by Malcom, Anne
No matter how broken it was right now.
Polly was home.
And now, things were a little fixed with that agonizing truth actualized. Burned into his brain like acid. It was something that he’d never get over. Forget. It was a wound that cut him to the core.
But he had Polly.
And she’d get him through.
In little ways like waking up at three in the morning to an empty bed.
He pushed out of bed and found Polly doing yoga in the moonlight.
Yeah, she was healing. She didn’t think she would be the same, she didn’t think she could be fixed. But the fact she was here, awake, not willing to give in her life to sleep anymore, it meant a little piece slotted back into place.
She came up from a forward fold—he was learning the terms because it was important to Polly and he didn’t give a fuck if that made him a pussy—and caught his eyes. She didn’t jump in surprise, she smiled, openly and warmly.
His heart clenched in his chest.
A broken piece inside him slotted into place with that smile.
“Couldn’t sleep, and it’s a full moon,” she said, looking out the window. “It’s a shame to waste it.”
Only Polly would think that not getting up in the middle of the night to do yoga and charge her crystals—he saw them on the windowsill, and knew she did this every month—would be wasting a full moon.
She was back.
He crossed the room and yanked her into his arms.
“Does it count as wasting the full moon if I fuck you in front of the window?” he rasped.
Her eyes flared with hunger. “No,” she breathed. “No, it doesn’t.”
So he did just that.
* * *
Polly
Two Days Later
“I think it’s time I called my parents,” I said sipping my tea, and perving at Heath as he got ready for work.
He froze, looking up from his belt.
“I’m not telling them everything,” I said quickly. “Or even half. I just...can’t. I’m not putting that on them.”
“This isn’t about putting it on them,” he said immediately. “This is about you doing whatever you need to heal. You needa stop worryin’ how that process is gonna hurt others. Because it won’t. Only way it does is if someone who adores you—list is long with me at the top—thought you were hurting yourself to save them. Don’t know your parents, but know the kind of women they’ve raised, so I know they will be of that opinion.”
I blinked at Heath’s words. I wondered if I’d ever get used to the way he spoke. His beautiful honesty. And his ugly honesty too. All mixed up together.
“I know that,” I said. “I know that it’d hurt them more if they found out I’d been keeping things from them. But, sometimes there are things you have to keep from your parents. This is one of those things.”
Your ex-husband kidnapping you, raping you and then selling you to human traffickers was definitely a thing to keep from your parents.
Heath watched me for a long time, testing the truth in my words.
He nodded once and crossed the room to snatch me into a kiss. “I trust you, babe. Trust that you know yourself well enough to make that decision. Not gonna make you change it. But I’m gonna make sure you know I’m here when you call them. When they come. Because my place is at your side. It has been since you were eighteen years old. Now I’m here, I’m not going anywhere. Sooner your parents, and you, realize that, the better.”
Tears ran down my face.
“You trust me?” I repeated.
He frowned. “Of course I fuckin’ trust you. I love you. With everything I am. Fucking adore you. You might deal with shit different than anyone else, you might deal with life different than anyone else, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.” He kissed me. “Means it’s the only thing that’s right in this fucked up world. You’re the only thing that’s right.”
More tears trailed down my face.
“I love you,” I murmured.
“Good, ‘cause I plan on growing old with you, it helps if you love me,” he said dryly.
A strangled giggle merged with my sob.
I was able to do that more and more now.
Laugh.
And Heath was able to tease me.
I’d thought that was lost.
But we just needed to find each other first.
I toyed with his belt and his body went instantly taut.
“You really need to go to work...now?” I asked sweetly.
I squealed as he yanked me into his arms. “No fucking way do I need to go anywhere but inside your pussy,” he growled.
And he did.
Twice.
Chapter Twenty-One
I called my parents later that morning.
Much later.
My hand was shaking as I dialed, but I was sitting in Heath’s lap, borrowing some of his strength.
I managed to dial.
To speak when they answered.
The second I’d gotten the words—the lies and half-truths about that day almost two months ago—out of my mouth, my parents were getting ready to get in the car.
They arrived hours later.
Mom was still wearing her slippers.
She full on sprinted at me in the parking lot of my apartment building. I collapsed in her arms. We both would’ve collapsed if Dad hadn’t caught us both.
I’d been so sure that I could handle not telling my parents. That it’d be somehow okay. But there was no way to heal without your parents to hug you. To cry with you. It wouldn’t heal me fully. Or even half. I knew this.
But I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near back to something resembling me without the smell of my mother’s perfume, without my father’s lips at my head.
“It’s gonna be okay,” he murmured into my hair.
And I believed him the only way a daughter believed her father when he told her it was all going to be okay.
Because it wasn’t, not really, on the outside of all this. But inside my dad’s arms, it was.
* * *
Dad and Heath had gone out to get some burgers and beer for dinner.
I didn’t get how it took two of them to do so, but it was likely some sort of male bonding thing. And it was definitely my father trying to protect me.
But then again, he’d taken to Heath almost immediately.
Not that Heath made an exact good first impression, with his beard, muscles, cold demeanor. But Dad looked between us, or more accurately looked at the way Heath had pulled me into his arms, wiped a rogue tear from my eye and murmured, “You okay, Sunshine?”
My father was a shrewd man. He saw things. I knew he saw things about Craig, but he was a good father so he kept his reservations quiet.
And because he was a good dad, the best, I knew he was going to carry that around with him, blame that didn’t belong on his shoulders. And that hurt. Added to the pile of pain I was carrying around. But I didn’t focus on that. I focused on the way he was with Heath, and it warmed me. Heath warmed me. Every day, every new wound I exposed, he stayed, he made roots. Made sure to tell me, to show me that this was permanent. Even when he knew I was broken. No longer that bright and happy girl he’d fallen in love with.
He was showing me that he was falling in love with this new Polly.
And I was falling in love with him all over again.
“You want the veggie burgers from the place that has the preacher out front or from that place that plays that weird music?” he asked, resting his hands lightly on my hips before they left.
My heart almost broke with that simple question. Because nothing was simple between us. And him knowing the places I got my veggie burgers from depending on my mood and cravings—and willing to travel thirty minutes out of the way to get them—was more than a simple question. It was everything.
I smiled. I couldn’t help it. And it was well and truly real. Not an original Polly smile. But a new one. Maybe slightly less
bright, a little less naive, but it was real.
“The preacher,” I whispered.
He stroked the edge of my jaw, looking at me in what could only be explained as awe. “Been plannin’ a lot of shit to get that smile back to me,” he murmured. “Didn’t think it would be from getting you veggie burgers. They’re gonna have to be on the menu every day for the rest of our lives.”
Then he kissed me hard and fast on the mouth.
In front of my parents.
I expected my father to be thin-lipped when he released me. But he was smiling. Beaming.
My mom’s eyes were misty, but she was smiling too.
“Right,” Dad said, clapping Heath on the back. “Hamburgers, and the shit the hippies try to sell as hamburgers.”
I grinned.
Whatever Dad said about it, he always drove me to every health store in the area since I’d decided I was vegetarian, without much complaining.
Because he loved me.
That was the secret. People who loved you didn’t have to believe in everything you did. Didn’t have to agree with it. But the fact they’d go out of their way for something they didn’t believe in, for you, that was saying a lot.
It was saying everything.
Heath gave me a long look before him and Dad walked out the door.
I pressed my hands to my lips, still smiling.
“Well,” Mom said to the room, her voice shaky. “He’s the best yet.”
I looked at her. “Yeah, he is,” I whispered.
She searched my face in a way only mothers could. “He’s the one, isn’t he? The real one?”
I nodded.
Mom’s shoulders sagged, like some sort of weight had just been released.
But then they tensed again.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Mom said, dabbing at her eye. She took a breath. “Something I should’ve told you a long time ago. But I wished I wouldn’t have to burden you with the hard truth when you seemed so beautiful and soft.”
She crossed the room to take my hand and sit us both down on the sofa. She squeezed my hand. “Not weak, just to clarify. I never thought of you as weak. But you are my Polly. My little dreamer. And I thought maybe I could preserve that dream. That I could save you from a truth that would only harm you. But now I see you need that truth so maybe it might heal you.”
She paused like she was bracing for something. For impact. “I was married, before your father.”
I blinked. That was a surprise. A shock, to be more accurate. My mom and I shared everything. She knew when I lost my virginity, obviously not the whole Heath story, but she knew that it happened. I told her about bad boyfriends. Bad friends. She did the same. I thought we shared mostly everything, and I felt guilty for beginning to hide things from her the older I got, the uglier the truth got.
But having a marriage before my father was a pretty darn big thing to hide.
I understood it, though. I might not have three years ago. But I did now.
Because sometimes, some truths were too big to share.
“Holy crap, Mom,” I said.
She nodded. “There’s more.” She looked strange, her face pinched and wary. Dad always said I got my ‘open face’ from Mom. We could never hide how we felt.
“Some people wear their heart on their sleeves, you wear it on your beautiful face.”
She almost looked...scared? Guilty?
“My first husband, he was not a good man,” she said. “If you knew him, were friends with him, worked with him, you would disagree with that. Because he was polite. Handsome. Charismatic. For all intents and purposes, he was the ideal husband and father. On the surface. But when he closed the door and loosened his tie, put down his briefcase, he was no longer burdened by the surface. And I didn’t realize this until I married him.” She took a long breath. “Until I got pregnant.”
The words hit me with enough force to take my breath away.
Mom saw this, but she kept going. Because there was obviously more.
“And it started to slip, his mask, after your sister was born,” she said. “And I should’ve seen that, should’ve done more. But I couldn’t. For a number of reasons. Mostly because I had been so blindly in love I gave him control over everything. He counted on this and made it so I couldn’t leave with anything. By this point, I had you as well. And it didn’t get bad until you were talking. It was bad, don’t get me wrong. Bad in a way no man should scream at his wife the way he did with me. Treated me the way he did. But I was in love and I made excuses and I thought that loving someone was forgiving them for their ugliness. Until his ugliness was all there was and he felt entitled to my forgiveness. And then he started to get violent.”
My stomach dropped. Literally dropped.
I had to put my hand on it to make sure all of my organs are still in place, that’s how violent of a reaction I was having to the mere thought of someone hurting my mother.
My father hurting my mother.
My biological father.
“And he was sorry, and he loved me,” she whispered. “And he had brainwashed me into thinking that it was my duty as a wife to forgive him. I won’t make excuses because I don’t need to.” She squeezed my hand again and more tears trailed down her cheeks. “You know what love for the wrong man can do to the right woman. It’s a soft heart that gets manipulated by hard souls. I was making plans to leave. Saving. It was taking time because I had no one to lean on. He had made sure of that. To slowly isolate me from my support system, from people that might’ve seen the signs, tried to help me had I not shut them out at his gentle probing.”
My stomach lurched again.
Because Craig had done that.
He had tried to do that. With subtle comments about my family, about them stifling me. Not understanding me.
It might’ve worked not on a weaker woman, but on weaker bonds. As it was, no one was ever breaking the connection I had to my family. Though he did fray it. More because when I loved someone, I wanted to give them my all. Life and breathe them. But Lucy was used to this, as I’d been doing it on and off over the years.
And she understood it.
And never judged me,
I wondered what it would’ve been like for me if I hadn’t lost my baby, if Craig had managed to separate me from my family.
“It was you,” she murmured, jerking me out of that dangerous game of ‘would’ve beens.’
“What?”
“You were so tiny,” she whispered, eyes watering. “You had figured out a way to escape your bedroom at night, because you liked to explore. And you were bad at sleeping even then. You never cried once you figured out how to get yourself out of bed. You didn’t need attention in the night. You were just curious.”
She smiled through her tears.
I gripped her hand so hard my knuckles were white.
“I had burned dinner that night,” she said. “Or maybe I didn’t iron a shirt correctly.” She tilted her head. “I don’t remember now. It’s funny, it seemed so important at the time. Like it would be etched into my mind forever. But it faded. It took time and love and a life that I’ve been blessed with to make it happen, but it faded.”
I struggled with my tears.
“Whatever the reason, what won’t fade, what can’t ever fade is seeing your wide, beautiful, curious and pure eyes fixated on me on the floor. My nose was bleeding. You wiped it with your security blanket. The one that up until then, you hadn’t let me even wash without screaming. But when you see people hurting, my little baby, you would give them everything you had if only to make them feel better. And I was not going to take everything I had from my precious daughter. I was not going to let your first memories of the world be tainted with violence and pain. I planned on leaving. But then, your father did the only good thing he ever did.” She sucked in another strangled breath. “He left, after beating me enough to require your sister, at eight years old, to somehow get me and you to the hospital.”
> Her voice cracked.
“And that’s where your dad found us. Your real dad. The one who took you to softball, who plaited your hair, who cared for you when you were sick. Because of your father, I found your real dad. But it was at the expense of Lucy’s innocence. I waited too long with Lucy and that’s my sin I will carry with me. It’s why she’s different than you. Because I left her in that place too long.”
“No, Mom. Lucy is different because she’s different,” I said firmly. “Because that’s how beautiful the world is, to give us that. You did not stop her from being who she was meant to be by being human. By having hope.”
“And the world has somehow not stopped you from being who you are, despite everything,” Mom murmured, cupping my face. “I’m so sorry I kept it from you,” she said.
“I understand,” I said, crying freely now. “I didn’t tell you and Dad what happened because I wanted to protect you from any and all kind of pain. That’s what you do when you love someone. You want to be true to them to show them you respect them, but sometimes the truth hurts, and you can’t hurt someone that precious to you without losing respect for yourself.” I squeezed Mom’s hand. “I respect you, Mom. I love you. And I’m proud of you for being strong enough to live through that. To find Dad. To give us a beautiful life without any inkling of that ugliness you carried around inside.”
Mom was sobbing now. We were notoriously the emotional half of the family. “My baby,” she croaked. “It takes no effort to create a beautiful life when you’ve got beauty around you. When you’ve got family. You need to remember that. What’s inside of us can alter the outsides, I know my little yogi is an expert on this.” She smiled at me. “But it’s the people on the outside, like your Heath, who can help repair the inside. I know that because your dad did that with me.”
I was sobbing too.
Because she was right.
Weren’t moms always?
Heath
The drive was silent at first.
Heath didn’t mind that.
Didn’t feel the awkwardness most people felt in silences. He preferred them. That—and many, many other things—had enchanted him about Polly. This bright, seemingly loud girl, was happy in silences. Didn’t rush to fill them. Just bathed in them.