The Problem with Peace (Greenstone Security 3)

He didn’t get to act outraged.

I paused.

Breathed.

I remembered what I’d been chasing since that night. Peace.

I’d never get it, of course. But what was the point in yelling at him? Accusing him? Spouting ugliness out into the present when I carried enough of it with me from the past? Me being angry and bitter would change nothing.

It would be giving him more of me.

He was waiting, bracing, watching me. Probably expecting more shouting. Screeching. There was something about his expression that looked like he wanted it. That he was ready to take it. Because he knew it was wrong, what he’d done.

“It’s the past,” I said, my voice little more than a whisper. “Whatever that was has happened. It’s history. And so are we. It would just be easier for all involved if we pretend it never happened.”

Lie.

Lie.

Big fat lie.

That was another thing I didn’t do. Like ever. Lie. Because I tried to act in a way that I’d want people to act toward me. Sometimes I’d tell a friend that her new hemp shoes were totally cute and that could’ve been considered a lie. But not when it didn’t hurt anyone’s peace. Plus, my abhorrence for hemp shoes was only my truth, not Marianne’s. So on the whole, I didn’t lie.

But I did it all fricking evening, with my sister, of all people.

And now to him.

It all revealed the lies I’d been telling myself all along.

“Bullshit.”

The single word echoed through the hallway.

“Excuse me?”

He didn’t blink at my tone, didn’t change his expression, this new version of him didn’t seem to have the same fluid ability as the man I’d met in a bar years before.

For a moment, I got the certainty that he’d taken something with him when he left, but he also left something too. Something I didn’t know I possessed until right now.

But of course, that was crazy. Impossible.

Wasn’t it?

“You heard me,” he said, voice mild and his indifference sweeping that thought away. “I said it’s fuckin’ bullshit.”

There was more bite in his words now.

More emotion.

Namely anger.

At me.

As if I wasn’t the one who woke up alone and confused, covered in memories of a man who had disappeared from reality.

I was the one that woke up to a note.

You will always be my Sunshine, but my life isn’t ready for that yet.

H

That was it.

The entire mother effing note.

And I hadn’t seen him for four years, yet this was him shouting at me, throwing anger at me.

“Are you fricking kidding me?” I demanded, my voice a visible snap of the last thread of my temper. “You think after a weekend four years ago we can just jump back into what we were? When what we were was forty-eight hours in a fantasy. I don’t live in a fantasy. Despite what people might tell you, or what you might tell yourself. I’ve moved on. I’m different.” I looked him up and down, hopefully keeping my mask of fury firmly intact. “And you obviously are. And this isn’t a fantasy. This is reality.” I paused, unable to banish him from my life as I had intended. Not when he was standing right in front of me. The universe put him here for a reason.

I wouldn’t survive him if I gave him my heart.

But I wouldn’t survive if I made him walk away either.

The pause yawned on as I considered my options.

“So how about we just be friends?” The words were weak and impossible to say, and even more impossible to make a reality.

Heath stepped forward, face granite. “Because I don’t have platonic feelings toward you, Sunshine,” he said, voice rough, caressing my spine and feeding a hunger between my legs. “I didn’t back then and I sure as fuck don’t now. I don’t want to be your friend. I’m gonna be your man.”

I folded my arms in frustration. Mostly at him, but also at myself for responding so viscerally to him. “You don’t know what kind of feelings you have toward me,” I hissed. “You have memories you carried through a war, through the years, just like me. And revisionist history isn’t just something that happens in politics or the corrupt education system, it’s rampant in emotional history too. So you think you know that weekend, you think you know me, but you’ve changed, tweaked when the details got fuzzy. You don’t know me for who I am. You know me from who you made me into.”

I threw the words out of desperation more than anything. And if the expression on his face was anything to go by, they hit their mark.

“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.