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The old Heath would’ve moved. Would’ve snatched the bags from my hands and not let me carry such a load. He was like that.
But chivalry, in this case, was dead because I’d killed it.
“What are you doing here?” I asked when I recovered enough to speak if not to move.
His jaw ticked as his sunglass stare leveled me to the spot. “I’m here because no one else could cover you,” he bit out like the words were acid.
I blinked, jostling my bags slightly, my arms were already screaming with the short trip from my car to here, and they were turning red at the fingers as I was sure I was cutting off circulation.
Not that I was going to ask for help. Not that Heath would give it.
“Cover me?” I repeated when I was sure I wasn’t going to drop canned soup and vegetables everywhere.
He nodded once, still gluing me in place with his glare. “Yeah, we’ve got a team on you. Small, one-man tail, rotating basis.”
I stared at him. “Is that supposed to be an answer to my question? Because I don’t speak military man, Marine.”
It just popped out. The name from the past I hadn’t uttered since…since he was inside me.
Blush crept up my neck. My stomach dipped.
He stiffened, reacting to the word, but not in the same way I did.
“For fuck’s sake,” he hissed, pushing off the wall he’d been leaning on to stalk toward me.
I couldn’t even scuttle back because I was afraid I’d lose my center of balance and me and all this food would go sprawling. I wasn’t worried about my fate—I could survive a header on the pavement, hopefully— but this food was intended to feed people who maybe hadn’t had a meal in days. I didn’t want them having to wait because I couldn’t handle myself in front of the man I’d lost my virginity to and almost left a man at the altar for.
A man I loved.
A man that hated me.
The bags were roughly snatched from my now numb arms before I could figure out what was going on.
He didn’t offer me an explanation, didn’t smile or even acknowledge my swift intake of breath that was a response to his presence, his arms brushed against mine for a beautifully painful split second.
Up close, his face, was, as always, more beautiful. But also it was harder. Crueler.
And then he turned on his boot and all but stormed into the shelter.
I stared after him.
He wasn’t waiting.
He didn’t leave the door open for me.
I didn’t want to follow him. In fact, if there were a choice between eating a New York ribeye, medium rare or following him, I’d be cutting into a steak.
And I’d been a vegetarian for eight years.
But I had to follow him.
And not just because that dark and self-deprecating part of me was whispering in my ear, urging me to do so just so I could experience a little more pain. But because people inside that building relied on me. I made a commitment to them. And though people would be quick to say that I broke commitments like I broke hearts, it wasn’t true. Not to these people, who had nothing but a hope to rely on strangers to keep their bellies full and their heads dry.
And I knew there was an opinion on why they were in that position and the fact that they should be helping themselves. I knew both Rosie and Lucy’s thoughts on it. But it didn’t matter how they got to this hopeless spot. Not to me. It just mattered that they needed help and I could try to give them some.
In someone’s life, I could be the one saving them—even if it just came in the form of volunteering here and giving them things I strictly wasn’t allowed to give. Like deposits on apartments, second-hand cars that a friend of mine didn’t need anymore. New identities for battered women, courtesy of my friend Wire, who also organized new homes out of state. It was small. Minuscule compared to the things Rosie and Lucy had done—brought down drug dealers, did something I wasn’t quite sure about with international drug traffickers, but something as terrifying as it was amazing.
It wasn’t anything compared to that.
But it was something.
It was mine. It was all I had left to make me feel like I could do something for someone that was about making their life easier and not harder.
I walked through the doors.
* * *
I got to the kitchen to see my bags unceremoniously dumped on the stainless-steel counter, and Heath prowling around the industrial-sized kitchen like a caged animal.
I debated addressing his presence again, or more accurately, questioning it when he seemed like he’d be anywhere but here, but with his general demeanor, I didn’t know how well that would go. I didn’t know how well I would be able to survive it.
