by K. S. Thomas
“Quinn?”
The sound of his familiar voice rips me out of my trance. My eyes open and search for his, locking on them instantly.
But I’m not the only one who takes notice of him. Carson does, too.
“Do you mind, asshole? How about some fucking privacy?”
Riker’s stare is still on me. Then, slowly, it moves to Carson, turning hard. And terrifying. I’ve never seen him like this. He barrels straight for Carson, gripping fistfuls of his shirt as he practically carries him to the edge of the lot, slamming him into the brick wall.
“I’m going to kill you! You hear me? I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU!” He shakes Carson, ramming the back of his head into the stone behind him repeatedly.
“Get your fucking hands off of me!” Carson tries to fight back, but it’s pointless. He may be taller than Riker, but height is nothing compared to brute strength fueled by emotions so deep and dark I know Carson doesn’t even have the capacity to feel.
Riker ignores his request to be let go and looks over his shoulder at me, still keeping Carson pinned in place. “Call the police. Right now.”
His tone is completely different from ten seconds ago. Even the ferocious glare in his eyes is gone. There’s something else there now. Sadness. Worry. Pain. It’s even more terrifying than his anger.
“I can’t.” I shake my head. It’s the first time I’ve been able to move since Carson first started assaulting me.
“Yes, you can,” Riker reassures me calmly.
But he’s wrong. The tears continue to stream down my face because now I’m not the only one being hurt by this. Riker’s in it, too. He won’t walk away untouched by this and that knowledge is enough to make me want to dissolve into a puddle on the cold hard pavement. “I can’t call the police. I’m sorry. But I can’t. I can’t.” I don’t know what else to say.
He doesn’t understand. “Why not? Quinn. I saw what he was doing. I saw it!” He nearly chokes on the words and has to force them out through clenched teeth.
“Please,” I beg. “Just let him go. And take me home.” I timidly place my hand on his shoulder. “Please.”
Meanwhile, Carson hasn’t said a word since realizing Riker has the upper hand between them.
Still holding him by his shirt, Riker begins to move him into a more natural position again, letting him put weight evenly on his feet.
“You listen to me, you piece of shit. You never, NEVER touch her again. I ever see you so much as walking in her general vicinity, I will come after you. And I promise you, Quinn won’t be able to save your sorry ass a second time.” He doesn’t wait for Carson to answer. Just releases his grip on the now ripped dress shirt and turns away from him.
Riker barely reaches my side when Carson comes at him from behind and all I see is Riker’s fist swinging past my face and making impact with Carson’s jaw. Two more punches and he hits the pavement, giving no indication that he’ll be able to get to his feet again anytime soon.
“Quinn. Quinn!” Riker’s hands are firmly on my shoulders, holding me in place. “Quinn. You need to take a breath for me. Okay? Deep breath. Come on. You can do it.” His deep voice is calm in spite of everything else around us suggesting it shouldn’t be.
I try to do what he says, but my whole body is shaking so hard I think I might be having convulsions caused by shock. Unable to do anything but nod to let him know I can still hear him, I close my eyes and try to retreat to somewhere within. Somewhere far, far away from here.
I’m already drifting off into the black abyss that is my soul when I vaguely take note of being carried. I can smell his cologne. Feel his skin on mine. The stubble on his jaw brushing against my forehead. And I start to come back. Because there’s nowhere safer than here. With him.
Next thing I know, I’m sitting in his old Ford pick-up, listening to the sound of his voice. He’s talking to someone. It’s not me. He’s on the phone.
“Sorry, Sid. I know, it was my idea. I feel like an ass, believe me, but I can’t make it. Not tonight.” Out of the corner of my eye I watch him push the phone across his dash. It slides until it gets stuck right below the windshield.
“I ruined your plans,” I croak.
His hand reaches out to rest on my leg, squeezing it lightly. “You didn’t ruin anything. Besides, you know damn well I’d rather spend the night in with you than be out with anyone else.” He smiles, but it’s not the same as before. He’s not the same as before. Because of what he saw. He’ll never be able to unsee it. And he’ll never be able to look at me the same because of it.
“Thank you.” The words seem hollow in comparison to what he did. But they need to be said, so I say them.
He just shakes his head, rejecting them instantly. “No. Don’t thank me for doing the only acceptable thing.” The hand he has on the steering wheel curls into a fist, before it flattens out again, slamming into the rim. “Fucking Carson Winn! Motherfucking piece of shit!” Then out of nowhere, he turns toward me, anguish in his eyes, “I swear, if I had known he would do something like this...that he was capable, Quinn, I never would have let it get this far.”
“What are you talking about?” My throat clenches up mid-sentence as another tsunami of emotions threaten to take me down. “This was not your fault. If anything it was mine.”
Riker doesn’t say anything. He just yanks the steering wheel to the side of the road and slams on his brakes, parking suddenly on the shoulder. Then he pulls me into his lap, cupping my face in his hands, he leaves a trail of kisses from my temple down to my chin, until he finds my lips and covers them whole with his.
“Nothing about what happened tonight was your fault, Quinn,” he whispers. “Nothing.”
I suck in a ragged breath and squeeze my eyelids shut. He kisses them, too.
“I want you to hold me.”
His arms are wrapped around me tightly. “I am holding you.”
I open my eyes again and meet his gaze. “No. Not like this. I want to feel you. The weight of your body on mine. The warmth of your skin. I want it all. I need it. Please.”
Riker doesn’t say anything. He just turns the key in the ignition and shifts into drive, pulling the truck back onto the road while I stay where I am, my head resting on his chest, listening to the calming beat of his heart all the way back to his place.
Once inside, neither of us says anything as he unzips my dress and lets it fall to the ground where I step out of it on my way to his bed. I lie back onto the mattress while he takes off my shoes and removes his own clothes.
It’s the first time we’ve ever undressed without any sense of urgency. Without a basic need for one another. Now the need is one sided. I need him. And he pities me. And I think maybe that hurts worse than anything else that happened tonight. Even if Carson didn’t get what he wanted, he still succeeded in taking something from me.
Before tonight, Riker didn’t know. He was the one person in my God forsaken life who didn’t look at me and see someone weak and broken. Damaged. I needed that. I needed him to just accept me at face value, never questioning my past. Never expecting a future. Now that’s gone. I can see it in his eyes. Feel it in his touch.
He cares. Maybe more than he should. More than I wanted him to. But things have shifted. We’re not equals in this anymore. He’s become the caregiver. I’ve become the victim. I hate being the victim. And as absurd as it sounds, I’d so much rather he was using me for sex right now, than caring so much he’ll never want to touch me again out of fear he might hurt me too.
I tilt my head up from where it’s nestled to his chest. “Thank you.”
His fingers gently dance over my shoulder. “I already told you not to tell me that.”
It’s the opening I was hoping for. I lift myself up and move my leg over his hips to straddle him. “Then let me show you instead.”
He looks confused. “What are you doing?”
I bend down to kiss him. “What we always do.”
But he turns his head
. “No, Quinn. Not tonight. Not after what happened.” He lifts me by my waist and sets me back down on the mattress beside him.
“But nothing happened. You stopped him,” I try to reason. I’m lying of course. Something happened. A lot happened. So much more than he could possibly even know happened. But I want to erase it from my mind. His mind. I want to erase it right out of existence and there’s only one way I know how to do that. “I’m fine. I swear.” I can feel the lump in my throat growing as it climbs. The last thing I want to do is cry in front of him again.
“No. You’re not.” He scoots himself up against the wall, not quite sitting upright, but enough to face me full on. “And who would be, Quinn?”
I want to punch him. I want to scream. Why is he making this so much more difficult than it already is? “Stop it! No one asked you to worry about me. The only thing I come here for is sex. So, if you’re not going to fucking screw me right now, I might as well put my fucking clothes back on and get out of here!” I have every intention of getting up in a huff and stomping out his apartment, but he’s already got a hold on me and he’s not letting me go.
“I’m not worried about you.” He flips me onto my back and moves over me encasing me with his entire body like a cocoon. “I’m merely doing what you asked me to do earlier. Holding you.” The whole time he speaks his tone never reflects even an ounce of emotion. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’m the one whose feelings are running amok and fucking everything up. But I can’t stop them. And I’m too desperate to care that I’m begging him to sleep with me now.
“Please.” With his weight on me, I can’t even move my arms, so my hands are pressed to my own chest where I can feel my heart pounding so hard and fast I think it’s trying to escape. And I can appreciate the sentiment. That’s all I want too. “Please, Riker. I just...I need you to still want me. If you stop, if you can’t see me as anything but this fragile wounded woman...then that’s what I’ll become. I don’t want to be her. I want to be the girl who struts in here owning the room because of the way you look at me. Please. I can’t lose that. You can’t let Carson take that. It’ll be worse than anything else he could have done to me tonight.” I’m gasping for air, trying to stop the tears. I have no choice but to look at him looking back at me, because we’re so close there’s nowhere else to aim my eyes. So I close them. And he kisses me.
Hard. With a need so overwhelming it’s almost desperate, and I feed it with my own frantic urgency.
“Feel that?” His raspy growl is strained and breathless as his mouth hovers right above mine. “I know you do. That is me wanting you with every fiber of my being. But I'm not going to have you. Not tonight. Tonight I'm just going lie here, holding you in my arms. Feeling your vulnerable and exposed body against my bare skin. Wanting you more and more with each passing second because you're the sexiest goddamn woman I've ever laid eyes on.” And the hunger in his eyes flares wildly as he says it, “but I'm not going to have you. Because I need you to know that a real man can respect your boundaries. A real man knows that your body is sacred and his physical needs are not. And because consensual sex is never about exerting control over someone else to get what you want. It's about being in control of yourself. So yes, believe me, I still want you. I want you like I’ve never wanted another woman in my entire life. But I want you to want me for the right reasons. In the right way. Because there's no way in hell I'm going to connect what we have when we're together to what happened in that parking lot tonight.”
His lips taste salty when he brushes over mine and I know I’ve been crying again. I don’t care anymore. Nor do I care that I know that from here on out we’ll be lying every time we claim we mean nothing to each other. It won’t keep us from lying any more than it will keep me from knowing the truth.
Chapter Nine
Riker
I wake up to find her still lying in my arms. This hasn’t happened before now. All the nights she’s spent here with me, we’ve never both fallen asleep. Together. Until last night. But then, a lot of things never happened before last night. Things that can’t be undone. Things I’m not sure I’m ready for, and I know she sure as hell isn’t.
I can feel her muscles tighten against me and for a moment I think she’s waking up. Then I see her face twist in pain with her eyes still sealed shut and I know she’s dreaming, face to face with whatever nightmares haunt her day in and day out. I know she thinks I can’t tell. Maybe she thinks I don’t care enough to notice anything beyond her beautiful face and amazing body, but that’s because that’s all I pay attention to when she’s watching. Because that’s all she wants me to see of her. But it’s not all I see. It’s never been. There’s always been more. And it’s the things she wants to hide from me the most that make me want to see her more.
“Quinn,” I whisper her name. I don’t want to startle her, but I can’t leave her trapped in her own subconscious hell. “Wake up.”
Her eyes flutter and immediately dart around the room as if she’s forgotten where she is. I feel her take a deep breath in as her chest moves against mine.
“Well, this is different.” I knew she’d do that. Make a joke to deflect from the possibility that we might have actually experienced some sort of emotional intimacy.
“You could say that.” I go along with her. I let her set the tone. Always have. Because she’s the wind and I’m the sail.
“I don’t suppose you know where my phone is?” She lifts her head to scan the room, but little else moves with it.
“I plugged it in last night to charge it.” I reach across her to the turned over milk crate I use as a nightstand. “Here.”
“Thanks.” She unlocks the screen and lets out a whistle. “Holly hell, Kirsten. She called seventeen times.” She drops the phone to my chest and lays her head down beside it.
“She’s probably worried. You should call her.” Kirsten’s never called while Quinn was here. At least not that I know of. I’m not sure she’s ever checked her phone before.
“No way. I’m not calling her now. You don’t know my sister. This will not be settled in one little phone call.” She’s not even done saying it when I feel her phone vibrate on my chest and see the screen light up. Her finger moves up to swipe the screen, but it’s not to answer, it’s to ignore the call. Then, to make it easier to forget, she moves the phone back over to my make shift nightstand, keeping Kirsten and her concerns out of sight until she’s ready to deal with them.
I don’t argue with her. Not about this. I just lie back silently and watch as her mind continues to wake up, becoming more alert and slowly beginning to digest everything all over again. It doesn’t take long for her to zone out. She does this a lot. But today, I have a feeling I know where she goes. And if I’m right, I honestly don’t know how I’ll handle it.
So, keeping my voice as low and as calm as I can, I ask her. “Who hits you, Quinn?”
Her head shoots up to turn in my direction, and I know before she even lies to me that I’m right. “No one hits me. Why would you even ask something like that?”
Automatically my jaw locks and the tension builds within me. But I can’t let her see it. So, I take a silent breath in before I answer her. “Yesterday. When I found you...you didn’t fight back against Carson. It was like some sort of deeply ingrained instinct kicked in. Like you were prey to some wild animal and you knew your best chance of survival was just to play dead.”
I expect her to counter me with some bullshit reason, but she doesn’t. She just stares at me blankly, saying nothing at all.
“And then...when Carson came at me and I swung at him. You flinched. Like you thought you were the one I was aiming at. I saw your face freeze up with fear and then you just started shaking. For a moment I thought your entire system was shutting down on me.” It scared me. Really fucking scared me.
She still doesn’t answer me. Just lies her head back down on my chest and absentmindedly begins to drum her fingers on the palm of my hand.
“Remem
ber when you asked me how Harley lost his leg?”
I remember, but she doesn’t really need me to confirm that.
“I was barely nineteen. And this guy...he attacked me. Harley was there. He tried to protect me, but the guy was big...and strong. And he just threw Harley across the room like it was nothing. I was on the ground and there were too many things blocking my view to see it happen. All I heard was this god awful thud as Harley hit the wall and then a heartbreaking yelp. The impact broke his back. He had to relearn how to walk. And the front leg, it just never recovered. For weeks he just sort of dragged it along, like dead weight. Finally the vet said it would be best to just take it. So, that’s what they did.”
The tone of her voice as she tells me her story is eerily empty. Like she’s told it before. Many times.
All I want to do is pull her close to me. To protect her. Create a world for her in which the monsters in her mind can’t reach her. But I can’t even do that for myself. So how could I possibly give it to her?
“What happened to the man who attacked you?”
She doesn’t even blink. “I killed him.” Then, before I can ask her again, she gets up onto her side. “Or maybe he got swallowed whole by the devil for attacking a defenseless girl and her puppy. Who can recall? He’d certainly deserve it.”
She’s making jokes. About things that aren’t funny. She’s done sharing. Probably already regretting having opened up to me this much. So, I let it go. For now.
“Hey, let me see your phone.” I stretch out my arm, but she’s got her weight on it so, I can’t reach it on my own.
“Why? Are you going to call my sister? Because that could be interesting.” She hands it over skeptically.
“No, I’m not getting in the middle of that. I’ll beat up other guys for you. But I’m not taking on your sister. She scares me.” I unlock her screen by tapping the number ‘five’ four times. I saw her do it earlier. It’s not much of a security code and I make a mental note to mock her for it later.