by Malcom, Anne
And it was bad. It had to be bad if it was more than us.
He was on me in two seconds, his hands framing either side of my face. And I knew it was bad. Because he was touching me tenderly, without the anger that had been present in our last discussion. In our last argument.
Heath wasn’t a man to forgive such things easily. To forget. So the tenderness was a cushion for something. Something bad.
“Sunshine, before I say what I’m gonna say, I need you to breathe. Need you to promise you’re gonna breathe,” he said, his voice a rasp that was cut with something.
Something that terrified me.
Pain.
I couldn’t speak so instead I responded with a strangled inhale.
He stroked my cheek with his thumb, tenderly, gently.
And then he fucking destroyed my world.
* * *
I paced.
Because I couldn’t sit still at the best of times.
This was not the best of times.
My sister, my savior, my best friend had been stabbed on the street and was now in critical condition.
“What does critical condition even mean?” I asked the room. The room being Heath. There were a lot of people waiting to hear news. Keltan included. But he wasn’t waiting.
No, he was yelling at doctors, fighting with security when they stopped him from pushing through the double doors that led to the place where people were saved, or they weren’t.
And my sister was behind those doors.
My sister who had been stabbed.
On the street.
Keltan was covered in blood.
Her blood.
That had given me pause when I’d walked in. When we’d walked in.
Heath hadn’t let go of my hand the entire time since he gave me the news. He’d held it silently on the ride, let it go only to round the truck and open the door for me and help me out, as if he knew that I couldn’t handle such basic things when my sister was in the hospital.
Stabbed.
And that’s all I knew.
That’s all Heath knew because as soon as he heard, he came looking for me.
It should’ve been sweet.
It should’ve filled me with warmth, his dedication to me when I’d done nothing but push him away when I saw him that day at the party.
But it didn’t fill me with anything.
Because I felt empty. Hollowed out.
I wasn’t empty when we walked through the automatic doors leading to the triage waiting room. I was full. Absolutely bursting with terror so visceral that my stomach lurched dangerously.
Because I saw Keltan.
I saw the utter hopelessness and emptiness on his face.
And the blood covering his white tee. Or what used to be a white tee.
It was crimson now.
There were dark red stains on his hands. Going up his arms. He looked like he’d just murdered someone. Or tried to save someone who had been murdered.
“That’s blood,” I said, standing woodenly in the spot right in the middle of the door. It was an inconsiderate place to stand, but I couldn’t move. No way in goddess’s green earth could I move from this spot. I wanted to go backward, like all the way backward to the loft where my biggest problem was a small kitchen fire.
But I couldn’t.
There was no way I could go forward, where my biggest problem was facing a man wearing my sister’s blood on his tee. I couldn’t move forward into the world in front of me. The world that might not contain Lucy.
So I stayed put. In the middle. If I stayed here long enough maybe reality might change into something less ugly and sickening.
But I couldn’t take my eyes off Keltan’s hands. His tee.
“He is covered in Lucy’s blood,” I whispered to no one. “That’s too much blood for a person to wear on the outside of their body. That’s meant to be inside someone’s body. That’s meant to be inside Lucy.”
Suddenly, the limbo I’d been so sure was safe was just as ugly and sickening as that world ahead. There was no escape from the image of Lucy, bleeding, dying, her skin ripped open with violence and pain.
My stomach lurched again.
I yanked my hand from Heath’s and sprinted in the direction of a bathroom.
I made it just in time to empty the contents of my stomach.
But not the contents of my heart. They were shedding my insides.
At some point, hands gathered up my hair, held it back. Another hand rubbed my back in slow circles.
It should’ve touched me somewhere deep, Heath quietly doing what he could in the face of my pain.
But I was empty again.
Heath had not left me since I threw up in the bathroom. He was sitting on a chair in a beige waiting room, elbows on his knees watching me.
He didn’t try to tell me to sit down, to calm down, because he was Heath and he didn’t do things that he knew were stupid. Telling me to do either of these things would’ve been stupid. So he was just...there.
“Critical condition,” I repeated, still pacing.
I hadn’t cried.
I’d thrown up.
I had worn out the soles of my shoes with the pacing. But no tears. Because tears were the first sign of grief. Of loss.
I stopped pacing to face Heath.
“Critical,” I whispered. “Critical means that they don’t want to tell you something to give you hope. Because there’s no hope.”
Heath was out of his chair and in front of me in a moment, his hands framing either side of my face. “You stop that shit right fucking now,” he growled. “You are the one person in the world that has hope in her fucking bones. In her soul. You give it to the hopeless. You gave it to a tortured man four years ago and you carried him through what came after. And if you can do that for someone else, someone damned, you sure as fuck can do that for your sister. Don’t you dare abandon that hope.”
He wasn’t speaking gently with me. Trying to handle me with care. Trying to mind the broken pieces. Which was good. They were broken anyway, no matter what happened from here on out, they’d stay that way, a reminder of how the world can smash everything apart in a handful of moments.
“What if critical turns to...” I trailed off, my voice literally unable to form the word.
Death.
The thought was poison in my mind.
“If it does. We’ll handle it. You’ll handle it. You’ll get through,” he said.
I flinched because he wasn’t placating me with false promises that most people made in situations like this. Because he didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep.
That hadn’t changed in the years between us.
Nothing had changed in four years as much as things had in the last four hours.
I searched his eyes for strength, for comfort. He gave me the former. But not the latter, because no matter how I responded to his hands on mine, to his sheer presence, there was no comfort in this moment. Not even Heath could change that. The only person who could change that was behind double doors in ‘critical condition.’
“Polly?” The strangled voice jerked me out of Heath’s gaze and he dropped his hands.
My mom and dad entered the room, each of them pale, drawn and terrified.
I ran into my father’s arms. He kissed my head.
No one said anything.
We couldn’t.
We were all too busy hoping.
* * *
My first full and clean inhale was marred by cleaning products.
Probably because I was surrounded by them. Because I was currently hiding in some sort of cleaning closet.
Yes, I was hiding in a hospital closet, breathing because I could finally do that now.
Because hope somehow won.
Lucy woke up.
She survived.
And she had it in her to joke about how bad her hair looked and demanded someone go and get her “Egyptian Cotton sheets and a pair of Versace pajamas.”
But I’d smiled at her bedside. Overjoyed, just like my parents had been, through their tears. Keltan hadn’t left her side.
He’d changed out of his bloodstained clothes.
In fact, he’d changed the next time I saw him after I’d thrown up at the sight of him.
I wondered if Heath had anything to do with it.
Of course Heath had something to do with it.
He hadn’t left. He’d left me to sit with my family, with a panicked Rosie who arrived a few hours before Lucy woke up.
She’d immediately yanked me into her arms and I relaxed into her small but strong embrace. I hadn’t seen her in a year. Not since she up and disappeared to who knew where doing who knew what.
Whatever it was, was bad. Because even though this place, this situation changed us all, there was something deeper behind her eyes, something darker than the Rosie I’d seen before.
“We’re going to kick her ass when she wakes up,” Rosie murmured after letting me go but still holding tight onto my hands.
That was her way of saying “she has to wake up because I couldn’t handle it if she didn’t.”
But she did.
So no one would actually have to live the reality of a world without her. But we would always live this memory.
I had slipped out of the room when I got enough reality to chase away the worst of my memories. Of my demons.
And now I was here, hiding in some supplies closet because I didn’t know where to go to breathe. To let my tears fall.
Because I couldn’t do it in the open, under harsh hospital lights, where people might see. Where I might catch a glimpse of myself.
The door opened and light flooded in. I was about to prepare some kind of excuse to whatever hospital employee opened the door, but it closed quickly again, and I was in muscled arms and pressed into a warm and muscled body.
“How did you know I’d be in here?” I whispered against Heath’s mouth.
The tightness of the space meant we were pressed up against each other out of necessity. But it was not just necessary because of the space.
He didn’t answer. A magician never gives away his tricks, after all.
Instead of answering, he kissed me.
Kissed me.
After years.
He kissed me like no time had passed, but somehow like an eternity had gone by in our separation.
I should’ve pushed him away. Should’ve grasped onto all the reasons that were so tangible before this day.
But instead, I grasped onto him. And I kissed him back with everything I had. All of my grief, sorrow, anger, frustration. All of the emotions that I never let ripple the smooth and happy façade.
My hands went underneath his tee, raking up that hard and warm skin that I hadn’t let myself remember.
He continued to kiss me, clutch my neck with one hand, the other went right to my ass, yanking my body farther against him, grinding me onto his hard length.
I moaned into his mouth.
He wasn’t kissing me to give me comfort, tenderness, after one of the hardest moments in my life. After being faced with the ugliest of all realities.
No, he was kissing me in the midst of that ugly reality. Giving me another one.
I moved my hands from underneath his tee to move downward, to work his belt with a desperation that crossed over into insanity.
He didn’t stop kissing me as I fumbled with his belt, trying to free him in the small space.
But then I no longer had purchase on his belt because I was being lifted up. My panties pushed to the side, and he surged into me.
I cried out into his mouth, wrapping my legs around him as he fucked me ruthlessly, brooms and cleaning products falling around us with the force of his thrusts.
My orgasm came quick and intense. Life-shattering. Life ending. His mouth left mine and the palm of his hand muffled my cries in a way his kiss couldn’t. He didn’t stop as I tumbled over the edge, as my orgasm threatened to destroy me. No, he continued with his movements, harsh and beautiful and almost unbearable.
And just as I thought the aftershocks were subsiding, his entire body tightened, his hand left my mouth and he was kissing me again, making a noise at the back of his throat as he found his release inside me.
And that sent me over the edge again, so I tightened around him, milking his release from him.
Stillness eventually took over the chaos that had seemed so permanent. Heath’s forehead was resting on mine.
We were both breathing heavily.
He was still inside me.
Slowly, without a word, he lifted me from him and placed me on my feet.
Evidence of his release began to trickle down my leg. He moved to snatch a rogue cloth and gently cleaned me with a tenderness that had been absent the entire time he’d been fucking me.
And this was fucking.
Pure and simple.
No, not at all pure and the farthest from simple anyone could ever get.
But this moment, afterward, the one that should’ve been filled with chaos as the reality of what had just happened settled in—me fucking the man I was trying to keep away from in a supply closet hours after my sister almost died—it was quiet. Peaceful.
Simple.
Heath pulled my dress down and then buckled his belt.
I stayed silent.
He lifted his hands to frame my face again, brushing my bottom lip with his thumb.
I opened my mouth to say something, something stupid and reckless and dangerous.
But then the door opened, harsh light flooded in and an orderly gaped between us and then grinned wickedly at Heath.
It was the harsh and sterile light and the leer from the young orderly that chased away the words that I was about to say. I took the slackening of Heath’s hands as an opportunity and pushed past the orderly to run out the door.
Away from Heath.
He didn’t chase me.
It didn’t work that way between us.
Chapter Five
It didn’t fix us.
Staring death in the face, or more accurately having death stare me in the face with its horrific, sickening and inescapable reality.
I didn’t go back on everything with the brutal reminder of how short life was. It was tempting. Oh so tempting when I spent the next two days at my sister’s side, Heath’s touch chasing away the grip of death.
I wanted him.
With my bones.
With my soul.
But it was my heart that stopped me.
My broken, damaged and cowardly heart.
And it continued to stop me as I watched Lucy marry Keltan from her hospital bed. With Heath staring at me during the whole thing.
I didn’t look at him.
I couldn’t.
And when it was appropriate, I ran from the room. Much like I’d run from that supply closet.
This time Heath chased me.
“Not so fast, Sunshine.”
He had yanked me into an empty exam room before I could escape.
Not that there was any escaping Heath.
“I gave you time,” he said, stalking toward me as I backed farther into the room.
I hit a bed and my retreat was hampered. And also the bed was not a good thing to have in the immediate vicinity considering the look in Heath’s eyes. Considering Heath. The electric connection we shared that had every cell in my body calling out for him.
“I gave you time,” he continued eyes dark, hands grasping my hips. The way he pressed against the thin fabric of my dress told me that he’d leave bruises.
And if there was ever a physical embodiment of the reasons why this wouldn’t work, it was that. He couldn’t touch me without leaving bruises. He couldn’t look at me without leaving scars.
“I know you needed it,” Heath rasped. “Time.
Knew it would do more harm than good to chase you after everything that happened. Know you’re a woman that enjoys the loud, but you need the quiet when everything becomes too much.” He cupped my face. “These past few days have been too fucking much,” he murmured.
My eyes watered.
I couldn’t handle it. Him being kind. Gentle.
I couldn’t handle him knowing me so fricking well when I was a stranger to myself.
“What happened between us was wrong,” I whispered.
His eyes flickered with hardness. With anger. “No, what happened between us was the only right thing in a fucking wrong situation,” he growled. “It should’ve happened the second I saw you again. The second for whatever reason, I was given another chance. Should’ve ripped you out of that hipster fucker’s arms. But I was trying to do it right. Trying to give you time. Waiting for you to come to me.” His gaze tore through me. “Why didn’t you come to me, Polly?”
I could’ve told him the truth. That I spent hours fighting with myself. Driving through the city, driving past his old apartment, visiting ghosts and wondering if there was such a thing as the resurrection of broken hearts.
I could’ve told him that I wanted to come to him with every fiber of my being, but I couldn’t because no matter how adventurous I seemed outwardly, my heart didn’t need adventure. Couldn’t survive it. It needed peace. And I knew he couldn’t give me that.
But I knew if I said all that, poured out my truth, that it’d be over. That when I laid out all those reasons that seemed so concrete inside my head, they’d dissipate to dust in front of Heath. In front of what he had.
So I didn’t tell him the real truth.
“Because back then, we had a weekend. A weekend to see all the beautiful things between us. To focus on them,” I said, trying to remember the words I’d rehearsed for this exact moment. And I had rehearsed them. Because I knew this moment would come. After seeing Heath’s gaze when I said to Jett that we were friends. He’d walked away after that, but his eyes held a promise. That he’d be coming back.
Which was why he was right, I had dodged him. I’d been careful to never stay in one place too long, my days were never the same, I slept even less than usual. In an ideal world, I was hard to pin down, hard to find.
