Broken Hearts (Hearts 2)

I wanted to weep and scream and do anything to change his mind. To convince him he mattered. That I would fight for him if he would let me. I sat there trembling, and he rolled over onto his side. His back to me.

“Wake me up in an hour,” he said. I waited until he was asleep and then picked up the file and put it back in the other room. He might not care right now, but that wasn’t going to be true forever. There might come a time when he’d want to know the circumstances of his birth.

Because this wasn’t the end of him. I will not be the end of him.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Zilla used to change her hair color all the time. Her red was browner than mine, and she’d dyed it purple and pink. She’d shave half her head at a time. I’d left mine long and curly, only dying it blond when the senator informed me I didn’t have a choice about it.

I didn’t have a choice about this, either, I guessed. But it felt different. Truthfully, everything felt different. In the bathroom, I stripped to my waist, squeezed all the chemicals onto my hair, and piled the tresses up on my head. In the cabinet under the sink, I found some bright pink fingernail polish and decided to paint my toes while I had the time to kill, all while coming to grips with the reality I was about to enter a brand-new life.

While Ronan thought this was the end of his.

I wished with everything I had in me that we could just stop. Stop time. Stay in this cottage for another day. Year.

To what end? a voice in my head that sounded remarkably like my sister asked. Monsters are fun to fuck, but dangerous to love.

And didn’t I have enough danger?

Sure. More than enough. More than enough for three lifetimes, but it didn’t seem right that I was going to dye my hair, change my name, and go off and have a life while Ronan was going to . . . what?

Die?

And I just had to be okay with it? Already the pain of saying goodbye to him was something I was putting away. Shoving aside the way Ronan himself had taught me.

When the time was up and my nails were dry, I stepped into the shower and rinsed out my hair, dark brown rivers of water running over my breasts and stomach and down between my legs to pool at my feet. I wiggled my bright pink toes in the suds.

We had twenty-four hours, and that was something. Twenty-four hours to change his mind about going back. He didn’t have to come with me, but why did he have to go back to Bishop’s Landing? To the Constantines? To that monster life no man should have?

One day had never seemed so short.

My hair was soft and a little limp from the treatment and . . . very brown. Black-brown, even. Far edgier against my pale skin than anything I’d ever had before, which made its length look all wrong. Punk Stepford wife wasn’t a good look for anyone, and so I did what I’d never done before.

Cut my own hair.

A ponytail and a sharp pair of scissors got rid of most of the length and after that, it was just a matter of cutting into the hair vertically, making pieces and edges where there weren’t any. And after toweling it dry and adding a dollop of ancient mousse I’d found in the bathroom cabinet, I had to admit it looked like shit, but I didn’t look at all like myself.

And that was the point.

I opened the door to the bathroom, expecting Ronan to be sound asleep. Only to find him awake. And pointing a gun at me. Which should’ve made my heart stop. Just something else to add to the list of things I was used to.

“Fuck.” He shook off the sleep and put the gun back down on the bedside table. “Sorry.”

“It’s not the first time you’ve pointed a gun at me, is it?”

He looked at me sideways and then reluctantly smiled. “Your hair,” he said. “Ya cut it.”

“Yeah. I thought maybe it would help.”

“You look so different, Poppy,” he said with some wonder.

“Truthfully, I feel different.” I put my hands on my hips. “How are you going to take this picture?”

He pulled his new cheap cell phone out of his back pocket.

“I need one of those,” I said.

“We’ll pick it up when we get your new passport tomorrow. Now . . .” He took me by the shoulders and positioned me up against a white wall. “That should work. Don’t smile.”

For some reason, that made me smile, and he shot me an exasperated look.

“Am I Beth in this new passport?

“Yep.”

“Where am I from?”