Shield (Greenstone Security 2)

“I don’t think that! Fuck, I was fucking proud of you,” he yelled back. “I couldn’t fucking say it out loud then, and I couldn’t fucking say it to myself because my thought was never going to be to arrest you. My first thought was, and always will be, to protect you.”

I simmered down, my anger deflating as quickly as it appeared, melancholy replacing it. “And protecting me ruined your life, Luke,” I whispered. “Don’t think I can forget that. That I can move past it. That we can. You know we can’t.”

His own anger remained. “I’ll admit that I don’t know a lot of shit, Rosie. Don’t know why the universe saw fit to give us so much suffering and fucking pain for wanting each other. Don’t know why, with a soul as light and good as yours, there’s been so much dark to damage it. I don’t know any of that shit. But one thing I do know is that we fucking can move past it. Know it in my fucking bones, and you know it too.”

I stared at him. He was right. We could. But it would mean dragging him down even further. I wouldn’t do it.

“No, I don’t,” I lied. “You’re always going to be Luke, the cop, and I’m always going to be Rosie, the criminal. It’s that simple.”

“We’re not fucking simple,” he growled. “And I’ll always be Luke, the man, and you’ll always be Rosie, my woman. That shit ain’t changing. But I’m not stupid enough to stand here and argue with you about it. You’re determined to hurt yourself because you think you’re doing the right thing.” He eyed me. “Maybe it is the right thing. But I’m not about right anymore. Never want to be again if that mean’s I’ll never sink into that sweet pussy.” He moved forward, so every inch of his body was a hair’s breadth from mine. “And I will be. Just so you know, this isn’t me walking away. This is you pushing me away. Not for good, but for right now.”

Then he turned around and left. I watched the empty air for a long time.

Then I calmly walked to the last door on the right, opened it.

Lucy smiled at me, sitting on Keltan’s knee.

I smiled back, pretending I wasn’t bleeding inside. “Lunch?”

So yeah, light and its unforgiving glow showed me in stark detail why I needed to stay the fuck away. But then night came, the darkness snatching away all those reasons and whatever strength and resolve I’d built when the sun came up.

One night, I found myself lying awake, unable to sleep, unable to hold onto a thought that didn’t involve Luke.

I needed a life without him. And I sure as shit needed a mind without him too. It didn’t help that I was determined to make up for all the time I’d missed with my family, with my best friend, so I tried to see her as often as possible, help keep her insane while she fully healed.

That meant I ran into Luke. Not often, but even a second in his presence, under his cold gaze, was enough to fuck with me. Destroy me.

I was done with that shit. Heartbreak.

We normalize heartbreak in our society. Mostly because of how painfully normal it is. So when we hear a song, read a book, watch a movie, all crammed with the dramatic truth of it, maybe it reminds us that we’re not alone. That there’s more out there, and our heartbreak isn’t the end of the world.

It’s a nice thought.

But it’s utter bullshit.

We are, and always will be, alone with our own pain.

And heartbreak may not make this chunk of rock in space stop spinning, but it is the end of someone’s world. Despite how well we keep up appearances.

And I was walking, talking, laughing Rosie, covering up the pain, just like the rest of them. I thought I was doing good, great even, at hiding it all until Polly’s wedding.

Yes, wedding.

She’d dated Craig for three weeks, then married the fucker.

We’d tried to gently change her mind, but she was like me: stubborn and would never let anyone change her heart. Which was funny, since she was jumping right in with her heart, and I was yanking mine right out.

We hadn’t been able to find anything on the fucker, which meant we had to watch our beautiful, romantic, and innocent girl marry an idiot named Craig and pretend we were happy.

I was already pretending.

Or so I thought.

“So,” Keltan said, standing beside me on the rooftop where the wedding was being held, watching Polly and Craig dance. “How is it being home, back to reality?”

I gave him a sideways glance. “Wouldn’t exactly call our life reality,” I answered.

He grinned, sipping his beer. “You are not wrong, not wrong at all. You ladies get more action than I did in the desert in the middle of a war.”