I wanted to scream. Actually scream in the face of his words. I ached for cruelty because it was bearable. But he was giving me this.
“You hated me,” I whispered, desperate to probe that out of him. “Just because I got kidnapped and whatever manly testosterone-fueled emotions were sparked from that, doesn’t change that, Heath. You’re not obligated to stand by and protect me. To coddle me or watch and make sure I don’t go off the deep end.” I paused. “Again. Lucy has already lectured me about joining cults or folk bands. I’ll be okay. You don’t have to do this.”
“Didn’t hate you,” he murmured, eyes and voice still frustratingly and beautifully gentle.
I raised my brow.
“Was angry with you,” he said. “I was furious with you. Fuck, I wanted to hate you.” He ran his hand through his hair. “But I couldn’t. Hate you. I could never. Not for as long as I walk this earth. Nothing you say here, while you’re trying to push me away is gonna make me do that, Polly. Say what you need to. But it’s not moving me from my spot. From this spot.”
My vision became blurry and stark all at the same time. Heath’s energy swallowed up all that anger that had been so visceral before.
“I realized I never thanked you,” I said finally, wrenching my eyes up to meet his.
“For what?”
“For finding me. Saving me,” I whispered.
His eyes hardened. “You’re not thanking me for shit. Especially when I was too fucking late.”
I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t. Because he was right. It was too late.
“It’s not your fault,” I said finally.
“Not yours either,” he said fiercely. “I know you’re toying with the past. With yourself. Trying to lay some kind of blame where it doesn’t belong. So I’ll say this now and I’ll say it every day, every moment until you believe it.”
His fingers lightly grasped my chin to move it upward so my eyes could drown in his gaze.
“This was not your fault,” he declared, throwing each word into the air with force.
Maybe he was right. Maybe it wasn’t my fault. The kidnapping, the brutality.
But it was my fault if I harmed more people than needed to be harmed.
People being Heath.
“I’m not the same girl as I was when I was eighteen,” I said, deciding to go for a different tactic. “Not even the woman I was eight weeks ago. This is not the story where there’s the happy ever after. This is what happens after the damsel is saved,” I whispered. “They never show you that because that would ruin it all. Wreck it all. Because the damsel isn’t really saved in the end. Not this one at least.”
“I’m not tryin’ to save you, Sunshine,” he said, taking me into his arms as if he was. “Just lookin’ for you.”
“Are you really looking for me, Heath?” I asked, grasping at emotional straws. “Second chance romances don’t work. Or in our case, third chance,” I said. “Of course in movies and books they do because they’re written by some heartbroken artist who is hoping to create their future, that impossible happy ending. And because most of us are lost, heartbroken souls, we rework those stories to fit our situation. Which isn’t hard, because heartbreak is always the same. And we always want the same thing, either for it to stop hurting so much, or it to hurt more when the person comes back. So we watch those movies. Read those books. Imagine, pray that those stories will come to life. It’s nice.”
I smiled.
“Really nice to do when things are dark and ugly in the present and you can find some solace in the marriage of an embellished past and am impossible future.”
My smile failed as I focused on him.
“It’s lovely and nice, but it doesn’t work. Not when years have passed, and the world has changed around us, and we haven’t.” I paused. “Changed, that is.”
I roved my eyes over the outside changes that had nothing on the inside changes.
“Life is still the same, but it’s intrinsically different. That feeling, that…” I trailed off in order to find the courage. I met his eyes. “That love survived the years, but only because it’s attached to a memory, it will not survive when we try to attach it to what we are now.”
What I am now, was what I didn’t say. What I couldn’t. I didn’t need to anyway. It was the elephant in the room, pressing on my lungs. On my heart.
He was silent for a long time. It was something I was getting used to, but it still made me uncomfortable, a person who always reacted, spoke, laughed, cried, jumped immediately, on initial reaction, on instinct.
Heath worked on instinct too. But it was a warrior’s instinct. Analyzing all the options, all possible threats, all ways to attack, to defend, to survive. I wondered if it was a throwaway from the war. But I thought about the war as something that required action without thought. Wasn’t that the whole point of basic training? To drum out those pesky unpredictable personality traits in order to promote the appropriate split second predictable responses in a soldier.