Keltan stood behind her, hands on her shoulders.
There was silence.
“You love her,” Lucy said finally.
Heath didn’t hesitate. “More than anything on this fucking earth.”
She smiled. “From the start?”
“From the second I saw her in that bar, and every second after that,” he said.
Lucy lost her smile. “She’s not the same as us,” Lucy said, voice quiet. “And I don’t mean this in a bad way. It’s in all the best of ways. Because there was something special in her, something soft and precious and something that I’ve always considered my duty as her sister to protect. Everyone that encounters her and loves her considers it their duty. To make sure that Polly continues to experience the world exactly how she sees it. And now that’s gone. I can’t protect her anymore. And even in the best case scenario, it’s going to break my sister.”
Heath didn’t flinch with the words. Though they cut him. Speared him. As did hearing the absolute sorrow in the tone of one of the strongest women he knew. Lucy had more of a poker face than half the men he’d served with. He’d seen it for himself.
But this wasn’t like anything they’d experienced.
This was Polly.
And she was so fucking different than them in all the best ways, which meant that this was cutting them to the core in all the worst ways.
“You’re wrong,” Heath said.
Keltan stiffened as he spoke and leaned forward as if to spring. Heath didn’t doubt he would if he didn’t like the next words coming out of his mouth.
“She’s stronger than you think. Than you know,” he continued not giving a fuck about Keltan’s glare. “She isn’t going to let the ugliness of the world break her.”
His words sounded certain, sure.
But they were little more than a prayer.
No one normally listened to his prayers, but Duke burst into the room.
Heath stood.
“We got her,” Duke said.
Chapter Sixteen
Polly
Sixteen Hours Missing
You get rescued in the nick of time.
That’s what happens in those fantasies in the head you pretend you don’t have. You know, the ones where something crazy happens and wakes up that person that you’ve been thinking about forever and then they come and save you, right in the nick of time.
Then they hold you in their arms and you’re safe and warm. They whisper to you about how they’d never leave you, how you were safe now.
It would’ve been nice if that happened.
But this seemed to be the period of my life when the universe had to educate me on the fact that fantasies didn’t play out here in real life.
Not mine at least.
So I was not rescued in the nick of time.
Or at all.
The back of the truck was uncomfortable, to say the least. My hands bound awkwardly behind my back contributed to that. As did the uneven terrain we seemed to be traversing on. I guessed it wasn’t a main highway from the number of times I went flying forward, back, up, down.
I had opened up a cut on my cheek.
It was from Craig’s wedding ring.
I hadn’t noticed he was still wearing it until it tore at my skin when he was beating the crap out of me.
I wondered why he’d worn it for so long. It can’t have been out of love. Because even deluded and ugly love didn’t let a person do what he’d done to me.
I wasn’t thinking about that.
It wasn’t going to help me.
It wasn’t going to help anything.
I was careful to keep my mind very blank as the journey continued. I took in the large area I was being jostled around in. Not too much, mind you, because I was shackled to something on the edge of the truck. It was considerate. Chaining me up to the side of the truck. So I wouldn’t go flying all the way across the truck. Without my hands to break my fall I could break my neck.
That might be nice.
Quick.
But I couldn’t wish for death.
That was so utterly selfish.
Heath’s words haunted me.
“You drive like you bowl through life. Full of almost hitting things, near misses, almost disasters. You’ve been lucky, so far, Polly. But no one is lucky forever. The world doesn’t give almosts forever. One day, you’re gonna fuckin’ crash.”
I wondered how much satisfaction Heath would get knowing he had predicted the future. I didn’t crash, literally, of course. But my body and soul was shattered into a thousand different pieces and that was pretty much the same thing.
The words bounced around the empty expanse surrounding me, hitting me now and again. It hurt. Which was surprising. I’d thought I’d stopped feeling pain.
I was in a large truck. Like a big long haul one. It was designed for large amounts of cargo. It had a strong smell of off milk. Maybe yogurt?
But it wasn’t refrigerated.
Maybe that’s why it went off.
Maybe that’s why it was used for transporting humans.
Or just one lone human.
I couldn’t go off, could I? But my insides felt like that’s what was happening. They were rotting, decaying, turning into something rancid and not at all pleasant.
It was off-putting.
But there was not much I could do about it, was there? It had happened, and I was here. Most likely there was worse in store for me. Or at the very least more of the same.
The thought provoked that lust for a quick death I had brushed away because of the people it would hurt.
My family.
I wondered how they were. I wondered how long they’d look for me until they gave up.
Never.
I knew that Lucy would never give up.
Neither would Rosie.
Them and their respective husbands would tear apart the earth for me. Because that’s what they did. They might find me, rotting in a shallow grave. I hoped not.
I smiled thinking about their babies. They’d have them in sorrow, of course. And I hated that I would involuntarily have a part in that. I wanted so much joy and love for them. Because they deserved so much of that. I wanted to meet my niece or nephew. Wanted to cradle the new warmth of life in my arms, and feel my heart grow with love for such a tiny being. I wanted to babysit when Lucy and Keltan were sleep deprived and going crazy. I wanted to save Luke from Rosie murdering him when he didn’t let her go back to work immediately.
I could’ve been that cool aunt. Because I’d never be a mother, even...if everything didn’t happen.
But everything did happen. I was wearing the evidence, body and soul. I should’ve been in pain. A lot of it.
And I was, somewhere amongst the layers. But I’d sunk down to someplace inside of me that was rather quiet and vacant and at peace with all the horrors that I’d gone through. Or maybe in denial. I knew it was a temporary place. One I’d likely get wrenched out of the second the truck stopped and my life—as I knew it at least—stopped too.
And my death might start.
Craig had sold me.
Sold. Me.
Like I was a commodity. Something that he had the right to throw at men, half-conscious and sullied and talk about being ‘even.’ As if my life, my soul was something that weighed just the right amount to even whatever scales he’d disrupted in the first place.