by Ivy Jordan
There was light conversation in the car, mostly just her checking up on the house from the day before. I had the feeling that there was something that she wanted to tell me, just as much as there were things that were on my own mind. It wasn’t until we got to the restaurant and got seated that things began to come up.
“You seem like something’s bothering you,” Quinn said.
I frowned and resisted the urge to groan. I didn’t want this to turn into some sort of therapy session. But then, most conversations between couples were like therapy sessions anyway. Quinn and I had already sort of talked about this; she wanted to help me, and I aimed to return the question in due time.
“Just more stuff with my dad,” I said.
“Oh? Did you talk to him?” Quinn stirred her drink, and I watched the sugar swirl, refusing to dissolve in the iced tea.
“Sort of. He talked to me.” I shook my head. “He asked me if I’d found a house, and I told him I had, and he told me he was glad I’d be leaving soon.”
“That’s rude.” Quinn raised an eyebrow. “Especially considering…”
“I just got back, yeah,” I agreed. “I turned and left, and he said something about not meaning it. I guess he must have said something wrong, but honestly, how many other meanings could that have?”
Quinn twisted her mouth over to one side and then shrugged. “I can’t think of many,” she admitted. “Unless he’s happy that you’re moving on and getting on with your life.”
“Maybe, but that’s not what he said,” I reminded her. “In any case, it just really rubbed me the wrong way.”
“I’d imagine so,” Quinn said. She furrowed her brow and took a sip of her tea. “You know, there’s a lot of animosity between the two of you. I keep thinking maybe you wrecked his car when you were a teenager or something, but there’s way too much… Hate’s strong, but there’s way too much anger for something that small.”
“I wish I’d just crashed his car,” I said. Cars could be taken to the shop. I could have worked over a summer to pay damages on a car. A busted car didn’t cause long-lasting ramifications on the family name and force a man into social hiding for shame of what his son had done.
Quinn looked across the table at me, and she didn’t ask anything. I couldn’t understand how she remained so kind to me. If I were her, it would be difficult not to be pushy with asking for information.
“I had a problem with some stuff,” I said. That was extremely nonspecific. “I, um… before I was in the military, I was dating Stacy Black, your, uh, cousin.”
Quinn nodded—with a nod that ready, I wondered how much she already knew. If she knew about Stacy, there was no telling.
“She was really into the party scene. Or, something like it. She did a lot of drugs, and at first, it really freaked me out. I grew up in a conservative household and everything. But she wanted me to be a part of her world, and one thing just sort of led to another.” I frowned. “I was just bored, I guess. That’s how a lot of us from these small towns end up, we get bored, and we try drugs because we have time to kill. I never cared about school or anything else. I didn’t have any reason not to, and Stacy was so unbelievably cool to me.”
Quinn stayed quiet, but she didn’t draw back. She was listening.
“I thought I’d just smoke pot, and then I thought I’d try crack one time, to make her happy. And then I thought I’d try it one more time, because she wanted me to. But it stopped being because she wanted me to. She stopped being a part of that equation.” My frown deepened, and I spoke more quietly, not exactly wanting to be overheard in this place. “I was doing it because I wanted to. And as you can imagine, things started to spiral pretty quickly from there.”
I didn’t tell her the worst of it. I didn’t tell her about the time I stole my mother’s watch to pay for crack, or about the times I came home to my parents completely drunk off my ass and engaged in shouting matches in the front lawn with my father. I didn’t tell her about the fights with Stacy, either, about how we’d gone at each other and I’d stayed with her because if she left, I wouldn’t have cocaine anymore, and that was all I cared about.
“And then I got arrested,” I said. “I was out with some friends and we weren’t high, but we had it on us, and that was enough to put us in jail.” I still remembered how that felt, how I’d thrown up out of sheer fear. “My dad came and paid my bail. We didn’t speak to each other the whole way home.”
“It made the local news, and that was… that was pretty much that. You wouldn’t think it would do much, but it just about ruined the family name. Dad was embarrassed to show his face in some places.”
We hadn’t moved, though. We almost had, but we hadn’t. “In the aftermath of it, there was just me and Stacy. Mom wanted to keep me home and send me to rehab, and Dad wanted to kick me out, let me fend for myself. And he had a point. I was a grown-ass adult, twenty-two; it wasn’t like I was a teenager. They came to some sort of compromise. If I wouldn’t get my shit together somehow by the end of that month, I was out of there.”
“So I left.” I looked up, realizing now that I’d gone on a rant, and hadn’t meant to. “I went and joined the SEALs. I figured it was better than sitting around Austin waiting for something to happen. Sorry, though, I didn’t mean to go on like that.” Something about Quinn made it so that I felt disarmed around her without feeling vulnerable, and that lent itself to rambling and going on about things long since over.
Quinn’s facial expression had shifted over the course of me talking. She’d started out knowing, almost expectant, and now her eyes were a bit wider. Shock cast doubt into those blue orbs, and she had an iron-tight bite on her lower lip that wasn’t so much sexy as it was disconcerting. Like she wanted to say something but didn’t want to say it out loud.
“I didn’t know that,” she said, and I could tell that I’d surprised her with at least a part of my story. “It definitely explains the animosity between you and your dad.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I guess it does.” I rubbed the back of my neck. “Jesus, Quinn, you’re not my therapist. I can’t keep doing this.”
Quinn cocked an eyebrow and rested her chin on her hand. “Pay for dinner, and we can call it even.”
I couldn’t help but smile at the insinuation that even if we hadn’t ever seen one another in a patient-doctor sort of way, I would owe her for the miniature lecture. Maybe all of these relationships ended up being symbiotic, and there was little sense in trying to defend ours from being the least bit co-dependent.
“I think you’ve done the right thing overall,” Quinn said on our way out of the restaurant. I opened the car door for her and hopped in the driver’s seat.
“How so?” I asked.
“You did what you needed to do to be independent,” Quinn said. “Anyone can go to rehab and pretend to care about their recovery long enough to get out without too many questions. A ton of my patients are like that, burning hours and money away just so their parents or whoever get off their back. But you actually did something that would be transformative. Treated the disease instead of the symptoms.”
“Maybe.” The analogy made sense, anyway. “It wouldn’t have been right to put my parents out of that money, anyway. Not when it was my fault.” Maybe to an extent, it had been Stacy’s, but I was an adult. I was capable of making my own decisions.
When we reached her house, I let her out and walked her to her door. It had been such a long night, such heavy conversation, and a part of me wanted to do everything in my power to clear both our minds completely and entirely, regardless of whether that was ‘appropriate’ or whether we ought to talk about it more.
Still, it felt wrong to make a move on her after such a heavy conversation. I smiled at her, and before she walked in, she paused.
“Do you want to stay?” she asked.
I raised my eyebrow. What was I, a stray dog? “What do you mean?”
“Tonight, I mean.” She walked back towards me and set a
hand on my face, leaning up to kiss me.
I kissed her back, and nearly forgot the question.
“If you’re sure,” I said, not wanting to neglect the emotional weight surrounding us.
Quinn nodded, and then she leaned up and kissed me again.
Chapter Twenty-Four
QUINN
There was something almost dangerously unpredictable in the way that Sawyer took to me. I never knew whether to count on him losing his inhibitions, snapping and pulling me roughly, whether he would be gentle, almost timid, or whether he might blend the two. After only two encounters with him, I found myself blissfully unsure of what he might do.
I didn’t want to waste time fumbling towards my bedroom, so when I pulled away, I led him by the hand. He didn’t say anything, but when I got the door closed, his hands were on me faster than I could have prepared for.
I skimmed my fingers along the buttons on his shirt, attempting to gain some sort of self-control while he claimed my mouth. His tongue pressed to mine, and he starved me for breath, and when I nearly had to break away, he broke away, mouth to jaw, mouth to neck, and I could only try to hold on.
He sat down on the bed with me. I was more than eager to help him slide the dress from my shoulders, and I didn’t have to help him with the bra straps. My hands glided along the smooth yet tough muscle on his abdomen, and when he pulled my hips down against his, I could feel how hard he was, and marveled at his restraint.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispered to me, as though drunk on the moment. I ground against him again, and he sighed against my lips.
It wasn’t a good time for talking. My underwear came off next, and he did away with his own pants. I didn’t give him time to take charge of the situation before slipping my hand down the front of his boxers and tugging, gently, suddenly worried that I would break him. The way he bucked up into my hand, though, suggested he wouldn’t; I tightened my grip, and he groaned aloud.
As if in retaliation, he began to press kisses to my neck again, and he wandered further down, pressing my back to the mattress. Every time his mouth met sensitive skin I thought I met explode from the tension.
He mumbled something, but it was lost to our action. A strong hand on my hip moved further down, and he nudged my legs apart almost insistently. I was more than pliable in his grip, more than eager to grant him access. His fingers, the palm of his hand, the pad of his thumb worked in circles, strokes, movements rushed and relaxed to bring me to a gasping mess.
“Please,” I whispered. I didn’t want to come yet; I wanted to feel him first. “Please.”
It took us no time to locate a condom—I couldn’t bring myself to be wary of the fact he’d brought one with him, like he’d known this would happen, when I wanted it so badly to happen—and once he’d rolled it on, he was back over me.
I pushed him back, though. I pushed him back and then motioned for him to lay down, and I pressed my knees into the bed on either side of him. His light eyes were alit with a hunger that ought to have frightened me. I watched his face as I sank down onto him, and my eyelids fluttered shut. I ground my hips against him, pulling him up, further into me, never far enough into me, and heard him moan his pleasure.
For a moment we lay like that, me fucking myself slowly on him, the sounds of our contentment filling the room. After a few seconds, he leaned forward slightly, and he grabbed his hands with mine.
He met my gaze, a moment of hesitation, asking permission before he did what he wanted to do. I could only pull up and nod as best I could; finding a breath, a coherent statement, was unspeakably difficult.
He drove up into me, his strokes harsh but measured. I could feel him brushing that spot inside me time and time again, and I threw my head back, crying out for the feeling of it. My hand flew between my legs to finish myself off; I couldn’t wait any longer.
“Fucking hell, Quinn,” I couldn’t imagine what the sight of me like this did to him, and he bore down once more, thrusting almost painfully until he combusted with a small shout. I rolled my hips against him, practically milking him, prolonging his pleasure as long as I could.
When I couldn’t stay up anymore, I rolled off him, laying down next to him. I could hear my own heart thudding in my chest, and I thought, maybe, I could hear his too.
I laid in blissful ignorance for a long time. I heard him get up and go the restroom, heard the gentle clink of the faucet and the water falling into the sink. When he returned, I rose, too, and walked to the bathroom to sort myself out. I didn’t feel like myself, or like anyone, for that matter. I felt like things had always been this way, like this was the most natural state of being, and we were both immortal.
I brushed my hair and washed my face, used the restroom, went through the motions of cleaning up and when I was done, I walked back into the bedroom. There sat Sawyer on my bed, sprawled out in boxers, looking up at me with a peaceful smile.
I wanted to stand there for a while and take him in like that, covered in tattoos and muscles and looking very much like the cover of a romance novel come to life. But while I could stand and appreciate him from afar, something was beginning to eat at me, and when I got into bed, I made my descion to talk to him about it.
“I have something to tell you,” I told him.
The fear on his face held enough confusion to suggest he thought I was pregnant, though we’d used a condom and I wouldn’t know seconds after anyway.
“Not about sex,” I clarified.
He exhaled.
“It’s about Stacy.”
“I’m not—”
I held a finger up so that he would let me finish speaking. “It’s not about whether you still like her. I’m not worried about that. She came by my office the other day to… I don’t know, talk to me? She just told me that she hated the therapy system and her parents. But she knows you’re out, and she knows we’re involved.”
“Why would she want to stop by your office?” Sawyer frowned. “Doesn’t make sense.”
“I know. But I didn’t want to tell you because I was worried it would freak you out, but it’s been pointed out to me that running into her unprepared would be worse. I don’t know. I just wanted to tell you.”
Sawyer pulled me closer to him and kissed the top of my head. “I’m glad you did,” he said. “But I don’t need to worry about it. I don’t. She’s bad for me. The mistakes I made were my fault, and I own up to that, but she’s bad for me and I know that. I’m not interested in hearing anything she has to say. I have everything I need.”
I smiled and a blush rose to my cheeks. It was what I’d wanted to hear, despite what I’d told myself about telling him for his own benefit alone. “I’m glad.”
“Things are looking up,” he reminded me. “I don’t want to sabotage it.”
“Me neither.”
“I’m going to buy that house,” he mentioned. My eyes were beginning to droop in my tiredness, and he yawned behind me. “I forgot to tell you, I’m signing the paperwork soon and the house is going to be mine.”
I smiled lazily. “That’s good, Sawyer,” I said. It seemed like despite everything, the mess with his father and the mess with Stacy and all the demons of the past that threatened to snatch him back to where he’d come from, things were looking up for him. I rested my head on his chest and let myself drift off to sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Five
SAWYER
“You had a whole week to sit on your ass, now help me move this box!” Pete hollered across the house from the front door.
I jogged from the back porch to help him with the box. Since the home came pre-furnished, there wasn’t a lot of work to do moving in, but I did need a little help getting my boxes of garbage into the house and unloading them. Pete didn’t know much about interior decorating, but Quinn was coming over later, and she could help make sure the place didn’t look too much like a barracks of some sort.
We pulled the box into the living room and set it down on the floor. It held some
of my service memorabilia, which I didn’t have enough of to really constitute more than a half of one box, and some of the things I’d taken from home. I brought a few pictures with my family, for example, and a few class pictures from my graduating class. I didn’t feel attached to it, but it seemed like the sort of thing I was supposed to have a picture of in my home.
“I hope you’re not expectin’ me to help you set up and make everything pretty,” Pete huffed. He sat back on the couch and pushed his cap down onto his head.
“Nope.”
“Is Quinn coming by later?”
“Yeah.” Actually, she would be by sooner than later. “She’ll help with all the decorating and stuff. She’s good with that.” From what little I’d seen of the inside of her house—I didn’t spent a lot of time pensively observing the decorations when I was over there—she was good at that sort of thing.
“You two getting along well?” Pete took his cap off and set it aside. His hair had a comical dent where his hat had been, but I knew he was just trying to cool off a little.
“Yeah, it’s been great.” I sat down on top of the box we’d brought in. “She’s really positive. We haven’t seen much of each other this past week since she’s been busy with work and I’ve been packing, but we’ve been in touch.”
“You’re not having any trouble without a therapist?” Pete asked. “I don’t want you to go to some pill-pusher in the city.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not having trouble. When I have an issue, I tend to talk to Quinn about it more often than not. If I end up needing therapy, we’ll talk about it. But things have been really great lately. I don’t want to throw a wrench in it by seeing another therapist.”
“What, would that be cheating? Are y’all in a relationship technically?” Pete asked.
I wasn’t sure about that. “Seeing a therapist wouldn’t be cheating, no.” As to his other question… “I don’t know if we’re in a relationship. It’s complicated, I guess. We see a lot of each other, and I think we’re exclusive, but I don’t think she’s calling me her boyfriend. Seems kind of childish, if that makes sense.”