The Problem with Peace: Greenstone Security #3

by Malcom, Anne

  I adjusted the pack on my back, suddenly it wasn’t heavy enough to distract me from the weight of the blame settling on my shoulders with Heath’s words, with his gaze, with his very presence.

  I couldn’t answer. I wanted to. I needed to. I needed to paint a smile on my face, needed to inform him of this wonderful adventure that I was going on by choice. Not by force.

  “You’re seriously fucking leaving?” he spat the words at me when silence had stretched on for too long between us.

  I nodded once, still unable to say anything when everything I needed to say was clogging up my throat, my lungs.

  More silence as his eyes turned cruel, hard and angry. It was familiar, since that was the way he’d stared at me since I’d announced I was marrying another man.

  It wasn’t present on my wedding day, of course.

  No, it disappeared that day to show the vulnerability underneath.

  But then I’d stamped on that, shredded it like I shredded my own heart and that horrible empty gaze was now permanent.

  Because. Of. Me.

  “Jesus,” he muttered, shaking his head violently. Everything about him was violent now. It didn’t used to be. Not on a night that turned into a weekend that seemed like a thousand years ago. The night that started it all.

  He had a little violence in him then. Staining his skin. In a way that might just wash off, if things changed. If he found peace instead of the war he’d committed to.

  But now it wasn’t staining his skin. It was etched into his very soul. And I was adding to it. Because it seemed like every time we were in front of each other, there was another layer to his violence. Until it came with every movement, every glance, every breath.

  And it was at its peak right now.

  “You expect me to ask you to stay? To not let you leave?” he hissed. “To fuckin’ demand you to stop running from this shit because it’s evident whatever it is between us isn’t gonna let us go, despite how fuckin’ much I want it to?”

  His words and the true frustration behind them hit me like bullets. It was a miracle I was still upright. Since I was expending all my energy just doing that, I didn’t have anything left inside me to speak.

  “Is that what this is?” He nodded to the pack. “You runnin’ ‘cause you want me to chase you? Because I’m not gonna do that.”

  He stepped out of the doorway, leaving it open to me.

  “So if you leave, that’s it. That’s us. Finally fuckin’ over. Because I won’t chase you. I fuckin’ can’t. One of us has to stop this shit. And I gotta do it for my sanity. I won’t ask you to stay either. Because you do what you want, regardless of what I say. Of what I fuckin’ beg. We both know that. And I’m still fuckin’ standing here. It’s the last time I will be. So what are you gonna do, Little Girl?”

  Something left his eyes when he uttered the last two words. Something that seeped into me. Tugged at all those frayed and torn threads in my soul. Teased me with a lie that maybe this could be fixed. Maybe like the two previous residents of this apartment, I might get an ever after.

  But that wasn’t my story.

  I kept my lips pursed, somehow my eyes stayed dry and I walked out the door. I didn’t look back. I couldn’t. Every single inch of my willpower, my strength was going to putting one foot in front of the other, taking me away from the one man I’d truly loved with all of me.

  The one man who’d broken me.

  And then I’d broken him right back.

  I blinked at the tears streaming down my cheeks. The tears I’d fought in this very doorway a year ago. Tears I’d battled with for every second after.

  And they came with a force that literally brought me to my knees.

  They beckoned me into the abyss.

  Chapter Seven

  “Dude, are you dead?”

  I jerked at the words because they were yelled at me. Like right in my ear.

  I blinked rapidly, sitting up just as rapidly, the world spinning with a worrying speed and I panicked with a few moments of utter confusion of where the heck I was.

  But then my seriously foggy brain caught up, and it caught up faster than most people since I was familiar with waking up in strange places. I was usually more panicked when I woke up in the same place for too long. The scream was familiar, as was the grinning face in front of me, and the apartment she was in.

  My apartment.

  The one I’d arrived in...however long ago.

  The one I’d sobbed into unconsciousness on the floor of.

  At some point, I’d obviously moved myself to the sofa, which was where I was now. I didn’t remember this. But that wasn’t strange. I was a sleepwalker—when I did sleep, that was. I had woken in all sorts of places I hadn’t gone to sleep in. Hallways, gardens, once, somehow, my own car.

  But this was likely more to do with being jetlagged and my zombie brain realizing it was uncomfortable to sleep on hardwood floors. I’d slept on much worse in my travels. I was a heavy sleeper when my brain let myself sleep. Could sleep through anything. And obviously, I had been sleeping through Rosie entering the apartment—which she would’ve done loudly because she’s Rosie—and trying to wake me up in a slightly quieter manner than this.

  I blinked grit from my eyes. It felt vaguely like I’d been hit by some heavy-duty vehicle. The last eleven months packaged into that vehicle.

  No, the last six years packaged into it.

  “Thank god, I didn’t have to do mouth to mouth, it’d ruin my lipstick,” Rosie said, this time at a more respectable decibel.

  “How did you know I was home?” I croaked at her, my throat scratchy and crying out for any kind of hydration. My muscles ached. My stomach was cramping with the emptiness of it. My bladder was full.

  I’d obviously been asleep for a long while.

  Rosie tilted her head, obviously taking note of what a freaking mess I was. Of course, she was glossy and beautiful, wearing a bright pink knit dress, white ankle boots and her hair in messy curls around her face.

  “Um, I have contacts at the border,” she said as if I should’ve known this. I actually should’ve. Rosie had ‘contacts’ everywhere. “I had you under a red flag in like twenty-eight countries, just to be safe,” she continued. “Color me disappointed that I didn’t have to come and rescue you from some sort of cult again.”

  I frowned. “It wasn’t a cult. It was a collective,” I argued, speaking of my first residence in L.A.

  “Anything that starts with C is a euphemism for cult, Pol,” she said. “But whatever, I’ve missed you. And I would communicate this with a hug but you kind of...reek.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m guessing you haven’t showered since some strange hostel in Belgrade?”

  I blinked again. “How did you—”

  “I’m me,” she interrupted, again, as if I should know. Again, I should’ve. I’d known Rosie almost my entire life, and though she didn’t share the same blood as Lucy and I, she was our sister. “Now, you get up, get showered and less scary and I’ll make you food.”

  I raised my brow at her. “You’ll make food?”

  She sighed. “Fine, I’ll order food. This is L.A., no one makes food.” She narrowed her eyes. “And then I want to know everything.”

  My stomach dropped.

  “Don’t worry, not the stuff that made you leave in the first place,” she said softly. “We’ll get to that. But I’ll hear about the rest until you’re ready.”

  She patted my hand then yanked me up. “But first, hygiene.”

  * * *

  I showered because as Rosie said, I did reek.

  I let the warm water attempt to melt away the grime over the memories I’d been trying to escape. To try and loosen the tension from carrying around blame and doubt.

  It didn’t work.

  By the time I’d gotten out and dressed, the smell of food had radiated through my small apartment.

  Rosie had ordered enough to feed a small country. Despite how hungry I was, there was no way
I’d eat it all. I made a mental note to run it down to Ed, the homeless guy who was usually down the street from my building.

  Rosie was true to her word.

  She didn’t make me spill about what I knew she’d been curious about for over a year. Since things between Heath and I became too obvious to ignore. For everyone around us at least. I did a wonderful job of pretending to ignore what it was. How it was tearing us both apart.

  “So,” Rosie said, putting down her half-eaten cheeseburger. “Tell me everything about your trip. How many Italians did you romance? How many times did you almost get kidnapped?”

  I smiled because she was being serious. Apparently you weren’t “part of the awesome bitches club” until you got kidnapped.

  “None,” I said, opening my veggie burger with a rumbling stomach.

  Rosie sighed. “You’re young, there’s still time.” She paused. “Tell me everything else then.”

  And in between bites. I did. I told her everything about the trip and nothing about the truth behind it.

  She was Rosie so she knew how much I was holding back. But she didn’t push.

  Because she was Rosie.

  She left, eventually.

  After promising she wouldn’t get in touch with Lucy and tell her I was here yet. She was a loud person. So was I, on the outside of course. But Rosie knew when to keep quiet. Even when she didn’t like it.

  She’d been very vocal about how much she hated keeping quiet about how everything went down with Craig.

  But she’d done it.

  For me.

  Because she was a good person.

  The best.

  “I know you don’t feel like talking yet,” she said in the doorway. “And I know there’s so much more to the story than you’ve let on, and I’m absolutely gagging for it, I won’t lie.” She winked before her eyes went sad. “But I do know a little something about not being able to talk about things that have touched our souls. People that have done that. People that have destroyed our souls.” She gave me a look, one that betrayed knowledge of things I hadn’t told. “When those people are the people we see in the mirror.”

  I gaped at her. “What—how?”

  She smiled. “No, I’m not a mind reader, and I have to clarify that because I know you believe in that shit.”

  I frowned. “It’s not shit. It’s people who are so in touch with the universe they vibrate on the same level in which we project our thoughts.”

  She raised her brow and smirked in that smile her and Lucy had reserved for me. The ‘oh Polly’s done or said something again, just grin and humor her and then set fire to the car of the latest man who has broken her heart.’

  She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Honey, sometimes it’s not about vibrations or the universe.” She paused as she leaned back. “Actually, it’s never about that. It’s just the simple fact that we see in each other what we hide in ourselves.”

  The world moved under my feet at Rosie—my Rosie—uttering something as profound as that.

  Then she winked again. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to ravage my husband so he can’t walk straight in the morning.”

  And there it was.

  She blew me a kiss.

  “Don’t get into trouble. Not without me at least.”

  I didn’t plan on getting in any.

  No, I planned on somehow trying to make my life trouble free.

  Peaceful.

  Which was going to be a feat since I didn’t know what peace looked like.

  * * *

  It was three in the morning.

  I was in the bath.

  Mostly because I loved baths. I had every single kind of bath bomb imaginable, every bath product, I had a tray that could hold wine, books, and snacks that fit across the tub.

  A speaker was shoved onto the small and cramped countertop, there was always music coming from it. Usually, it was peaceful piano.

  Now it was ear-splitting rock.

  Because I needed something like that to drown out the silence.

  Silence was always loudest at three in the morning.

  The witching hour.

  It was the time many of my Wiccan friends believed that black magic was most powerful. It was the peak of supernatural activity. All of the demons and ghosts were most powerful.

  And they were right.

  But not the ghosts and demons that were tangible, that came from horror movies and great TV shows.

  No, they came from the inside. Clawed their way up when our minds were trying to dream and woke us up brutally.

  I had been jerking awake at this exact time for well over year. I had never been the best sleeper. My dad said it was because my mind was too busy to be clutched by dreams for too long.

  “You dream while you’re awake, baby girl. So you don’t need to sleep like the rest of us.”

  He and my mom never tried to change me. Never told me to go to sleep when they found me wandering around a quiet house in the middle of the night. They accepted me.

  I came from a loving and supportive home.

  Had great friends.

  My health.

  A roof over my head.

  Food in my belly.

  I shouldn’t have these demons.

  Yet here they were.

  Heartbreak was so much uglier than whatever movies portrayed it to be. There was no carton of ice cream, bottle of vodka, one-night stand and an amazing rebound guy type of combination that worked to cure that ache in your chest.

  And it wasn’t an ache. It was a sharp, stabbing, consistent agony. And it wasn’t in the chest. It was everywhere. You ached for the person who hurt you. Who ruined you. Who broke down every part of what made you you. Craig did all those things and it was horrible and painful and so soul destroying that it took a punch in the face to make me leave, but still, there was the pain. The agony.

  It was that much worse because now, I knew all of this, what a bad person he was and I still loved him. I couldn’t just turn something like that off. The violence, the ugliness of his true character was enough to make me leave him, but that wasn’t enough to make me forget him.

  When you give your heart to someone, it remains in their possession, at least a piece of it anyway, no matter what they do afterward.

  So I was here, curled up in the bath, not cradling wine and listening to empowering music and reading Eat Pray Love. No, I was clutching my knees to my chest, curled up in the darkness of the room, sobbing violently and silently. Pain wracked every single cell in my body.

  And in that moment, I wanted him to save me from this. Not Craig. Not the man who’d punched me in the face that I still loved with a part of me. But Heath, the man who’d punched through my soul when I’d torn his apart. Who I still loved with every aching cell in my body.

  I stared into the water, my eyes swollen.

  My fingertips trailed over the surface of the water, thinking about how such a thing could give us life, something we needed to continue living, could also kill us if we completely submerged ourselves in it.

  Much like love.

  My finger froze atop the water.

  That had been my problem. Not just with Heath or Craig, with every man I fell in and out of love with since I grew boobs.

  I had been looking for someone to save me. Not from dragons or villains, just from life. From loneliness.

  And I hadn’t realized there was only one person who could save me.

  She was sitting in the dark in a lukewarm bathtub crying over the husband that beat her. Crying because she knew that she made a mistake on her wedding day. Walking down an aisle. Saying I do.

  Walking away from a man who kept promising he’d never come back to her, but who always did, a little more broken and crueler than before.

  * * *

  “Hey Dad,” I said into the phone, exhaling with the force my pseudo cheerful voice took to create.

  “Polly!” he shouted into the phone like he had for the past year. Thou
gh every single conversation, the connection had been fine, he seemed to be of the opinion that the technology required him to shout so he could be heard across oceans.

  “Where are you now?” he demanded. “I’ve had no pictures in days. You know the whole reason I don’t go all Liam Neeson is because you send me my adventure updates.”

  I smiled.

  “That’s why you’re not going Liam Neeson?” I teased.

  My father was the furthest from Liam Neeson than any father could get. Yes, he was protective of me, of our entire family. But he didn’t communicate this with threats of violence or curses.

  I had no idea where Lucy got her genes from.

  Plus, when it became apparent I was going to have a new boyfriend with every week, he didn’t sit on the proverbial porch with the proverbial shotgun. He was actually nice to the “poor bastards,” this was because “they are only going to get a handful of heartbeats with the most extraordinary girl on this earth because they’re too ordinary for you.”

  It was safe to say he doted over me.

  Because I was the youngest, obviously. And because I was a total daddy’s girl. I adored my mother more than anything too, but it was a connection with my father that was something different. He got me. In a way most of my family didn’t.

  They accepted me.

  But they didn’t get me like my dad.

  Never in my life had I seen an ounce of disappointment in his eyes when most parents would have an ocean of it.

  Not when I changed colleges because of a boyfriend.

  Or changed majors because of a different boyfriend.

  When he had to loan me money because I’d loaned all of mine to a friend who had lost everything in a house fire.

  Not when I’d dropped out of college and moved to L.A. and didn’t tell him.

  My mother had something to say about that. Not much, but something, because she was a parent and she loved me, and she worried about what future I’d have without that piece of paper that somehow said I was ‘approved’ to operate in the world.

  But there was nothing from my father.

  Nothing but support.

  And when I’d announced my marriage to Craig, there was a slight wary glint to his eyes, but he still smiled and promised he’d walk me down the aisle.