Sloe Ride (23 page)

“She’s a Cornish Rex. That’s how their fur is. Just a little bit of it, really.”

He was quick to jump to Harley’s defense, standing up to face Rafe. Bending down, Rafe wiggled his fingers at the cat.

“Don’t be offended if she takes a little bit to warm up—”

Damned if Harley didn’t make Quinn a liar and trot up to Rafe for loving. Delicately standing up on her hind legs, she pressed her front paws on the top of his knee, purring up a storm as she rubbed her face against Rafe’s chin.

“Hey, kinda like velvet.” Rafe picked Harley up, and the cat buried her head in his hair, rumbling deep in her chest. “She’s cool. I like the spots. Great name—Harley. Very badass.”

“My coworker Graham suggested it.” Quinn unsnapped the latches of the kennel to break it down. “I was kind of surprised because he’s not the motorcycle type, but it suited her. She sounds like a Harley once she starts purring.”

“This Graham guy, when he suggested her name, did he say something like ‘You should call her Harley, Quinn’?” Rafe scritched the cat’s serpentine body as she wiggled in his arms.

“Yeah,” he replied, packing the crate down.

“He was probably telling you to call her Harlequin, like those Italian clowns.” Rafe laughed, probably at the astonished expression on Quinn’s face. “’Cause she’s spotted.”

“Well, shit.” He felt a flush creep across his face. “Graham didn’t even say anything when I told him I called her Harley like he suggested. God, what an idiot.”

“I love you, but man, sometimes for all your smarts, you’re a git—as your mom says.”

Rafe jerked his head down the hall, obviously not hearing the heavy pounding of Quinn’s heart.

“I’ll show you the guest suite. You won’t believe the bathtub in there. I think the designer thought I was going to have water orgies or something. I think it fits five people.”

Rafe was right about the tub. The room was incredible, overlooking the Bay, but the bathroom was built for lounging and possibly water sex. It was the only reason Quinn could come up with for a marble tub that size. He put his toiletries bag on the counter, then began to unpack his things. Rafe came in behind him and set Harley down on the counter. She mewled her discontent, wheedling to be picked up again, but Rafe ignored her and palmed one of Quinn’s medicine bottles.

“What’s this?” He turned it around, finding the directions.

“It’s to help me… focus. Sort of,” Quinn mumbled, reaching to extract the bottle from Rafe’s fingers. Or at least he tried to, but Rafe closed his hand before Quinn could grab it. “Give it. I don’t like—it helps me be…
normal
. Focused. Kind of.”

“Nothing not normal about you, Q. It’s your normal, and if this shit helps you, then great, but I’ve got to ask you one thing.” Rafe shook the bottle. “This stuff. Do I have to be worried about it?”

“Worried how?”

“If this stuff’s addictive… I can’t have it in the house, Q.”

Rafe’s face was cold, a mask of indifference Quinn knew he was hiding behind. Despite the chill in Rafe’s expression, Quinn could see the pain and fear in Rafe’s soft brown eyes.

“I just… can’t, babe. I can’t trust… me.”

“I didn’t think about that. Shit. I thought you were talking… never mind what I thought.” Quinn tapped the bottle’s top. The marble was cold through his clothes where Quinn leaned against the bathroom counter, but all he felt was the hot length of Rafe’s body pressed up to his side. “It’s not addictive. Not controlled in any way.”

“And it helps you how?”

Quinn dug down into everything he knew about reading faces and the lessons he’d learned fucking it up, but nothing in Rafe’s face held any judgment. He was curious, concerned a bit, but for the most part—wondering more about the how of the pills and not the why.

It’d been so fucking long since the
why
of the pills wasn’t important to someone, and
that
person’d been Miki St. John, not exactly a poster child of stability himself.

“The dosage I take’s just enough to help me edge off the… spiders in my head. Like coffee but better.”

“You’re the only person I know who drinks coffee to calm them down, Q,” Rafe murmured, brushing Quinn’s hair back from his forehead. “How does it make you feel? Taking it. Not what it does to your body but… you? Are you okay with it? I don’t think I’d be.”

“It’s usually okay. It just gets… old,” Quinn confessed. There he was, standing in a bathroom about the size of his father’s study, digging his soul and heart out about the one thing he never spoke about, then handing it all over to Rafe, of all people. Oddly, the whispering secrets, the heat of Rafe’s hand, and the gentle push of his voice brushed away the sharp edges prickling Quinn’s thoughts.

“Talk to me, Q.” Rafe’s smirk was gentle and teasing. “Just you and me here.”

Quinn’s fingers seemed to find Rafe’s waistband of their own accord, and he hooked two into a belt loop, tugging on Rafe’s jeans as he spoke. “Truth? It’s fucking shitty because it makes you… makes
me
feel like I can’t be normal unless I take something. And then I get used to it until one day I get mad again. Then I don’t want to take them. So, most of the time it’s okay, and then it’s not.

“I guess sometimes I hate it. I hate it because the family’s always saying shit like ‘Did you take your meds?’ Especially if I’m grumpy or pissed off about shit they do. Because I can’t be mad or pissy. Like it’s a magical little gumdrop I just forgot about, and if I take one, it’s all better, and I won’t cause any problems.” He tugged again, staring at the denim loop, unwilling to look up into Rafe’s face, afraid of what he’d see there. “And I love them, but they’re always there, always in my face, and sometimes I just want to be normal so they don’t handle me like they do. They treat me differently, and I hate it. All because I need ten milligrams of a fucking drug to help me even things out a bit.”

“It was worse before, right?” Rafe stepped in closer until their hips brushed. His breath was hot on Quinn’s cheek, a warm kiss of wind in the bathroom’s slightly cold air. “I remember…. Q, it wasn’t a good time for you before. Does this shit help with that?”

“Some. Mostly better now that I’m out of puberty.
That
shit didn’t help. Some behavior modifications worked. Tools to focus on things I forget.” He made a face, mostly at Rafe’s chest. “There’s no instructions, you know? I have to stop and remember what to say to people or try to fix their names to their faces, and I can’t recall their faces.

“It’s worse if they talk to me first because I answer automatically, but then the follow-through—like asking how they’re doing—that doesn’t always follow. It’s worse when I’m tired because I forget. And if I don’t control everything—every damned little thing—something falls through the cracks. I panic, and it swings so high or low, cutting into me, and I can’t stop that feeling.” He shrugged, trying to ease away the rising helplessness inside of him. “So, there’s the
why
for the pills. To keep everything from swinging too far. To keep
me
from going SuperBall in my brain.”

“People joke about better living through chemicals.” The heel of Rafe’s hand ghosted under Quinn’s chin, forcing him to look up. “For me, not so good. For you, maybe okay.”

“Mostly okay,” he whispered softly, trembling under Rafe’s touch. “I just have to remind myself sometimes that it’s worse if I don’t take them. But oh, I
hate
having to need to.”

“
That
I understand, magpie,” he laughed. “Come on. Bet that clan of yours is about to light the torches because you’ve gone AWOL.”

“I left Kane a note.” It was a stretch of the truth, a piece of hastily scribbled-on paper tacked onto the kitchen fridge. “Sort of. I left Da a voice mail. Let him deal with their shit. He made them. He can deal with Kane and Con.”

“I’m game if you are. How about some dinner? Feel like some food?”

Rafe’s fingers were back in Quinn’s hair, and he resisted the urge to move his cheek into Rafe’s palm. Not daring to speak, Quinn nodded.

“Good,” Rafe said. “One thing, though, why’s your cat splashing around in the toilet? ’Cause I sure as shit don’t know where a mop is in this place.”

Q
UINN
WAS
choking on blood. No matter how much he tried swallowing, it bubbled back in, a steady river pushing past his teeth to flood his throat and sinuses. He tried screaming, tried doing anything other than drowning in the thick metallic mass pouring over him, but nothing came out—nothing
happened
—and when Quinn’s eyelids won their fight against the rushing tide of blood, he opened them to find only darkness.

LeAnne came out at him from the shadows, her mouth stretched wide in a vulgar mockery of the gaping wound carved into her belly. Her lips were slung down low, pushed nearly to her chin from the weight of her intestines spilling over her broken teeth and undulating tongue.

He fought to be free of the shadows wrapping around him, but they clung too firmly, a stygian straitjacket Quinn couldn’t work loose. If anything, the pressure on his body tightened, cutting off his airway and pushing his ribs in, the bones turning knifelike to slice through his flesh. Horrifyingly, a jut of steel bone burst through his belly before curving a half-moon cut into his skin.

“Come on, baby. Come back to me here.”

Rafe’s purring rasp broke through the gurgle of blood pouring from Quinn’s mouth, and he blinked, losing his battle to the gush once again.

“Hey. Hey, I’m right here, Q. Just pull up, babe. For me. Come on.”

Rafe shouldn’t have been there. Not in the middle of the gore and foul-smelling ichors. The darkness lightened, peeling away in ashen sheets. Then Quinn gasped, finally able to breathe despite the sour metallic wash in his throat and lungs.

“There you go. Come back to me, magpie. I’ve got you.”

A warmth encompassed Quinn, burning away the last remaining cold tendrils wrapping around his chest.

“Open those gorgeous eyes of yours. That’s it. Hey, there you are.”

The dream wisped away into smoke, flecks of gray lingering in Quinn’s mind as he surfaced out of his nightmare’s drowning pool. He blinked, and LeAnne was gone. He’d sat up at some point, or Rafe’d pulled him up, because he found himself nearly sprawled over Rafe’s lap, his arms wrapped around Quinn’s waist.

Then LeAnne came to him, her empty eyes fogged with confusion and pain, and Quinn felt the panic ride him again as he tasted blood in his mouth and the sting on his tongue where he’d nearly bitten through its flesh.

“Oh God, the girl,” Quinn gasped, thankful for the rush of cold air burning when he took a breath. “Her eyes, Rafe. God, her eyes. She kept staring at me. Just looking at me—”

“I know, babe. Come on,” Rafe murmured, rocking Quinn in a slow curve. “Hey, Q. I’m right here. It’s just a dream.”

“She’s
dead
, Rafe. And I killed her.” The image of LeAnne’s shocked slack face blurred, swaddled by emotions and other memories. “God, she looked at me… like when I had to put Tommy to sleep, the cat you brought home to us. Remember him? He was so sick… and so old… and when the vet said we couldn’t do any more for him, I wanted to be the one who held him then, you know?”

“Yeah, I know, babe. But this… she’s not on you.”

“She is. And she had the same look in her eyes that he did.”

He had to get free of Rafe’s arms, if only to shake the feeling back into his hands. Rafe refused to let go, shifting to keep hold of his waist, and Quinn gulped in more air.

“It was like she was saying ‘Why are you making me go away?’ Like he did. God, I didn’t want to let him go, even though I knew there wasn’t anything I could do, all I could think was he’s asking me why I am sending him away. She was dead, and I could hear her screaming at me—”

“You didn’t kill her, Q.” Rafe shifted, rocking Quinn back. “You didn’t kill Tommy either. Don’t—”

“She had the same look in her eyes—like he did, Rafe.” Everything hurt. His heart lost control of itself and threatened to beat its way free of its prison, and no amount of breathing seemed to calm it down. “I held him, and he looked at me that way. And I didn’t want to let him go. Because he was all I had left of you. That’s how LeAnne looked. It’s crazy because she’s… a person, and he was… but she looked so confused. Like he did. He was so confused and—”

“Baby, I need you to focus on me.” Rafe turned, settling Quinn against the headboard. Straddling Quinn’s lap, he rested his weight on his knees and took Quinn’s face into his hands, forcing Quinn to stare straight ahead. “Listen to me, okay?”

“Okay.” He knew he was crying. It was childish and stupid, a nova of emotions he couldn’t quite seem to tamp down, and Rafe’s voice promised so much.

“LeAnne… was a dream. You didn’t have anything to do with her dying. Someone else did that. Some sick fucking asshole took her from her family, and
that
person fucked up her life. Not you.” Rafe leaned in, his hair curtaining around their faces. “Can you see that? Tell me you see that.”

It sounded so simple, so logical, but the stain of LeAnne’s death ran deep. “I led him to her. She wouldn’t have died if—that
tuilí
—he shouldn’t have seen her. He wouldn’t have even known she was alive if I’d—”

“We don’t even know for certain
you’re
the one this guy is after.”

Rafe stroked his thumb over Quinn’s chin. It was a silly caress, almost as if Quinn smeared ice cream on his face, but something in Quinn’s belly turned over and begged for more with each pass of Rafe’s finger.

“And if he is, I’m not going to let him get even five miles near you. I’ve got you now. Here. Okay? It’ll be okay.”

“Tommy was my fault,” Quinn confessed. “I just didn’t want to… I argued with Mum about letting him go. Because he was so sick. I kept hoping he’d get better. I kept hoping, you know? And when I knew I couldn’t let him suffer anymore, I still couldn’t… I kept thinking I wasn’t doing enough for him.”

“For the record, Tommy was fucking ancient. And I’m not sure how one has to do with the other, but in that too-smart, Moebius-strip brain of yours, they do. And I’m going to tell you flat out, he was kind of old and beat up before he ever went to live with you guys. He was horny, mean, and somehow got your mom’s cat knocked up in the
one
hour he was in the house before he headed to the vet to get snipped.”