Through the Fire (7 page)

He looked at her, narrowing his eyes. “She had problems, couldn’t deal with them or us. I guess she felt the only way to handle what was going on in her life was to walk away from everything. Just split. She was selfish, didn’t think about what that one stupid act would do to us, her kids. It messed us up, messed us up real good.”

“And you’ll hate her for the rest of your life, right?”

“I didn’t say that.” He bristled. “I deal with it. I don’t hate her.”

“I think you do and it’s poisoning your life,” she said. “Hate doesn’t hurt anybody but the person who does it. Think about what having these feelings has done to you, to your life.”

“I think I’ve done damned well considering what I’ve come through,” he said proudly. “Hey, I could’ve ended up like some of the other brothers out here. Lives totally wrecked. But I’ve stayed on my feet.”

“Tell me about your sister,” she said, trying to keep him talking, keep the conversation away from her and what she’d nearly revealed about her own demons. “What happened?”

He visibly sagged as though she had sucker punched him. It took several minutes for him to recover his composure. He swallowed hard. “My
twin
sister was killed…shot down in a drive-by shooting in my old neighborhood. It…it…was my fault ’cause she kept buggin’ me to move, to find a new place, get out of the neighborhood. And I kept puttin’ it off, comin’ up with excuses. Then one day she was dead. Gunned down like a common thug. And I could have prevented it all if I had just moved out of there when she asked me to. So you see,
I
killed her as sure as if I’d pulled the trigger.”

“Quinn, it’s not your fault,” she said sternly. “It’s fate, chance, destiny, whatever you want to call it. When it’s your time…nothing and nobody can stop it.”

“No.” He shook his head.

“No, no what?”

“No, I don’t believe that. I was responsible. I let her down.”

“I see. So you’ll spend the rest of your life hanging on to the guilt like some sort of badge of honor,” she goaded. “Is that what it’s about? You’re better than that. And if your sister loved you as much as I’m sure she did, she’d never want to you live like this.”

He sprung up from the stool, nearly knocking it over. His expression turned into a mask of pain and rage. “You don’t know shit! You don’t know anything about me, what’s going on inside me. Your life is all laid out for you. Yeah, you talk a good game, getting folks to spill their guts. Makes you feel good, don’t it? Keeps the light from shining on you, don’t it?” He stepped toward her, his nostrils flaring. “What about you, Rae? Huh? Why is it that
you
can’t hear the music anymore?”

She turned away, away from the mirror that so easily reflected her soul. He was right. It was easy for her to throw out platitudes, wise counsel, and clichés. And it wasn’t that she didn’t believe them to be true, but they kept her from dealing with her own issues. “This isn’t about me,” she muttered weakly.

He stared at her back, at her lowered head,
and realization rose and stood between them. “Isn’t it, Rae? Isn’t this what you needed, what you were really after?”

“What are you talking about? I—”

“You and I are cut from the same cloth, Rae,” he said, moving up behind her and taking her shoulders in his hands. He felt her body stiffen beneath his fingertips. “You told me once about walking through the fire. Remember?”

She tugged in a breath and nodded.

“You pushed me through it…and you were on the other side—waiting. I’ll help you. If you give me a chance. If you trust me the same way you wanted me to trust you.”

Slowly she turned to face him, looked up into his eyes, saw the sincerity, the need, the awakening. The walls of her chest tightened.

“Tell me, Rae,” he said forcefully, fully turning the tables. “Tell me what stopped the melody.”

“I… I.” She shook her head.

“Tell me,” he said in a harsh whisper, knowing if she denied him this one thing he’d surely retreat to that dark, safe place and never return. Not again.

“I…should have stayed…home that night.” Her voice cracked. “I should have stayed…”

Bit by bit she relived that dreadful night that changed her life forever. Changed her forever. It was now her turn to face the bitter truth, to take his place in the core of the heat. She measured out the words inside her head, weighing each one. It was unlike her to surrender such large chunks of herself this way. Control by editing. Maintain the emotion, retain the control, and edit what you say. There was no way she would divulge her entire life story in one sitting. No way. Rae didn’t do that. Still, she felt uncommonly comfortable with him, comfortable enough to say more than she usually would.

“All I thought about was me, what I needed,” she continued slowly, deliberately. “How important my work, my career was to me. And in the end I lost everything. All I had left was my music, my work. Ironic. But it’s not enough to fill the holes, the emptiness, no matter how hard I try.”

“Yeah, you’ve said that, Rae,” he said, almost cutting her off. “But what do you mean
when you said ‘I should have stayed home that night’? That’s the heart of it.”

She kept her back to him once he started asking those questions, the ones that hurt. “If I hadn’t gone out, then my husband and daughter wouldn’t have gone to the store and gotten killed. Simple as that.” Never before had she dared to say the words aloud. And now that she’d shared the load with someone who truly understood, the weight of guilt and regret was lifted.

“And that’s haunted you just like the thing with my sister,” he said, finally understanding the connection between the murder of her family and the dry creative well that robbed her music of its vitality, the way his own losses had. “That grief spills over into everything in your life, too, doesn’t it?”

“Just like you, Quinn?” she murmured, looking at him now. “Mirror images. We both have our crosses to bear.”

“I guess. All I’m sure of is that I can’t do this anymore.”

“So what are you saying, Quinn?”

He bent down to tie his shoe, a loose lace, but kept talking, then stood. “I don’t have any
easy answers, Rae. I just know that it’s time for a change, and how that happens…” He shrugged. “It’ll come to me. But I’m through anguishing over it.”

It was the look on his face that made her stand there, completely admiring and respecting this new man in her life with a whole new set of feelings. It was a look of strength, steely resolve, and even arrogance. Quinn had showed her more than just his scars and wounds; he’d showed her the iron will that had helped him survive all these years, through some old fires and battles. And he’d survived, a bit battered and bruised, but he’d survived, and so had she. Both of them possessed a toughness so few men, or even women, had anymore. Yes, they were survivors. The question now became since they’d crossed that first wall of fire, would they continue to fight the blaze together, or become consumed by the flames—alone?

R
ae watched the Jeep until it became a mere speck in front of her eyes. Slowly, she moved away from the window, out of the way of the sun that was making every effort to debut, heralding the start of a new day.

And it was, Rae thought, making her way to the bathroom. She turned on the water in the tub full blast and dribbled some bath gel into the rushing water.

The evening spent with Quinn, or more so,
with herself, had truly rattled her, took her someplace she’d never been—deep inside herself, right smack next to everything she’d always been afraid of. She’d stood toe to toe with her demons, looked guilt and selfishness in the face, and accepted her role, something she had done everything in her power to keep from happening. Except tonight—tonight nothing was as it had been, for either of them.

She tugged on her sweatshirt and pulled it over her head, and stepped out of her pants, dropping them in a heap with her underwear right behind them. Gingerly she stuck one foot in the tub, and bit by bit slid into the steamy water until it reached her chin.

Sighing, she relaxed and closed her eyes, her mind and body humming. She may have thought a lot of things about Quinn Parker: talented, sexy, handsome, caring. But she would never have thought of him as one who would actually open the door to his innermost spaces. He had. And it was her that he chose to share a part of himself with.

The experience touched her profoundly, understanding that what had happened with
him tonight was no easy feat, especially for a man like Quinn, who had always lived with the “image.” It may have been something as simple as bringing her to his home. On the surface it seemed like nothing at all—but it was. It was an unwritten, unspoken message to her that he believed he could bring her into a small part of his world. Open the doors. Just as his painful revelations to her had been.

What happened between them tonight created a bond that would not easily be broken. It left her feeling closer to him than she had to any man—even Sterling. The thought, though sad, gave her what she needed to finally be able to let go—to mend.

Leaving had been hard. She had wanted to stay. It was Quinn who knew that tonight was not the night. Not the time, not when they were still so tender. When they did come together, and she knew that they would, it would not be with wobbly legs and tenuous hearts. They would be ready, and she was willing now to wait, because she was certain it would be worth it.

Finishing her bath, she languidly went to her bedroom and stretched out across the bed.
Usually her first thought in the morning would be getting to the studio, getting to her music. Not today.
Interesting.
For the first time something else took center stage in her thoughts.
Quinn.

If she’d had any doubts that she was in love with him, they were erased. She knew that loving him would be hard, harder than anything she’d ever done. He was the most complex man she’d ever met. Nothing about him was as it seemed. When he allowed you to see beyond the facade, the brilliance of his soul could bring you joy. And just as quickly as he permitted the vision he could make it all vanish, appear as an illusion that you would fight to experience again…and again.

But he was what she wanted. And if she knew nothing else about herself, she knew she could be single-focused and determined. She was determined to win his heart and she understood that it wouldn’t be easy. Quinn was a man who turned over his emotions in small doses, if at all. He’d made that clear tonight. In that way, they were the same.

He’d approached the center of her, that part
that haunted her, stole the melody. But she’d quickly hidden herself from view, unwilling, unable to face herself in the reflection of his eyes. But he was as tenacious as she, and as he had done, she had bared her soul and he hadn’t run from what he’d seen.

She turned on her side, listened to the sounds of activity on the street below. Closing her eyes, she wondered what he was feeling, thinking. If their evening together had had the same effect on him as it had on her. She believed it had. How it would manifest itself only time would tell.

By the time Rae awoke it was nearly noon. And her first thought was of Quinn. She’d dreamed of him as surely as if he’d lain beside her. If she closed her eyes, she could smell his scent, see the soft curl of his lashes that draped the dark, intense eyes, hear the rich tones of his voice that brought to mind the notes played from an alto sax.

She knew he was as shaken as she by what was said between them, and instinct told her he’d blame her somehow for the revelations he’d made—the secrets he’d told. She didn’t
care. All she wanted, at that very moment, was to hear his voice, assure herself that this thing growing between them, in whatever form it took, was real.

Q
uinn returned from taking Rae home. They’d talked until the sun was moments away from rising. Both of them were spent, yet surprisingly renewed.

He tossed his jacket onto the couch, and walked toward the window, the events, the words, the confessions of the evening still looming in his mind. He stood poised there, his hands bracing his weight against the frame of the window. As he watched the sun slowly
blaze across the horizon, signaling the beginning of a new day, for the first time in longer than he could remember he felt the inklings of hope—possibility.

Tonight was a revelation, not just of Rae and who she was, but who he was and what he was capable of becoming. From caterpillar to butterfly, Mr. Osborne, his old high school science teacher, used to say, comparing the stages of development to those of the insect world. A chuckle passed his lips as he recalled the short, squat man directing a pointer at a chart showing the growth of a baby through young adulthood to a mature man. Just like insects, only harder.

Distracted by the night’s recollections, he sleepwalked over to the CD player and put in a disk of Bud Powell’s greatest hits, pressed the on button, and draped himself over the sofa, one leg over the armrest. The music of the bop piano legend washed over him in waves; the emotional force of the cascading notes, the endless surge of inventiveness, the courageous risks taken each time the man’s nimble fingers struck the ivories. This was jazz at its best. No matter how fast Bud
played, there was no lack of ideas, each phrase clearly articulated, each moment full of drama and excitement. Quinn closed his eyes, imagining how the pianist must have felt to be at the peak of his creative powers, realizing there was nothing he couldn’t do on the keyboard.

Listening to Bud’s incredible artistry on the tunes “Dance of the Infidels” and “Parisian Thoroughfare,” he saw the fierce two-handed attack of the master across the length of the black-and-white keys in his mind’s eye and sighed deeply. Works of genius from a wholly original mind. Then he considered the man’s slow yet continuous emotional decline into madness and the gnawing away of his talents by heavy drinking and long sessions of electro-shock therapy in psychiatric wards. This was what saddened him. He couldn’t let his troubled past do that to him, rob him of his gifts, cheat him of fulfilling his promise.

“Damn, that could be me if I don’t stop this thing before it gets the best of me,” he said aloud to himself. “Can’t let that happen, can’t.”

He walked toward the piano, looked at it for
a moment, then sat down on the bench. Something happened. It was as if he couldn’t move, as though something inside him suddenly sapped all the power from his fingers. Minutes passed, maybe an hour. Still he hadn’t played anything. The music was there in his body, in his head, trapped, unable to come out. He sat there staring blankly into space, his fingers poised just above the keys, unable to descend, to touch.

“Damn it,” he cried out, tears coursing down his cheeks.

He flicked the dreads from his forehead, bent over, and gave in to the torment inside him. It was the first time he could remember feeling this helpless. Crying didn’t help. The tears only reminded him of how far from emotional health he really was, how long the trek back to normal would be.

Wobbly, he got to his feet, walked over, and switched off the machine, and Powell’s fleet lines of brilliant sound vanished. Rae, Rae, Rae.

Rae.
Was this relationship what he really wanted, what he had intended to do when he’d gone to the studio to see her that first time? She’d pushed him, put him on the defensive,
ready to attack his shield. Was he ready to let someone knowingly push all of his buttons? To take him to some place where there was no safe ground? Maybe she was just another woman who enjoyed tormenting men. Watching them squirm.
Stop it. Stop this.
She wasn’t the problem; he was the problem. No, he hadn’t really wanted to attack Rae, but rather that thing that lived inside him.

The notion to call her crossed his mind but he decided against it. It was too soon. He didn’t want to seem too eager, like an overanxious chump. Maybe he already had jumped the gun. But the die was now cast. His sacred home, his apartment sanctuary. Bringing her to his home had been a serious move for him. This was where he and Nikita had lived—loved—as best they could. He’d never brought another woman there, believing that it would somehow violate what he and Nikita had shared. But seeing and feeling Rae in this space hadn’t hurt as he thought it would. It felt right. It felt good. It felt like change.

He sat back down, staring at the phone. What was he doing? Why was he obsessing about this
woman? The caution light was blinking,
warning, warning, warning.

As if by magic, the phone rang. He knew who was calling before he even picked it up.
Rae.

“Hey?” Her voice sounded dreamy, all soft and inviting.

“Hey yourself.”

“Did you finally get some sleep?” she asked, stretching.

“Naw…too worked up to sleep.”

“I took a bit of a nap. But I can’t rest.” She paused, taking a chance. “I thought maybe we could go out and do something tonight.”

He was still feeling the aftereffects of their talk earlier. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m up to people right now. I’ve got a lot in my head.”

This was what she was afraid of, his retreat. But she wouldn’t give up that easily. “Getting out among some folks might do you—both of us—a world of good. Think about it, Quinn. No pressure.”

“Yeah, right, no pressure,” he repeated with some edge to his words.

“Are you upset with me about something?” she asked, unsettled by his cool tone.

“Should I be?” he shot back, not willing to let her see how much their night had affected him. “Look, I don’t feel especially social right now.”

“Let it go,” she said. “You’re making much too much of everything. Just let it go.” She couldn’t let him escape, retreat again, not now, not after it was he who threw her the life preserver, with the promise of keeping her afloat.

“Maybe that’s easy for you but not for me,” he said, allowing his irrational anger and emotional confusion to erect a protective wall around him.

Had she been wrong in her conclusions about what happened? Did she want this so bad that she was seeing things that weren’t there? “I…I don’t get it, Quinn. You seemed like you wanted to talk and once we do, you turn it around like
I’ve
done something to you?”

“Maybe it’s not about you, Rae.”

His tone, his unwarranted attack stung as sharp as a slap.
Fine, if that’s the way he wants it.
“Look, I’ll be at Encore, if you decide to come, it’s on you, okay? A friend of mine is playing tonight at nine. You might enjoy it. Think about it at least.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled as he heard the phone click in his ear.

Absently, he scribbled down the info, hung up the phone, and walked back to the piano, where he stood staring at the keys for what seemed like an eternity.
Rae.
She refused to let him hide, to sink back into his safe place. Damn her! It was so much easier before when he didn’t care. The slip of paper was still in his hand, burning his fingers. He stared at it, thought about tearing it up, and did.