She gave him an accusing look.
“Than they deserved. So don’t you try and lay the blame for Polly’s asshole ex snatching her out of the comfort of her own home on me, because I won’t let that fly. You want to look for someone to blame? How about you go find a fucking mirror then ask it why she was sitting at home, alone unprotected, most likely thinking about the man who broke her heart. And I’m not talking about the one who is currently holding her captive right now.”
She was yelling at this point.
“You think about that while you go all manly and smash perfectly good mugs and perfectly good, kind and giving fucking hearts.”
She stood up quickly, flipped him the bird and then stormed out of the room.
* * *
Heath was staring at his bloodied hand, wondering if he was wearing more or less than Polly was wearing. If she was in more or less pain than him. Wondering how many marks she was wearing on her perfect body. The body he’d had in his arms this morning.
Was it only this morning?
And he’d gotten out of bed with the intention of a fresh start. With the intention of never letting her go again.
He wondered if his bloody and torn hands would ever hold her again.
His door opened and closed and his head snapped up, instantly alert, instantly bracing.
“No news,” Lucy said quietly, knowing that’s what Heath was surviving on. Scraps of information that might lead him to her.
He flinched at the growing bruise on Lucy’s face. On the pain in every part of her.
Keltan followed behind her, hand on her lower back. Of course the fucker wasn’t gonna let her walk the short distance from the bed to Heath’s office.
Heath didn’t blame him.
If—no, when he got Polly back, she wouldn’t be walking from the bed to the kitchen alone.
“You okay?” Heath forced himself to show concern for Lucy. Because Polly would want him to do that. Because Polly showed concern for everyone, no matter how much pain she was in.
Lucy raised her brow in response.
“Yeah,” Heath agreed.
Lucy sat down across from him.
Keltan stood behind her, hands on her shoulders.
There was silence.
“You love her,” Lucy said finally.
Heath didn’t hesitate. “More than anything on this fucking earth.”
She smiled. “From the start?”
“From the second I saw her in that bar, and every second after that,” he said.
Lucy lost her smile. “She’s not the same as us,” Lucy said, voice quiet. “And I don’t mean this in a bad way. It’s in all the best of ways. Because there was something special in her, something soft and precious and something that I’ve always considered my duty as her sister to protect. Everyone that encounters her and loves her considers it their duty. To make sure that Polly continues to experience the world exactly how she sees it. And now that’s gone. I can’t protect her anymore. And even in the best case scenario, it’s going to break my sister.”
Heath didn’t flinch with the words. Though they cut him. Speared him. As did hearing the absolute sorrow in the tone of one of the strongest women he knew. Lucy had more of a poker face than half the men he’d served with. He’d seen it for himself.
But this wasn’t like anything they’d experienced.
This was Polly.
And she was so fucking different than them in all the best ways, which meant that this was cutting them to the core in all the worst ways.
“You’re wrong,” Heath said.
Keltan stiffened as he spoke and leaned forward as if to spring. Heath didn’t doubt he would if he didn’t like the next words coming out of his mouth.
“She’s stronger than you think. Than you know,” he continued not giving a fuck about Keltan’s glare. “She isn’t going to let the ugliness of the world break her.”
His words sounded certain, sure.
But they were little more than a prayer.
No one normally listened to his prayers, but Duke burst into the room.
Heath stood.
“We got her,” Duke said.
Chapter Sixteen
Polly
Sixteen Hours Missing
You get rescued in the nick of time.
That’s what happens in those fantasies in the head you pretend you don’t have. You know, the ones where something crazy happens and wakes up that person that you’ve been thinking about forever and then they come and save you, right in the nick of time.
Then they hold you in their arms and you’re safe and warm. They whisper to you about how they’d never leave you, how you were safe now.
It would’ve been nice if that happened.
But this seemed to be the period of my life when the universe had to educate me on the fact that fantasies didn’t play out here in real life.
Not mine at least.
So I was not rescued in the nick of time.
Or at all.
The back of the truck was uncomfortable, to say the least. My hands bound awkwardly behind my back contributed to that. As did the uneven terrain we seemed to be traversing on. I guessed it wasn’t a main highway from the number of times I went flying forward, back, up, down.