Burn (Brothers of Ink and Steel #2) (22 page)

“Oh, Liam!” My fingers trace the lines.

“I don’t mind, makes me look tough,” he says. “Anyway, once the doctors fixed me up, the cops threw me in juvie for a couple weeks, where I got into a shit ton more fights, then they brought in Cade North. You remember him, right? He runs the group home where we met for the first time and he also runs a gym in the city. Social services transferred me there about a week ago. I swear, I ran to get back to you, but Cade caught me. We had this big talk—he’s different, Quinn. I know neither of us had much of a chance to get to know him the first time we were there, but I think we can trust him.”

I search his face, trying to figure out what he means.

“It’s a safe place for us to be.”

“No! No way, no place in the system is safe.” I shake my head.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought too. But he’s like us. He’s lived like us; he thinks like us.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I think we should go back and stay there—at least give him a shot.”

This dream come true is beginning to feel like a nightmare. “How can you think that?”

“Just listen. I’m here alone because he let me go. He told me he understood, told me about him and his older brother going through the system when their parents died. When he caught me busting out, he asked if I’d stay long enough to talk with him, and told me he wouldn’t stop me from going and he wouldn’t call the cops for twenty-four hours,” Liam explains. “He asked me why I wanted to leave, and if I’d give him a chance. I told him I had to get back to you. He invited us both to come back and stay there, to give it a try. If we don’t like it, he’ll let us leave.”

“Come on, Liam, that’s total bullshit, and you know it!”

“It’s not. I can feel it—he’s for fucking real.” He’s trying to convince me, but I just don’t know. It seems way too good to be true.

“What about St. Anne’s?”

“I’ve learned he has a lot of pull and clout in the community. He told me he can pull a few strings—since you haven’t actually been charged with anything, he can vouch for you and say that you’re under his supervision.”

Goddamnit! I want to believe him.

“I’ve been there for a week, watching how he interacts, trying to catch him being two-faced. I came up with nothing,” Liam says. “He’s got no locks keeping anybody in. If you want to go, you can.”

“That doesn’t make sense.” I shake my head.

“It’s his policy. He and his brother were separated and dragged to different homes they ran from to be together—he works to keep kids together—it’s what he does.”

After he says this, he weaves his fingers through my hair. “You’ve gotten so thin. When’s the last time you got a hot meal?”

I drop my eyes and shake my head. “Don’t ask me that.”

“Please, let’s give it a try. If he turns out to be a douchebag, I swear, we’ll hitch to Florida, like we talked about,” he pleads, trying to convince me. “And look.” Liam pulls out a twenty dollar bill. “Cade gave me the money to buy you something to eat and take the bus back to the house.”

I look at Liam and know I can trust him. I look at the twenty and think of food.

“I’ll follow you wherever you think we should go,” I say.

Chapter Ten

2015

Liam

I come back into the house, and everything is quiet. No sign of Bailey or Quinn. I think maybe they went out for a walk, but her coat and boots are still where she left them.

Where she left them
… Where
Quinn
left her coat and boots.

Oh, I am so fucked! 

After I hang my coat and put my boots on the rug next to hers I walk through the house and set the food bags on the kitchen table. I check the bathroom.

Where could they be?

I don’t know what possesses me to climb up the stairs to my bedroom, but I do.

Bailey sleeps, sprawled on the floor next to the bed.

And there’s Quinn, curled on her side in my bed, asleep. My top drawer and old wood keepsake box are open, and in her fingers is the photo of us that I keep.

I can’t stop the tears that rise into my eyes or the smile that spreads across my face. I’m not even upset she went through my shit. It’s so fitting, so perfect.

So us.

And in that instant, it’s like she was never gone.

I’m overwhelmingly lost in her, on my bed, next to my dog, holding our picture.

In the next moment, I risk everything—the crumbling of every angry wall I’ve erected, my foolish pride and dignity and the possibility of receiving her right hook—as I walk to the opposite side of my bed and crawl in beside her.

I dare to get as near to her as I can without waking her, that is, until I hear her soft breaths and breathe in her sweet scent.

Her warmth is so close … so
fucking
close … but not close enough.

I last less than five seconds before I pull my body up flush to hers. I bury my face in her golden hair and wrap my arm around her waist.

Oh, God … I’m dying! But at the same time, I’m impossibly alive again for the first time in ten long, lifeless, loveless years.

My fear of waking her is replaced by hunger … a hunger that’s been suppressed for all that time.

With the smell and feel of her comes the overpowering need to taste her, to kiss her, to prove she’s really here and I’m not just dreaming.

“I’ve missed you, Quinn.” I whisper the words and hope they reach her soul.

A moment passes before I hear her softly say, “I’ve missed you too.”

I have to get closer. I work my fingers through her beautiful hair and pull it up onto the pillow so I can taste the back of her neck.

The first kiss feels like I’m waking up. It’s just my lips against her skin, but really it’s so much more than that. I do it again. Quinn tilts her head down to offer me more. And I take it feverishly.

This time my mouth opens to taste her flesh. It’s beyond waking up, it’s like being resurrected.

She’s warm and soft and sweet. She moans and presses her back against my front, and my blood races.

My restraint fails. My tongue darts out against her, and my teeth nip and scrape.

I’ve been walking dead without you, Quinn.

“I have to see your eyes,” I tell her, even though I’m so fucking afraid she’s going to stop me now. Tell me she can’t and run away, and I will have fucked up again.

She begins to turn, and I tangle my arms around her, one moving with her head and the other over the length of her back in an attempt to keep her from running.

“Nothing has been right since you left, Quinn.” It sounds so pathetic, but it’s the truth.
I’m nothing without you. I’m not a whole person.

You make me whole. You make me real. You and only you, make me feel alive.

I kiss her neck and over the shirt at her shoulders as she turns. She doesn’t get all the way around before I cover her mouth with mine and bring her closer. 

“Liam.”

I taste her tears as they reach her lips, and it makes me kiss her harder, makes me trace her lips with my tongue to catch them.

This time, when she moans, it comes from deep within her throat.

I feel her breasts press into my chest, and her nipples harden as she crushes her body against mine.

I can’t help but think this is how it’s always supposed to have been.

“Oh, God,” I groan.

“The photograph,” she says.

Without opening my eyes, I continue to land kisses against her skin and feel my way up over her arm to her hand to take the picture from her, so it won’t be crumpled between us. I extend my arm behind me to drop it on the bedside table, but instead it falls to the carpeted floor. The action makes me laugh.

“Why are you laughing?” She’s breathless.

“I couldn’t help thinking of those fucking Pop-Tart wrappers I threw to the floor when we were on my bed together that first time.”

She says nothing; instead she plunges her hands up under my shirt and begins to tug it up.

God yes!
I twist and lift my torso so she can get it off.

Quinn’s fingertips tickle down my shoulders and chest.

“
Even the stars cannot compare.
” She traces the script that’s written over my breastbone.

I wait. This is when she snaps out of it, when she realizes her head doesn’t want what her body does, when she gets back out of my bed and walks out of my life … again … forever.

“That night … what you did, Liam … it was the greatest gift you could have ever given me,” she says.

My brow presses down.
What is she saying?
I need to know exactly what she means.

I open my eyes to find hers, searching me, gazing at the tat.

“That night you gave me became my true first time. I learned that, when I thought of the other, I could overshadow that image with your love for me.”

Her admission squeezes my heart like a fist.

“And even though I left … you wrote this on your chest for forever.” She begins to kiss each letter of the ink as she talks. “I’ve seen the pictures of it, when you’ve posed for ads and articles and magazines. You still loved me, even though I hurt you.”

“I’ve never loved another.” I stroke her hair as the sensations of her mouth on my chest drives me into a frenzy. “It didn’t matter that you were gone, you’d always be the best part of me.”

She lifts her gorgeous topaz blue eyes to mine. “I’ve always loved you, Liam. I never stopped.”

Suddenly the decade of torment without her evaporates, as if the separation had never existed—like we’ve always been together and no time has passed.

*****

October, 2005

Liam

I carry Quinn through the field of tall grass out behind North House as she cries against my shoulder.

I promised I would protect her and I failed.

“It was supposed to be ours. I saved it for you. He stole that from me and I can never have it back!”

I press her into me, tighter. I have no words, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. It doesn’t work. The tears come, and I know they won’t stop anytime soon.

“We can’t do this,” she protests. “I mean, I want to—more than anything, but—”

“We can do this,” I say firmly. “I should have done this a long time ago. I made you wait. I’m an asshole.”

“No you’re not, Liam! Take it back!” scolds Quinn.

I can’t, I fucked up in too many ways. If only I had been there.

Why did I let her go alone? Because that’s how the social worker set it up. But that’s just an excuse.
A lame fucking reason.
I should have just gone on my own and sat outside of her fucking mother’s house! I knew it then, and now she’s scarred forever and I’ll always be reminded of the grave mistake I made. This kind of pain can never be erased. It can never go away. We can only hope that it fades with the passing of seasons and that time will take away some of the harshest sting.

“I should have been there, Quinn. If I had just gone and waited outside of the house, it wouldn’t have happened.”

“That’s not fair. How could you have ever anticipated that?” she says. “You couldn’t have!”

The words tear out of my throat with a sob. “I blame myself.”

“Blaming yourself is just as foolish as me blaming myself.” She ends it there, as if that absolves me.

But what she says next is crippling.

“I still see them, you know. Every time I close my eyes. Every time I hear a noise in the house or outside … I
feel
the fear. When you’re with me, it’s better, but when you leave to go to The Core, or to the fucking bathroom, and I’m all alone … I feel like he’s waiting for me, watching through the windows and stalking me, waiting for another chance … and that maybe this time he’ll kill me.”

“He didn’t want to kill you, Quinn, he wanted to hurt you.”
He wanted to damage you beyond repair.
“He couldn’t control you.”

“I’ll never have my first time back!” Her voice is laced with panic. “He stole my first time.”

And we’ve circled back to where we began. It’s been the same conversation for the past three months, since it happened.

I set her down so her feet connect to the earth underneath us. The huge sky envelopes us in shadows while guiding us with the light of a million stars tossed and scattered in an endless midnight.

“
That
… was not your first time!” My voice shakes with anger, pain and so much regret. “
That
will
never
be your first time.” I make her look at me. “Your first time will be about love and wanting. Your first time will be about sweetness and gentleness … and tenderness, with me holding you all through the night as you sleep in my arms, content and satisfied. That will be your first time, Quinn!”

We’re both sobbing as I lay the blanket I carried over my shoulders onto the ground.

It’s the middle of October, and the grasses have turned to gold, but tonight’s air is unseasonably warm.

“
This
… this is your first time.
This
moment,
this
memory that
we
create tonight will be the one you remember.” I lay my hand over her beating heart. “The one nobody can taint or steal or tarnish.” I can hardly see her through my tears. “
This
is your first time—because it’s about you and me—and love. Our love.”

Quinn sobs, and I wipe her tears as they fall. “It’s about me loving you and you loving me back. Do you understand?”

She nods but only slightly.

“Quinn, do you understand me?” I want to shout. I want to erase all my fucking choices. I want to turn back the clock and save her.

“I’m … damaged, Liam,” she whispers.

“I know you feel that way.”
Dear Christ, please help us.

“You don’t know how I feel,” she whispers again, as if the volume of the words themselves could shatter her.

Actually, I know exactly how she feels.

“I know you feel scared. I know you feel violated and like you can’t let another person come close and touch you.
But you’re not damaged!
” I wipe my eyes and face against my arm. “Not to me …
never
to me.”

“What if … what if they … gave me something, Liam? Something the doctors haven’t seen yet, something that could kill me … and could kill you?”

I know what she’s saying. She’s worried about passing an STD on to me.

“I don’t care.” I shake my head. “People die every day. My fate is tied to yours, Quinn.”

She takes a deep shuddering breath before she brings her hands to my face.

“This is us, becoming one. No matter what happens in our lives—if it’s great or if it’s a fucking tragedy, we’ll hold on together, no matter what!” I say.

She nods her head yes and squeezes more sadness from her eyes. I kiss each cheek to absorb the tears.

“If, at any point, you need me to stop, tell me. I don’t care what the reason is—if it hurts, if you’re scared—anything … you tell me, okay?”

She nods again.

As gently as I can, I lift her back into my arms and cradle her against my chest for a moment before I lower her onto the blanket.

“I love you so much, Quinn … so fucking much.” I lay over her and kiss her.

I carefully remove her clothes, then mine. The stars above us are breathtaking.

“Look up,” I tell her.

She does and smiles. “They’re beautiful.”

“You’re beautiful.”

She smiles, that sweet, shy smile she has that possesses me. I tilt my head to peer up into the sky, but not so much that I can’t still see her.

When I look back at her fully and take her eyes with mine, I say, “Even the stars cannot compare.”