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“He did this?” I seethed, gently bringing her into my arms.
She didn’t say anything, just sank into my embrace and sobbed soundlessly.
“Fucking Craig,” I hissed.
I held her for a while, my anger growing. It mingled with my hurt, my immense pain at seeing another innocent girl battered at the hands of an asshole man. It would’ve hurt with any one of my sisters, friends or strangers. But Polly was different. She was the last of them. The last of my girls who didn’t let the ugliness of the world tarnish the beautiful way she saw it. That didn’t mean she didn’t know sorrow, but she had this way of enduring it, not letting it make her hard.
Like Laurie.
Laurie had been broken and battered and murdered in the end.
Again, that sore spot that never quite healed and never quite would throbbed with that pain.
Because now it was Polly. I prayed it was the first time. That it wasn’t any worse than it looked. And it already looked pretty fucking bad.
It didn’t matter if it was one punch or five. First time or tenth. The mere act of taking someone who loved and lived so gently and then treating them so brutally was the ultimate sin.
And deserved the ultimate punishment.
I pushed Polly backward so I could gently frame her face and inspect the purplish red bruise steadily growing.
It was fresh.
Hours old.
“Are you hurt anywhere else?” I asked, using all my effort to keep my voice gentle. Looking at Polly, she needed gentle. She needed gentle hours before, but I couldn’t change or control someone else’s actions in the past. I could only control my actions in the present.
And my actions against them in the future.
She hiccupped. “No,” she said shakily.
I nodded. “He didn’t… do anything else?” I asked, praying to whoever was left to take care of this ugly world that the answer would be no.
She blinked, confused.
In her confusion, I found my relief. Because she didn’t know what I was talking about, for a second at least. If it had happened, the worst, she would’ve known. Her body and mind would’ve been reminding her of it, not allowing her the momentary luxury of confusion.
“No,” she realized finally, not knowing she’d already answered my question. “No, God, no. He just hit me,” she whispered.
I grabbed her hand. “There’s no just,” I said firmly. “There’s no spectrum of just a little bit of bad. Hitting a woman once or a thousand times is the same sin. I’m so sorry it happened to you, my Pol.”
Again, she sank into my arms, sobbing loudly that time.
I really wanted to cry too. But I stayed strong.
For my friend. For my sister.
And for the coming revenge I would make sure I personally delivered.
“Thanks,” Polly whispered, taking the mug of tea I offered her.
I hadn’t even realized I had herbal tea. I found it stashed in the back of the cupboard, a remnant of Polly’s temporary habitation.
“You sure you don’t want wine?” I asked, sitting next to her. “Or tequila?”
She shook her head.
The quiet with Polly was almost as bad as the ever-worsening bruise covering almost half of her face.
Polly wasn’t quiet.
She was never quiet.
She might’ve lived her life gently, but she did it loud.
And he took that from her.
I clenched my fist.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Polly whispered.
I snapped my head to her. “What are you talking about? Of course I’m telling people. Namely the crew I’ll be assembling to make Craig a eunuch before we bury him in a shallow grave.”
I wondered whether we could track down Heath. I knew he’d be the first in line to deal the killing blow.
His and Polly’s relationship was complicated when I’d expected it to be simple. The girl lived for love. And even though I didn’t believe in that shit, the way Heath looked at her, it was love.
I was certain there would’ve been a rushed wedding after seeing that look. I was right about the wedding, wrong about the groom.
And Polly, the girl who usually told Lucy and me everything about her current beau, down to his preferred brand of toothpaste, refused to utter a word about Heath and the looks.
He’d disappeared before the wedding.
Who could blame him?
“No, you can’t,” Polly said, roughly setting her mug down so the steaming liquid sloshed onto the coffee table. She snatched my hands. “Please.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Please don’t tell me you’re going back to him.”
She sharpened her own gaze. “Of course not. He lost me the second his hand turned into a fist.” Her voice was strong, resolute.
So there was that.
“Well then, what’s with the insane demand to keep something that is A, hard to hide, and B, something that needs to be dealt with a secret?” I demanded.
She regarded me. “You know what everyone thinks of me. Polly the romantic idiot. Head in the clouds. Clueless. My family’s been in enough pain. I’m not causing them more. Not giving them another reason that they have to take care of me. They deserve to take care of themselves.”
