Sloe Ride (7 page)

Or in Quinn’s case, a space to breathe and get away from the noisy rush of people around him.

It hadn’t been that long since Rafe’d been with the green-eyed apple of Donal’s eye. He’d not forgotten the nearly panicky need Quinn had at times to get away—to not be touched—to seek out some quiet from the simmering bustle of his family and the rest of the world.

Or at least that’s what Rafe was sure pissed him off about the brunette nearly putting her hand on Quinn’s ass.

“Nice place.” Rafe slid into the chair, keeping an eye on the ever-helpful Jeanine as she bustled about gathering their coffees. “One of the guys you work with owns it, you said?”

“He’s a professor. Really brilliant. A linguist—a damned good one. Speaks thirteen languages. Reads more. His husband’s an investigator. I like them.” Quinn passed over a sheet of paper with the coffee shop’s food selections. “They’re in Egypt right now.”

“What’re they doing there?”

“Chasing mummies. Or being chased by mummies. One of the two.” Quinn’s eyes sparkled when Rafe looked up at him. “The pastrami’s good, but avoid the vegan grilled cheese.”

“I barely like vegetables there, Q. I’m not going to eat cheese made out of them.” Rafe could almost taste the foul on his tongue. “Pass.”

“They’re not made from vegetables. And I’ve had some really good ones, but those are made out of tree nut milk. I think they’re using something cheddar-like for the grilled cheese—”

“What the fucking hell is a tree nut? Like almonds? Why not just tell you it’s almonds?” He cut Quinn off, mostly to see the light hit Quinn’s face as he geared up to answer. Rafe didn’t realize how much he missed hearing Quinn
talk
. How he got lost in the labyrinth of his brain, pulling out pieces of floss and brightly hued scraps of information Rafe adored listening to.

Mostly, he missed the soft smile Quinn got when he began to share the brilliant slivers of things he’d gathered along the way. It was one of the reasons his family called him
breac
—magpie—and Rafe adored making Quinn smile.

Teasing slightly, Rafe continued, “And how do you milk them? They come with little teats like cows?”

With that, Quinn was off and running.

G
OD
HE
’
D
forgotten how much he loved sitting around listening to Quinn babble. There was a song to Quinn’s mind, a diving, swooping gleeful dance with somber passages as the conversation grew dearthen taking off again on a gallivant when something intriguing came up. He’d taken the plates from the waitress when shecame by, sliding Quinn’s around so his fries were near his left hand and a napkin right above that. Everything came back to him easily. The caring of Quinn—taking the small steps in easing some of the roughness around them before the burrs caught on Quinn’s velvety soul.

Rafe’d missed that. Missed
him
. Something about Quinn Morgan soothed even as it ruffled other parts of Rafe’s mind… of Rafe’s body and soul.

He’d hesitated before trying to steal a piece of swiss cheese from Quinn’s sandwich, not knowing if he still had that right—that permission—to intrude on Q’s world. This Quinn was older, yes—a little bit looser—but the rules governing Quinn’s delicate balance remained the same. Ask. Don’t push. And let him fly.

There was nothing more glorious than to see Quinn Morgan flying in the spectral rainbow of the world he’d plunged into.

Little bits of things suddenly became enormously important. The pop of a mustard seed on Rafe’s tongue held a tart wonder he’d not have stopped to see if Quinn hadn’t pointed it out to him. They’d spent at least five minutes dissecting the different flavors in the shop’s homemade bread-and-butter pickles, chortling when Rafe dared Quinn to taste the pickling juice, then finding himself intrigued at the flavor of it on a piece of sourdough from his pastrami sandwich.

Then Quinn was off again. Running along the weaving paths of his mind, dragging Rafe along for the ride.

They eventually found music, a commonality they’d shared from the very beginning. Of everyone Rafe’d ever met, it’d been Quinn who’d gotten his love for the deep, rolling thread beneath the music, the river feeding the land a song was built on. Before he knew it, they were scooted up together, debating a sweet from the menu, and the sky outside was pitch black through the frosted panes.

And discovered he’d placed his hand across Quinn’s, stroking at Q’s long fingers with his own rough touch.

“Do you have school tomorrow?” Rafe didn’t want to stop touching Quinn. Especially not when Quinn turned his hand over and rubbed his fingertips across Rafe’s palm. “Shit, all these years of trying to get out of school, and you go and jump right back in with both feet.”

“I have a few student meetings tomorrow, and
you
hated school because they made you do homework,” Quinn pointed out. “Which you tried to shove off on me.”

“Hey, you
liked
it. ’Sides, what was smarter? Doing it myself or bribing a resident genius to give me a hand?”

“Once. I helped you once.” Quinn held up a single finger—and not with the hand Rafe was playing with. “And that’s because I felt sorry for you. Learned our lesson, didn’t we?”

“Yeah. When writing a paper for an idiot, write
like
an idiot.” Rafe snorted, recalling the thunderous roll of Donal’s voice when the school’s dean dragged them all in for punishment. “Your dad went to the mat for me there. I thought I was out for sure. One too many fuckups.”

“And all because you
had
to see if that band would let you play with them.” Quinn leaned against the chair’s arm, his shoulder nearly brushing Rafe’s. “I was scared Da was going to skin us alive.”

“Yeah, the
one
time I wished your mom showed up.” Rafe chuckled. “But she didn’t. Neither did mine, though, so there’s that.”

“She worked,” Quinn pointed out softly.

It was a long-standing truth. Rafe lived in the Morgans’ back pocket, and his mother worked to keep him there.

“It’s hard if there’s only one parent. She spent a hell of a lot of time working.”

“Not anymore.” Rafe reached for his second latte, then saluted his absent mother. “I’m glad she’s… not here, you know? That sounds fucked-up, but it’s rough between us right now. And that’s not on her. I mean, she did her best. Me, not so much. But at least she’s taken care of. No more working for her. Not ever again.”

“You doing okay?”

And now, Rafe thought, came the dramatic portion of the evening.

“Seriously, Q, don’t I look okay?” Rolling his shoulders back, Rafe tangled his fingers into Quinn’s, tightening his hold. Lying was easy. Or it should have been, but his tongue stumbled over the words he was forcing over them. “All the rock-star money, none of the responsibilities.”

It was Quinn’s soul-piercing look into his eyes that undid Rafe, and he swallowed hard, forcing himself to look away before he fell into the despair he saw mirrored back at him. Folding his hands around Rafe’s, Quinn angled his head down until he was in Rafe’s field of vision.

“This is
me
, Andrade,” Quinn reminded him. “I
know
you. Don’t give me the crap you give everyone else. After all these years, don’t I deserve the truth?”

“Truth is, Q—” Rafe inhaled sharply, tasting the coffee, sugar, and the man next to him in the warm air swirling around them. “I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing with myself, and if I don’t find something soon, I know I’m going to be crawling right back into the bad habits that got me kicked out of my own band.

“I haven’t done drugs in fucking forever, and I don’t miss them. That’s the sad part, right? I should miss them more. Instead I miss what I screwed up, because shit, I had
everything
, Q. Fucking everything. And I didn’t just let it go. I set it on fire and watched the whole thing burn. And for what? I still don’t know why.”

“Maybe you’re missing something inside of you? Maybe you walked too far away from the music?” The whiskey was back in Quinn’s voice, a thick Irish malt heady enough for Rafe to get drunk off of from a single sip. “Maybe if you can find that again. I remember how much you used to love playing. All the time your fingers were going, even when you didn’t have an instrument. Where did
that
go?”

“Maybe that guy Mark wasn’t the only thing that died that night.” Rafe tried to laugh off the welling thickness in his throat, but it soon became too difficult to breathe. His eyes were losing focus, drowning beneath a wash of stinging emotion he couldn’t control. “I don’t know, magpie. I just feel like I’m dead inside, and nothing—
nothing
—I do can bring me back. And I’m so fucking alone. So damned fucking dead and alone.”

“Hey.” Quinn’s breath was warm on Rafe’s cheek, his mouth a few butterfly wings away from brushing Rafe’s skin and frosting it with heat. “You’re not alone. Never alone. I’m here. Any time. You know that, right?”

“Maybe I just forgot.” Quinn was close, too close for Rafe’s comfort or perhaps not close enough for Rafe’s liking. Leaning forward would shatter Rafe’s world, confusing his already jumbled mess of a life, but in that moment when Quinn was so close Rafe could dab his tongue out and lick the curve of Quinn’s upper lip, finding out if his rainbow-chattering magpie tasted as sweet as he had before was all Rafe could think about.

“Last call!” The barista’s booming voice was a clumsy elephant dancing across their toes, and Quinn jerked back, startled by the echoing refrain bouncing about the coffee shop walls. “Closing in fifteen! Take something to go!”

“Well, shit, Q. Looks like we closed the place down.” Rafe leaned back, reluctantly letting Quinn’s fingers go. “Not as good as shutting a bar down, but hey, I take my kicks where I can get them. Look, Q, I’ve got to—”

“You’re going to say you’ve got to go when you and I both know you’re only saying that to avoid the emotions of this… between us. Our friendship. Our… brotherhood.”

“Trust me, Q. The last thing I think of when I look at you is being a brother.” The expression on Quinn’s face was priceless, and if it hadn’t been so late… if he didn’t hurt so deep inside, he’d have loved to kiss Quinn full on the mouth to watch it bloom. “Thanks for listening, kid—”

“Not a kid,” Quinn cut him off, shaking his head. “Stop trying to make me small, Andrade. That’s not going to work.”

It wouldn’t. Rafe knew that. He did it because it helped him deal with how Quinn looked, the want of Quinn’s taste on his mouth, and for all the missteps and fumbling emotions between them.

“No, not a kid,” he agreed softly, then winked. “But wait, the virgin thing. Real or no?”

“Sadly, real.” Quinn pulled a face and got up out of the chair. “Well, depending on how you define sex. I don’t… date well, and my last boyfriend… had some problems with body fluids. So we never really… got too far.”

“Oh, babe. See, that’s a crying shame,” Rafe whispered, leaning over to brush his lips against Quinn’s earlobe. “We’ll have to see what we can do about that. Because if done right, bodily fluids are sometimes the best damned part about the whole fucking business.”

On the warehouse rooftop, looking out over the Bay.

Quinn: You ever wonder at what point someone thinks they can murder someone. I mean, where is that point? How do you get there? To that point?

Miki: That’s fucking easy. It’s ’cause some people are assholes, and instead of seeing a person… instead of seeing a soul, they look at a guy or chick and say: that over there, that’s just meat. That’s all that person is to the asshole. Just another piece of meat.

Damie: And this kind of shit is why no one will come up here and hang with the two of you.

“H
EY
,
HOW
are the kiddies?” Rafe would have swallowed his tongue had he known
that
was going to come out of his mouth. Any bit of swag and polish he had seemed to go out the window where Quinn was concerned. He tried to recover, fumbling about until he just gave up and shot Quinn a shit-eating grin.

“They’re old enough to vote. Hardly kids.”

“Don’t give me that look. Fuck it, they’re kids. I’m an old man, or at least in musician years.”

“Is that seven for any one, like a dog? Or is it more?” Quinn cocked his head, an oh-so-familiar gesture guaranteed to tug at Rafe’s heart. “What is the ratio for one rock star year to mere mortal?”

“I think it depends on the fame. And the fuckery they’ve done,” Rafe replied, leaning on his broom. “Wasn’t famous or fucked-up enough for the 27 Club, but I sure as shit gave it my best to get in.”

Quinn made a face. “Yeah, that’s one membership I’m glad you passed on, Andrade.”

F
INNEGAN
’
S
WAS
open for late breakfast, a smattering of baking-soda biscuits, eggs, and rashers. Leigh’d put up a fight with Sionn, insisting on catching at least some of the morning tourist traffic by pointing out it cost them little to nothing to open, and staffing would be to a minimum, especially if they kept the food to something people could grab before hitting the pier. Unfortunately for Leigh, she was often busier than expected and had no shame in calling in a favor or five to boost her morning staff in a pinch.