Sloe Ride (6 page)

“Yeah, it was a joke. Just… something silly.”

As if they weren’t standing in a pool of quiet so deep Rafe could hear the demons beneath his feet cackling in hell at his discomfort, Quinn’s full mouth quirked with rueful remorse.

“God, I was just trying to tease. This is why teasing never works for me. It always ends up going really stupid.”

“Teasing’s never been your thing, Q.” Rafe pulled up short as a flush pinked Quinn’s cheeks. “It’s kind of like getting into a fight. You… you’ve always been the go-in-to-end-it kind of guy when usually the punching’s kind of what you need. How’re you doing, kid?”

It was safer to call him kid, so much safer for Rafe’s brain to handle, but something in the way he said it must have rubbed Quinn wrong because he bristled, tightening his shoulders. Rafe couldn’t count the number of times he’d shoved Quinn back, needing a bit of space from his best friend’s all-too-delectable younger brother. Kid, that kept Quinn back, back into the toy box and Little League games neither one of them excelled at.

“I’m okay just… not a kid, Rafe. Not for a long time. Hey, it was good to see you. I just wanted to come by and say hi. Mum’s right. You need to come up to the house more. They… we… miss you.” Quinn’s throat bobbled as he swallowed, and in true Q fashion, his eyes slid from Rafe’s face to scan the crowd. “Really. Come by.”

As quick as he’d appeared, Quinn melted away, a mist of Irish sinew and bone swallowed up by the crowd. Wall-to-wall cops and Morgans, and for the life of him, Rafe couldn’t find the one he wanted. He couldn’t really afford to look at what he wanted to do—not with Quinn.

“Jesus fucking Christ, stick your foot in your mouth, Andrade. What an asshole.” Rafe scrubbed at his face, exasperated at the emotions rising up from the dark, cold place he’d shoved them into a long time ago. “And I’m still jonesing for Quinn. Great. Just. Fucking. Great.”

He shouldn’t have hurt Quinn. Shouldn’t have thrown up the walls he always put up whenever Q came near. Despite the effort Rafe’d put into distancing them, he’d given in a few times too many. A kiss under moonlight, a brief slide of his hand down the length of Quinn’s back, as if daring himself to take more, and even the times they’d shared a beer bottle, their mouths touching and sharing a slip of glass between them. They’d danced around each other. Rafe knew it even if Quinn hadn’t. Either way, he brought a bit of pain to those deep emerald eyes, and Rafe hated himself for doing it.

“Well, screw it.” He retrieved his now cold coffee and drained it. “I pissed him off. Time to man up and chew down some crow.”

Living Room Session

Damie: We need more songs about love.

Miki: We’d need to know more about love to write about love. Pain I know. Love’s kind of iffy.

D: What do you mean we don’t know love? You’ve got Kane! I’ve got Sionn! We so
know
love.

M: Because I’m not ready to share Kane with anyone else. With any stranger. He’s mine. That’s mine. I’ve not had enough
mine
in my life yet. When I do, I’ll start writing fucking love songs.

Q
UINN
RAN
.

He wasn’t going to sugarcoat it. The truth was, he’d taken one look at the passionate emotion flaring in Rafe’s liquid-brown eyes, turning golden treacle to burned caramel, and ran.

Quinn could have called it a strategic retreat, but he was going to call it what it was—pure tongue-swelling, awkward fucking up, and he was running from it. The moment he’d seen Rafe, Quinn thought he could for once in his life pull off the easy banter he’d grown up around. The
one
time he needed to just be
normal
, and he couldn’t do it.

The stupid bravado he’d somehow scraped up from the tiny bit of Irish snarl he’d inherited from his parents whispered away when Rafe’s hot gaze seared into him, a swirl of misty smoke caught in the wind of Rafe’s flaring challenge. In that second Quinn was back in high school, standing on the edges of his brothers’ circle, listening to Rafe’s burled rasp turn deep as they bantered about sex and trouble.

He’d so wanted to be a part of that—longed to reach out, touch the sunburst heat of Rafe’s body and feel the strength in his crush’s lean hips and powerful arms. Instead he’d run then too.

Back then, he’d been a thirteen-year-old awkwardly hanging out with his older brothers, hoping their coolness would rub off on him. It was funny how even a decade or so later, he was pretty much still hoping that would happen—but it never did.

“Seriously. Stupid. Degrees out the ass, and you can’t even talk to someone you’ve known for years?” Quinn grumbled, trying to ease his way past the people gathered in front of the shop. “It’s not hard. You do it with other people, right? Shit, why the hell can’t you do it with Rafe? He’s just another guy. Just another
damned
guy.”

A cool bath of fresh air splashed a bit of the heat in Quinn’s face, and he hurried over to the rental he’d gotten from the Audi dealer. There were footsteps behind him, a heavy tread he chose to ignore, because if he turned around and found Rafe there, he’d… probably sink down into the ground.

He turned anyway. Not Rafe. Hipsters. Hairy-faced, boot-wearing young men who wouldn’t be out of place in one of Quinn’s classes and definitely heading to Forest’s coffee shop. Quinn couldn’t decide if he was disappointed or relieved it wasn’t Rafe.

Until he turned back around and found himself nose to nose with the man he’d just fled. Seeing Rafe again was like being punched in the nuts by one of his younger sisters, not as powerful but angled in such a way he ached in places not even touched.

With his sun-streaked golden-brown hair, a body hard enough Michelangelo would long for a block of marble, and a mouth Quinn still tasted in his dreams, Rafe looked like the rock star he’d been. Or still was. Quinn wasn’t sure where Rafe stood with his career or his music. Or if it even mattered anymore.

No, the music would always matter. Regardless of what the world did to him, Rafe would always submerge himself in his music. It was one of the few constants of Quinn’s horrible teenage years, discovering a lanky Rafe sprawled out on one of the beds in the attic room, cradling a bass to his body, and working through deep threads of rolling grumbles.

Rafe
fucking
Andrade.

Quinn hated how Rafe made him feel. Or loved it. He wasn’t sure about that either.

“Hey, hold up there, Q.”

Rafe’s fingers were a hot sear through his shirtsleeve where he grabbed at Quinn.

“And come on, dude. When have I ever been the one you’ve run from?”

“Nearly every single fucking time,” Quinn muttered under his breath. A part of him wanted to shake Rafe off and push him back inside where he belonged, with all of the people who didn’t stumble over their own brains to make conversation. “It’s okay. I’m not—”

“You’re not what, dude?” His fingers gentled, but they stayed wrapped around Quinn’s upper arm. “I think I ran over one of the kitchen guys to make it out the back door before you took off. I’m sorry. I fucked up. I always seem to say the wrong damned thing and—”

“So not you. Mum says you out-Irish the Irish.”

“Your mom’s pretty easy to con shit out of,” Rafe shot back, giving Quinn his mad-pirate grin when Quinn yanked his arm away. “Sure, deny it, but she’s like Wendy with the Lost Boys. Or Little Bunny Foo Foo—and we’re the field mice. Come on, dude. It’s me. Rafe, long-time friend and even longer time fuckup.” Rafe’s expression sobered, the cavalier light in his eyes replaced by something more serious, more soulful. “I’m sorry, Q. I didn’t mean to make you feel like shit back there. Really.”

“And here I thought I was the one who fucked up.” The wind kicked up, brushing an icy chill into Quinn’s skin. “What I said in there?
Really
stupid.”

“So the virgin thing isn’t for real?” Rafe made a show of eyeballing Quinn’s body. “Because I didn’t think all the guys in this damned city were blind.”

Quinn shoved Rafe away, giving himself a bit of space to breathe. “Shut up, Rafe.”

“Look, it’s fucking freezing. How about if we go grab a cup of coffee and catch up?”

“We just left a coffee shop.”

“How about one with less cops? And maybe more food.” Rafe patted his flat belly. “I could eat.”

“You always could eat.” Quinn snorted. “You went away, and Mum couldn’t figure out why she had so many leftovers.”

“That’s a fucking lie. I’ve seen Kiki chow down.” Rafe bobbed his head toward the parking lot. “Come on. Let’s get out of the wind and someplace warm. Probably need to take both cars. Your family’s crawling with cops. They’ll notice if one of us left our car here, and then they’d be all in our shit.”

“Yeah, probably not. About the noticing. Mine kind of got in a wreck, so I have a loaner.” Quinn shook his head, stalling Rafe’s questioning look. “Follow me. I know where to take you.”

Rafe grinned wickedly. “Q, you have no idea how long I’ve waited to hear you say that.”

“W
HYBORNE
’
S
C
OFFEE
House?” An elegant gold script on the storefront’s frosted window was the only hint Rafe had of what lay beyond the Nob Hill shop’s heavy wooden door. “How long has this been here?”

“A few years now. One of the professors I’m friends with owns it. Well, he and his husband own it, but someone manages it for them. They live upstairs.” Quinn opened the street-facing door and waved Rafe in. “I almost bought one of the apartments in the building, but then the house came up, and well, I really liked it.”

Built a decade after the great earthquake, the multistory building’s street level discreetly offered not only a coffee shop but a bento deli and a dance studio for the uninitiated. Rafe grinned at the flock of tiny purple-haired elderly women pouring past them, their chattering punctuated with admiration for their salsa instructor’s ass and one woman’s chocolate Thai plant she’d been cultivating for the past month. One of the city’s trolleys clanged by, swaying as it chugged up to the hill’s crest. Rafe spotted his own apartment building among the spires rising above them, then had to duck out of the way as a young woman with bouncy blonde pigtails careened past him on an old red bicycle. She tossed off a few rings from the bell on her handlebar as a thank-you, speeding off toward Japantown.

“Coming in?” Quinn’s throaty Irish purr drew Rafe back. “Or do you want to keep sightseeing?”

“You never were the impatient one, Q,” he tossed back to the Irish man waiting by the door.

“I’m standing on a corner where the winds cut up from the Bay and wearing too thin of a shirt. I’m going to be impatient.”

Rafe glanced at the prick of nipples under Quinn’s shirt, letting his gaze slip over Quinn’s chest and shoulders.

“Where’s your jacket, Q?”

“I forgot my jacket in the car. Had other things on my mind.” He rattled the open door. “I’m going in without you. Save yourself. Don’t let Gojira get you.”

It was a silly thing, a simple toss-off comment from their younger years Rafe’d nearly forgotten about. Shaking his head, he followed Quinn in, still marveling at how tall Connor’s baby brother had gotten over the years.

Outside the place hid itself like a speakeasy. Inside it was like stepping into an old British gentlemen’s club, complete with cherrywood wainscoting, antique furniture, and a large expanse of a bar dedicated to brewing teas and rich-bodied coffees. Small intimate alcoves were set up along the walls, cordoned off by old Asian screens or half walls of wood and frosted glass. Behind the bar, a bald, nearly cadaverous man with a curled-up mustache the color of bright pennies steamed milk, and he looked up to nod at Quinn as they passed.

“Two of the same, Professor Morgan?” A young woman in a black shirtwaist dress fell into step between them, and Rafe found himself frowning at the pretty, flirtatious smile she gave Quinn.

“Are lattes okay, Rafe?” Quinn got tangled in the young girl’s path when he turned back. He stumbled, sidestepping her again as she moved into his way. “Damn. Pardon me.”

“I’m sorry, is
he
with you?”

Rafe caught the slight assessing look the elfin-faced brunette shot his way. He also saw Quinn stiffen slightly when her hand drifted across the small of Quinn’s back.

“Yeah, sugar. He’s with me.” Rafe glided up into Quinn’s space, neatly paring her off of him. “We order off the menu here or up at the bar? I’d like something besides sugar and cop in my stomach right now.”

“Menus are on the tables. We’ll be at the back, Jeanine,” Quinn called out as Rafe shuffled behind him toward a corner of the wedge-shaped shop. “By the bookcases.”

Rafe could see why Quinn chose the spot he had. Chances were it was a favorite, familiar niche in Q’s life, a square carved out by a pair of heavy shelves and up against one of the half-curtained windows looking out into the street. A couple of wingback chairs, worn sage velvet and nearly black wood, sat abreast of a round tea table in the same dark wood—a matched set from someone’s purloined estate, Rafe guessed. With the shelves on either side of them, it was a cozy nook, large enough to move about in yet intimate and warm for conversation.