Broken (22 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said.

She shot him a glance. He stood by the window, staring out into the night. Faint light filtered in through the curtains, and she could see his face now. But she still didn’t want him seeing her. “Sorry for what?” she asked woodenly.

“I wasn’t . . . I . . . she. Fuck.” He lifted his hands and covered his eyes. “Help me out here a little bit, Sara. I don’t generally spend the night with women, and this is the first time I talked about one woman while in bed, sleeping with another. I’m not real sure how to handle this—how to handle you.”

“You don’t need to
handle
anything,” she snapped, shoving her hair back. “I don’t need
handling
. You had a bad dream—they happen, and it sounds like it was a whopper. If you want to talk about it, I’ll listen. If you want to talk about her, I’ll listen. If not, that’s fine. But I don’t need
handling
.”

He was quiet, too quiet. Restless, she kicked free of the blankets and sheets and stood. Spying his T-shirt at the foot of the bed, she grabbed it and jerked it over her head as she stormed into the kitchen.

She went to open the refrigerator, but stopped cold as he finally spoke.

“She’s dead.”

Her hand fell away from the handle and she turned back to stare at him. “What?”

He reached out, hitting the light switch.

She flinched against the harsh light, blinked as her eyes worked to adjust. She was still squinting when he started to speak again. “She’s dead. She died the year before last—and she died because of mistakes I made.”

“What?” She’d heard the words. But they didn’t make any sense. They just bumped and banged around inside her head, not connecting and leaving her feeling even more lost and confused.

“Fuck.” He turned away and once more stared back outside. His shoulders rose and fell on a sigh. “She’s dead because of me, Sara.”

Finally, the words started to connect and she could make some sense of them. A woman had died. And Quinn said it was because of him.

“I don’t believe that.” She shook her head, tried to wrap her mind around that information, but it just wouldn’t settle. It didn’t fit.

“Yeah, well, believe it.” He shot her a look over his shoulder, and that screaming, endless hell she’d glimpsed in his eyes once before was back.

Wounded warrior—so tortured and torn.

Licking her lips, she opened her mouth and tried to figure out what to say. Nothing seemed right. Nothing felt right. In the end, she said nothing—she just crossed the room and wrapped her arms around him, pressing her lips to his shoulder.

His body shuddered and then he turned around and slipped his arms around her waist, pulling her close.

“If you want to tell me about it, I’ll listen,” she said.

Quinn just shook his head.

She stroked a hand down his back. “Are you sure? Trust me, I’m a pretty good listener.”

“Doesn’t have anything to do with trust,” he said. “I just can’t talk about it. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

“I’m sorry, too.” She kissed his neck and snuggled in close. “For whatever happened, I’m sorry.”

THE dream had been a bad one.

Quinn didn’t know where in the hell it had come from, blind-siding him like that. Although why in the hell it had to happen with Sara lying in the bed next to him, he didn’t know.

Right now she was asleep, cuddled up against him with her hand resting just above his heart. He reached up and covered her hand with his, stroked his thumb along the inside of her wrist.

He’d hurt her.

He had seen that flash in her eyes before she buried it. He wanted to take it away, but he didn’t know how.

And still, as bad as he felt, the pain wasn’t like it had once been. It was a dull ache inside his chest, but the vicious intensity that normally came with one of those dreams wasn’t there. The guilt was only an echo of what it usually was.

Part of him said it was just because he was moving on.

The other part of him said it was because of Sara. Because of the woman who now lay in his arms, sighing softly in sleep. The turmoil inside him always seemed less when she was with him. The anger faded. And pain ceased to exist.

Sighing, he eased away, but instead of climbing out of the bed, he pushed up onto his elbow and studied her face. Her lashes lay against her cheeks and her pale skin was softly flushed from sleep. A frown tugged at the corners of her mouth and she reached out, stroking a hand down the sheets like she was looking for him. He leaned in and pressed his lips to her neck then rubbed his cheek against hers.

Sara sighed and the frown faded as she cuddled deeper into the blankets.

His heart twisted a little as he climbed out of the bed. Damn it, she’d gone and gotten to him, hard and fast, turning him into a messy knot of nerves and need. Every day that passed drew that knot tighter and tighter—binding him to her.

It wasn’t that long ago when Quinn had wondered if he had anything left of a heart inside him—if he’d ever had one. But the way things were going, he no longer had those questions. One big question lingered, though . . . was he about to put his heart in this woman’s hands?

He suspected the answer was yes—and he suspected he had no control over the matter, either. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that.

WHEN Sara woke up, she was alone in the bed.

But she hadn’t been for long.

Rolling over, she stroked a hand down the sheets, felt the lingering warmth of his body. Sighing, she sat up, and that was when she saw the note on the pillow. She reached for it and settled back against the headboard as she opened it.

Scrawled at the bottom, added in almost like an afterthought, was the word
Thanks.

“A man of many words,” she murmured with a reluctant smile. She folded the note back up. She was sure there were men who’d penned prettier notes to women they’d spent the night with. She was equally sure that quite a few of them would have had a whole slew of words to explain, apologize, or otherwise excuse away what had happened.

Even if he didn’t have much control over his dreams.

It wasn’t like he’d been having some hot and heavy XXX fantasy of Elena—whoever she was. Sara doubted she would have tolerated that very well. Snuggling back down into the bed, she stroked a hand down the spot where Quinn had been. The warmth was fading away, but she could still smell him. A smile curled her lips, one of those goofy, loopy, giddy grins.

Yeah, there were guys out there who would leave much prettier notes, but she doubted many of them would have left her smiling like this. She was also equally certain that he was probably the only man she
could
smile about, only hours after he’d been whispering another woman’s name while sleeping next to her.

Her smile faded quickly, though, as the faceless Elena filled her thoughts. Dead . . . whoever she was, Elena was dead, and according to Quinn, it was his fault.

Sara was well acquainted with guilt, knew how the mind could play tricks on a person, make them think the strangest things. How guilt and grief could twist and skew logic so out of proportion.

She wanted to know what had really happened.

With a sigh, she swung her legs around and sat up on the edge of the bed. Staring down at the note, she read it through once more. No confessions of undying love, no poetic turns of phrase. But just reading it made her heart feel all warm and soft.

She knew better than this.

She knew better than to get attached, to develop any sort of connection.

Part of her wanted to argue,
It’s not a connection . . . or it doesn’t have to be
.
You’re sleeping together. He left you a note; it wasn’t a declaration of love.

Still, she couldn’t make herself crumple the note up and she couldn’t wipe the foolish grin from her face, either. Instead, she smoothed the note out and then carefully folded it one more time, tucking it into the little table next to the futon before climbing out of bed.

Every muscle in her back screamed at her and she shot the futon a dirty look. “Man, what I wouldn’t give for a real bed again . . .”

Bending over, she touched her toes, trying to ease the tight muscles and knots. A shower would do a better job, but she hated to shower before she worked out.

She was halfway through her workout when the phone rang. Not the little chime that sounded when she had a text message, but a ring. It was the standard loud, blaring ring because she hadn’t ever changed it to one of the polyphonic tones that had come with the phone. She didn’t see the point, because she only got a few calls a month. Hell, she could count the number of calls she got on one hand and still have fingers left over.

With one leg bent in front of her and the other stretched out behind her, she wobbled, frozen in the middle of a lunge. Staring at the phone like the damn thing had grown teeth.

A second ring.

Her heart slammed away inside her chest, but it didn’t have anything to do with the lunges. Straightening up, she started toward the phone as the third ring sounded. She grabbed it from the table with a hand that shook. Relief punched through her as she saw Quinn’s name on the display.

Relief . . . and a little bit of anger. Grabbing the phone, she answered the call just before it would have gone into voice mail—or rather attempted to, because she hadn’t set up the voice mail, either. “Hello?”

“You in the middle of working out?” he asked.

She huffed out a breath and flicked her sweaty hair back from her face. “What gave you that idea?”

“You’re out of breath and you’re irritated. You’re always irritated when you work out.”

Actually, I’m irritated because you got ahold of my number. Because you programmed your number into my phone without asking me.
She made a face, tried to decide if that would sound as petty out loud as it did in her mind. “Yes, I’m working out . . . and probably a little irritated.” As soon as she said it, she bit her lip.

She didn’t sound
irritated
.

She sounded like an outright bitch.

“Somehow I get the feeling you’re not irritated because you’re working out . . . or at least, not just because of that,” Quinn said, his voice slow and measuring.

Shifting from one foot to the other, she debated what to say.

Of course, he hadn’t asked . . . if he had, what would she have done? Seemed kind of strange that she’d sleep with the guy but not give him her number. Hell, she hadn’t been at all irritated when he’d started showing up at the bus stop to walk her home.

Getting pissed over a phone call, but not the bus stop thing, seemed stupid in the extreme.

And of course there was what had happened last night—he’d been mumbling another woman’s name while lying in bed next to her and she’d hadn’t been irritated like this. Hurt, yeah. Jealous, oh, shit, yeah. But not irritated.

She couldn’t help it, though, and she felt more and more stupid with each passing second for even being irritated. All because he had her phone number.

Of course, if her life was anything bearing a similarity to normal, she would have already given him her number . . . assuming he had shown any interest in her to begin with.

Back in her normal life.

“You’re mad at me.”

Quinn’s level voice couldn’t quite disguise the hurt she sensed in it. Now she really felt like a bitch.

Grimacing, she once more pushed her fingers through her sweat-dampened hair. Softening her voice, she said, “I’m not mad. Not exactly. I just . . . I wasn’t expecting anybody to call and it kind of startled me to see your name on the display. I don’t handle surprises very well, I guess.”