by Emma Salah
He said nothing. They pulled up in front of his apartment. She unbuckled her seat belt and was reaching for him, stopping him from getting out of the car. She touched his cheek. He gazed at her.
“Ree—”
“I think you underestimate just how amazing you are.”
“Stop,” he said through clenched teeth.
“You are amazing, Zachariah Quinn.” She punctuated each word with a kiss to his mouth.
“Reagan.” More desperate now to get her to stop. He cupped both of her cheeks in his palms. But she couldn’t. She wasn’t going to until he understood what she was saying to him.
“You are an incredible hockey player, but you are a wonderful person. One of my best friends.” She choked on the last word.
He stroked her face.
“Stop,” he said, gently. “I get it.”
“Do you?”
“Yeah, you little vixen. So, you can stop now.”
She grinned at him. “Or what?”
Zac kissed her, hard.
“Or I’m going to spank you again,” he said, against her lips.
She shuddered and she knew he felt it when his eyes darkened.
“Yes please.”
“Fuck, let’s get inside now, before I fuck you in this car again. Can’t even be bothered with my bag right now, I’ll get it tomorrow.”
It would not bother her in the least if they fucked in the car again, but she had a feeling once they started they would not be able to stop. And she did not want to give all the residents of Zac’s apartment an unforgettable show of Zac’s and Ree’s orgasms. Also, she still needed to have that talk with him. She could do this. They’d spent close to every waking moment with each other for the last couple of days. Zac must feel the way she was feeling. She knew it.
Hand in hand, they walked into the lobby of the apartment. The security guard, Dave, who usually gave them a wave and smile, looked up from the monitors. Alarm crossed his face and he hurried towards them.
“Mr. Quinn, I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”
“I saw the message. What is it?”
Dave took a deep breath. “Your father’s here.”
Zac went rigid. Reagan’s eyes snapped to his.
“What?” she breathed.
“He arrived half an hour ago...and he refused to leave. He was disturbing many of the residents as they were trying to get in. I had to do something with him, so I left him outside your door. I thought since you own the whole floor, no one else would be able to hear him and you could have a private conversation.” Dave swallowed.
Zac’s expression was blank, a scary blank. He let go of her hand.
“Where’s Kenny and Mark?” Zac asked Dave, his voice deep and crackling with something volatile.
“Out. I called them and they said they’ll be here in ten minutes. That was five minutes ago.”
“When they get here, bring them to my floor. Reagan, stay here,” he snapped and then he was gone, running up the stairs.
Oh shit, this was not good. Not good at all. Zac’s father was here. A father he hadn’t seen in a decade. A father he hated, who messed up his childhood and ruined his mother. And now, Zac was about to confront this man. Not good. She had to stop him from doing something stupid.
“You heard him?” she asked Dave.
Dave nodded.
“Okay. Dave, tell them to hurry.” Reagan ran after Zac.
Thank god for Converses. Zac lived on the eighth floor and by the fourth, she was huffing and puffing. Why, oh why, didn’t I take the elevator? I’m such a dumbass. She finally reached the eighth floor, trying not to hack out a lung as she pushed open the door. A loud voice assaulted her ears immediately.
“YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME, DO YOU? DO YOU, YOU BASTARD? YOU’RE NOTHING! YOU HEAR ME, NOTHING!”
Silence. No reply from Zac. Reagan hurried down the hallway, almost afraid of what she was going to see. She turned the corner and skidded to a halt.
“DON’T IGNORE ME, YOU BASTARD! YOU GOOD FOR NOTHING, SON OF A BITCH!”
Zac stood with his back to her, arms to his side, frozen. A man was standing in front of him, yelling in his face. It had been five years since Reagan had seen Zac’s father and he was almost unrecognizable. His abuse of alcohol had ravaged him. At fifty-five years old, the man was younger than her own father, but looked decades older. His once-brown hair was now entirely gray, except for the bald patches on his head. He was overweight, carrying most of that fat around his middle. His clothes were dirty, an unbuttoned checkered shirt, a T-shirt tucked into jeans that had seen better days. And his face was haggard, but his eyes were spitting mad and his mouth twisted in his usual hate-filled smirk. Even from here, Reagan could tell he was drunk out of his mind.
“Look at you,” Sheriff Jeremy Quinn spat. “You were nothing as a child and you’re still nothing now.”
Reagan nearly jumped out of her skin when Zac spoke.
“Then, why are you here? It’s clear that I mean nothing to you, so why are you at my house?”
He pushed a fat, red finger in Zac’s face. “Because you owe me. And I came for what belongs to me. I think two million would do nicely for now.”
Fuck no. He was owed nothing. Reagan opened her mouth to tell him that, but Zac beat her to it.
“No. You deserve nothing from me. Get the fuck out.”
Sheriff Quinn’s face twisted into something ugly. “YOU BASTARD! YOU OWE ME! YOU THINK YOU CAN SAY NO TO ME! DO YOU? I’LL SHOW YOU!”
Reagan watched in horror as he swung his fist. Zac stepped back and the punch went wide. Sheriff Quinn stumbled and almost fell. He caught himself by grabbing onto the wall. The silence in the hallway was terrible. She couldn’t move. Was paralyzed by some unknown fear.
Zac’s father wiped the back of his mouth.
“I should have drowned you as a baby,” he whispered. “I told her, I told that woman I didn’t want you in my house and what did she do? She had you anyway. She should’ve never had you. You shouldn’t be alive.” He looked up at Zac, the hate palpable.
Zac didn’t react. And they stood like that, until the door behind Reagan thudded open. Kenny, Mark and Dave ran into the hallway. They reached for Sheriff Quinn, who began screaming abuse again.
“GET OFF ME! I’LL SUE, YOU HEAR ME! THAT’S MY SON! HE’S MINE!”
His words rang through the hallway even after the security guards had dragged him out. His words haunting Zac and Reagan both.
Chapter Twenty-One
They stood there in silence. Reagan walked to Zac’s side on shaky legs. His face was turned from her, his hands clenched at his side. Everything inside of her hurt from Jeremy Quinn’s words and if she felt like that, she had no idea how Zac was feeling.
“Zac,” she whispered.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, harshly.
“Zac, your dad—”
He exploded. “Fuck, Reagan! I just said I don’t want to talk about it!”
He pushed open the door to his apartment and strode inside, leaving her standing there in shock. She hesitated for a moment. Should I go inside, or should I leave him to calm down? Give him some distance? No. I can’t. He’s in pain. She couldn’t just leave him in pain. She took a deep breath. Put on your big girl panties, Reagan, and go help him. She’d let it slide too many times before. Not anymore.
She followed Zac inside the apartment. He stood at the breakfast bar, hands on the counter, leaning forward with his head hung down. He looked up when she slammed the door shut. His face was strained, his jaw tight, as she came towards him.
“You need to leave,” he told her.
She shook her head. “I’m not leaving you like this. I can’t. Don’t ask me to.”
“Fuck! Fuck!” He banged his fist on the counter. She flinched
. “What don’t you get? I don’t want you here!”
“I’m not leaving you!” she snapped, frustration leaking out.
“It has nothing to do with you, Reagan!”
“But it has everything to do with you!” She put her hands on her hips.
“No,” he snapped back. “My fucked-up dad has absolutely nothing to do with me.”
“He hurt you—” Reagan tried.
“I don’t want to talk about him. He’s gone. That’s over with. Let’s move the fuck on, already.”
“If you’re so over it, then why don’t you want to talk about it?” she asked him desperately. God, why couldn’t he see that he was hurting himself by keeping this all bottled inside? She wasn’t naïve enough to believe that by talking to her, it would magically make decades of pain disappear, but it might help. It might give him an outlet for all the anger and pain eating away at him.
Zac ran his hands through his hair. “Look, I know you’re trying to help, Reagan, but I don’t need anything. I’m fine, okay. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Zac. You think I can’t see it, but I can’t—”
“Stop.”
“Your dad coming back here has torn open old wounds that you don’t—”
“STOP!”
But she couldn’t stop. She needed to get through to him. Desperation drove her. She leaned on the counter towards him. His eyes were wary.
“I want to help. Let me in, Zac.”
“There’s nothing I need your help for,” he whispered.
“Needing help doesn’t mean you’re weak.”
“I know that,” he said, harshly.
“I needed your help a couple of days ago, remember? With my dickhead boss. Why is it okay for us to share that part of our lives, but not this part? I want you, Zac! I want all of you!”
He laughed harshly. “I’m sorry I’m not like you, Reagan. Not all of us can spill out all our problems. You might want to, but I definitely don’t. And I never will. You need to get whatever hero complex you have out of your system, because you’re not going to save me. I’m not going to be your pet project or your boyfriend. That isn’t what I want. Or does what I want not matter to you at all?”
She stumbled back. His expression didn’t change as he watched her, not moving an inch. The distance between them felt more than just a few meters. There was more than just a breakfast bar separating them. Tears pricked her eyes. She let them fall.
“I’m literally begging you, but you don’t care at all, do you?” Reagan whispered. “I’m so fucking stupid.” She looked away, coming to a realization. Every moment that Zac had said “no” to her or showed her exactly what he thought of her ran through her mind. “All this time, I thought you just needed me to be patient and you would eventually see that I’m not going anywhere. That I love you. That I want to be with you. All this time, I thought it was fear that was holding you back.”
* * *
She loves me.
Zac heard nothing but the roar of his own blood in his ears and those words. Fuck, she loved him. How was that even possible? He had no clue and he didn’t know what to say to that.
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Reagan,” he admitted aloud.
She brushed away the tears trailing down her cheek, stepping further away from the breakfast bar.
“Nothing. This is not your fault. It’s mine. I should have listened to you when you said you didn’t want to be with me. It was my own stupid fault for ignoring you. For thinking that I knew more than you. That you would suddenly wake up and feel the way I feel about you. And... I shouldn’t have pushed you, Zac. If you don’t want to talk about it, I can’t force you to.”
Instead of her words calming him, it made him panic. He walked around the breakfast bar.
“Reagan—” he began, with no idea what he was going to say.
She shook her head, moving further away from him, towards the door.
“It’s okay. I love you, Zachariah Quinn. I’m sorry I’m not what you need me to be.”
He caught her by the arm. She jerked away from his grip.
“Don’t go,” he told her desperately. “Not like this.”
“I can’t stay. And tonight was going to be the end of our deal so it all had to end anyway.”
“You promised, Reagan. You promised that we would still be friends after all this.”
An expression washed over her face that he had never seen, but it was gone before he could decipher it.
“We are friends.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Please, Zac.” Her voice broke on his name and his heart almost broke with it. “If you value me at all, please let me go. We can deal with our friendship another day, just...not now.”
Fuck. What did he do? But she was literally trembling, arms wrapped around her body as if she was protecting herself from him. From him. Fuck. Slowly, Zac nodded. She left the apartment and him, leaving him wondering for the hundredth time since this all started: What the fuck had just happened?
Chapter Twenty-Two
Reagan was finding it hard to breathe. Partially because of the broken heart she was currently nursing, but mostly because of the pillow over her head. She was lying facedown in her bed, under her covers, where she had been almost every moment since coming home yesterday. She wasn’t planning on moving anytime soon. She was in the ugliest pajamas that she could find in her closet and she hadn’t bothered to fix her hair after her shower. She could feel the wet tendrils on the back of her neck. If it was up to her, she was going to spend the rest of her life under her pillows, in her bed. Doing nothing but eating cookies and pizza. Fuck her job, who needed it anyway?
So much had happened in only two weeks. In two weeks, she’d gone from thinking things between her and Zac would always be in this friends with almost benefits phase to dating to...this. She had been so hopeful about Zac’s feelings for her only a couple of days ago and now...now, she knew the truth. Zac didn’t feel the same way about her. How could he when he refused to let her in? She had given him plenty of opportunities, but still he only gave her a part of himself and never all of it. She couldn’t do it. Not with him. She wanted all of him.
At least she knew now before...before what exactly? Before her feelings for him got too deep? Too late for that. Before things between them got messy? Yep, things between them were already messy and they had only gotten messier. The truth was always better though. Right?
No, it isn’t, she thought hysterically. She would rather have lived in denial, thinking if given half a chance Zac would want to be with her. That he would see that loving her was worth all the risk and that she would never leave him.
* * *
Reagan felt the ever-persistent tears in her throat and burning in her eyes. She tried to beat it back since she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life crying. She only heard the noise of her doorbell buzzing when she lifted her head for a second to rub her eyes. By the sound of it the person had buzzed more than once.
Reagan leapt out of bed. She skidded out of her bedroom on her fluffy socks, into the hallway to her door. She was definitely not presentable enough for guests, but she couldn’t be bothered to fix herself up. Whoever was at her door was just going to have to deal.
“Coming! Coming!”
She didn’t bother looking through the keyhole. She unlocked the door and threw it open.
“Dad,” she said in shock.
Lincoln Thomas took her in, his eyes shifting to her socks, her cotton pants and oversized shirt to her face, where there were track marks from the pillow and probably smeared tears on her cheeks. Her dad didn’t say anything about it. Another thing she had to think about today: her dad’s avoidance of any uncomfortable conversations with her.
“Did we have plans today and I forgot?” she finally asked.
&
nbsp; “Do I need to make an appointment to see my daughter?”
“No.” She laughed softly.
She opened the door wider. “Um...come in.”
Her father walked into her apartment. He had only been in her apartment maybe four times in the two years she had lived here. And one of those times had been the day she had moved in. It was kind of weird seeing him here. She had no idea if it was a good weird or a bad weird.
Reagan followed him into the living room. He made his way to the sofa and sat down. He placed his cane across his knee as he generally did. She sat down beside him, tentatively, still unsure what he was doing here.
“I was in the city for an errand and I thought it might be a good idea to drop in.” He cleared his throat, not meeting her eyes. “I didn’t think you would be at home during the day on a weekend.”
Oh. He didn’t expect her to be here. She thought maybe that explained things, but it didn’t. It just made her more confused. Why would he have bothered to drive to her apartment if he didn’t think she was going to be there? Her efficient, military father never did anything without a reason.
They fell into an uncomfortable silence. Usually, Reagan would have jumped in to fill the silence, but she felt so damn tired she couldn’t think of any pleasant crap to talk about. Instead, she went with the truth.
“Is there something you want to talk to me about, Dad?”
He tapped his cane on his knee, a nervous gesture so out of character she stared at him. Oh god, there was something wrong with him.
“You’re not dying, are you?” she asked, suddenly scared.
“No!” he huffed out. “Why do you children keep on asking me that? Are you trying to get rid of me? I’m as healthy as a horse.”
She sighed in relief. “Oh, that’s good.”
“I’ve been seeing a therapist.”
Reagan glanced at him. Her dad hardly ever talked about being in the military. He had retired before she was born, so she’d never really got to see that side of his life since he’d started his own furniture business. Except, he wasn’t simply a carpenter. Lincoln Thomas still followed a strict regime, such as waking up early, cleaning, and keeping in shape, training with his guns and overall being the stoic and hardcore man that he was. She wouldn’t even know how he had hurt his leg if it hadn’t been for Aidan.