“No, babe, I totally do. It’s kind of the point to kick everyone out after the I dos so you can, you know, do the nasty.” I glimpsed at the priest. “Sorry, Padre.”
He smiled. “You’re quite all right.”
I winked at him, then gave Lucy and Keltan a smile. A real one. “I’m so very happy for you two,” I whispered.
Then I left.
I had to.
I expected to hear his footsteps chasing me down the hallway.
Dreaded it.
Hoped for it.
The footsteps never came.
One Month Later
“I’m in love.”
I sipped my wine, not even raising a brow at Polly’s dramatic proclamation. “Again?” I deadpanned.
She scowled as she sipped at her own wine, eyes dreamy. “This time he’s the one, Rosie. I know it. It’s different.”
I nodded. “I’m sure it is.” I did my best to sound genuine, but it was hard.
Polly, bless her heart, fell in love as often as I fell into trouble.
She was the ultimate romantic. Believed in the fairy tale. Which was funny, since both her sister and I had always been adamant that the fairy tale was a load of shit. The only thing true about all those tales was in Cinderella—the right shoes can change a girl’s life.
The wrong man can ruin it. Fuck, the right one will destroy it.
Polly had a lot of wrong men, yet somehow her life stayed intact. Well, her life was a hurricane, but it remained that way. As did her beautiful smile, unblemished by the bitch known as reality.
It should’ve annoyed me. On anyone else, it surely would have. But with Polly, it was different. I wanted to protect her delusion, not set her straight. I feared the day when she learned the hard way.
When some asshole showed her that.
Then I’d show him the sole of my size 9 Jimmy Choos.
“I know I’ve said this a few times before,” she said, draining her glass and pushing herself up.
I restrained my snort.
“But I think that every time before was leading up to this, you know?” she asked.
I nodded. I had no fucking clue what she was talking about.
But then my mind went to that moment with Heath last month, the intensity that saturated the room, not drowning out what was coming from Lucy and Keltan but operating on a different plane. Lucy hadn’t noticed because even though she had a stab wound and was wearing a hospital gown while getting hitched, she was on the love and rainbows and happiness plane.
You couldn’t taste the heartbreak and difficulty unless you were suffering from something similar.
It was safe to say I was.
So I noticed.
And I’d brought it up with Polly when she finally did get home late that night and I’d been on the sofa, watching Say Yes to the Dress and drinking martinis. In sweatpants, but also in full makeup because that stupid hopeful shred of me that hadn’t been killed—don’t ask me how—by the years before had thought that maybe Luke would turn up on his slightly tarnished white horse and save the proverbial day.
He did not.
Men on white horses, tarnished or not, didn’t exist.
Or maybe he had and I had killed him, and his horse too.
So she’d come in, face unreadable.Which was a change, considering Polly always wore her feelings on her beautiful face and her heart on her sleeve.
Both of those were hidden.
She’d been uncharacteristically quiet, and when I’d suggested that perhaps Heath was the reason, she uncharacteristically snapped at me.
I’d been so shocked at that, I’d let her stomp out of the room and slam the door before I knew what happened. It was her temporary room, since she spent most of her time at a loft apartment she shared with a handful of other free spirits I was vaguely worried about being in a cult. But she seemed okay, not planning on drinking any Kool-Aid.
She’d apologized the next morning, but nothing more was said about Heath.
So now, as she downed her wine and was declaring love and something being different, with the Heath thought in mind, I maybe believed her. Because whatever it was between them was different. The kind of different her very own sister had. But then again, right then, she looked too happy for that kind of different. Because the real, life-changing, heart-wrenching kind of love didn’t make you happy. Not at the start, at least. It made you miserable. Even well after the start, I was still fucking miserable. So I was confused.
Not that I dared speak Heath’s name again. I just waited for Polly to educate me.
She put her glass in the sink, then checked herself in the mirror before snatching her purse up from the table below it. She turned, her face beautiful not just from bone structure, excellent hair and an expert hand at makeup, but from happiness. However transient that may be. She was glowing.
“He makes me feel different. Like he sucks up all the air when I’m around him and I can’t breathe. I need him to breathe.”
I frowned. I didn’t like some motherfucker doing that, yanking a beautiful and kind girl into his orbit and bespelling her. And Heath, the way he looked at Polly, that told me he’d suck all the air out of his own body, forsake oxygen just to make sure Polly breathed easy.
“What’s his name?”
She beamed. “Craig.”
I frowned. No one should be beaming about a man named Craig. I itched to ask about the Heath situation, but previous experience told me I’d see it all soon enough. I really prayed my little hopeless romantic didn’t have car bombs or stabbings in her courtship.
We’d had enough drama.
For me to say that, it was legit.
“When do I get to meet him?” I asked, wondering when Lucy and I got to set his car on fire.
Polly smeared some gloss on her lips. “Oh, soon,” she said vaguely. “I’m just not ready to share.”
I pursed my lips. That meant she knew that we wouldn’t approve.
Not that we’d ever approved.
Her phone vibrated. She glanced down. “That’s my Uber,” she said.
I frowned again. “He doesn’t pick you up?”
“He lives all the way in the Valley, so it makes no sense,” she replied, leaning down to kiss my cheek. “I’ll be staying there tonight, all going well.”
And like the hurricane she was, she was gone.
I chewed my lip. Then I got my phone. “Wire, I need info on a guy Polly’s dating,” I said without hello.
“Another one? Jesus,” Wire muttered.
This wasn’t the first, or even the fourth time that I’d gotten Wire to check on Polly’s boyfriends.
“It’s Polly,” I said in answer.
He sighed. “True. And I was getting a little bored. Was thinking of changing the nuclear codes just for fun.”
I laughed, but I didn’t doubt that’s what he would’ve done. Wire was crazy. Not a Lucky type of crazy. Nor a murderous borderline sociopath Gage type of crazy either.
He was a computer guy. That didn’t mean he didn’t know how to handle himself in the ‘real’ world. He only looked skinny because he was surrounded by men who resembled Chris Hemsworth’s more cut brothers. He was lean and kickboxed every day.
I knew that because whenever I was home, I trained with him. I had him to thank for a lot of my takedowns in Venezuela.