Seeing as, two days ago, I was just a girl with a stalker.
And now I was a killer.
I was worried that was all I would be seeing myself as. Was I doomed to judge myself by the one horrible situation I had been forced into?
Time, I guess that was what I needed.
Time would tell.
It always did.
- Hanging in there.
Once more, and try to make it even the least bit convincing.
- I would if I could.
There was nothing for twenty minutes after that, leaving me to have a pit settle in my stomach, heavy and nauseating, making me wish I had forced my fingers to say something, anything else.
I probably came off whiny and pathetic.
And ungrateful.
But then the cell dinged again, making my heart skitter in my chest.
Meet me at She's Bean Around.
It wasn't exactly a request. Normally, I would have bristled at the presumptuousness of it all. I wasn't exactly a fan of being ordered around, even if it was for a meeting at the best coffee place in town.
But right now, in all my desperation not to be in my house, not to feel like all I was doing was living some giant cover-up, I got in my car and made my way into town.
I parked my old and rusty car in front of Quin's new and shiny one, taking a deep breath, and pulling down the mirror to make sure my makeup was still intact, before making my way up to the doors of She's Bean Around.
It was the only independent coffee place in the area, run by two women - Jazzy and Gala, both of whom were as wild as their names - who were sticklers for making the absolutely best coffee on this coast. In my humble opinion, they knocked it out of the park. And, judging by the large crowd in the somewhat small space with upscale, but rustic decor, I wasn't the only one.
I spotted the back of Quin at the counter, his navy suit still somehow perfectly pressed even after a full day of work. Making my way over, I heard Gala - the redheaded owner - speaking. "I'm just saying. I know you have like five coffee machines up in that joint. Sending that poor girl here three times a day seems like overkill."
"You're complaining about business?" Quin shot back, sounding amused.
"I'm complaining about that poor girl's feet is what I am doing," she told him, shaking her head as she moved to slap a filter into a coffee machine. "Don't worry," she went on, "I know your order. Black. Just like everyone else in that office except the puppy who likes hot chocolate."
I felt my lips curling up at that, finding it perfectly appropriate for that to be Kai's drink of choice.
"And one with cream and three sugars," Quin said suddenly, making me aware he knew of my presence even though I hadn't said anything, and was still a few feet behind. "You can come closer, babe. I did invite you here after all."
"Whaaaaat?" Gala asked, popping out from behind the massive coffee machine with six active pots, three brewing, three seeming just made. "You invited a girl here?"
"Don't read into it."
"Me? Read into the fact that I have seen you around this town for years now, and have never seen you with anyone but Jules? Why ever would I do that?"
"Ease up, or I'll have Jules start ordering in from that place with the bird name instead."
"You wouldn't," Gala insisted, small-eyeing him.
"Wouldn't I?" Quin asked as I moved in beside him at the counter.
"The thing is," Gala went on, looking at me, "he will. He's a real jackass that way. Stay clear of him. You look like a nice girl."
"What are you saying, Gala?" Quin asked in that same somewhat amused tone, "that I am not a good guy?"
Her only response to that was a snort as she pushed two to-go coffees across the counter, and took Quin's cash. "I'm keeping the change just because you threatened me," she told him, but he had already been reaching for the coffees, clearly not planning on taking it anyway.
"Sit?" Quin asked, jerking his chin toward the lone empty table in a back corner.
"Sure," I agreed, feeling like an awkward teenager on her first date as I followed him across the room.
Except, you know, this wasn't some kind of date or anything.
I wasn't sure what this was.
A meeting, I guess.
"The makeup covered well," he said as he pulled out my chair, a show of old-fashioned manners I was completely unaccustomed to. "I can notice a slight shadow, but that's likely only because I know it is there." He moved across the table to sit down, pushing my coffee toward me. "You slept in your bathtub, didn't you?"
"What?" I whisper-shrieked, jerking back in my chair. "How did you--"
"It's just something many women do when they don't feel safe in their houses," he said, shrugging it off. "Finn would like your critique of his cleaning job."
"Are you... serious?" I asked, brows drawing together.
"About cleaning, Finn is always serious."
"It's the cleanest I have ever seen my house, even after I scrubbed it myself for hours. I'm kind of getting used to the minty chemical smell."
"Fucking Finn smells like that ninety-percent of the time."
"The carpet is gorgeous. I know he asked about that. And the bedspread. It's all nicer than I had before. I just..."
"Can't bring yourself to sleep in there yet."
Or maybe ever again.
I didn't say that, though. I didn't want to be that weak, whiny, pathetic girl who needed someone to hold her hand. No matter how treacherous the landscape might be. I could learn to be sure-footed.
"I'll get there," I said instead, with perhaps more determination than I felt.
"Or you'll make do until the market turns, and you can move. But, just for the record," he said, sounding a little more serious suddenly, "you can't do that for at least a year. This has to settle first."
"I figured as much."
"You'll get through it," he assured me.
"Of course I will," I shot back, nodding. I didn't doubt that one day, someday, I could go through a twenty-four-hour period without it being in my mind. Today was simply not that day. Tomorrow wouldn't be either. "Was there something you needed to talk to me about in person?" I asked, taking a quick look around, noting a rather complete lack of privacy with how closely the tables were all situated.
"No," he said, shaking his head. "Nothing has changed since before. No progress today."
"Then, why the coffee?" I asked, wrapping my hands around the cup.
"Figured maybe you needed to get out of the house." Right, but he could have simply encouraged me to do so, right? He didn't need to invite me out himself. Especially when he seemed to say that we would not be in contact save for the burner cell he gave me. "And maybe with someone who you don't have to pretend around. If you're feeling like shit, feel like shit. No need to put on a mask with me. I know what went down."
That was true.
And it was refreshing to have that freedom.
That being said, I felt like I needed to keep it together with him. Because he was helping me for free, sure, but also for a reason I couldn't quite put a name to. I just didn't want him to think less of me, I guess. As odd as that was. He was just a stranger. Just a fixer. That was it. He wasn't a friend, a confidant.
"What's going on?" he asked into my silence, too lost in my own head to realize the time was slipping by. I went to shake my head and deny that anything was, but was cut off by him. "It won't help to pretend shit didn't go down when you are able to let it out. That's how you end up snapping. The last thing you - or me and my team - needs is for you to crack."
Right.
This was business.
I could point fingers at them if I ever lost my mind and admitted what I had done. And what was done to cover it up.
They needed to make sure their client didn't go off the deep end. To cover their own asses.
That reality made this meeting a lot less sweet suddenly.
"Right," I agreed, bringing my coffee up, taking a sip even though it
was too hot, somehow reveling in how it burned all the way down. "No worries."
Quin's dark brows drew together as he watched me, head dipped to the side slightly. "What'd I say?"
"You and your team don't need me going all straitjacket-crazy."
"More or less, that was what I said, yes. But then what's with the attitude?"
"No attitude."
"Remind me to invite you to poker night," he said, lips tipped up slightly. "You can't lie for shit. I'd wipe the floor with you."
Ugh.
That was true, unfortunately.
My voice went too robotic to be natural.
"I wouldn't be so cocky. I have a knack for cards. My father taught me before he died."
"Mine too," Quin agreed, and somehow, having that little real life detail for him managed to take him from being this unknowable, enigmatic force, this fixer, to a human being. And in doing so, I felt a lot more on even footing with him.
"Do you always win?"
"Ah," he said, leaning back in the chair, his chest widening, making his shirt stretch over it, a sexy detail I had no business noticing. Now. Or ever. And I definitely should not have been flashing back to the shower room, and the inhumanly perfect image of him with next to no clothes on. "Depends on the week. And by that, I mean it depends if Jules is playing or not. She could do it professionally. Never met someone with such a perfect poker face before."
"Must be interesting to be the only girl in a boys club. Especially so young."
"She's got attitude beyond her years. She holds her own around the office. We all know we'd be lost without her. What's your place like?"
"Well, if I am out in the front instead of in the back room, it's nice. Fun. Kennedy, the owner, and her best friend Benny are hilarious together. It's a nice, light place."
"If you're not stuck in the back room waxing pussy all day, that is."
I was starting to wonder if he used the word because it made me flinch. I wasn't a prude by anyone's standards, but there was something about hearing that kind of word unexpectedly out of a really hot man's mouth that disarmed a woman. You couldn't help but let your thoughts go there. Where my thoughts most definitely needed not to go.
"I wax backs and chests too." On occasion. Fine, rarely. But he didn't need to know that part.
He let that slide, though the look in his eye suggested he had my card. "Was this something you were always into?" I felt my cheeks heat, making a low, rumbling chuckle escape him, a sound that seemed to slide through my system way too deliciously. "Spa crap, not pussy," he clarified, a ghost of a smile on his lips.
"I was into something that would get me away from two dozen kids that would come in every day of the year carrying some sort of viral plague that was bound to make its way through to all the staff. And, besides that, forty-thousand a year was a lot more tempting than nineteen."
"You like kids?"
"I haven't really spent any time with any since I left that job. But, yeah. I mean, you can't do that job if you don't like kids at least a little bit."
To be perfectly honest, it was rather nice to talk. Not just about pleasantries with clients, or salon stuff with coworkers. Just talking. About me. About life. It had been so long since I had this that I had almost forgotten how good it felt when someone just wanted to get to know you a little.
"You?" I asked when he didn't immediately move the conversation along.
"My sister has a couple monsters I am fond of. They live off in New York state so I generally only see them on their summer break."
Oddly, it was almost hard to imagine Quin with a family. I don't know why. I mean, almost everyone had a family. I guess, in my head, he existed as this tall, dark, savior, surrounded by all his equally tall and interesting group of coworkers.
"How did you get into, erm, fixing?" I asked, finding myself wanting to know more, wanting all the pieces to the puzzle.
"I went to school for law in the first place."
Law?
Now that made no sense.
How does one go from being on the right side of it, to doing everything in his power to obstruct it?
"Okay, that is going to need more explanation."
He gave me a small smile. "Eighteen, I went into the military knowing they would pay for my college. There was no way my parents could."
"Is this the part where you say I saw some shit. It changed me?"
He snorted a little at that, but shrugged. "That wouldn't be the wrong way to put it. I did see some shit - and do some shit - that changed me. It was also where I met Smith. And Finn. But regardless of that, I did finish law school. Passed the Bar. Spent about a year doing that before I couldn't fucking take it anymore. From there, things just fell into place. I had contacts. I knew how to get some interesting things done. People were willing to pay a lot to have those things done."
"You never had a moral dilemma about it?"
"I won't lie about it. I deal with a lot of scumbags. More scumbags than good people. But sometimes it is a less seedy job like burying a decade-old lesbian affair for a married woman who is about to become the first female CEO of a giant corporation. Or getting rid of any possible evidence that some poor, idiot politician's kid took a drug tour across Europe."
"Poor politician's kid?" I asked, voice dripping with skepticism.
"If you met this politician, you would understand why this kid turned to drugs. Never saw a snake wearing a suit before that day he came to me."
I guess I could understand that. I had only maybe ever come across two politicians that I didn't think were corrupt weasels out for themselves first. "Why did you move to Navesink Bank? Your website said you had been here only a few years," I clarified.
"I've never come across a more corrupt police force than this one. I'm not in the business of paying off cops, but they're a lot less likely to be trying to come off as cop of the year if they're on the take. So no one even looks our way here. Plus, with all the shit that goes on in this town, it drums up some business for us too."
"Is it dangerous? Fixing?"
"Depends on the job. Miller and Kai are in the minefields the most."
"Kai? Sweet Kai?"
"Sweet Kai is a fucking adrenaline junkie. If he's not on a crazy ass job, he is jumping off some cliff, out of some plane, climbing some impossible wall. Says he had to make up for the boring nerd he was all growing up."
"He has a thing for Jules," I observed, curious if they knew. Or if they were too dense about that kind of thing.
"He's got an epic, unrequited, once in a lifetime thing for Jules. Ever since her first week on the job."
"It's sweet."
"It's sad," he countered.
"Because Jules doesn't reciprocate."
"Because I think Jules is clueless. Thinks it is just Kai being Kai. And she maybe has a sisterly attachment to him. But he thinks she is the holy grail. So no other woman is ever going to be able to measure up."
Okay.
Maybe that was kind of sad.
I hadn't thought of it that way.
I maybe already pictured them finding love some day and having adorable Korean and Irish - I am assuming given her red hair - babies.
That was a bit fanciful and romantic of me, I guess.
"Don't look so crushed, babe," Quin said, giving me what I could only call a warm smile, something that seemed strange coming from him. "Were you already picturing them with a white picket fence, two-point-five kids, and a Golden Retriever?"
"Shut up," I said, feeling a smile tugging at my lips. A real one. Just half an hour before, I would have said that that was impossible.
"Admit it. You were hearing wedding bells and the low rumble of a," he started, then stopped to swallow hard, like what was to follow was truly horrifying, "mini-van."
"I didn't figure you for the teasing type," I observed, feeling an odd bit of warmness in my stomach that I hadn't felt in so long that I almost couldn't name for what it was. Attraction. And more than just the ph
ysical kind.
"I'm usually not," he told me but seemed unbothered by an uncharacteristic shift in his nature. "What can I say, the idea of a guy like Kai cruising down the road in a minivan with a set of those ridiculous stick-figure families on the back window brings it out of me."
"Jules running around the sidelines at little league with those six-inch ankle-breakers on..."
"Exactly," he agreed, giving me a small smile. "Look at that," he added, watching me.
"Look at what?"
"That boulder fell right off your shoulders. You just needed to get out of there for a while."
He wasn't wrong. That knot that had been settled in my stomach, twisting ever tighter by the hour felt unraveled suddenly. And this had been the longest I had gone all day without thinking of the body, of the eyes wide-open in death, of the blood, of the way my finger had squeezed that trigger.
"It's nice to be able to forget for a while."
Quin watched me for a long moment, something in his deep eyes that I couldn't read. "If you need to forget for a little while, just let me know."
Was he offering me - this intimidating, successful, lawless man, offering me, boring, no one me - friendship?
What's more, was I actually considering it?
Hell, did I - alone as a person could be in the world - even have a true choice in the matter? I was in no position to turn it down. Especially because, with Quin, I wouldn't have to pretend. He knew all. And because he was who he was, he wouldn't judge me for it.
"I'll keep that in mind. Thank you," I added, meaning it more than I knew was even possible.
"And maybe consider getting out more in general. I know you are a homebody, and I don't want you going out to the bar, and getting wasted every night, doing shit completely out of character. But maybe take that beast to the dog park. Maybe hit a movie, or come hang out here with a book. Just don't let those walls start whispering to you."
"Whispering to me? That's an odd way to put it."
"Is it?" he countered, but said nothing else, leaving me to wonder what walls whispered to him. And what they said.
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