“You think the details of you that night are fucking fuzzy for me?” he asked slowly, voice flat.
I nodded, trying to make the gesture decisive.
“You were wearing a dress that was too short and you didn’t have a fuckin’ jacket on even though it was January in L.A., not winter like anywhere else, but chilly enough to need a fuckin’ jacket. Your dress had sunflowers on it, huge bright yellow ones,” he said.
I sucked in a breath of surprise.
But he wasn’t done.
He was so far from done.
“You were wearing some sort of corked wedges, like you were going to a fucking garden party in August instead of a shitty gig in a shitty bar in a shitty area in L.A.’s version of winter,” he continued, voice harsh. “Your hair was split into two pigtails, and they drove me fuckin’ wild. They were loose, you had curls escaping out of them.”
His hand reached up as if to hold onto one of the curls—much longer now—escaping my messy bun, but then he caught himself halfway, yanking his hand back down into a fist at his side.
“You were glowing, like a fuckin’ sun in the middle of that bar,” he ground out, eyes not leaving mine. “Some sweaty, fat, drunk asshole had his hands on you. You weren’t fighting him like most girls were. You weren’t even fucking looking around for anyone to help you. You were lost in your head, and you had a soft look on your face that even the hardness of a place like that, a situation like that couldn’t take off. You were a lamb in a den of wolves. And it looked like I was saving you, but really I just wanted you for myself.”
His voice was raspier now. Full of desire from the past, and plenty being built in the present.
My panties were soaked. My breathing shallow. Heart shattering as it thundered against my ribs.
And. He. Wasn’t. Done.
“Your hands on my chest were the lightest and smallest thing that had ever been on there, but somehow they cracked my fuckin’ ribcage,” he rasped. “You tasted like strawberry when you kissed me because you wanted to see what it felt like. You told me you believed in peace but didn’t judge me from making my living fighting a war.”
He paused, and his eyes darkened even more as his gaze tore through my clothes, searing my skin. My fricking soul.
“You were wearing white lace panties underneath your dress. No fuckin’ bra.” He paused, his eyes at my chest He visibly shuddered at the memory of my freaking bare breasts.
I almost leaned in then. Almost swallowed his painful and beautiful words with a kiss.
Almost.
Heath watched me as if he knew what I was battling. “Had I known that you weren’t wearin’ a fucking bra that night would’ve ended at my apartment much fuckin’ earlier,” he continued. “Your pussy was the sweetest, warmest and most beautiful place I’ve ever been able to make my home in.”
My core clenched at his words. It ached for his touch. For him to fill me up bodily like his words were filling me up. But I didn’t move. I couldn’t.
“And I told you I didn’t have a home apart from that shitty apartment and it broke your heart,” he said, voice softer now. And the softness was tearing through me like a serrated blade. “Saw it because you don’t wear your heart on your sleeve, you wear it in every inch of you,” he murmured. “It radiates from the air around you. And it broke for me, the man who was a stranger, who knew you more intimately than anyone had before.”
He let the words sink into the air. Into the energy between us. Let them chip away at the lies I’d told myself about what that night had been.
“And when I left you in bed, you reached for me, and mumbled ‘I love you,’ in your fuckin’ sleep,” he said, going for the final blow. “And I thought, fucking seriously, about snatching you up, putting you in my truck and just...driving. I seriously considered abandoning the family who’d made me into a man, the thing that defined me better than the first eighteen years of my life. I almost risked it all, ruined it all—happily—for you in that moment.”
My eyes watered, my vision wavered at his words. At the emotion in them. At the truth in them. My brain ached for that moment to have come into actuality so I could’ve taken his hand, driving through the years with him at my side and the world on our backs. I yearned for a past I’d never known and never would know.
“And the worst thing was, I knew you, knew your soul and knew that you would’ve gone if I asked you,” he said, voice quieter now. “You would’ve committed to a life on the road, on the run from Uncle Sam and the world itself. That’s what made me leave. And that’s what made me commit every single fucking detail of you to my memory. No revising. Not embellishment. Because you can’t fucking embellish perfection. Don’t do this, us, the injustice of saying it was anything less than it was. You’re lying to me and you’re lying to your fucking self.”
The end of his speech was no longer gentle. Not that the words had ever been gentle. Nothing about this, us, was gentle. It wasn’t some kind of easy or joyous reunion. It was torture.
He hadn’t moved. He was still watching me, waiting for a response.
But what in the actual heck did I say to that? A part of me knew what to say.
Nothing.
It wasn’t the time to say anything. It was a time to jump back into his arms. To kiss him and let the years dissolve around us.
But I couldn’t.
I was afraid.
And not too proud to admit it.
“Polly!” The voice cracked through the moment.
Both Heath and I moved our gazes to a group of people storming through the hall.
Jett was front and center.
Oblivious, and likely wasted, he bowled forward and snatched me into his arms.
“Babe! You missed the show,” he said. “I’d be mad at you, if you weren’t so cute.” He kissed my forehead. “And because we’re doing an encore show in your living room.”
People shouted “fuck yeah!” in response to this, as the small crowd pushed past all the emotional demons that had filled up the hall with their instruments, with their half-full beers.
Heath stood in the middle of it all, unmoving, glaring at Jett. Or more accurately, his arms around me. Jett noticed this, belatedly. He moved and slung his arm around my shoulder. “Oh hey, dude.”
Jett looked the part of an indie rocker. He had silver on every single finger. Wore a ripped black tee. His skinny arms were covered in mismatched and random tattoos. He was wearing dirty Chuck Taylors.
But he really had a kind heart, which was what drew me to him.
“You a friend of Polly’s?” he asked.
Heath glared at me now. “I don’t know, am I, Polly?”
The question was much more than that. It was an invitation to step out of Jett’s kind and safe embrace into Heath’s harsh and dangerous one.
I painted a smile on my face. “Yeah, he’s a friend.”
Nothing changed outwardly on Heath’s expression.
But everything changed.
Chapter Four
Three Weeks Later
I wasn’t paying attention when a knock came at the door. It should’ve been something to pay attention to, considering no one knocked here. Most people walked right in. We operated on an open-door policy. Obviously I didn’t tell my family about that because they would get all judgy about it.