my glass and did the dishes while I read. Especially not when he bought the bottle, a tub of my favorite ice cream then turned on our new favorite show—yes, we had a favorite—pulling me into his embrace and settling us in.
No, I couldn’t do it then.
And then I’d fallen asleep.
And I couldn’t do it the next night.
Or the next.
It had to be tonight.
Because this was getting bad.
Because it was getting permanent. We had a show. We had a routine. Everything I’d wanted before. Nothing I could have now.
I was working on getting my life back together. Or at least fractured and chaotic like it had been before. Of course it would never be like it was before, but I could make it look that way. And when it looked that way, people would stop having to babysit me on rotations, stop having to hide the pain in their faces, just stop all of it. I needed to get my life back to its version of together so everyone around me would be okay with getting their lives together too.
Rosie and Lucy were having babies. They needed to be excited about that. Yelling at their husbands for trying to make them drink decaffeinated coffee and stop shooting people.
I spent three days preparing.
Making calls.
Making plans.
Procrastinating the one big thing I needed to be doing.
And I was forcing myself to do it today.
My stomach was roiling when Heath walked in the door, when his shoulders both sagged and tightened, when his eyes fastened on mine. When my soul relaxed, just the tiniest bit when he did.
“We need to talk,” I said before he could say “baby” in that soft, rough tone of his and melt my resolve.
He was instantly on guard.
Not that he wasn’t always.
But he was more so now. Because he was Heath and he saw most things in other people and everything in me.
Almost everything.
I was pacing.
I did that in moments of extreme loss, I was noticing. I’d done it when faced with losing Lucy. Now I was doing it preparing to lose Heath. The last part of myself.
He moved, watching me, and he stopped in front of me.
I stopped pacing and held my hand up as a barrier to stop him from coming closer.
In the past, he might’ve ignored that, yanked me into his arms anyway. Not that we’d had enough time together for me to form such opinions, but it seemed a very Heath thing to do.
But he didn’t.
“Sunshine,” he murmured.
I flinched at the word. At the meaning behind it. Every time he said it was torture. But there was enough comfort in the pain that forced me to handle it.
“You remember how you said I light up a room?” I asked. “When we first met?”
“Yeah, babe, I remember,” he replied, body tight.
“I don’t mean to sound narcissistic, but I kind of knew I did that,” I said, looking down because I couldn’t meet his eyes. “Not because I think of myself as being overly brighter than anyone else, but because everyone else mutes themselves, who they truly are because they think that’s what they’re meant to do. They need to blend in. Not stand out. And I know I stood out. Because to me, blending in was a little death. It was a disservice to the meaning of life. I like to think I made things brighter because I made people realize that they could be who they were around me. Made it okay for them to let their light out.” I peeked up at Heath. “I know it’s stupid—”
“It’s not fuckin’ stupid,” he ground out.
I swallowed the power of his words. The passion in them. I didn’t let it stop me. “Well, I used to be a little proud of that,” I continued. “Most of my life I didn’t have it together. I didn’t really have a lot to contribute, I didn’t have a skill like Lucy has for writing and Rosie has for...chaos. I never let the fact I didn’t have a ‘thing’ get to me because I kind of thought of that as my thing.”
I sucked in a ragged breath against the power of Heath’s stare, knowing if I met it again, I’d crumble. So I kept talking.
“But now, I don’t have it anymore. I don’t light up a room. I suck all the light out when I enter. Like the people who love me most are afraid to be happy around me. I can see it in their eyes, that forced brightness. They’re ashamed to truly be joyous about their lives because how can they possibly be with poor, broken Polly around?”
Heath had gone still, absolutely still with my words, but I had to keep going. For his sake and mine.
“It’s because they love me so much, I know that,” I whispered. “But it’s because I love them so much that it kills me a little inside to be around them.” I said them when I meant him.
I finally got the courage to meet his eyes. “To be faced with just how draining I am, it’s exhausting. My light’s gone out, Heath. And I don’t know who I am now. Don’t know what I am now.” I sucked in another breath. “I can’t even begin to figure out who I am now when I’m wondering what we are.”
“There is no wondering about what we are,” he said. “We just are. After fucking everything. We are.”
I struggled against his words. “That’s not an answer,” I whispered. “After everything, that’s not an answer.”
His eyes didn’t leave mine. “Yeah, babe, it is. After everything, it’s the only fucking answer.”
Something that should’ve made my heart soar, would’ve in any other circumstance, suddenly made my blood boil. Anger, intense and unfamiliar surged through me.
I narrowed my eyes, finding it much easier to meet his stare that way.
“So what, now I’m the damsel again, now I need protecting, fixing, that’s what brought you back?” I hissed, the words cruel and unfair. “That’s what makes you think that we can work on this now that I’m hopeless and weak and you can be strong and heroic?”
Heath didn’t react to my anger, my venom. Not in the way I expected him to. With that cold and ruthless exterior that had been absent for this last month. The exterior I was trying to call forward to make this easier, somehow.
But this was not meant to be easier.
So Heath’s eyes softened at my ugly accusations.
“No, babe, it’s the exact opposite of that,” he said, voice equally soft, gentle. “What happened did not make you a damsel. And it sure as fuck didn’t make me strong.” He moved as if to step forward, he saw my entire body stiffen so he held himself back with a tight jaw.
His eyes ran over me with reverence. “It made you into something I don’t understand,” he continued. “Turned you into a survivor. But not like most people. Because those who survive, lose parts of themselves, big parts, important parts. Those who survive lose a little of what makes them human. And you haven’t lost an ounce of it. Your kindness. Your generosity. It should’ve made you hate the world. Hate everyone. When you’re showing everyone just the same amount of love that you have before. More, if that’s possible.”
I wanted to scream. Actually scream in the face of his words. I ached for cruelty because it was bearable. But he was giving me this.
“You hated me,” I whispered, desperate to probe that out of him. “Just because I got kidnapped and whatever manly testosterone-fueled emotions were sparked from that, doesn’t change that, Heath. You’re not obligated to stand by and protect me. To coddle me or watch and make sure I don’t go off the deep end.” I paused. “Again. Lucy has already lectured me about joining cults or folk bands. I’ll be okay. You don’t have to do th
is.”
“Didn’t hate you,” he murmured, eyes and voice still frustratingly and beautifully gentle.
I raised my brow.
“Was angry with you,” he said. “I was furious with you. Fuck, I wanted to hate you.” He ran his hand through his hair. “But I couldn’t. Hate you. I could never. Not for as long as I walk this earth. Nothing you say here, while you’re trying to push me away is gonna make me do that, Polly. Say what you need to. But it’s not moving me from my spot. From this spot.”
My vision became blurry and stark all at the same time. Heath’s energy swallowed up all that anger that had been so visceral before.
“I realized I never thanked you,” I said finally, wrenching my eyes up to meet his.
“For what?”
“For finding me. Saving me,” I whispered.
His eyes hardened. “You’re not thanking me for shit. Especially when I was too fucking late.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Because he was right. It was too late.
“It’s not your fault,” I said finally.
“Not yours either,” he said fiercely. “I know you’re toying with the past. With yourself. Trying to lay some kind of blame where it doesn’t belong. So I’ll say this now and I’ll say it every day, every moment until you believe it.”
His fingers lightly grasped my chin to move it upward so my eyes could drown in his gaze.
“This was not your fault,” he declared, throwing each word into the air with force.
Maybe he was right. Maybe it wasn’t my fault. The kidnapping, the brutality.
But it was my fault if I harmed more people than needed to be harmed.
People being Heath.