The Problem with Peace: Greenstone Security #3

by Malcom, Anne

  “I’m okay,” I whispered.

  His eyes snapped up.

  Another slash.

  “You were shot at,” he said flatly.

  I nodded. “But I’m okay.”

  His jaw was hard. His hands were fisted at his sides.

  He was different.

  After only a handful of months, he’d changed. Everything about him was sharper. Colder. Tortured.

  I’d done that.

  My stomach lurched.

  He’d disappeared after my wedding day.

  In what was supposed to be happily married bliss I’d thought of him more than I cared to admit.

  A lot more.

  And in the two weeks since my happily married bliss became a nightmare, I’d consciously not thought of him. Of the huge fucking mistake I’d made.

  I wondered if that’s why Heath was here.

  Because he’d heard.

  Heard that I’d done the oh so Polly thing of leaving her husband after not even a year of marriage. He hadn’t heard the details, obviously. Because no one knew the details. Except Rosie. And Rosie wouldn’t tell. Plus, if he knew the details, he wouldn’t be here, he’d be in prison for murder.

  Though I reasoned he could murder someone without getting caught. Especially if that someone was my husband who’d decided to use me as a punching bag.

  So he wasn’t here because of that.

  I wondered if he was going back on his word, on the promise he’d made on my wedding day.

  “You’re makin’ a mistake, Sunshine. And I’m not gonna save you from it.”

  No, I wasn’t wondering that.

  A sick little part of me was hoping for that.

  Hoping to be saved from it all. From myself.

  But this wasn’t that kind of story.

  “You’re back,” I said when the silence had lasted for too long. Long enough for me to try and yank up a fantasy that toyed with my tortured soul.

  His nod served as his response.

  I itched to escape his empty stare. His cold presence. It was tearing at my skin.

  But I also wanted to sink into that pain. Live in it.

  I sucked in a breath. “Did you...”

  “Hear that your marriage broke up after two months?” he asked, voice cruel. “Yeah, I heard.”

  I steeled against the pain.

  “Not here to be the second choice,” he continued. “Here because I was with Luke when he got the call. Needed to make sure you hadn’t gotten yourself shot.”

  I was winded from the force of his successive blows. “Gotten myself shot?” I repeated on a whisper.

  He nodded once. “Let’s be real, Polly. Not like you haven’t been playing Russian Roulette with your life thus far.”

  “And you know me well enough to hurl this at me?” I asked, my voice still a whisper.

  His eyes stayed hard. “Oh, I know you, wish I didn’t. But I do. You fucking know that. I’ve known you since that night four years ago.”

  “That night four years ago,” I repeated, tasting the sweetness of the past on my tongue, then it turned rancid with Heath’s stare.

  I was done.

  I had almost been shot today.

  After hiding out for two weeks waiting for my bruises to heal. Bruises made by my husband. The man I loved.

  Somehow still loved.

  And now I was standing in front of another man. Who made what Craig and I had turn flat. Two dimensional.

  But I was done with his accusations.

  “That morning, when I woke up alone but for a slight stain serving as ugly evidence of something I’d thought was beautiful, I had two options. Only two.” I made myself keep eye contact with Heath, struggled to keep my voice even, but I managed it.

  I sucked in a breath and continued.

  “Everyone only has two options in these kinds of situations. But because we’re all different, there are a million different ways that these two options ultimately manifest. You make the decision from one of two organs. The brain or their heart.”

  I smiled, and I imagined it was full of melancholy.

  “I used to think that was such a cliché, which is funny since I was the cliché. The idiot girl believing the man she was giving her virginity to thought it was special. And then he left, and I realized he wasn’t of the same opinion.”

  I laughed, and I hated the bitterness to it. “But I realized I had two options, and whichever one I chose would serve as the roadmap for all future matters of love. Because it was pivotal, that moment. How I reacted would be how my thoughts about love and sex would be structured. My brain urged me to cry. Scream. Call my sister and get her and Rosie to track you down and get you locked up in a POW camp or something.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. “The need for that was so strong, so hot, it was acid in my veins. And I almost did it. I was closer than I’d like to admit. But I remembered who I was. Listened for the whisper from my heart, separated it from the screams of my brain. So I didn’t call my sister. I cried. But only to purge. Only to get rid of all that bitterness. And then I closed my eyes, wished you the best and believed that karma would teach you the lesson I wanted Rosie and Lucy to teach you. My lesson had already been taught. So I followed my heart. Let it lead me everywhere away from that ugly morning. And it led me to Craig. To something easy. Beautiful. Or so I thought, of course. I could lie and say that seeing you didn’t urge me to throw myself into it that much more. But I won’t. It’s not my style. I followed my heart and it led me astray, but I won’t regret it.”

  “That’s a fuckin’ lie,” he hissed. “If you followed your heart, there’s no way you would’ve walked down that fuckin’ aisle. Said those vows. You did that because you were a coward.”

  I stayed silent.

  I let him hurl those words at me. Let them spear into the places already radiating with pain. Let him create new ones.

  Because in a way, I deserved it.

  The pain.

  The judgment.

  He stepped back.

  “You weren’t brave enough to try something that didn’t fit into your fucking fantasy. And now you’ve got your reality.”

  And then he walked away.

  I sank down on the floor of the hospital.

  I got back up eventually.

  * * *

  Two Years Later

  The door closed with a resounding bang which beckoned silence.

  Absolute roaring silence.

  I paused, taking in the living room.

  Nothing had changed, of course.

  I had, though.

  My hand was still fastened tightly on the handle of my suitcase. I was still standing in front of the door I’d slammed shut.

  I was exhausted.

  I’d been on ferries, buses, and planes for almost thirty hours, the grime of the trip and lack of sleep settling into my bones.

  I hadn’t eaten in as long because my stomach was too tied up at what I was doing in that thirty hours.

  More specifically, where I was going.

  Home.

  After a year, I was back.

  I hadn’t told anyone I’d left, of course. Not until I’d landed in the AirBnb in Northern Italy.

  People weren’t exactly shocked since I was Polly. The unpredictable, flaky, flighty Polly. I did things like this.

  Irresponsible things.

  I modeled for a life drawing class because my boyfriend was a painter.

  I decided I wanted to learn Mandarin.

  Then I quit when I realized how hard it was.

  I went vegan.

  Then went back to vegetarian because I couldn’t live without chocolate.

  I dropped out of college with one semester to go because I had changed majors so much I didn’t even know what my degree would be in, other than indecision.

  I married a man I’d known for less than a month.

  Then I divorced that very same man when he thought that punching me in the face was the best way to resolve an ar
gument.

  Then I was involved in a drive-by shooting. That wasn’t technically to do with me, but chaos followed me everywhere. And I was with Rosie. Chaos was attached to Rosie’s freaking soul.

  And after getting punched in the face, I’d gone to Rosie for a safe haven, sworn her to secrecy and she’d saved me—again—and housed me until my bruises faded. And we left the house together when that happened, carrying around our mutual chaos.

  Hence the shooting.

  My mind thrust in what happened after.

  Heath rushing in, the concern and terror painted on his face, the pain of that expression hitting me truer than any bullet could’ve.

  I would’ve preferred the bullet wound. At least that would heal. There would’ve been a scar, but it would serve only as the memory of a pain now forgotten. Of how I’d survived.

  But that expression, everything after that—heck, everything before that—everything that lay beneath it was a wound that would never heal.

  Festering.

  Bleeding.

  Something I hadn’t survived.

  Something I was still struggling with.

  And at the time, I couldn’t handle that.

  My sorrow and pain flew under the radar at first because of kidnappings, wars with human traffickers, Rosie’s life.

  And then when things quietened down, and my divorce proceedings began, my sorrow was misconstrued as heartbreak.

  Which it was.

  But it was also love.

  The kind I couldn’t handle.

  Little Polly who worked on bubblegum dreams and fairy tales couldn’t handle the truest and ugliest kind of pain otherwise known as love.

  So after a year of fighting, pretending, bleeding from the inside out, I ran.

  I told everyone I was ‘finding myself’ in Europe. When I’d really left all of me behind when I left him behind.

  Because I was a coward.

  Among other things.

  My family thought this impromptu trip was to do with my then finalized divorce.

  It was surely funded by it.

  I hadn’t wanted a cent of my ex’s money at first.

  “He made you bruise, we’re bleeding him dry,” Rosie had said.

  I didn’t agree. I didn’t work that way, on revenge, on an eye for an eye. That wasn’t my nature.

  But it was in Rosie’s nature. She, like the club that was otherwise known as my extended family, all but operated on revenge, on an eye for an eye.

  Rosie herself was a force to be reckoned with. I could’ve fought her on it. Maybe I might’ve been able to budge her, as hard as she looked outwardly, her heart was as soft and as big as I’d ever experienced—especially now she was with the man she’d been painfully in love with pretty much her whole life. But I didn’t have the energy to fight the woman I considered a sister. I was already fighting an enormous, deadly battle with myself. And trying to hide it from everyone I loved.

  So I yielded.

  And Rosie was true to her word. I don’t exactly know how she did it, Craig considered his money very important. I had to sign a prenup before marrying him, not that it bothered me. I had never been concerned with money, and I would never want money to come from the breakup of a marriage.

  But then again, I didn’t expect my marriage to crumble so quickly, just like that hollow love I’d convinced myself would fill me up.

  There was no legal way Rosie could’ve gotten the money.

  But she never exactly worked within the law. And her now-husband no longer enforced it.

  It would pay for me not to know how she did it. Rosie just did things. You didn’t ask questions if you couldn’t handle the answers. And I wasn’t too proud to say I couldn’t handle the answers. I wasn’t strong like her or my sister. I couldn’t fight the world the way they did.

  So I didn’t ask.

  And I was now a wealthy woman.

  I most likely wouldn’t have to work again if I didn’t want to, considering my lifestyle wasn’t exactly extravagant.

  And I was wealthy enough to take the trip around Europe, flit around the continent like I didn’t have a care in the world.

  When in reality, the cares were cinderblocks I dragged around with me from country to country, from wonder to wonder. Luckily invisible in the many pictures I sent back to my no doubt concerned family. My carefree grin was firmly in place, mindful of the fact I loved them and didn’t want them worrying about me doing something stupid.

  Again.

  So I looked happy. Joyous.

  But my joy was only on the surface.

  Even as I sucked down pasta in a little-known town in Northern Italy where I was all but adopted by a tomato farmer and his friends—wrinkled and leathery from a lifetime working in the sun, fond of grappa, not a word of English spoke between them, considering none of them had left their idyllic village in the hills. But they had kind eyes and large hearts.

  I was invited to party after party when they realized the crazy American girl was on her own and that just wasn’t okay.

  So I was adopted.

  I indulged in some of the most delicious food I’d ever tasted. The most vibrant company of people who didn’t speak my language yet they somehow understood everything I didn’t say. Everything I couldn’t say.

  But then, of course, I left.

  Because the family and the happiness became sour on my tongue with the knowledge of my very own family half a world away. The delicious food was ashes in my mouth when my mind thought about another man a world away yet somehow right beside me.

  So I ran.

  Again.

  Hopped through Spain. Ran with the bulls. Walked a week of the Camino. But that was too quiet. So I took a detour to Morocco. Rode camels in the desert. Learned to surf in a seaside town called Essaouira.

  Went back upwards to Portugal. Did a yoga retreat in the hills for three weeks. I volunteered when I could because there was only so much wandering my feet could do before my mind followed suit.

  Before my broken and bleeding, festering heart followed suit.

  I kept busy.

  Met people.

  Had experiences that most people weren’t lucky enough to enjoy in a lifetime let alone eleven months. And though outwardly I was enjoying every moment, I couldn’t smile in my soul. Couldn’t find the peace I thought an ocean and an ancient continent would give me.

  So here I was.

  Back in the apartment that Rosie had taken care of for me.

  “I killed your plants,” Rosie said one month into my trip over a crackling connection, after she told me about her wedding that I was going to miss. Not with judgment, but with understanding. She might not know the specifics of why I couldn’t come back, but she knew I couldn’t. “How I’m going to be a mother someday is beyond me,” she continued. “But then again, a child screams when it’s hungry. Plants just die quietly. So maybe plants are much harder to keep alive than a child.”

  So my apartment was devoid of all life that my houseplants had offered.

  But it suited me at this point.

  I stared at the apartment, unmoving even though my limbs were heavier than lead and my stomach was protesting painfully at the lack of food I’d given it. Usually, I took care of my body. I was a vegetarian, something that started because of a boyfriend who educated me on the horrors of eating meat and then I continued long after he was history. I became somewhat obsessed with taking care of what I put into my body because I hadn’t taken care of who I’d let into my heart.

  I drank kombucha.

  I did yoga every single morning.

  Meditated.

  Took vitamins.

  Surrounded myself with crystals that helped with spiritual growth and promoted clean and positive energy.

  I lived mindfully and tried to do as little harm to myself and others as I could.

  And wasn’t that ironic since I’d harmed the person who I cared about more than myself. Broken his heart. Not because he’d broken mine.
No, I didn’t work that way. But I’d broken the both of ours because there was no other choice.

  Not that he knew that.

  He, like everyone else, thought I breezed through life on a whim and barely noticed the wreckage I left in my wake. And I left the broken pieces of us both eleven months ago, in this very apartment.

  I let the weight of my pack settle on my back, sighing in relief as my body protested with the load. It was good to get something tangible on my shoulders to distract me from the true weight I’d been carrying around. That had brought me to my knees. At least I could stand under the meager physical reproduction of it.

  I didn’t pause to think about what I was doing. To have a wistful look around the apartment that used to be Lucy’s, then Rosie’s after Lucy got her ever after, and then Rosie got hers too so it was mine.

  I didn’t say happy ever after because despite what the world thought, I knew that endings, even the best ones—like what Rosie and Lucy got—they were never completely happy. Even when they involved love. Especially when they involved love.

  I wasn’t getting my ever after, happy or otherwise. The world had taken care of that. But I couldn’t put my blame on the universe. No, the universe was not to blame for this.

  It was me.

  I didn’t pause as I walked toward the door.

  Didn’t think about what I was doing.

  I couldn’t.

  Because then I’d falter.

  Then I wouldn’t find myself at the airport.

  I’d find myself at the door of the man I was running from.

  And I couldn’t do that.

  I’d done enough harm.

  And he’d made it clear that we were done. That there were no more chances for us.

  As it turned out when I opened my front door, the universe had other ideas.

  I sucked in a harsh breath when I was confronted with Heath. He didn’t look like he was poised to knock before I’d opened the door. His hands were fists at his sides, his body rooted into the ground with such a force it was a surprise not to see chains on his ankles. Every inch of his body was taut.

  His eyes were marble as they rested on me. Then they flared when they focused on my back. More accurately, what was on it.

  “Going somewhere.” It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.