Saw the ugly.
He lived it, after all.
“I can’t,” I choked out. “I have to stay busy, to help people with their horrors, to understand them, because I have a visceral need to understand their nightmares, so maybe I can understand mine one day.”
His jaw was hard, was iron with even my small admission. So I knew there was no way I could ever utter the big one.
He pressed his lips to mine hard and quick. “Well, I’m here, Sunshine. I’m here ‘til you understand it. And I’ll be here after too.”
It was another promise.
I shouldn’t have let him make it.
But I did.
Three Weeks Later
“Can I ask you a question?”
Heath’s eyes lightened with my words. Ones that called up images from the past. I hadn’t consciously chosen them. No, especially considering my question. I didn’t want those beautiful memories in the proximity of the words that I was going to utter next. But here they were, ready to be tainted like everything else was.
Of course, on the surface, it didn’t look that way.
I was getting close to becoming certified as a yoga instructor since I’d done some training...before. I was back to volunteering, with Heath at my side, of course.
I was back to helping Rain with her latest move—the girl couldn’t keep an apartment to save her life—to helping my friend Dave with his new role on a soap, running lines with him when I could.
I read to the kids at St. Mary’s. Every Thursday.
My timetable was full. Bursting.
Just like before.
But nothing was like before.
People weren’t babysitting me anymore. They were still bracing, but they were trying to get back to something resembling normal. Lucy was yelling at Keltan for getting her the wrong flavor La Croix. Luke was yelling at Rosie when she was still at the gun range.
The nurseries were being decorated.
Life went on.
Kind of.
I was still sleeping through the night, in Heath’s arms. He still treated me gently. Still wasn’t pushing. Though he could walk down the street with my hand firmly clasped in his and I didn’t feel the urge to yank it back. He could kiss me more often. Close-mouthed and quick, of course, but he could do it more. Obviously he did. Often.
As soon as he sensed I could take more, he gave me more. Another touch, another gaze, more murmured promises of the future.
Our future.
Our impossible future.
I should’ve tried to stop it again. But I was Polly, I never did what I should’ve.
So we were curled up on the sofa, watching Stranger Things and eating peanut butter popcorn. Heath had screwed his nose up the first time I put it in our cart—yes, we were grocery shopping together now—but then he tried it and we had to buy four packets to last the week.
My head had been on Heath’s chest, I had been almost content.
So of course that’s when the demons in my soul chose that moment to strike. That’s why I lifted my head and spoke. Heath paused the TV, turning to give me his full attention. He did that. Gave me his full attention. Always. I always got all of him. And I gave him tattered scraps of me.
“You’re askin’ to ask me a question?” he clarified, voice holding a bit of teasing. Only a bit, because the man he was now wasn’t capable of the light teasing, the light happiness of the man he was before.
I was largely responsible for this.
“What did you do with Craig?” I asked, deciding to plow right through with the emotional bulldozer.
My words worked to wipe that light teasing right off his face. Like right off. I hated that I had the ability to do that.
“I’m not strong enough for all the details,” I said quickly. “I’m not like Rosie or Lucy or the old ladies in the Sons of Templar. I don’t need to know everything. I can’t know everything. It’s not in me. But I need to know at least, is he breathing or not?”
I had a hefty amount of shame admitting what I couldn’t handle. The whole truth. I barely knew anything about how they found me, though I knew it had to do with the Sons of Templar and Wire since he had been there during the first horrible days of my recovery. Physical recovery at least.
But I didn’t know what was going on with the larger picture. The men who Craig had tried to sell me to. It was something I should’ve asked about. But I didn’t.
Heath was silent for a long time.
Long even for him.
I guessed by the way his fists were resting on the tops of his knees, the steady and forced breaths, he was trying to calm himself down.
Because of course, I needed to be treated with care.
I ached for him to not do that. To explode.
Because at least that was honest.
“Does it matter?” he said through clenched teeth. “He’s never going to hurt you again.”
“It matters as to whether he’s never going to hurt me again because he’s banished to Siberia or whether he’s in a shallow grave and you have his death on your soul,” I said.
Heath’s jaw ticked. “I have plenty of death on my soul. That one is not gonna haunt me for a second.”
The blow was physical.
“You killed him,” I choked out.
He didn’t reply.
Which was a reply.
“You had no right to do that,” I said, my voice broken.
“I had every fucking right,” he hissed, voice chilling by the second. “It was the only thing I could do to punish him.” He paused. “There were a lot of things I wish I could’ve done to punish him.”
My skin prickled with his cold and foreign tone. His ruthless tone. His war tone. “He didn’t need punishment,” I said quietly. “He needed forgiveness.”
My words brought about silence. Tense and dangerous silence.
And Heath’s fury tore through it.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” he exploded, jumping from the sofa.
I stood too.
There was no more care, not now. No more Polly gloves, I found myself strangely relieved.
He started to pace. “The fucker hit you. Kidnapped you. Hurt you.”
As if his words brought back the reality, he stopped pacing to stand in front of me. His hand ghosted over the spot that was now healed and unblemished.
“Not just on the surface, but on the parts of you that don’t heal as easily as a bruise. That is a crime punishable by death.” His hand fisted beside my face and went to his side. “And you want me to believe, to fucking accept the fact that you think he deserved forgiveness instead of death?”
I smiled at him. Which of course, caught him off guard. When he got like this, like the man who had to use his anger to get him through the hardest of times, when he had to hurl his words out, pepper them with profanities in order to continue on the road he’d chosen, I doubted he often got a response such as this.
“I don’t expect you to understand it, Heath,” I said. “Nor am I going to try to convert you to my own state of belief. Because that’s not how I work. And even if it was, I should know that no one is going to convince you of all people, to change a pattern of behavior.”
I paused, wanting to touch him. Needing to touch him. I almost did. But the past stopped me. So I sucked in a breath.
“But I do want you to accept it. Certainly believe it,” I murmured. “Because if you know me half as well as you tell me you do, then you will know who I am.”