by Eden Butler
“Evelyn Meara Donley,” I say, glancing at Autumn to see her chin tremble. “She’s beautiful,” I offer, my smile growing even bigger as Autumn nods.
Layla had named her daughter after Autumn’s mother and her own. Two women who had given their daughters strength, who had taught them to fight, to thrive. It was a fitting honor to give to that beautiful baby. “Have you ever seen her like that?”
“Never, and especially not with Donovan.”
We stand inside the hospital lobby, looking at the black clouds up ahead and the deluge that is covering the walk way and running down the steps. Still, neither one of us stop smiling and it’s only when Declan opens the door and we both automatically step back to avoid the spatter that those ridiculous smiles dim.
“McShane. Wait here. I’ll get the car.” Declan offers us a smile, and Quinn, who stands behind us, one glare of warning. Quinn had not spoken to anyone while we visited Layla and the baby, but I caught our friends eyeing him and that bruise on his eye.
Declan runs out into the rain as Autumn and I step beneath the awning, laughing when Vaughn races out of the door and Mollie huddles behind us.
“It’s absolutely pissing,” she says, laughing when Vaughn steps in the center of the courtyard, arms stretched, head back, catching rain on his tongue.
“Is he crazy?” Autumn asks, laughing at the heat that colors Mollie’s face.
“Yeah,” she says, moving away from us. “He damn well is.” And then she runs out into the shower, hopping on Vaughn’s back, laughing as he spins them both around and around.
“Absolutely barking,” Autumn says, but I notice that smile on her face hasn’t lessened. It won’t, not any time soon, not when our friends are happy, when the joy they feel is tangible, infectious.
To our left, Quinn stands on steps, gaze on me, watching, with an expression I cannot read. Autumn notices as well. “He’s not nearly as smug as he was in the hospital room.” Autumn glances over her shoulder at him, then turns back to me when he ignores her. “Are you responsible for the black eye?” She raises an eyebrow with the perfect rendition of a mother’s glare. One day there will be ginger kids with Declan’s attitude and Autumn’s temper. I almost feel sorry for them being exposed to that glare for the whole of their lives.
Unable to bear the weight of even that facetious glare, I turn to watch the rain again, ignoring her for a moment, then I mumble weakly, “It looks worse than it actually is.” Autumn’s tisking tongue is ridiculous and I shake my head and chuckle despite myself, silencing her lecture before it comes. “It was an accident.”
“Uh huh and that ‘put me out of my misery’ expression on his face?” Again she glances at him and I lean forward to watch him too before Autumn moves to stand in front of me. “That an accident too?”
“Friend…”
“Sayo,” she says, pulling me closer conspiratorially, “You’ve got ten minutes before Declan gets back with the car. I’m going to run to the bathroom. Be wise with your time.”
“Autumn…” but she is gone and I am left staring at Quinn, feeling stupid and silly. “What?” I throw it out as a challenge.
“I’m sorry.” Quinn steps forward, close. My back it to the wall, I have nowhere else to go.
“Don’t be.”
He leans forward, resting one hand on the wall by my head. “You were crying. You were upset and I kept at you. I turned things around.”
I shoot for indifference, shrugging, moving a step to the right when he reaches for the end of my braid. “You were being you.”
His expression changes then, twists into something unfamiliar, something tender. Truly searching rather than bating. Something that makes my stomach twist. And then Quinn reaches out, stilling me with a soft touch of his hand against my cheek. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I wasn’t with you at the funeral. I’m sorry I acted like you weren’t upset. I’m sorry I can’t be more…”
“You might want to keep at those buggering apologies.” Declan’s loud, startling voice breaks us apart and what I was having with Quinn was gone, replaced by his typical brooding attitude. Declan, having no idea what he had interrupted, kept up the tirade at his half-brother. “What did I say to you the first fecking day you were here?’
“How the bloody hell should I know?” Quinn steps up to Declan, shoulders back, matching his threatening stance. “You kept yammering about. Like I could keep track.”
“You wanker.” Declan grips Quinn’s collar but the younger man isn’t put off by Declan’s strength or size. “I told you to keep clear of her, of all of them. And what do you do? Especially Sayo… especially when…”
“Declan, stop, please,” I say, but am completely ignored as Declan slams his brother against the glass behind us.
“You will fecking learn, little brother. You cannot treat folk the way you have your entire life.”
“Enough!” Quinn shouts, managing to push Declan back. They both seem surprised by the movement. “You don’t fecking know me. You don’t know anything about me but what you were told. In all these months, have you once tried using a civil tongue with me? Have you once thought that maybe I am the way I fecking well am for a reason?”
Declan shakes his head, laughing. “There’s no reason to be a prick.”
“Says the man whose mum destroyed my family!”
Declan charges, grabbing Quinn again, knocking his head against the glass. “Don’t you dare say anything against my mum.”
Quinn volleys back, using his feet and thighs to keep Declan from slamming him. “It’s the fecking truth! She lied. So did he. For ages and ages. I had a brother my whole life and he never once… it bloody broke my mum. It destroyed her.”
“You think she was the only one?”
“Declan, stop.” I yell, pushing between them with my hands on Declan’s chest just as Autumn runs into the lobby. “The both of you. Maybe you both got screwed over. But time is short. God knows we’ve all learned that lesson.” I look between them, feeling some relief when the hard set on their faces isn’t quite as severe. Autumn pulls Declan back, rubbing his chest to calm him. “Quinn didn’t do a thing to me that I didn’t ask him for. He tried staying away.”
“Sayo,” Declan says, eyebrows shooting up as though he’s convinced he heard me wrong.
“I went to him, to get away from the hurt I was feeling.” I pause, glancing behind me at Quinn. “We used each other, that’s all it was.” I take a breath, knowing I was parroting the same thing he’d said that morning in my apartment. “That’s all it will ever be. But that doesn’t make him a bad person. In fact, how could he be? Rhea loved him.” Autumn releases Declan and I step to the side so that the brothers are forced to face each other. “She loved him for a reason, Declan. Maybe you can find out why. Maybe… maybe you both can start over, put the past behind you? It’s the least you can do because like it or not, you’re brothers. You’re blood.”
I turn on my heel and walk out of the hospital, leaving the two brothers to their glowering and ebbing anger. I want nothing more than some liquid numbness, but the idea of going home where my thoughts will no doubt linger on the emptiness, doesn’t sound appealing. Before I realize it, I’m already four blocks away from the hospital and heading for McKinney’s. My umbrella is flooded and swaying in the wind, and I dart forward when I see the neon in the pub’s window. Cars zip by me, flinging dirty water up from the puddles and I quicken my pace, jogging, making it to the pub just as the door slams open.
“You okay?” I hear, as I shake off my umbrella as I back into to pub, where I shed my sopping wet jacket.
“Yeah, I’m good,” I say, gratefully taking the bundle of paper towels offered to me. It’s only then that I look up to see who it is that has come to my rescue. “Sam.”
“Hey.” He smiles, reaching over the bar to retrieve a proper towel, smelling fresh from the dryer. It’s still warm. “Here, this will work better than those paper towels.” I let him dry me off, staring wide-eyed at his face, t
he strong cut of his angular jaw and those giant crystal eyes that I’d spent the better part of our short-lived relationship staring into. I’d never quite managed to figure out if they were gray or blue.
When Sam tilts his head, his smile lowering with concern, I blink, internally berating myself for gawking, and take the towel from him. “Thanks for the rescue.” Patting my face dry keeps me from seeing his expression, from letting myself linger too long on his smile.
“It’s not a problem. Here,” Sam sits me down on a stool, moving my legs so I face the bar. “How about some hot tea or cocoa? I remember you liked both with Baileys.”
So I let my ex-boyfriend ply me with Baileys-laced hot tea. I spent the next hour letting him flirt with me, joke with me, recalling all the silly things we’d done together, avoiding topics that led to our break up. By the time the door chimes with another customer, I am warm and a comfortable buzz warms my insides. Quinn O’Malley hasn’t entered my thoughts once, something that increases that soft buzz.
“Here, have another, beautiful,” Sam says, placing a cup of piping hot tea in front of me. As he walks away he touches my hand, moving his thumb across my knuckles—a gesture I realize he gives me to show affection, despite the mild buzz I have. He has a gentle smile and the touch is brief, likely not meant to be anything more than a kindness, but I didn’t miss it what he meant by it. Neither, it seems did the two men at the end of the bar.
Declan and Quinn.
Sam sets two pints in front of them, earning a nod from Declan who tips back his glass, sending a quick toast and a smile my way. Quinn, however, doesn’t touch his drink and when he stands, tossing a few bills onto the bar, he deflects Declan’s hand on his shoulder.
“Where are you going?” I hear Declan ask but what Quinn whispers to him, is too low for me to make out. Quinn is out of the door, his pint forgotten.
When I look at Declan, he can only shake his head, downing half his drink in two gulps. “I don’t know, love.” He looks out the window, wiping his mouth. “I’ve no clue what to make of him.”
Yeah, I think. Neither do I.
THE WAREHOUSE SEEMS darker, danker at night, especially after a storm. Quinn hasn’t bothered with the lights or the heat. I climb the curved stairs like a woman on her way to the gallows, not sure why I am worried, having no clue why I feel guilty.
There is nothing between us.
Nothing.
We agreed. We made promises, unspoken, but sacred when this whole thing started. We wanted to forget. We wanted to not feel anything other than sensation. So why did Quinn glare at me as though I betrayed him? Why was Sam’s attention the thing that had him leaving without so much as a backward glance?
The hallway lightens the closer I get to the room, from the single flame of his barrel candle in the center of his desk. There are forgotten sheets of paper strewn there, some with half sketches, some crumpled, littered around the floor. There are empty beer bottles and the lingering scent of food, but otherwise, no signs of Quinn, that he might be here at all.
Except for the candle and the shadow behind it.
He stands in front of the window in only his unbuttoned jeans. In Quinn’s hand is an unlit cigarette and as I walk further inside, I catch sight of the lighter he flicks over and over, a nervous habit that is both soothing and irritating.
“Come to give me the toss?”
He doesn’t move his gaze from the street below and in this light I notice how defined his body is, how the muscles beneath his skin are taut with barely any fat flawing his frame.
“How can I do that, Quinn, when there was no relationship between us?”
A jerk of his head and his gaze pierces beneath the shadows. “There was a relationship between us, Sayo.” He moves away from the window and I pick up on the small stomp in his stride, the fists he makes as he stalks closer to me. “You had one with her. So did I. That’s what was between us. Her.”
The air becomes weighted, as though something dark, something thick filters through the vents. It is a sensation I know; the coil of lust and anger, the echo of desire. The hint of love. It all thickens around us, collects in the space between our bodies.
“Don’t.” I say, stopping him before he touches me. But Quinn is determined, stubborn, knows I don’t want him keeping his touch from me.
“And now… she’s gone. Now, love, so is that thing between us. Right?”
The rejection is forced. He’s telling me to leave. He’s telling me he doesn’t want me. So why do I care? It’s what I’d come to tell him. It’s what being with Sam had reminded me of.
But Quinn not wanting me? Not craving me? The arrogant brat in me doesn’t like that, isn’t sure she wants to walk away.
“Nothing at all?” I ask him, watching his reaction, squinting to focus on the twist of his mouth, the tiny twitch that moves his eyebrow, any tell that gives him away. There. Right there—the small pulse moving the corner of his top lip and I know he’s lying.
So I bluff. “Fine. If that’s what you want.” I turn, keeping my steps slow, trying desperately to keep my heartbeat steady.
“Sayo.”
It isn’t a question. It’s not a demand. Somewhere in the middle, something in his tone, there is truth. It reaches across the room, keeps me rooted in place. He’d warned me before, admitted he’d take and give and would offer no apologies. But in this tone of his is something that sounds an awful lot like need, a lot like possession.
I should walk away. No looks back. No second thoughts. Just leave him, leave this warehouse and forget that he ever touched me.
“Sayo,” he says again and this time that voice is closer. He’d moved like a whisper across the room and I hadn’t noticed.
Two steps more and Quinn is behind me. Three more and he rushes forward, forcing me to the wall, bracing myself with my palms flat. “Quinn…”
“No,” he says, leaning against me so I can’t move. “No, love, you stay still and answer a question for me.”
“Back off.”
He does, only to slip his hand to my chest, to slide his fingers under my bra and cup my breasts. “You’re so hot and cold with me, I never know who you’ll be when you come to me.”
Moving my head, I catch Quinn’s gaze over my shoulder. “You never give yourself to me, O’Malley. Never.”
He shifts, withdraws his hands to twist me around by the hips, not leaving much room between us, still holding me to the wall. “You might not like what you see in the real me. I don’t much like him myself…”
If I thought he’d continue his awkward interrogation, I was wrong. His grip lessens, his body relaxing into mine and suddenly he moves his forehead against mine, breath hot over my face, smelling of warm beer.
“You want him? The blonde? You want to be rid of me, Sayo?”
“Quinn…” I try, wishing he didn’t smell quite so good. Wishing that I didn’t remember how much I love the way his arms wrap around me, how the stubble from his face tickles my chest when he rubs it there. I wish I knew how to walk away, to take what had happened between us for the lesson it was.
I wish I didn’t want him so badly.
“Quinn…” I try again but he stands too close, feels too close and then our defenses weaken, they crumble and his mouth is on mine, his hands, mine, are everywhere, insisting, skilled, aching.
Bodies molding together.
Skin to skin, no room for regret.
There is only this sensation. This man. This moment.
Quinn touches me, takes me to floor, barely shoving my jeans off, hardly moving his pants down his hips before he hovers over me, sliding his hard dick against me.
“You don’t want this anymore?” he asks, his breath shaking, his hands sure as he guides himself over my pussy. “Can you walk away from this, love?” He slips inside me in one fluid thrust and I gasp, gripping hold of his shoulders as he kisses up my neck. “Because I damn well can’t.”
Words flit into my mind, defenses that are likely logi
cal, seem reasonable, but I don’t speak them. Not with how well Quinn touches me, how he treats my body like a playground he’s only just discovered.
He is deep inside me, and I’m not sure how to be rid of him. I’m not sure I want to be. But Quinn is a man of few promises. As much as I crave this, he is a wild card I’m not sure I want to play.
When his heartbeat slows and he continues to kiss me, mouth wet, slow against my lips, breath panting and pleased, I touch his face, keeping him still enough that he has to look at me.
“What do you want from me?” I manage to whisper.
Direct questions demand direct responses and I wait with Quinn on top of me, softening inside me as he watches, scanning my face, looking for something, but I don’t know what that something is. And then, he closes his eyes, resting his forehead on mine and the faint hope I have dwindles into a dying spark.
Quinn’s touch is light and tender, and for a fleeting second I think I might be wrong, that he will give me anything, everything. Then, he rolls away from me, lying at my side with his arm across his forehead.
“Nothing, love. Absolutely nothing.”
AUTUMN AND I had taken the run up to Fanning Falls in less than an hour, sweating now despite the frigid winter weather. It was a trail I never tired of running, with a winding pathway that curled around the river and moved up the mountain. It was the best place to clear your mind, something I needed to do more often.
As we come to the end of Duncan Street, the longest lane that runs through campus before it straightens from its bend to head right into the large park near the athletic fields, Autumn laughs. Her steps quicken, like a kid who’s just spotted an ice cream truck entering her neighborhood. She’s likely drunk on the adrenaline pumping through her body, likely sexually frustrated since Declan has spent much of this week in Atlanta because Quinn had insisted on some night life that didn’t include either Irish jigs or country music. Atlanta was the closest to that and Declan, Vaughn and even a reluctant Donovan had left for a boys’ weekend four days ago. They were due back, and the smile on Autumn’s face, I suspect, was a result of her spotting Declan’s Mustang parked in front of the athletic building.