by Malcom, Anne
Because if I was going to survive this encounter, it wasn’t with the decision to be happy. It was the decision to be miserable. To be ruthless. With Heath. And most of all, myself.
“You treated me like a stranger,” he accused, instead of continuing the apartment conversation.
I wished we’d continued that conversation, because this was a lot more dangerous. But the only way through it was, well, through it.
Though I did consider running back into the loft, slamming the deadbolt, and hiding in the bathtub for the foreseeable future.
I didn’t do that.
Instead, I sank further into the persona that felt so uncomfortable.
“You took my virginity, showed me two nights of...something and then left me in the morning without so much as a goodbye,” I hissed back. “You are a stranger.”
He flinched at my words.
I tried not to let that affect me. So he had a minor physical reaction to my recounting of the event. I lived it. And I had critical physical and emotional reactions for years after.
He didn’t get to act outraged.
I paused.
Breathed.
I remembered what I’d been chasing since that night. Peace.
I’d never get it, of course. But what was the point in yelling at him? Accusing him? Spouting ugliness out into the present when I carried enough of it with me from the past? Me being angry and bitter would change nothing.
It would be giving him more of me.
He was waiting, bracing, watching me. Probably expecting more shouting. Screeching. There was something about his expression that looked like he wanted it. That he was ready to take it. Because he knew it was wrong, what he’d done.
“It’s the past,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper. “Whatever that was has happened. It’s history. And so are we. It would just be easier for all involved if we pretend it never happened.”
Lie.
Lie.
Big fat lie.
That was another thing I didn’t do. Like ever. Lie. Because I tried to act in a way that I’d want people to act toward me. Sometimes I’d tell a friend that her new hemp shoes were totally cute and that could’ve been considered a lie. But not when it didn’t hurt anyone’s peace. Plus, my abhorrence for hemp shoes was only my truth, not Marianne’s. So on the whole, I didn’t lie.
But I did it all fricking evening, with my sister, of all people.
And now to him.
It all revealed the lies I’d been telling myself all along.
“Bullshit.”
The single word echoed through the hallway.
“Excuse me?”
He didn’t blink at my tone, didn’t change his expression, this new version of him didn’t seem to have the same fluid ability as the man I’d met in a bar years before.
For a moment, I got the certainty that he’d taken something with him when he left, but he also left something too. Something I didn’t know I possessed until right now.
But of course, that was crazy. Impossible.
Wasn’t it?
“You heard me,” he said, voice mild and his indifference sweeping that thought away. “I said it’s fuckin’ bullshit.”
There was more bite in his words now.
More emotion.
Namely anger.
At me.
As if I wasn’t the one who woke up alone and confused, covered in memories of a man who had disappeared from reality.
I was the one that woke up to a note.
You will always be my Sunshine, but my life isn’t ready for that yet.
H
That was it.
The entire mother effing note.
And I hadn’t seen him for four years, yet this was him shouting at me, throwing anger at me.
“Are you fricking kidding me?” I demanded, my voice a visible snap of the last thread of my temper. “You think after a weekend four years ago we can just jump back into what we were? When what we were was forty-eight hours in a fantasy. I don’t live in a fantasy. Despite what people might tell you, or what you might tell yourself. I’ve moved on. I’m different.” I looked him up and down, hopefully keeping my mask of fury firmly intact. “And you obviously are. And this isn’t a fantasy. This is reality.” I paused, unable to banish him from my life as I had intended. Not when he was standing right in front of me. The universe put him here for a reason.
I wouldn’t survive him if I gave him my heart.
But I wouldn’t survive if I made him walk away either.
The pause yawned on as I considered my options.
“So how about we just be friends?” The words were weak and impossible to say, and even more impossible to make a reality.
Heath stepped forward, face granite. “Because I don’t have platonic feelings toward you, Sunshine,” he said, voice rough, caressing my spine and feeding a hunger between my legs. “I didn’t back then and I sure as fuck don’t now. I don’t want to be your friend. I’m gonna be your man.”
I folded my arms in frustration. Mostly at him, but also at myself for responding so viscerally to him. “You don’t know what kind of feelings you have toward me,” I hissed. “You have memories you carried through a war, through the years, just like me. And revisionist history isn’t just something that happens in politics or the corrupt education system, it’s rampant in emotional history too. So you think you know that weekend, you think you know me, but you’ve changed, tweaked when the details got fuzzy. You don’t know me for who I am. You know me from who you made me into.”
I threw the words out of desperation more than anything. And if the expression on his face was anything to go by, they hit their mark.
“You think the details of you that night are fucking fuzzy for me?” he asked slowly, voice flat.
I nodded, trying to make the gesture decisive.
“You were wearing a dress that was too short and you didn’t have a fuckin’ jacket on even though it was January in L.A., not winter like anywhere else, but chilly enough to need a fuckin’ jacket. Your dress had sunflowers on it, huge bright yellow ones,” he said.
I sucked in a breath of surprise.
But he wasn’t done.
He was so far from done.
“You were wearing some sort of corked wedges, like you were going to a fucking garden party in August instead of a shitty gig in a shitty bar in a shitty area in L.A.’s version of winter,” he continued, voice harsh. “Your hair was split into two pigtails, and they drove me fuckin’ wild. They were loose, you had curls escaping out of them.”
His hand reached up as if to hold onto one of the curls—much longer now—escaping my messy bun, but then he caught himself halfway, yanking his hand back down into a fist at his side.
“You were glowing, like a fuckin’ sun in the middle of that bar,” he ground out, eyes not leaving mine. “Some sweaty, fat, drunk asshole had his hands on you. You weren’t fighting him like most girls were. You weren’t even fucking looking around for anyone to help you. You were lost in your head, and you had a soft look on your face that even the hardness of a place like that, a situation like that couldn’t take off. You were a lamb in a den of wolves. And it looked like I was saving you, but really I just wanted you for myself.”
His voice was raspier now. Full of desire from the past, and plenty being built in the present.
My panties were soaked. My breathing shallow. Heart shattering as it thundered against my ribs.
And. He. Wasn’t. Done.
“Your hands on my chest were the lightest and smallest thing that had ever been on there, but somehow they cracked my fuckin’ ribcage,” he rasped. “You tasted like strawberry when you kissed me because you wanted to see what it felt like. You told me you believed in peace but didn’t judge me from making my living fighting a war.”
He paused, and his eyes darkened even more as his gaze tore through my clothes, searing my skin. My fricking soul.
“You were wearing white lace pan
ties underneath your dress. No fuckin’ bra.” He paused, his eyes at my chest He visibly shuddered at the memory of my freaking bare breasts.
I almost leaned in then. Almost swallowed his painful and beautiful words with a kiss.
Almost.
Heath watched me as if he knew what I was battling. “Had I known that you weren’t wearin’ a fucking bra that night would’ve ended at my apartment much fuckin’ earlier,” he continued. “Your pussy was the sweetest, warmest and most beautiful place I’ve ever been able to make my home in.”
My core clenched at his words. It ached for his touch. For him to fill me up bodily like his words were filling me up. But I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
“And I told you I didn’t have a home apart from that shitty apartment and it broke your heart,” he said, voice softer now. And the softness was tearing through me like a serrated blade. “Saw it because you don’t wear your heart on your sleeve, you wear it in every inch of you,” he murmured. “It radiates from the air around you. And it broke for me, the man who was a stranger, who knew you more intimately than anyone had before.”
He let the words sink into the air. Into the energy between us. Let them chip away at the lies I’d told myself about what that night had been.
“And when I left you in bed, you reached for me, and mumbled ‘I love you,’ in your fuckin’ sleep,” he said, going for the final blow. “And I thought, fucking seriously, about snatching you up, putting you in my truck and just...driving. I seriously considered abandoning the family who’d made me into a man, the thing that defined me better than the first eighteen years of my life. I almost risked it all, ruined it all—happily—for you in that moment.”
My eyes watered, my vision wavered at his words. At the emotion in them. At the truth in them. My brain ached for that moment to have come into actuality so I could’ve taken his hand, driving through the years with him at my side and the world on our backs. I yearned for a past I’d never known and never would know.
“And the worst thing was, I knew you, knew your soul and knew that you would’ve gone if I asked you,” he said, voice quieter now. “You would’ve committed to a life on the road, on the run from Uncle Sam and the world itself. That’s what made me leave. And that’s what made me commit every single fucking detail of you to my memory. No revising. Not embellishment. Because you can’t fucking embellish perfection. Don’t do this, us, the injustice of saying it was anything less than it was. You’re lying to me and you’re lying to your fucking self.”
The end of his speech was no longer gentle. Not that the words had ever been gentle. Nothing about this, us, was gentle. It wasn’t some kind of easy or joyous reunion. It was torture.
He hadn’t moved. He was still watching me, waiting for a response.
But what in the actual heck did I say to that? A part of me knew what to say.
Nothing.
It wasn’t the time to say anything. It was a time to jump back into his arms. To kiss him and let the years dissolve around us.
But I couldn’t.
I was afraid.
And not too proud to admit it.
“Polly!” The voice cracked through the moment.
Both Heath and I moved our gazes to a group of people storming through the hall.
Jett was front and center.
Oblivious, and likely wasted, he bowled forward and snatched me into his arms.
“Babe! You missed the show,” he said. “I’d be mad at you, if you weren’t so cute.” He kissed my forehead. “And because we’re doing an encore show in your living room.”
People shouted “fuck yeah!” in response to this, as the small crowd pushed past all the emotional demons that had filled up the hall with their instruments, with their half-full beers.
Heath stood in the middle of it all, unmoving, glaring at Jett. Or more accurately, his arms around me. Jett noticed this, belatedly. He moved and slung his arm around my shoulder. “Oh hey, dude.”
Jett looked the part of an indie rocker. He had silver on every single finger. Wore a ripped black tee. His skinny arms were covered in mismatched and random tattoos. He was wearing dirty Chuck Taylors.
But he really had a kind heart, which was what drew me to him.
“You a friend of Polly’s?” he asked.
Heath glared at me now. “I don’t know, am I, Polly?”
The question was much more than that. It was an invitation to step out of Jett’s kind and safe embrace into Heath’s harsh and dangerous one.
I painted a smile on my face. “Yeah, he’s a friend.”
Nothing changed outwardly on Heath’s expression.
But everything changed.
Chapter Four
Three Weeks Later
I wasn’t paying attention when a knock came at the door. It should’ve been something to pay attention to, considering no one knocked here. Most people walked right in. We operated on an open-door policy. Obviously I didn’t tell my family about that because they would get all judgy about it.
No one stole anything.
No one was hurt.
The world didn’t tilt on its axis because we didn’t believe in locked doors.
It was a little slice of peace, of magic, this loft. People came and went, they gave what they could, took what was offered and it worked.
Not something the outside world would understand because we were conditioned to think it didn’t work that way. That money and greed drove everyone. You could never get something for nothing, and people always had an ulterior motive.
Not here.
So the knocking thing was weird.
But weird was a construct. Just like normal. There was nothing constructed or constant about the lifestyle here, and that was the beauty of it. So I didn’t think much about the knock. It was outside the norm, but that was all the better.
Plus, I was focused on the pasta I was making. It wasn’t exactly working with coconut flour. Bringing white flour into this kitchen was pretty much taken as an act of war. Mainly because of the fact that modified grains were now used to produce said flour, and we did not support that.
“We could turn it into a savory cake,” Rain offered, swinging her legs from where she sat on the counter. She was sucking a lollipop, watching me and reading A Communist Manifesto at the same time.
We’d moved in within days of each other.
Became fast friends.
Even though she wasn’t exactly friendly looking on the outside with jet black hair, wore clothes to match the shade, her eyes always heavily made up with smudged eyeliner, she had piercings on her eyebrow and nose, tattoos crawling up her neck.
She exuded the mood of someone who was perpetually sad. Because people that wore black all the time and dressed like goths were all about violent music and misery, in society’s eyes at least.
But that was the opposite of the truth. She was perpetually happy. Never in a bad mood. Always smiling. Always positive. Despite the crappy hand life had dealt her.
I frowned at the mush in front of me. “Do you think it would bake without setting the oven on fire? I don’t want to do that twice in one week.”
That time I had been trying to make pizza with cauliflower. We ended up ordering in. The firefighters even stayed for a slice.
Rain shrugged. “Let’s find out. And if you do, then I’ll be able to get the phone number of that firefighter that was totally flirting with me. Plus, I’ve got a friend who works at a restaurant and can likely get us an oven real cheap, read, free.” She waggled her brows at me meaningfully. She wasn’t exactly averse to breaking the law. I knew she was some kind of hacker and I didn’t think anything she did on her computer was anywhere near legal.
I was reasonably sure she was high up in the ranks of the notorious group ‘Anonymous’ even though their ethos was built around the idea that there were no ranks, which was how they survived despite the FBI imprisoning various members.
I didn’t have strict ideas about following rules o
r the law and I knew Rain well enough to know that whatever she was doing was for the greater good. Or at least her version of the greater good, and it certainly wasn’t hurting anyone.
But virtually stealing something from someone with too much money and not enough morals was not the same as stealing an oven from a restaurant. Especially if I was the reason for it.
I was about to lecture her about how we couldn’t steal ovens, but Lionel’s voice floated through the loft. He’d been the one to open the door, it had taken him a couple of long moments to even get to the door, likely because of the bong on the table but also because of the fact he wasn’t used to the knocking either.
“You know, you have to tell me if you’re a cop, it’s the law,” he drawled, sounding a lot more alert than he was before. But alert in a way of a high person trying their hardest to sound sober. Which of course wasn’t alert. Like at all.
There was a pause.
“Dude! You can’t just waltz right in here! You don’t have a warrant. Anything you find is inadmissible in court. We have rights!” Lionel yelled, his voice still slow but trying to catch up with him nonetheless.
I would’ve been laughing at this had I not had my eyes on the man storming across the room. The man who only had eyes for me.
Rain popped her lollipop from her mouth. “Wow,” she breathed. “I’d steal a thousand ovens if he could arrest me. But if he’s a cop, then I’m a Real Housewife.”
I froze with Heath’s presence usually. Especially with everything that was going on. Because I hadn’t seen him in a handful of weeks. Not since our meeting in the hallway. And I hadn’t stopped thinking about him.
I had tried to convince myself in these weeks that Heath had a part of me that didn’t exist anymore, the part that was eighteen and nurtured fantasies and had the naivety of youth to rely on.
But seeing him told me I’d been lying.
Heath had everything.
And he took it strolling across the room.
I wiped my hands just in time for him to round the counter.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded, my voice shaking slightly.
Not because of his mere presence, but because of something behind his eyes. Something that was more than us.
