The Problem with Peace: Greenstone Security #3

by Malcom, Anne

  But it was a fight that it’d never win.

  And I didn’t want every touch, every gaze to be a fight with Heath.

  “My whole life has been chaos, Heath,” I whispered. “Granted, most of it has been self-imposed.” Heath’s eyes hardened at this, but I continued. “But now, after...” I trailed off, unable to finish that sentence. I took a breath. “After what happened, I’ve realized it, I know what I need. I need peace. And I can’t get that from you. From us.”

  It was a lie. Kind of. I could get everything from us. But not without taking everything from him. Not without my ugliness draining all that was good inside him.

  He regarded me for a long while. “There’s a problem there, babe. With that peace. You’re looking for quiet amongst that chaos you think is such a bad thing.” He smiled, and I hated that there was so much sadness and pain in that smile. “Your chaos is the single most beautiful and defining thing about you. You live life wild and loud, babe. I’m not talking about sound. I’m talkin’ about the way you smile, the way you enter a room. The way you love.”

  I’d been so certain that the cruel way he’d talked to me before was what hurt me most. What made my insides bleed. But it wasn’t cruelty that was breaking me worse than ever before. It was his kindness. His love.

  “My love isn’t sunshine anymore, Heath,” I choked out. “You know that better than anyone.”

  He flinched, actually flinched at my words. “No, I fuckin’ don’t,” he hissed. “I know that standing here in the middle of a parking lot on a cloudy day, in a fucking cloudy point in our lives, all I can feel is sunshine. That hasn’t changed. That’s something that’ll never change. And I’m promising you that.” Something flared in his eyes. “Remember, Polly, I’m a man who keeps his promises.”

  He pressed his forehead to mine, his thumb wiping at the single tear I’d let escape.

  “I’m not inside your head, baby,” he murmured. “I don’t know how to help you, though I wish to fuck I did. I would give anything to be able to know exactly what to do, what to fucking say to make it...”

  “Better?” I offered, I hated how cynical, how cold my voice sounded after the warmth of his words.

  He rested his head on mine for a moment longer, then he straightened, hands still on my hips. “I’ll settle for bearable,” he said. “And I’m not meanin’ for me, or for your sister, or for Rosie, ‘cause I know how fuckin’ hard you’re trying to make it bearable for everyone else. I can see it in you. You’re exhausting yourself helping your family deal with this. Helping strangers deal with other shit. And I honestly don’t give a fuck about them. I give a fuck about you being able to smile without it taking every ounce of your energy to make it look like something you think it should look like. But you gotta give yourself a chance for that, Sunshine. You’re the most selfless person I know, but I’m going to request you be a little selfish in order to breathe again. ‘Cause I know you’re suffocating, even if you won’t admit it.”

  The lump was bigger now. As was the hole in my chest. He saw it. He saw all of it. I thought I’d been doing so freaking well. I’d thought I was excelling at my performance. I should’ve known Heath saw more.

  Saw the ugly.

  He lived it, after all.

  “I can’t,” I choked out. “I have to stay busy, to help people with their horrors, to understand them, because I have a visceral need to understand their nightmares, so maybe I can understand mine one day.”

  His jaw was hard, was iron with even my small admission. So I knew there was no way I could ever utter the big one.

  He pressed his lips to mine hard and quick. “Well, I’m here, Sunshine. I’m here ‘til you understand it. And I’ll be here after too.”

  It was another promise.

  I shouldn’t have let him make it.

  But I did.

  * * *

  Three Weeks Later

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  Heath’s eyes lightened with my words. Ones that called up images from the past. I hadn’t consciously chosen them. No, especially considering my question. I didn’t want those beautiful memories in the proximity of the words that I was going to utter next. But here they were, ready to be tainted like everything else was.

  Of course, on the surface, it didn’t look that way.

  I was getting close to becoming certified as a yoga instructor since I’d done some training...before. I was back to volunteering, with Heath at my side, of course.

  I was back to helping Rain with her latest move—the girl couldn’t keep an apartment to save her life—to helping my friend Dave with his new role on a soap, running lines with him when I could.

  I read to the kids at St. Mary’s. Every Thursday.

  My timetable was full. Bursting.

  Just like before.

  But nothing was like before.

  People weren’t babysitting me anymore. They were still bracing, but they were trying to get back to something resembling normal. Lucy was yelling at Keltan for getting her the wrong flavor La Croix. Luke was yelling at Rosie when she was still at the gun range.

  The nurseries were being decorated.

  Life went on.

  Kind of.

  I was still sleeping through the night, in Heath’s arms. He still treated me gently. Still wasn’t pushing. Though he could walk down the street with my hand firmly clasped in his and I didn’t feel the urge to yank it back. He could kiss me more often. Close-mouthed and quick, of course, but he could do it more. Obviously he did. Often.

  As soon as he sensed I could take more, he gave me more. Another touch, another gaze, more murmured promises of the future.

  Our future.

  Our impossible future.

  I should’ve tried to stop it again. But I was Polly, I never did what I should’ve.

  So we were curled up on the sofa, watching Stranger Things and eating peanut butter popcorn. Heath had screwed his nose up the first time I put it in our cart—yes, we were grocery shopping together now—but then he tried it and we had to buy four packets to last the week.

  My head had been on Heath’s chest, I had been almost content.

  So of course that’s when the demons in my soul chose that moment to strike. That’s why I lifted my head and spoke. Heath paused the TV, turning to give me his full attention. He did that. Gave me his full attention. Always. I always got all of him. And I gave him tattered scraps of me.

  “You’re askin’ to ask me a question?” he clarified, voice holding a bit of teasing. Only a bit, because the man he was now wasn’t capable of the light teasing, the light happiness of the man he was before.

  I was largely responsible for this.

  “What did you do with Craig?” I asked, deciding to plow right through with the emotional bulldozer.

  My words worked to wipe that light teasing right off his face. Like right off. I hated that I had the ability to do that.

  “I’m not strong enough for all the details,” I said quickly. “I’m not like Rosie or Lucy or the old ladies in the Sons of Templar. I don’t need to know everything. I can’t know everything. It’s not in me. But I need to know at least, is he breathing or not?”

  I had a hefty amount of shame admitting what I couldn’t handle. The whole truth. I barely knew anything about how they found me, though I knew it had to do with the Sons of Templar and Wire since he had been there during the first horrible days of my recovery. Physical recovery at least.

  But I didn’t know what was going on with the larger picture. The men who Craig had tried to sell me to. It was something I should’ve asked about. But I didn’t.

  Heath was silent for a long time.

  Long even for him.

  I guessed by the way his fists were resting on the tops of his knees, the steady and forced breaths, he was trying to calm himself down.

  Because of course, I needed to be treated with care.

  I ached for him to not do that. To explode.

  Because at least
that was honest.

  “Does it matter?” he said through clenched teeth. “He’s never going to hurt you again.”

  “It matters as to whether he’s never going to hurt me again because he’s banished to Siberia or whether he’s in a shallow grave and you have his death on your soul,” I said.

  Heath’s jaw ticked. “I have plenty of death on my soul. That one is not gonna haunt me for a second.”

  The blow was physical.

  “You killed him,” I choked out.

  He didn’t reply.

  Which was a reply.

  “You had no right to do that,” I said, my voice broken.

  “I had every fucking right,” he hissed, voice chilling by the second. “It was the only thing I could do to punish him.” He paused. “There were a lot of things I wish I could’ve done to punish him.”

  My skin prickled with his cold and foreign tone. His ruthless tone. His war tone. “He didn’t need punishment,” I said quietly. “He needed forgiveness.”

  My words brought about silence. Tense and dangerous silence.

  And Heath’s fury tore through it.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he exploded, jumping from the sofa.

  I stood too.

  There was no more care, not now. No more Polly gloves, I found myself strangely relieved.

  He started to pace. “The fucker hit you. Kidnapped you. Hurt you.”

  As if his words brought back the reality, he stopped pacing to stand in front of me. His hand ghosted over the spot that was now healed and unblemished.

  “Not just on the surface, but on the parts of you that don’t heal as easily as a bruise. That is a crime punishable by death.” His hand fisted beside my face and went to his side. “And you want me to believe, to fucking accept the fact that you think he deserved forgiveness instead of death?”

  I smiled at him. Which of course, caught him off guard. When he got like this, like the man who had to use his anger to get him through the hardest of times, when he had to hurl his words out, pepper them with profanities in order to continue on the road he’d chosen, I doubted he often got a response such as this.

  “I don’t expect you to understand it, Heath,” I said. “Nor am I going to try to convert you to my own state of belief. Because that’s not how I work. And even if it was, I should know that no one is going to convince you of all people, to change a pattern of behavior.”

  I paused, wanting to touch him. Needing to touch him. I almost did. But the past stopped me. So I sucked in a breath.

  “But I do want you to accept it. Certainly believe it,” I murmured. “Because if you know me half as well as you tell me you do, then you will know who I am.”

  His gaze was softening, draining of that visceral fury as I spoke.

  “So many people walk around with anger in their hearts,” I whispered, my eyes going to his chest, then back up to his eyes. “And that anger is warranted, of course. Because the world hurts every single person who walks across it, in some way or another. Some worse than others. And if you want to find one, there is a reason to be angry every single day. Every single second.”

  That anger was creeping up my throat, even as I spoke. It was an effort, a great fricking effort to swallow it.

  “People are going to walk around with anger in their hearts and I will not blame them or judge them,” I said. “We all deal with what we’re given the best ways we know how. The ways that we know will keep us standing, keep us inhaling and exhaling. For you, that’s a lot of profanities, yelling on occasion and a lot of intense and brooding stares.” I smiled sadly. “Even death threats. Violence,” I continued, no longer smiling. “You know me, so you know that I don’t believe in this. But I accept it. Because that’s what’s got you here, right here in front of me. Exhaling.”

  I lifted my hand up to trail his beard, it was soft and scratchy at the same time. It was comforting.

  He jerked at the contact, the first I’d initiated between us.

  “For me,” I whispered, “it’s forgiveness. Because I can’t carry the weight of anger or hate. For me, I can’t stand underneath that. I have to forgive, or I can’t move forward. I can’t exhale.” I moved forward to touch my lips to his. “And right now, I’m really fricking glad to be inhaling and exhaling.”

  He was taut, shaking with his exertion to let my lips move slowly against his. To let me control this kiss. The first one I’d initiated. It was gentle. Tentative. Slow. Sweet.

  It was goodbye.

  I stepped back, and he let out a sound of protest at the back of his throat.

  “Why’d you do that?” he demanded.

  I smiled at the proximity of the past right now. It was something I needed. “I wanted to see what it felt like to kiss you,” I whispered.

  He jerked again. Like I’d stuck him. His eyes were on fire with heat, with everything. “No, Sunshine, wasn’t asking why you kissed me,” he growled, hands fisted at his sides. “Askin’ why you stopped.”

  My stomach dipped at the way his words caressed me. The way they demanded attention from parts of me I thought were dead.

  I ached to step forward again, press my lips to his, let the kiss chase away the horror. The truth.

  But I wasn’t eighteen anymore. I couldn’t do that.

  I had to invite the truth. In all of its horrible glory.

  “I was pregnant,” I whispered, the words barely breaking the air that was rumbling from energy between us. It was like they screamed at me, roared in the hollows of my skull. The hollows of my heart.

  Through those roars, I saw Heath go still.

  Go completely and utterly still.

  He waited a long time. Presumably for me to speak more, or maybe for him to get himself under control. I wasn’t sure which.

  But I wasn’t ready to speak more. I wasn’t sure if I could.

  “Say again?” he murmured, voice shaking.

  I sucked in air, and it settled in my lungs like concrete. “I was pregnant,” I whispered again, my eyes darting downward. “I didn’t tell anyone, not even Lucy. Not at first. Because you’re not supposed to tell anyone until twelve weeks. And imagine, me, following the rules in that one thing when I break all the others.” I tried to smile, but it didn’t work. So I shrugged instead. “I honestly don’t know why I didn’t tell her. Or anyone...even Craig.”

  I almost choked on his name. I saw Heath’s jaw twitch from the way I uttered it.

  “It wasn’t the reason he asked me, he didn’t know the, neither did I, it was too early.” I sucked in a horrible breath. “I loved him.” I chewed my lip, unable to lie to myself any more after everything that happened.

  I surely couldn’t lie to Heath.

  Even if that admission was acid in my soul right now.

  “Maybe, I loved him,” I amended, unable to believe that statement, that feeling after everything I’d gone through.

  “The part of him that he pretended to be, at least,” I said. “The part that seemed so easy and right when things between us...weren’t. I found out not long after we got engaged. Not long after we saw you that day. After you left. After my feet started to get cold. My soul started to get cold.”

  I’d never admitted that to anyone. My reservations leading up to the wedding. I certainly didn’t admit it to myself. But it was time. Beyond time. I had too many secrets in my soul. I needed to let some of them out.

  “I knew that I didn’t have to get married in order to have a baby,” I continued. “I didn’t have to stay with Craig. But, I’ve lived in chaos, in constant motion for so long, I knew the second I saw that plus sign that I wanted peace for my baby. That normal life that I pretty much rebelled against, since, well, ever.”

  I smiled.

  “Because when I think about my mom and dad, the life that they gave Lucy and me, how happy I was, I wanted to reproduce that. If I hadn’t have met you, I would’ve been so certain about that. But there was hesitation, when I was holding a stick telling me I was carry
ing another man’s child...there was you.” My voice was a broken whisper and I didn’t have the courage to meet Heath’s eyes so I continued to look at the floor.

  “If it was just me...” I trailed off. “I don’t let myself torture myself with those ‘ifs,’” I rasped. “Because then I would think about if I didn’t lose...” I choked, literally choked on the words right as they were coming from my throat.

  If I didn’t lose my baby.

  “Polly,” Heath said, the word seemingly yanked from him, torn from his very throat it was full of that much pain.

  Pain for me.

  More pain.

  That’s what we were now.

  I held up my hand. “I need to finish,” I whispered.

  “You need to fucking look at me,” he demanded.

  I sucked in a breath, counting the scuffs in the hardwood. “I can’t,” I said to the floor. “I can’t because I see myself in your eyes, I see my pain in your eyes and I’m scared I might not be able to stand if I see that.”

  Whether he had been respecting the distance I put between us, or maybe he’d just been unable to move until now I wasn’t sure.

  All that I knew was there wasn’t distance between us now.

  Heath’s hand was on my hip, yanking his body to mine, steadying me, even when his touch weakened my knees. His other hand went to my chin, gently moving it upward to meet his gaze.

  I flinched.

  Because there was pain there.

  Agony.

  Of what I’d lost.

  Of what we’d lost.

  A life.

  Peace.

  “You don’t need to stand under it, Polly,” he murmured. “Not when I’m here to hold you up.”

  A single tear trailed down my cheek.

  He didn’t wipe it away.

  He just watched me, waiting for more.

  And there was more.

  With us, it seemed there was always more.

  “I planned on telling everyone...after the honeymoon,” I continued. “I would be exactly twelve weeks then, and I wasn’t really showing. Craig didn’t notice, apart from a comment about me eating more donuts than usual. I should’ve taken more notice as to why he wanted the wedding to happen so quickly. Not because of him loving me and wanting to marry me as soon as possible.” I laughed. “No, because there was only so long he could keep up the act. The human mask itches the monster underneath. But I was distracted. I’m always distracted about something. But this time I was distracted about the fact I was going to be a mother. I was growing a baby inside of me. And I didn’t let myself think of you and what could’ve been because I felt like I was betraying that little life that had become more important than anything else in the world to me. It was her peace that I had to think about not my own. I thought I was making the right decision. But I was wrong.”