And I hadn’t mourned them, not really.
It was onto the next one.
And if I had loved them, there would be no moving. There would be a lifetime of mourning. There would be a huge gaping hole in my life that I couldn’t cover up with anyone else.
And that’s why I ran from Heath. Because it was ugly, what I felt for him. Unhealthy. Uncomfortable. Heavy. Like the weight of a real crown might be.
Lucy had moved at some point and now her hand was tight in mine. It was comforting. Healing.
Well, as healing as it could be.
No one spoke for a long time.
Until Rosie.
“Okay, so there are people that say that nothing is certain in life, I disagree.” Rosie grinned, but her eyes were glassy from my words. “And not just because I like to disagree with people. But because there are things that are certain. Like your favorite lipstick will be discontinued the second you finish your last tube. It will start to rain the second you walk out in your new suede Manolos, or right after you’ve had a kick-ass blowout.” She scowled at this, and then down at her shoes that looked perfect in my eyes but obviously weren’t to her.
It had rained today.
She snapped her head back up. “You run into Chris Hemsworth on the street after a workout, makeup-free and scarier than that Stephen King book with the clown,” she continued.
And then her face changed. Turned a little more serious. A little more kind to me. “And, this is the biggy, you’ll always fall in love at the wrong time. Most likely with the wrong person. Then you’ll fuck something up. Or he will. Shit goes down. Because life likes to screw with us, babe, whether it’s ruining eight hundred-dollar shoes, or sending us the perfect man in the most imperfect—sometimes seemingly impossible—of circumstances. But here’s a secret, we’re not people. We’re kick ass bitches.” She looked to Lucy, then to me. “And just because you don’t literally kick ass like we do, ‘cause you’re into, like, peace, or whatever.” She rolled her eyes. “Doesn’t mean you don’t kick ass. I refuse to hear yourself talking about yourself the way you would never talk to us. To the people, you love most in this world. You were there for both of the disasters that were the beginning of the relationships. And I don’t think it’s presumptuous for me to say we both fucked up. A lot.” She looked to Lucy for confirmation.
Lucy nodded. “A lot.”
“But you didn’t judge us,” Rosie said. “You didn’t say one thing about a wrong decision, a cowardly one made by our brain in an attempt to protect our heart. You understand because you’re Polly. You love everyone, are kind to people even when they don’t deserve it. But the person who deserves the most love and kindness right now is yourself.”
Lucy nodded. “And Heath is not a blameless saint in all of this. Not from where I’m standing. You both made wrong decisions. And he has no fucking right to treat you the way he has, riding around on his high fucking horse.” Her voice was pinched in fury.
“Do not blow up his car,” I said suddenly, wiping a tear from my eye.
Lucy widened her own in a faux look of innocence. “I wasn’t even considering it.”
I raised my brow.
“I might’ve been considering it,” she amended. “But Keltan doesn’t let me handle explosives anymore so you’re safe.”
I wasn’t.
I was the farthest from safe I’d ever been in my life.
Chapter Twelve
I should’ve been getting more accustomed to seeing him.
But I had the same reaction to him outside my apartment building the next morning as I did to seeing him outside the shelter. In the Greenstone security offices when I got back from Europe. Seeing him outside my door before I left to Europe. Seeing him standing in front of me while I was wearing a wedding dress and he was telling me to run away with him.
Pain.
And a sense of strange relief in that pain.
A safety.
His gaze was the same as it had been since I left him on my doorstep.
Blank.
I guessed I deserved that.
No, I knew I deserved that. Despite what Rosie said the night before.
I was trying to be kind to myself. But I also had to be honest with myself.
Me lying to myself was what got us here in the first place. I had to own that blame.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him when he pushed off the wall and moved slightly toward me, but sure to keep distance between us.
“It’s Thursday,” he said by response, by greeting.
“I’m aware.” I was getting almost good at mimicking his cold tone.
Almost.
Or I was failing utterly and completely.
“You read to the kids at St. Mary’s on Thursdays,” he said.
I froze.