It wasn’t a nine to five job, obviously. The offices were expensive and comfortable not because the employees spent a lot of time in here but because they needed to be welcoming to clients.
I wasn’t a client, I was family. I should’ve felt welcome. But his presence was a ghost in these halls, so I didn’t feel welcome whenever I came here, which was as little as possible.
And then the ghost turned tangible as the flesh and blood man strolled from the hallway into the reception. He was looking down at his phone so he didn’t see me until he was halfway across the foyer. Getting closer to me.
When he looked up, he stopped his steps abruptly.
His gaze told me a lot of things.
One thing was a roar among the rest.
I was definitely not welcome here.
“You’re back.”
The two words were harmless in any other context. The combination of them nothing that could be packaged or structured into something that would hurt.
And words could hurt.
Sticks and stones did break bones. But words broke souls.
I knew that better than anyone.
Because two seemingly innocuous harmless words did just that. Tore through the broken pieces jabbed at my insides for good measure.
It wasn’t about the words.
It was the voice that spoke them.
The man that spoke them.
The man whose face I’d forced myself not to think of for an entire year. So naturally, it was the face ingrained into my memory like I’d stitched it there, sewn it into the fabric of my mind.
And I didn’t recognize him.
Just like I didn’t recognize that flat, cold, empty and dead voice.
I couldn’t even say cruel.
Because cruelty required energy. Some sort of effort.
Nothing was there inside of that voice I pretended I didn’t hear in my dreams. In my nightmares.
His gaze flickered over me blankly. With disinterest.
Not hatred.
Or longing.
It should’ve been anger.
I’d prepared myself for that. Prepared myself for the inevitable meeting that we’d have because of our mutual connections. I hadn’t expected it to be so soon, but ripping the Band-Aid off was meant to be good, right? It was meant to make it hurt less. I’d known it would hurt, but I didn’t think much could hurt more than what I’d already done to myself.
I’d reasoned it would kill me if he looked at me in hatred.
Oh, how I longed for that now.
Because that flat and empty gaze ruined me.
Right there on the spot.
I had to stay standing. Because we were in the middle of my brother-in-law’s offices. There were people. People staring between the two of us like they might two bombs lingering near that fatal zero on the counter.
But there was no explosion.
Nothing.
I swallowed glass.
“I’m back,” I agreed, my voice low, more than a squeak. I tried a smile, a Polly smile. That’s what I did, after all, I smiled at people. Even the man I’d loved and run from—twice—the man looking at me like I was a stranger on the street.
Yes, I tried to smile at him because the only other option was sinking to my knees and falling apart right here in the modern offices of Greenstone Security, in front of the receptionist and my brother in law who had just appeared behind Heath, his face tight and fists at his sides.
I knew Keltan was worried. He was protective by nature. And I was a damsel by nature. But I would not be responsible for him feeling like he had to come to my aid by creating conflict with a friend. So I smiled, tearing my eyes from Heath and settling on the safer gaze of my brother in law.
But I feared my smile was something more than a grimace.
I wondered if I ever might smile again.
Like magnets, my eyes were drawn to Heath’s once more.
I clutched onto that stupid, oh so very old Polly-like shred of hope I’d been carrying around like the tattered remains of a child’s security blanket.
It was the hope that there would be something there, some spark to hold onto, to feed me...something, despite the fact I didn’t deserve it. Rage. Disappointment. Anything to hold onto.
But there was nothing.
The hope was a moth-eaten scrap of fabric, clutched too tight and crumbling in my hands.
Heath nodded once. “Good. I hope you had a nice trip.”
And then he strode forward.
Toward me.
I held my breath as he gave me a wide berth—not wide enough since his scent, his very presence assaulted me with his nearness—and then strode out the door.
Like left.
I stayed there, frozen, unblinking.
I must’ve been breathing because I was upright and people that weren’t breathing tended to be horizontal.
I couldn’t believe we went through all of that, everything in the past, just to be strangers again.
That was the biggest tragedy of heartbreak.
When someone was your everything.
And then they were nothing.
He wasn’t nothing to me, of course.
But I was obviously nothing to him.
And I couldn’t blame him.
Not one bit.
There was only so much two people could go through before you had to call it, before someone had to back out, walk away. There was only so much two hearts could take. He was making the right decision turning us into strangers at worst, acquaintances at best.
There was pressure at my elbow.
“Polly?”
I focused on the source of the masculine concern.
Keltan was regarding me with pinched brows and a hard jaw. His eyes were soft, though. Because he was kind. And good. And he loved my sister more than anything on this planet and he took me as his little sister and did what everyone else did with me—handled me with a version of kid gloves, otherwise known as ‘Polly gloves.’
I straightened. “I’m okay,” I said.
I wondered who I was talking to, him or myself.
His eyes narrowed. “Didn’t ask you if you’re okay,” he said, voice warm and low.
I blinked. “Oh.”
“I know you’re not okay so askin’ would be a stupid question,” he continued. “I don’t ask stupid questions.”
I paused, momentarily surprised at how astute the hulking New Zealander was. Then again, he was married to one of the most emotionally complex—some would say crippled—women on the planet, otherwise known as my sister, so he had to be on his game.
Also, it felt like I was bleeding from a thousand tiny wounds and I wasn’t adept at hiding such pain and he was ex-military so he knew pain. He also had a tumultuous courtship with my sister, which ended in her bleeding out in his arms.
So yes, he knew pain.
And it was obviously painted on my face. It was certainly etched into my bones.
“Yes, you’re not stupid,” I said.
But I am, was what I left unsaid.
He frowned as if he could read my mind.
I paused. As Rosie had said the night before, I didn’t completely discredit the ability for the right person in touch with the right energies to be able to tap into someone’s thoughts, but I didn’t think the muscled and tattooed man in front of me would’ve been able to do so.
Because if he did, I reasoned that his courtship with Lucy would’ve gone a lot smoother.
“I’m going to ask a question that’s not stupid,” he said, moving, still holding me by the elbow so I was moving alongside him too.