He did not.
Men on white horses, tarnished or not, didn’t exist.
Or maybe he had and I had killed him, and his horse too.
So she’d come in, face unreadable.Which was a change, considering Polly always wore her feelings on her beautiful face and her heart on her sleeve.
Both of those were hidden.
She’d been uncharacteristically quiet, and when I’d suggested that perhaps Heath was the reason, she uncharacteristically snapped at me.
I’d been so shocked at that, I’d let her stomp out of the room and slam the door before I knew what happened. It was her temporary room, since she spent most of her time at a loft apartment she shared with a handful of other free spirits I was vaguely worried about being in a cult. But she seemed okay, not planning on drinking any Kool-Aid.
She’d apologized the next morning, but nothing more was said about Heath.
So now, as she downed her wine and was declaring love and something being different, with the Heath thought in mind, I maybe believed her. Because whatever it was between them was different. The kind of different her very own sister had. But then again, right then, she looked too happy for that kind of different. Because the real, life-changing, heart-wrenching kind of love didn’t make you happy. Not at the start, at least. It made you miserable. Even well after the start, I was still fucking miserable. So I was confused.
Not that I dared speak Heath’s name again. I just waited for Polly to educate me.
She put her glass in the sink, then checked herself in the mirror before snatching her purse up from the table below it. She turned, her face beautiful not just from bone structure, excellent hair and an expert hand at makeup, but from happiness. However transient that may be. She was glowing.
“He makes me feel different. Like he sucks up all the air when I’m around him and I can’t breathe. I need him to breathe.”
I frowned. I didn’t like some motherfucker doing that, yanking a beautiful and kind girl into his orbit and bespelling her. And Heath, the way he looked at Polly, that told me he’d suck all the air out of his own body, forsake oxygen just to make sure Polly breathed easy.
“What’s his name?”
She beamed. “Craig.”
I frowned. No one should be beaming about a man named Craig. I itched to ask about the Heath situation, but previous experience told me I’d see it all soon enough. I really prayed my little hopeless romantic didn’t have car bombs or stabbings in her courtship.
We’d had enough drama.
For me to say that, it was legit.
“When do I get to meet him?” I asked, wondering when Lucy and I got to set his car on fire.
Polly smeared some gloss on her lips. “Oh, soon,” she said vaguely. “I’m just not ready to share.”
I pursed my lips. That meant she knew that we wouldn’t approve.
Not that we’d ever approved.
Her phone vibrated. She glanced down. “That’s my Uber,” she said.
I frowned again. “He doesn’t pick you up?”
“He lives all the way in the Valley, so it makes no sense,” she replied, leaning down to kiss my cheek. “I’ll be staying there tonight, all going well.”
And like the hurricane she was, she was gone.
I chewed my lip. Then I got my phone. “Wire, I need info on a guy Polly’s dating,” I said without hello.
“Another one? Jesus,” Wire muttered.
This wasn’t the first, or even the fourth time that I’d gotten Wire to check on Polly’s boyfriends.
“It’s Polly,” I said in answer.
He sighed. “True. And I was getting a little bored. Was thinking of changing the nuclear codes just for fun.”
I laughed, but I didn’t doubt that’s what he would’ve done. Wire was crazy. Not a Lucky type of crazy. Nor a murderous borderline sociopath Gage type of crazy either.
He was a computer guy. That didn’t mean he didn’t know how to handle himself in the ‘real’ world. He only looked skinny because he was surrounded by men who resembled Chris Hemsworth’s more cut brothers. He was lean and kickboxed every day.
I knew that because whenever I was home, I trained with him. I had him to thank for a lot of my takedowns in Venezuela.
“His name’s Craig.”
There was a pause.
“Last name?”
“I don’t exactly have one.”
Another pause and sigh. “So you want me to look up a guy Polly’s dating who shares a name with approximately two hundred thousand men in the United States?”
I grinned. “Yeah, well I didn’t want to make it easy for you. If you can’t do it—”
“I can fucking do it,” he snapped. The tap of keys rattled behind the phone. “Just need some time.”
“Here’s hoping by the time you’ve got the information, Polly’s moved on to someone who actually picks her up for dates instead of making her Uber,” I muttered.