Broken Hearts (Hearts 2)

“Caroline,” I said. He nodded.

I stumbled back against the wall, knocking a picture cockeyed.

“She’s not at all who I thought she was, is she?”

“She is. She’s just other things as well.”

There was no part of my life I could trust. No part of my life that I knew. This was a betrayal too big to process. And thinking about Caroline opened a giant hole in my belly, sucking me into nothing.

“Stop,” he said, like he could read my mind. “Caroline doesn’t matter right now. Put her away.”

My laugh was hysterical. “Put her away?”

“Don’t think about her.”

His cold dead eyes indicated he had a tremendous amount of practice doing this. Just putting pain and hurt and betrayal and people away.

“This is how you survive,” he said, and everything looped back to that night in the garden outside the party. The night we met. When all of this started.

Feeling pain was a choice. Feeling betrayed—choice. And if all that was true, then strength was choice too.

Injured and bloody, I was going to choose strength.

Taking a deep breath, I squared my shoulders as best I could with the sling, inspired by the stone-cold killer in front of me.

“What was Theo’s job? Since it clearly wasn’t to be my driver.”

“He was working for the Morellis. A spy and a hit man.”

“A hit man?” I laughed, but he didn’t. “That is . . . ridiculous.”

He shrugged. “This is the world you live in now.”

“Is that supposed to comfort me?”

“Do you remember what Theo said to you?” he asked, offering no words on the matter of comfort.

The memory was like trying to look at something underwater, distorted with the distance all off. I couldn’t be sure if the memory were close or far. Real or fake. Then I realized it didn’t matter. His questions were shit. Ronan stood there in a shirt stained with blood and the most important questions were actually mine to ask.

“Somebody shot me.”

“Is that what you remember?”

“I don’t . . .” I remembered running. That was all. Running and hearing a gun shot . . . “Theo is dead?”

He nodded.

“You shot him.”

“He was going to kidnap you, Poppy. Take you to the Morellis, and who knows what they would have done to you?”

“Exactly what you did to me, I imagine,” I said, liking the tartness of my words.

“They would make sure you didn’t like it.”

I flinched, his words hitting a soft spot I didn’t want to have.

“Who shot me?” I pushed at my memories, trying to put the watercolor edges of the night together. Ronan in a doorway. Yellow light and his black coat sweeping out behind him.

He’d been holding a gun. At me.

I lurched out of the bedroom into a small living room. There was a crackling fire in a hearth and two chairs in front of it. A table cluttered with a teapot and mugs. Newspapers. More reading glasses. Knitting. Behind the table was a stone kitchen with a wall of windows looking out at the night. In the distance, there was another building with three bright windows.

The unfamiliarity of it all stopped me in my tracks.

“Where are we?” I asked. It was a home, like one from a movie. The kind that was immediately comfortable. The kind I never expected to find myself in.

“Someplace safe.”

I laughed and shot him a caustic look over my shoulder. “If I’m with you, I can’t be that safe.”

“You are safe as I can make you.”

“Did you shoot me?” I asked again.

“Is that what you remember?”

“Ronan,” I said on a heavy sigh. “This sexy mysterious answering-a-question-with-another-question thing you’re trying to do isn’t going to work.”

“It worked on you before.” The corner of his lip lifted so fast it was like a spasm. An involuntary smile that pierced me right through the chest in a way I definitely didn’t want.

“All part of the job?” I asked him, pretending as hard as I could to be as casual as he was.

He shrugged.

I crossed the rag rug on the wooden floor to the heavy door. He was behind me. Following me. And that was his choice. My mouth was dry, and my arm hurt, but if this man weren’t going to give me answers, I could figure something out on my own.

“What are you doing?”

“Figuring out where we are.”

With my good arm I threw open the door. Nothing but wind and darkness met me. Not even a moon or stars. No lights from other houses. Water was nearby and I could hear crashing waves. The wind blew me back a step, but I leaned forward and stepped out anyway. The chill and the damp went right through my shirt. Through my skin. Down to my bones. I turned and saw Ronan behind me. Following but not touching. Following and not stopping.

“Where the fuck are we?” I yelled so he could hear me over the wind.