I turned, my temper flaring in a way that was totally and utterly unfamiliar. “That’s what I tend to do when someone is in danger of shattering the fricking wood,” I hissed, folding my arms across my chest, partly because that’s women did when they were pissed off, but also because it was a good way to hide how much my hands had been shaking before that.
Heath had been pacing the small living room, his boots hitting the floor with such force, I worried for Mrs. Alderson, my downstairs neighbor. But she was out of trouble when Heath stopped pacing to stare at me.
No, to glower at me.
“Why the fuck are you even still living in this piece of shit apartment with a door that has nothing but a deadbolt?” he hissed. “You’ve got money. A lot of it. From your divorce,” he spat the word and coming from his mouth, it sharpened the word to a point so it speared through my skin. “You need to be in a better building, better neighborhood. Make it happen.”
I blinked at him through the pain, trying to catch up. “Make it happen?” I repeated.
He nodded once, the motion violent and jerky.
“So let me get this straight, you came to my apartment, stormed in, yelled at me, to order me to move to a different neighborhood?” I surmised.
He didn’t speak, maybe because I didn’t give him time to, because I found that anger that had been absent when my ex had upturned a table in the middle of a restaurant and then presumably was planning on attacking me.
I was finding it because I was finding fear in front of Heath when it had been absent in front of Craig. Because Heath scared me more than Craig ever could. And he hurt me more than Craig ever could. The difference was he wasn’t meaning to.
Or at least I didn’t think he was.
He’d been a good man before.
A good man who’d wanted me.
But I’d brutally turned him down.
Did I break his heart?
I wasn’t sure.
But I knew that a good man with a broken heart was almost impossible to distinguish from a bad one with a blackened one.
So he scared me.
And somehow with everything between us, my fear morphed in anger.
“In case you didn’t notice this about me, I don’t care about money,” I hissed at him, trying to mimic that detached and harsh tone that he’d adopted. “And now I have more of it, it changes nothing. I like this apartment.” I gestured around the small and cozy space. “I like this neighborhood. It’s me. I fit. I certainly don’t fit in some skyscraper downtown or a townhouse in Beverly Hills. And I’m proud of that fact. And I don’t even know why I’m explaining this to you since it’s none of your business. You made it very clear that I’m none of your business.”
His eyes darkened. Blackened like the clothes he was wearing. “You’re my business, Polly,” he murmured, his voice low and dangerous.
My skin prickled.
“You’re always my business. Primarily because my business is security and you’re in desperate fucking need of it since you were accosted by your ex-fucking-husband two hours ago and he almost hit you, had you not fucking tased him!” He was not murmuring anymore.
“How do you know that?” I asked, voice flat, finding that strange calmness come over me in the face of Heath’s anger as it had with Craig’s.
But Heath’s anger wasn’t the same as Craig’s. It wasn’t full of menace, of the desire to hurt.
Well, not physically at least.
“How do I know?’ he repeated as if I was a little slow and should’ve realized he was all seeing and all knowing. “I’m in the business of security, and about six different people posted the fucking whole thing online. We got our Amber Alert within fuckin’ minutes.”
I screwed up my nose. “Amber Alert? That’s only with kidnapped kids.”
He continued to glare. “And for three women from Amber who have a habit of gettin’ kidnapped, shot at and stabbed,” he bit out. “We’re not too keen on havin’ that shit become somethin’ of a general occurrence, no matter how determined Rosie and Lucy seem to be about that.” His face flickered. Something soft, something almost tender lay underneath his fury. For a moment at least. Like sun glare on a road, when you stared at it for too long, you saw it was an illusion. “But not you,” he said. “You’re not getting caught up in that shit. You’re not like Rosie and Lucy.”
I resisted the urge to flinch at this.
But he was right.
I wasn’t like Rosie and Lucy. They were fighters. They were their own knights in shining leather—in Rosie’s case, and in Manolos—Lucy’s.
They were definitely my knights on occasion.
I’d always known this was true. I’d been okay with it. Because I knew it wasn’t in me to fight like they did, not in my DNA. I’d accepted that.
Until I heard it from Heath’s mouth. Until he faced me with the fact I was helpless.
Or at least in his eyes.
“I thought you never wanted to see me again,” I shot back, impressed I was able to talk through the pain. I was using my yoga breathing. And sheer force of will.
His eyes emptied. “I didn’t,” he said flatly, the words themselves had enough of a point. “But I was the only one in the office when I got the alert, and Keltan is my friend. Didn’t need him having to see this shit, having to deal with his pregnant wife dealing with it. You know who I’m talking about, right? Your sister? Don’t you fuckin’ think you’ve put her through enough? Gettin’ married to some asshole after knowing him a couple of months, getting involved in a drive-by, divorcing that asshole then disa-fuck-appearing for a year.”
He paused.
I struggled not to double over. He was hurling the truth at me like bombs. His aim was true. And fatal.
“I missin’ anything?” he asked, voice cold.
He was.
He was missing a couple of huge fricking things. Some of those things Rosie knew about. And the worst of it, no one knew about.
Because he was right. The people in my life didn’t deserve another Polly disaster on top of everything else. Lucy had almost died a couple of years ago. Rosie ran off too, but I doubted it was to volunteer on an olive grove like me. Considering it chased her back here and kidnapped her.
Now they were happy.
Getting shot at a lot less.
Pregnant.
Heath was right, they didn’t deserve more of the kind of thing that got them to their happiness. That wasn’t going to lead me to mine, considering he was glowering at me with electric hatred.
He was right, but it didn’t mean it was right to say.
“That’s cruel, Heath,” I whispered. I just didn’t have it in me to raise my voice. To yell like Rosie and Lucy would have. I knew that they did a lot of yelling throughout their heartbreaking courtships.
They still yelled now, of course.
But it wasn’t to disguise their pain.
But they were stronger than me. Heath was right.
So the whisper was almost beyond my strength.
He folded his arms, his eyes not betraying an inch of reaction at my broken tone. “The truth is cruel, Polly. You should know that better than anyone. You sure as fuck taught me that.”
I flinched.
He didn’t react.