Only in L.A.
Chapter Nine
It was after the promised tequila shot from the waiter that didn’t save me that I made my way home.
No one called the police.
Because, well, this was L.A. The police had better things to do. And if the police went to every fight a couple had in the middle of a trendy bar, they’d never do anything like catch murderers and drug dealers.
I was thankful for that.
Because the cops coming would mean Rosie finding out at the very least. If I was lucky. If I was not, it would mean Keltan finding out which would mean Heath would find out. Not that he would care, I guessed.
He’d made it painfully freaking clear that he was making true on the promise he’d made me the day he left.
“You walk away from me now, that’s it, we’re done. Period. I don’t know you, you don’t know me.”
I should’ve been more worried about Lucy finding out through Keltan. She might be pregnant, but she was scary. Especially if she found out what Craig had really done, instead of thinking my flight of fancy had expired, hence the reason for the quickie divorce.
It was her small and powerful strength that I was guessing was behind the banging of my front door, and I opened, bracing for Lucy fury.
I froze at what I got.
“You’re opening the fucking door?” he hissed, pushing past me almost violently to storm into my living room.
I stared at the empty space he’d occupied for a moment, unable to fathom that he was here. And that another man I had been in love with was yelling at me for the second time in less than two hours.
I turned, my temper flaring in a way that was totally and utterly unfamiliar. “That’s what I tend to do when someone is in danger of shattering the fricking wood,” I hissed, folding my arms across my chest, partly because that’s women did when they were pissed off, but also because it was a good way to hide how much my hands had been shaking before that.
Heath had been pacing the small living room, his boots hitting the floor with such force, I worried for Mrs. Alderson, my downstairs neighbor. But she was out of trouble when Heath stopped pacing to stare at me.
No, to glower at me.
“Why the fuck are you even still living in this piece of shit apartment with a door that has nothing but a deadbolt?” he hissed. “You’ve got money. A lot of it. From your divorce,” he spat the word and coming from his mouth, it sharpened the word to a point so it speared through my skin. “You need to be in a better building, better neighborhood. Make it happen.”
I blinked at him through the pain, trying to catch up. “Make it happen?” I repeated.
He nodded once, the motion violent and jerky.
“So let me get this straight, you came to my apartment, stormed in, yelled at me, to order me to move to a different neighborhood?” I surmised.
He didn’t speak, maybe because I didn’t give him time to, because I found that anger that had been absent when my ex had upturned a table in the middle of a restaurant and then presumably was planning on attacking me.
I was finding it because I was finding fear in front of Heath when it had been absent in front of Craig. Because Heath scared me more than Craig ever could. And he hurt me more than Craig ever could. The difference was he wasn’t meaning to.
Or at least I didn’t think he was.
He’d been a good man before.
A good man who’d wanted me.
But I’d brutally turned him down.
Did I break his heart?
I wasn’t sure.
But I knew that a good man with a broken heart was almost impossible to distinguish from a bad one with a blackened one.
So he scared me.
And somehow with everything between us, my fear morphed in anger.
“In case you didn’t notice this about me, I don’t care about money,” I hissed at him, trying to mimic that detached and harsh tone that he’d adopted. “And now I have more of it, it changes nothing. I like this apartment.” I gestured around the small and cozy space. “I like this neighborhood. It’s me. I fit. I certainly don’t fit in some skyscraper downtown or a townhouse in Beverly Hills. And I’m proud of that fact. And I don’t even know why I’m explaining this to you since it’s none of your business. You made it very clear that I’m none of your business.”
His eyes darkened. Blackened like the clothes he was wearing. “You’re my business, Polly,” he murmured, his voice low and dangerous.
My skin prickled.
“You’re always my business. Primarily because my business is security and you’re in desperate fucking need of it since you were accosted by your ex-fucking-husband two hours ago and he almost hit you, had you not fucking tased him!” He was not murmuring anymore.