by Tia Fielding
“And what?” Charlie shook her head. “And listen to you two instead? The two guys who were most important to me, who both just fucked off and left town without a word? And now you’re both going to ride in and white knight me, like I need saving?”
“It’s not just about you though,” Aaron said. “Is it? It’s about Lennox too. You have every right to hate both of us—I’m not going to argue about that—but Quinn is telling you that Lennox is in danger.”
“I know!” She ripped her hand away from his. “I know! I’m not deaf, Aaron! I can hear what Quinn’s saying!”
She stood up and stomped into the kitchen. Aaron heard the refrigerator open, and the rattle of glass bottles. He and Quinn exchanged a wary look. Charlie was back a moment later, with three bottles of beer. She sat down again, twisted the top off one bottle, and held it out to Quinn.
He shook his head.
“Right,” Charlie said, and took a swig of the beer. “Rehab, of course.”
Aaron wasn’t as constrained. He reached for one of the other bottles, and watched Quinn watch him drink. “So rehab was the real deal, huh?”
Quinn’s brows drew together, wrinkling his forehead. “Yeah.” And then, before Aaron could ask, he said, “It was for coke, mostly, but I also used crack when I couldn’t get my hands on any coke. It fucked me up for a while.”
Aaron raised his brows. “Past tense?”
Quinn shrugged. “I didn’t say I wasn’t still fucked up, just that now I’m fucked up and clean.”
Charlie picked at the label on her beer bottle and glared at Quinn. “So you want me to quit my job and just leave town? Like it’s all that easy?”
Quinn didn’t say anything.
Aaron sighed. “Listen, there’s nothing keeping me here. Maybe you and Lennox could come with me.” He saw Quinn’s shoulders slump a little as the tension left him. “We could go on a road trip or something.”
Charlie leveled him with a stare. “A road trip? To where?”
“Fuck if I know.” He took a swig of beer. “Where was that place you always wanted to go to?”
“Hollywood?”
“No, the place on the postcard you used to carry around,” Aaron said. “With the lake and the trees. Vermont.”
Charlie set her beer down on the table and rubbed her hands over her face. “You want to take me and Lennox on a road trip to Vermont?”
“It’s not like I’ve got anything more pressing on my schedule. Besides, maybe in a few weeks everything will have settled down again.” He glanced at Quinn, and could tell he thought that was bullshit. “How long’ve you been working at the diner?”
“Since high school.”
“So tell your boss you need a few weeks off,” Aaron said. “They might hold your job for you.”
“That’s a hell of a gamble to make when I’ve got rent to pay and a kid to feed.” But Charlie’s voice had softened, and Aaron knew he had her on the hook now. “I mean, maybe it will work.”
“So that’s what we’ll do then,” Aaron said, looking to Quinn for confirmation and getting a short dip of his chin. “We’ll leave…when? A couple of days from now?”
“As soon as you can,” Quinn said. “Please.”
And it was probably that word, more than the badge still lying on the table, that convinced Aaron that Quinn was deadly serious, because he couldn’t ever remember Quinn MacGregor ever saying it so quietly, so wholeheartedly, in his life.
He took another swig of beer.
Fuck. This was all real.
* * * *
Charlie left after her beer, and Aaron limped into the kitchen to throw the paper plates into the trash. He figured Quinn would leave when Charlie did—slink out like a stray dog, probably—and he was surprised when he followed him and then moved to stand beside him at the counter. He was a line of heat along Aaron’s side.
“You know how to shock a guy. I always figured you’d followed in your dad’s footsteps,” Aaron murmured, folding a paper plate in half and shoving it in a garbage bag.
“No,” Quinn said. “I followed in your dad’s footsteps instead.”
Heat rose on Aaron’s face—anger and pain and hurt—and his chest ached. “Don’t—don’t—”
Quinn put a hand on his lower back, anchoring him in the moment. “Listen. Just listen to me for a second, okay?”
Aaron turned to face him, and Quinn’s hand slid to his hip.
“I never got a chance to tell you this,” Quinn said. “I never even told Charlie about it.”
Aaron swallowed around the lump in his throat.
“A few days before everything happened, your dad busted me smoking weed at the school, at like midnight on a Wednesday or something, because I was making all the smart decisions back then.” Quinn smiled slightly. “Anyway, instead of dragging my ass down to the station, he threw me in the back of his cruiser instead, and said he was taking me home. Instead, he took me out of town.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“He gave me the shovel talk, Aaron,” Quinn said. “I was stuck in that cruiser for a good thirty minutes while your dad drove us around and went on about how I needed to straighten up and fly right and all that stuff. And at first I figured it was because of Charlie, since her dad was never going to step up for her and give a boyfriend that talk, but then he said, ‘If you’re seeing my son, you need to get your head out of your ass.’”
Aaron felt as though he’d been thrown into cold water. “What?”
“He knew,” Quinn said. “I don’t know how, but he knew. And he didn’t care that I was a guy, or even that I was a MacGregor. Jesus, Aaron, nobody had ever told me before that I could do better. That I could be better than my family. And he said that he’d help me, in whatever way I needed.”
Aaron sucked in a shaking breath. He could hardly hear over the roar of blood in his skull. “Dad knew about us?”
“Yeah.” Quinn lifted his free hand and brushed his knuckles gently down Aaron’s stubbled cheek. “So when…so when he was killed and Mom moved me to Chicago, suddenly I didn’t have to be a MacGregor anymore. Like your dad said, I could be anything I wanted. I could be a good person. When I graduated from the academy and got my badge, it wasn’t my dad I was thinking of, Aaron, it was yours. He was a good man, and I wanted to make him proud.”
Aaron’s eyes stung. “Shit.”
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said, his voice rasping. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth from the start. And I’m so fucking sorry that my asshole father murdered your dad. I’m so sorry it wasn’t my dad who died instead.”
Aaron scrubbed at his tears with the heels of his hands.
“This is why you can’t stay,” Quinn said. “Because I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you. You know what your dad said to me that night, about us?”
Aaron shook his head.
“He said, ‘Be kind to each other.’ And that was never us, but God, I wanted it to be. And it was going to be. I was going to be kind and good and never say hurtful things to you again, and we were going to get out of Spruce Creek together, and I was going to figure out how to be happy, Aaron.” His voice cracked and tears slid down his cheeks. “And all because your dad told me that I could, and I believed him. Thirty minutes alone with the guy, and he made me want to be better. He made me want to be someone he could be proud of.”
Aaron reached out and took Quinn’s hand and laced their fingers together. His head was spinning. “Stay,” he said. “Stay with me for a while. Just to sleep, please.”
Quinn’s dark gaze held his, and then he nodded. “Yes.”
They went into the bedroom.
There, in the quiet and the golden light of the afternoon, they both stripped off down to their underwear and then slid into the bed. Quinn rested his head on Aaron’s chest, and Aaron put his arms around him. He wasn’t sure which one of them was comforting the other, and it didn’t matter.
He carded his fin
gers through Quinn’s hair until Quinn’s breathing evened out and he fell asleep. Aaron stayed awake for much longer, staring into the darkness, his chest aching, missing his dad. He wished there was some way to tell him that a thirty-minute talk with a messed-up teenage boy had somehow changed the trajectory of that boy’s entire life. He wished he could tell Dad that Quinn had listened and believed him, and had turned his life around.
And then he wondered if it even mattered. After all, Quinn was still a MacGregor, and that was a dangerous thing to be in Spruce Creek.
Chapter 13
This time, Quinn stayed the whole night. After all the confessions, he felt wiped out and was smart enough to know that being too tired—emotionally or physically—to function wasn’t constructive in any way when it came to his job.
He was sure Sheriff Henderson would see his car on the other side of the road from Aaron’s house anyway, so who was he trying to kid? Then again, eventually, he would have to tell Henderson what was going on. He just couldn’t do it yet. He refused to put another small-town sheriff Aaron loved into that kind of danger. Quinn knew enough of how territorial cops worked to know that there was a fifty-fifty chance Henderson would stick his nose into something he wasn’t ready or equipped for.
Aaron woke up slowly next to Quinn. Before he even opened his eyes, he reached his hand out, his mouth a line that curved upwards as soon as he touched Quinn’s chest. Then he opened his eyes and looked at Quinn with a weird sort of marvel in his gaze.
“Hi,” Aaron whispered.
“Morning.”
They smiled at each other for a moment, then cuddled up under the covers in the too-cold bedroom, and just soaked in the moment.
“This feels like a calm before a storm,” Aaron said quietly, his words tickling Quinn’s chest.
Quinn huffed. “Yeah. It’s the exact way I’ve been feeling since I got into town, and I didn’t even know why.”
“God, I can’t even imagine what your job must be like.”
“It’s…it’s a lot of being fake. Being someone I’m not. At all times. Sometimes….”
When he didn’t continue, Aaron looked up. “What?”
Quinn smiled tightly. “Sometimes I think I used the drugs so I wouldn’t think about how I wasn’t sure who the real me was anymore.” He’d said as much to the therapist at rehab who had agreed.
Aaron pressed his cheek against Quinn’s chest again and squeezed him tighter.
A car drove past the house, the hum in the morning surprisingly loud, but then again, the house was practically attached to Main Street.
“I feel like you were the only person who ever really saw me,” Quinn whispered eventually.
Aaron stayed quiet for a bit, then said, “Same. Well, and Charlie of course. But that’s not a basis for…this.” He lifted his hand where it was on Quinn’s stomach under the blanket and let it drop again.
“I don’t know how this whole deal ends. With Jimmy and the Skulls I mean. I don’t want to get hurt again, but that might happen. If I get caught in it somehow, I can’t promise I’ll walk out of there.” Quinn put into words what he knew Aaron had been thinking. He’d seen it in his eyes, just like he always saw it in his mother’s eyes or even Day’s when he headed somewhere dangerous.
“I know.”
“But if it goes well, if I can follow you wherever you guys go, then….” He hoped but he didn’t believe enough to say it out loud.
Aaron had the bravery to put it into words. “Then maybe we see where this goes now, as adults?”
Quinn nodded. “I think, once this is done, I’m done with undercover shit. I’ve spent my whole career in it so far and I’m so over it.”
“How did that even happen?”
Quinn sighed. “I’m not sure if you noticed but my badge says Byrne, not MacGregor?”
“Yeah, I saw. Isn’t that your mom’s family?”
“Yes, and that’s what I use now officially. Except here.”
“Right.”
“Well, one of my instructors realized where I was from, happens to have a friend who is from Crystal Springs, and also a cop.” He shrugged.
“And cops love to talk,” Aaron concluded.
“Yeah. So he knew there was this family in Spruce Creek and he asked. I ended up having several meetings with people before and after I graduated and well, the rest is history. They needed to put a fresh face in a gang in Denver, so I was there for a year, barely got out alive.”
Aaron tensed, then sneaked his fingers under Quinn’s side, unerringly finding the scars there. “That’s where you got these?”
Quinn wished he could’ve said yes. “No, those came after. In the next place. Chicago was my third assignment and the longest.” He took Aaron’s hand and put it on the scar on his lower abdomen. It was small and hidden by a tattoo of a Japanese phoenix. “Knife wound.”
“I like the ink.” Aaron stroked the phoenix with his fingers. “And the meaning.”
Quinn hummed. He didn’t have many tattoos, but they all held messages of courage, hope, and rebirth. He’d figured the reminder wouldn’t go amiss.
The cuddling turned into slow, tender lovemaking that somehow made everything better and worse at the same time. It gave Quinn that pesky hope that if he managed to survive this, there would be better things ahead, but it also meant that if he died, Aaron would be hurt again.
This time, Quinn moved inside Aaron, his hips rocking ever so slightly as they held each other close. Quinn had never made love like this, and he knew that he never would again if he lost Aaron.
“Isn’t it fucking silly,” he managed to speak just barely, “that we met as kids?”
“Oh fuck, right there, harder.” Aaron gasped, and then moaned long and low before saying, “What are you saying?”
Quinn moved enough to get more force behind his thrusts. “That in another life, we’d been some sort of high school sweethearts who made it?”
He was getting close, spurred on by the ecstasy on Aaron’s face. To know he could have this effect on Aaron was everything.
Aaron let out a litany of curses, then arched his back slightly and quickly jerked himself off to an orgasm that made him turn into a vise around Quinn’s dick.
Quinn couldn’t hold back any longer, either. Instead, he let go and came hard enough to feel it in his whole body, then slumped on top of Aaron. He had just enough energy left to put a hand down to support his weight a bit, then awkwardly did the getting rid of the condom thing.
When he came back from the bathroom, Aaron looked at him with some sadness in his gaze.
“What?”
“I think our lives are some Shakespeare quality shit, Quinn. A fucking drama with some weird comedic bits and a great tragedy at the end.”
“Don’t say that,” Quinn said, feeling genuinely upset.
Before Aaron could reply, Quinn’s phone buzzed on the floor where he’d left it. He picked it up and sat on the edge of the bed.
“For fuck’s sake!” He punched the mattress next to his hip when he read the message.
“What is it?”
“Charlie. She can’t get time off until starting Saturday. Someone’s sick and another server is home with sick kids. She’s literally the only one able to work in addition to the owner’s wife.”
Aaron winced. Then he thought quickly, like he always had. “So we leave on Saturday. It’s Sunday now. That’s a week.”
“I wish she wasn’t this stubborn,” Quinn grumped as he texted Charlie back.
Aaron laughed out loud. “Quinn, she has a kid to feed. If everything returns to normal, if the only way is for her to come back here, she needs that job. She needs security for Lennox. It’s completely reasonable from her point of view not to leave town without that.”
“I know that!” Quinn snapped, immediately regretting it. “I just hate that I can’t do anything about that.”
“Yeah,” Aaron said in a decidedly “it is what it is” kind of tone.
Quinn leaned back where he sat, resting his head on Aaron’s thighs. He looked up at the boy he’d loved since he was a teenager and wondered how being with Aaron now could hurt this much. The elusive memories of that summer had started to feel like a utopia of sorts. Like it couldn’t have been as good as he remembered it.
But he saw it there, in Aaron’s eyes, even now. Even after a decade of fucked up distance, tragedy, and getting hurt in various ways. “I love you. I’ve always loved you.”
Aaron’s face did something extremely complicated, then he smiled sadly. “Yeah.” It was as close to a declaration Quinn was going to get right now, and that was okay.
“I have to go,” Quinn said and pushed himself upright. “I need to find a way to figure out how much Ian knows. Arthur too.”
“It can’t be easy, having to keep stuff from them when they’re your family.”
“No, no it’s not.” Quinn got dressed, foregoing a shower in lieu of getting out of the house where his emotions were starting to overwhelm him. He leaned in to kiss Aaron. “Stay safe for me. Keep an eye on Charlie and Lennox if you can. This might…this might get messy. I’ll try to give you a heads-up if I need you to leave in a rush, okay?”
“Okay.” Aaron fisted his hair and pulled him close into a kiss that tasted of desperation. Then he pushed Quinn away. “Go.”
Quinn left the house.
* * * *
He went to have lunch with Aunt Karen. She seemed almost like her typical take no-BS self, but there was an undercurrent Quinn could feel, so he chose not to poke at her. When she was already worried, she would clam up when it came to the issue at hand.
“So, when I came home last night, I drove past the old sheriff’s house…” She trailed off, raising an eyebrow at him over her mug of coffee.
Quinn rolled his eyes. “Yes, I spent the night with Aaron. It’s not like you’re surprised.”
She pursed her mouth and thought for a moment. “I’m not, in a way. There’s just this…I don’t know. I worry about you, and I don’t know where this will lead, any of this, and if you add Aaron into the equation…”