But it didn’t hurt as much as that comment coming from Heath. Heath could always hurt me more than Craig. And that meant he was the only one I really loved. Because only people you loved completely could ruin you so efficiently.
“That is brutally ridiculous, Heath,” I croaked out.
He didn’t look affected by the pain in my voice and what I was sure was agony in my expression. “You want to know what’s brutally ridiculous? This whole fucking situation. You.” His stare was a thousand knives and a thousand different wounds, and I couldn’t look away. “You ran,” he accused, his voice cold and hard and so full of judgment it hit me bodily.
My instinct was to cower. To hide from this. Escape it. But I’d done that once. I’d tried to do that once. And I’d failed. There was no going back now. No hiding. So I jutted my chin up.
“What you felt between us was real and visceral and you couldn’t fuckin’ handle it,” he spat. “So you ran. You ran into the arms of a man that hurt you. That doesn’t respect you. That showed that in a fucking restaurant when he was about to hit you.”
“That’s cruel,” I whispered.
Nothing moved in his eyes. “You’ve made me cruel, Polly. You’ve made me fuckin’ crazy. It was one thing to watch you fuckin’ marry someone else. It was a little death. And a lot of big ones. Every fuckin’ day I woke up with the knowledge that you weren’t in my arms ‘cause you were wakin’ up with your fuckin’ husband.” He hissed the word. “And it was all I could do to get through that day thinkin’ you were happy. I hated it wasn’t with me, but fuck I got through the day because I guessed you knew yourself enough to give yourself happy. And then I figure out you were wakin’ up with someone who had the world in his arms and he was ready to put his fucking hands on you? That wasn’t a little death. Or a big one—that was fucking annihilation.”
His hands were fisted at his sides as the blank and emotionless mask he’d been wearing started to slip, to give way to anger, to something else.
“You tried to put an ocean between us. A whole fucking continent.” He stepped forward, and I backed up right until I slammed into a wall and I couldn’t retreat any farther. He didn’t pause, didn’t show mercy at my obvious fear.
He didn’t have mercy because there was no room for mercy between us.
He boxed me in until his hands came against the wall, either side of my face, his body lightly pressing into mine.
His gaze ripped through me.
“So, Little Girl, did it work?” he murmured. “All that distance? That ocean? Did it wash us away from you?”
I blinked at him. “You know it didn’t,” I whispered.
The words had barely come out of my mouth until his lips crashed onto mine. Brutally. Painfully. Exquisitely.
It was everything I’d craved but pretended I didn’t need. Pretended I didn’t need because I was sure I couldn’t have it.
But now that I did, now Heath’s hands were tearing through my hair, yanking my body to his, and then my legs were suddenly wrapped around his hips, I couldn’t imagine taking another breath in a world where this wasn’t a part of it.
I’d run out of reasons to fight this. To fight us. To pull back. To run again. There was no more running for me. No, there was Heath. Finally. Kissing me. Me, finally getting my shit together.
Just as quickly as he started kissing me, he stopped. He was across the hallway in one heartbeat.
My hand went to my lips, trying to extend the sensation of his kiss.
“Fuck,” he growled into the empty air.
I focused on him.
He did not look like he was ready to stop fighting. To continue kissing me.
No, he looked like he was about to run.
But he didn’t run, of course.
He gave me one last glare and turned on his heel and walked purposefully out the door.
“Dude, do you know you’ve got a hot guy following you?” Rain stage-whispered as I met her at the doors to our favorite bar.
Well, it was my favorite bar and I took her here one night and she, therefore, decided to was ‘our favorite bar’ since then.
It was mine and Heath’s bar.
It was dangerous. The emotional version of self-harm to come here at all, let alone the night after...everything that happened last night.
I hadn’t slept.
Not a wink.
How could someone sleep with those words bouncing off their skulls? Off the walls? They were louder than any chaos in L.A. could reproduce.
So I just lay there, replaying the words. Replaying the kiss.
And then it was morning.
I expected Heath to be waiting outside the building.
But he wasn’t.
There was a man, he had impressive muscles, leaned with the appropriate alpha stance, but he was not Heath. He was slightly shorter, he had short blond hair and a much kinder expression than what I was used to.
It was his kind expression that almost brought me to my knees. It was the fact he was there at all. The morning after Heath had kissed me and walked away.
He’d given up on me.
Finally.
It was all I could do to continue walking toward the man supposedly responsible for my safety.
“Polly,” he said, grinning. “I’m Duke.”
He extended his hand and I took it, smiling back because it was reflex to smile at someone who smiled at you so easily and openly. His hand was dry and warm and welcoming, just like everything about him.
I liked him.
I knew he’d be easy to be around, he wouldn’t make it hurt to breathe. To exist.
But I missed Heath physically nonetheless.
“I’m guessing you’re my next victim?” I asked, walking toward my car.
“Victim? You a serial killer?” he asked.
I smiled. “Not that I know of. But I’m wasting the time of someone who I’m guessing has much better things to do.”
He grinned, snatching my keys from my hand in a gesture that managed not to be rude and opened my door for me after unlocking it.
Heath didn’t open doors anymore. Sometimes he looked like he wanted to jam one of my fingers in one.
“Hanging out with a pretty lady who I’ve heard is crazier than her sister in all the best ways is not what I consider a waste of my time.” He winked, closing my door.
Before I knew it, the passenger door was opening, and the large man had folded himself into it. He threw a yoga mat into the back seat and two paperbacks.
“You’re riding with me?” I asked, though he’d put his seatbelt on so it was pretty obvious.
He nodded. “Heard you’re a maniac driver and I haven’t had time to head to Disney this year so I’m lookin’ forward to the thrill.”
Again, I couldn’t help but smile. “I’ll do my best to recreate Space Mountain.”
“All I can ask for.”
Duke had been easy all day. Offering help when needed at the homeless shelter and even volunteering to teach self-defense classes once a week when he’d talked to a couple of bruised and skinny girls who were barely out of their teens.
All of his pleasant and joking manner had disappeared when he’d finished speaking to them. I knew why. They were under the thumb of some asshole pimp who preyed on girls with bad home environments. He showed them a beautiful life for just long enough to get them committed, tied. Then he took down the façade, trapped them in an ugly life.