Catching Serenity (Serenity #4) (21 page)

“What?” I say when he shakes his head.

“You’re quite a quandary.” He looks out the window again, rubbing his thumb along his mouth.

“I don’t know why I did that.” There’s no need to hide the frustration in my tone or shy away from Quinn’s touch when he moves his fingers through my hair. “I should never kiss you. Not once.”

“No,” he says, his mouth quirking. “You shouldn’t a’tall.” Another glance at me and he looks to his right, watching the neighbor’s youngest son walking their Dachshunds. “It’s because you think I don’t see anything.”

“What do you mean?”

Quinn shakes his head, scratching at the scruff on his chin. “Everyone thinks I don’t see what’s right in front of my nose. But I do. I see the truth of things. I see it all. It’s in every fighting couple on the sidewalk, every ridiculous discussion. People fight, they row and scream because they are desperate.” The way Quinn speaks, the listless defeat in his tone reminds me of someone doubting the existence of God. Someone so desperate not to believe for fear they’d have to atone for their sins.

Quinn doesn’t want connections. I get it. It’s no wonder with the childhood he had, with the apparent contentious relationship between his parents, his father’s philandering, all the money given to him but no moral compass, his father’s defection, his mother’s death. It’s likely why he’s become so close to a little girl who may not have long to live. Relationships are complications he finds distasteful, still, none of us get through life without having them. No matter how hard we try to avoid them.

His voice sounds lost. “They do all that—fight and row and scream—because they are clinging to the last bit of passion left inside them, because they feel it draining away.”

“That’s life, Quinn.”

“No, love, that’s begging. That’s pleading that the end won’t come. But it always does, doesn’t it? Declan, Autumn, all your barmy mates and the blokes they try to wrangle down, it’s all fecking fiction. None if lasts. Not any of it.”

“So why bother trying? You believe it’s bullshit and you still keep at it, you still try to bed as many women as you can. It’s why Layla smacked you.”

“Who’s trying? I’m just
trying
to have a good time, and there’s not much trying to it, girls fall all over me. But you make it sound like I’m not fussed who I shag. That’s your hypocritical assumption. I am. When you get right to it, I’m damn well picky over who I let in my bed. You’re right on one thing, though. I don’t
try
, not anymore. I haven’t tried in ages and ages. I’ve seen where trying takes you and it’s not worth the bother. But I’m a bloke, aren’t I? I have needs. And I’m not particularly shameful about saying what I want. Like you.”

“Me?”

“Aye, you. I won’t lie about it. Twice now you’ve kissed me.” He pauses, daring to deny it with one glance and when I only met his stare, when I lifted my eyebrow in my own small challenge, Quinn smiles. “Twice it never went further than that.” He moves his gaze over my lips, a slow, steady glance that tells me all I need to know about where his thoughts have drifted to. “I’m saying that I’m not shameful about liking your mouth on me. You are. You’re fussed what the others will think of you should you let yourself give in to me. You needn’t be. It’s not as if there’s a soul here I’d brag to about bedding you. I only care that I do.”

“You’re a pig, O’Malley.”

“That may be true, love, but you’re the one who keeps coming back to this pig.” Quinn reaches out to grab the back of my neck to pull me close to his mouth, and dammit, I let him. “You’re the one pretending you don’t like me a’tall.” He takes a kiss then, fierce, firm, one that makes a quick moan slip from my throat.

And then he leaves me. Again. Sitting alone in that car, my lips throbbing, my mind twisted with the realization that he’d just shown me exactly who he was. And I didn’t know if I hated him for it, or wanted him more desperately than before.

THE COLD SNAP
came in between the beginning of mass on Sunday and my mother’s peach cobbler that afternoon. There had been no warning. My father said it was one of those freak occurrences—the quick whip of cold, the hint of a storm that no radar predicted, like the rumble of something in the distance you aren’t certain is thunder of a canon.

The cold, the light flurries that caked on the sidewalk and wetted the ground should have been warning enough. Cavanagh has not seen snow in ages. The cold and winter weather we usually get comes and is over before anyone can bring their snow shovels from the garage. But this storm, with the slowness of the falling flurries and the ache of cold that settled into my joints wasn’t like the storms of past years.

It was harsher.

It was colder.

Much like the day itself.

It is two a.m. before Quinn shows in the waiting room. He bypasses my parents, my brother and sisters as they wait for news on the other side of the room. I have chosen the farthest corner near the bay window that looks out onto the small man-made lake in front of the hospital. The tall column of brick next to me hides me from those worried, anxious gazes my parents and siblings have sent my way in the two hours since Rhea was rushed to the ER.

It doesn’t keep Quinn away.

How he found out, I have no clue. I certainly didn’t call him. I could think of a dozen people I’d rather see, a dozen more that I’d want sitting next to me, watching the slow fall of flurries out of that cold window.

“How long?” he asks, and I realize he’s been staring at me, maybe watching for a slip in my expression, maybe wondering why I haven’t asked why he came at all. Of course, Autumn knows I’d be here, I’d texted her around midnight, just after I got here. There’s no doubt she and Declan would have told Quinn to leave us be until there was news.

I’m not surprised he ignored them.

“Too long,” I tell him closing my eyes, not wanting to see that constant frown on his face. I am some weird paradox—waiting in limbo for news that will either prolong my grief or force it forward. I want numbess. I want reality.

But as I’m sitting there with my eyes closed, he blurts out “Layla is pregnant,” and it shocks me, not just because of what it is, but at who is the one to break it to me. Really, with the way that Layla and Donovan have been carrying on, the news shouldn’t shock me. It does, but I can’t seem to react. And Quinn speaks so blatantly, like this news is nothing, like it’s at all appropriate to announce in the middle of my limbo.

He glances at me, eyebrows bunching together like he can’t make any sense of my stoic, bland reaction. “Her father found out, forced her hand,” he continues, ignoring the way my jaw finally drops, not picking up on how I really don’t want to be hearing this right now. “Only found out cuz the mad bint tried blaming it on me. Didn’t want her da knowing it was that Donovan bloke that got her up the pole.”

Autumn surely would have mentioned it when I spoke to her earlier, when I gave her the news of… but I’d been brief, anxious, refusing her comfort when she offered it. She would have thought it wasn’t the time to tell me.

“You slept with her?” I ask him, knowing his answer didn’t matter to me, at least not right now, not here. It was just something to say.

“Think so little of me?”

“You tried kissing her.”

He doesn’t react. He doesn’t bother denying his actions, but then I don’t care as Aunt Carol walks into the waiting room. Nothing matters to me then, except that devestated expression on her face. Not Quinn or Autumn or my friends being pregnant. Nothing.

We converge, all of us, and Carol leans against my mother, like a sponge absorbing strength, solidity. “The tests were… fast tracked. They’ve…” Her breath rattles, weakens as she watches each face around her, finally stopping on my mother’s. “Clay should be here,” she tells Mama, frowning as though she isn’t sure if she should mourn or rage against her husband leaving. It happened yesterday, just as Rhea stopped breathing. Quinn had been right. Clay had checked out. “They’ve given her a month at the most.”

Someone unplugs me then. It’s the only way I can explain the sensation that comes over me. Worse than having my feet kicked out from underneath me. Worse that the feel of my blood slipping right out of my veins. I am not prepared for the news, even though I knew it would come someday. Hadn’t we waited for it? Didn’t we know a timeline would be given eventually? But knowing and accepting are two very different things.

Around me, my family weakens until they fall back, separate, leaving me staring at my aunt as my mom steps forward and allows her sister to crumble against her. I can barely stand, myself, and am grateful when Booker leads me to a chair and lets me hold on to him as I slowly sit. Quinn has vanished. He was there, standing behind me. I smelled his cologne, felt the tremble of his hands and then he was missing. This is too much reality for him. Somehow I understand that.

“She stopped breathing and the doctor said it was because…”

“The experiemental treatment though…” my mother sounds hopeful, confident but one shake of Carol’s head and we all know the truth. There is no more time. There is no more hope.

Idly, I stare around the room, waste time watching the lights outside the window, then for no other reason than distraction, I call Layla, leaving a message that I’m at the hospital.

Then, I block out everything—the explanation of Rhea’s condition that doesn’t matter, the lost hope and defeat that colors my aunt’s tone. I’m uncertain how long we sit there with the low refrain of sorrow moving around us like a fog. It’s only until Booker nudges me, nods toward the door at the end of the corridor that I move, standing up and walking to meet Layla at the edge of the waiting room.

“Sayo. Sayo, oh God,” she says. Her emotion does something to me. It turns off my grief, the weight of agony that threatens to choke me.

My friend’s face is so pale. Layla’s flushed and looks tired. I know I should ask her how she feels. I should find out the details, how she let this
thing
that happened to her happen, what her plans are, but none of that matters really. All I know is that Layla is as scared as I am of the future, and we cling to each other, our tears flowing.

“I’m so sorry,” she says, sniffling when I pull her into a hug.

“Me too, sweetie.”

And we don’t say anything else. We watch, take comfort in each other. Layla holds my hand and holds me much the same way that my mother holds Aunt Carol. Mama holds her sister and takes into herself that well of grief because she loves Carol. Because that is what sisters do for each other.

“What am I going to do?” Carol whispers to my mother, but her voice is harsh and ragged. The anguish pours from her, the fear moves her limbs like an exposed wire flickering electricity. “My baby. My poor baby. Oh, God, my poor baby.” And then Carol cannot stop crying and because she can’t, no one can.

THE MURAL IS
incomplete. Skies have been left blank, stars undrawn. There are no billowing clouds on the left side of the mural and only one side of Rhea’s face is finished.

It’s the completed side, that round cheek, the bright, brilliant dark iris that I watch, sitting in my car with the engine off. The cold barely registers because that mural fills me up, warms me. Yet in the next second I am cold again, colder than I was walking away from the hospital, refusing my brother’s invite for a drink, waving off my father when he suggested I stay with them tonight.

I didn’t want their comfort or company. It would keep me too warm, too alive. Now I embrace the numbness.

I only want to forget.

Someone inside can help with that.

I’d found out that Quinn had actually bought the warehouse a month before. Declan told Autumn the trustee thought it was Quinn wanting to set roots in Cavanagh so they did not reject his request to buy it. But he has done nothing to set up anything more than a place to escape from his brother and Joe. The power and water have been turned on, but the elevator doesn’t work. When I walk up the steps, the scent of vanilla candles and a musty, closed hallway greets me. I should worry about it being a fire trap, but I don’t. I just don’t care.