Baby: A Linear Tactical Romantic Suspense Standalone

by Janie Crouch

  He didn’t know how anyone could’ve been foolish enough to walk away from her, to not see what a treasure she was. But he wouldn’t make that mistake.

  He pulled her into him and kissed her. Softly. With the reverence she deserved.

  He didn’t know what he was going to do with his secrets, but he knew exactly what he was going to do with Quinn.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  The next few days were a blur for Quinn. It was almost Thanksgiving, and the weather was turning much cooler, although still didn’t have the winter bite Baby promised her was coming. She knew all about winters, although she imagined the ones here were different than in Massachusetts. Like everything was different than in Massachusetts.

  She wasn’t sure if she was looking forward to it or not.

  For the past two days, every spare hour that either of them wasn’t working, or him dragging her off to bed, had been spent researching his dyslexia. He needed proper help and tests—more than Quinn could provide on her own. But they were learning. And her heart was threatening to burst at the hope that had been growing in Baby’s eyes.

  Overcoming his learning disability wasn’t going to be easy. It was going to take a lot of hard work, but Baby wasn’t afraid of hard work.

  The U.S. Army may not have deemed him a suitable soldier, but he knew how to battle. Once he took the first step and no longer kept this secret, it was going to lose the power it had over him.

  If his friends and family wanted to pity him, then that was their own poor choice. Anyone who underestimated Baby Bollinger, learning disability or not, was a fool.

  And God, she was falling in love with him. There was no way around that fact.

  It was so ridiculous. There were so many reasons this wouldn’t work that she refused to list them for herself.

  Again. She’d done that way too many times already.

  It always came back to the same thing. Baby needed someone his own age. Not so much the number of years, but someone on the same place on life’s path as he was.

  Someone who could provide him with the children he would make such a wonderful father for.

  And then that little voice in her head would say that Baby would love children even if they weren’t biologically his. Maybe they could adopt.

  She’d always banished that voice, not wanting to give it traction. Because she knew if she let it grow, let herself hope, and things didn’t work out, she would never recover from the inevitable heartache of losing Baby.

  She lay in her bed and stared up at the ceiling. She should be exhausted. Evidently, she and Baby weren’t responsible enough adults to sleep in bed with each other and actually get sleep. They’d always found something else to do.

  And the way the rest of her life was going, she wished she could just stay in bed with him.

  Yesterday, her bank card had given her a fit once again when she tried to use her ATM card to take out the money to pay her rent to Mrs. Mazille. Fortunately, she had enough money in tips, but she’d been embarrassed to have to pay in a huge stack of ones like she was trying to offer unmarked bills or something.

  In a couple more years, she would hopefully be out from under all this debt. She was making a lot less working two part-time jobs here, but it also cost a lot less to live.

  She rubbed her fingers across her eyes and yawned. The teaching was going really well. She loved being in the classroom and interacting with students.

  But then she’d somehow screwed everything up entering grades into the TSC system yesterday. When she’d gone in today to enter more, the previous grades, all of them for all her classes, were gone.

  She’d learned enough from her mistakes at Harvard to have kept a paper copy of all the grades, but she’d still had to spend the entire evening manually reentering.

  She never used to feel like such a computer failure. She considered herself pretty computer savvy, but this would’ve been a disaster if she hadn’t had paper backups. No doubt she would have been fired again.

  That was the problem, wasn’t it?

  She stared up into the darkness of the room. Now that she wasn’t around Baby, she could finally have some actual time to think.

  Was she self-sabotaging?

  While she didn’t hold Peter the prick’s opinion in much regard, she couldn’t ignore the possibility anymore.

  She still wasn’t exactly sure what had happened with the computer stuff at Harvard—the lost grades and the research project. Had she subconsciously deleted all that information on purpose? Wash she now doing the same thing here?

  Self-sabotage?

  Was she dating Baby because she knew there was no possibility for long-term happiness?

  She hadn’t ever really analyzed what had happened to her office or her house from that same framework. Had she somehow drawn that negative attention toward herself? Invited the universe to dump on her?

  Jesus, had she subconsciously left Peter on that bank account on purpose?

  But why would she do that to herself? She didn’t hate or have some need to punish herself.

  Yet, looking at it objectively here in the dark, the lone common denominator between all the bad stuff that had happened to her over the past year was her.

  “Shut up, Quinn.”

  She was tired and needed sleep. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving, and she was supposed to go over to Linear Tactical for their Thanksgria celebration.

  Maybe tomorrow everything would seem—

  Grizzly barked from the living room; she bolted upright in bed. The dog had started sleeping inside the front door a few nights ago when the weather had turned colder. She waited to see if he would calm himself down, but he didn’t, so she stumbled out of bed and into the living room.

  “Grizzly! What’s the matter? Do you need to go outside?”

  The dog kept barking, facing the kitchen door.

  Why was that door even closed? She always kept it open so she could walk from the kitchen into the living room without having to open it all the time.

  Oh God, could someone be in there?

  Could it be those same teenagers who had vandalized her house? Maybe they had come back? And what would they do if they found out she was here?

  She wasn’t leaving Grizzly to face them alone.

  “Grizzly.” She slapped her hands on her pajama pants that covered thighs. “Come here, boy.”

  The dog continued to bark at the kitchen.

  She was going to have to grab him and pull him out. That was probably not going to go over well with the dog, but she wasn’t leaving him. She hoped he wouldn’t bite her.

  “Grizzly, come on,” she said in a loud whisper as she got closer. She slid on a pair of ballet flats that were by her front door. “Come on, boy, we need to go out the back door.”

  She was reaching for Grizzly when she noticed the smoke coming from under the kitchen door.

  Grizzly wasn’t barking because someone was breaking into her house; he’d been trying to tell her the house was on fire.

  She threw the door open, realizing a second later that was probably not the best thing to do, but fortunately, the flame seem to be concentrated over near the table by the window. The edge of the curtains had somehow caught on fire, the flames burning bright in the darkness.

  She needed to get this under control before it spread. Would Mrs. Mazille have a fire extinguisher? Quinn didn’t have time to look for one.

  She ran over to the sink then stopped. You weren’t supposed to throw water on a fire, right? Or was that for a grease fire?

  She knew baking soda and salt were okay and there was plenty of both in the cabinet. She snatched them and threw as much as she could at the flames.

  It worked enough that she could grab the broom and yank the curtain rod down, while Grizzly continued to bark.

  She knocked it to the ground then began beating the flames with the broom. Within a few seconds, she couldn’t see any more fire, just some residual smoke.

  Grizzly kept barking.
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  “Grizz, it’s okay.” She looked over at the dog. “No more fire.”

  When he still kept barking, she walked over to the side door in the kitchen and opened it for him.

  He immediately dashed outside. She couldn’t blame him. The poor dog probably thought she was trying to kill him.

  She stomped on the ruined curtains to make sure they couldn’t possibly reignite, then she leaned heavily against the counter. What would’ve happened if Grizzly hadn’t been here to warn her? To wake her.

  The poor dog was still barking his head off outside. He wasn’t ever going to trust her enough to come inside again.

  She walked over to the door. “Grizzly, it’s okay, buddy. Do you want to come back inside the house?”

  Grizzly sat a couple of feet from the door barking out into the darkness.

  Quinn touched him softly, not wanting to startle the dog into snapping at her. “It’s okay to come back. I promise I won’t let the house burn down around us.”

  Grizzly continued to bark, but not at her. He didn’t seem to be upset with her at all. He was more preoccupied with whatever was out there. She turned to study the area herself. Was there something out in the trees? She couldn’t see anything but darkness.

  She crouched beside Grizzly and wrapped her arms around him. He stopped barking, but still looked out toward the woods. “Let’s go inside,” she whispered. “If that’s some sort of mountain lion or a bear, I don’t want to wait for it to come eat us.”

  She had no idea if there were mountain lions or bears around here, but it stood to reason there could be.

  “Please, Grizzly, let’s go inside.”

  If not, she’d have to leave him out here. She needed to clean up the mess in the kitchen.

  She let go of Grizzly and stood. The dog glanced from the trees back to Quinn. He growled low and slowly stood and turned around, almost reluctantly, and followed Quinn toward the door. He turned once again and barked, loud and deep into the night before he crossed the doorway.

  “Good boy. I don’t want you out there with whatever creatures of the night are wandering around. Now let’s see if we can figure out what happened in here.”

  She was no fire inspector, but it didn’t take her long to put everything together.

  “Oh no,” she said to Grizzly, who still hadn’t wandered far from her side. “It was my fault.”

  She couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe she would be so stupid. It was the candle she’d bought—the pumpkin-scented one that reminded her of fall. She’d bought it on a whim a couple of days ago when she’d walked by the general store on her way to Baby’s apartment. She thought it would be a nice, homey touch for her house now that she had newly painted walls and some relatively nice, if mismatched, furniture.

  It had signified the first purchase she’d made with the intent of staying here long-term.

  Plus, she loved the smell.

  She’d lit it tonight when she’d gotten home, the stress of the day already wearing on her.

  She must have forgotten to extinguish the big, three-wick candle. Then somehow, the curtains must have blown into the flames.

  She thought she had blown the candle out, but obviously, she hadn’t.

  She sat at her tiny kitchen table and put her head in her hands. In the greater scheme of things, there hadn’t been too much damage done. Hopefully, the smoke smell would air out after a few days. The curtains that someone–she thought it was Violet—brought by when her house had been vandalized were ruined and needed to be replaced. And there was some paint damage on the walls that would need to be repaired.

  Not bad unless she circled back around to her earlier thoughts.

  Self-sabotage.

  Maybe Peter was right. And Gavin had insinuated the same thing—that she was going through some sort of mid-life crisis. It happened; she was the right age for it. After everything she’d screwed up today at work, and now this, she had to admit she could be self-sabotaging.

  She and Baby had discussed the possibility of him seeing a psychiatrist to help him through the transition of telling his secret to his friends and family, but she’d never considered that she might have her own secrets that she needed to dig into.

  She couldn’t stop the tears that fell from her eyes.

  How much of the stuff that had happened over the past year had she brought on herself? She’d tried not to think of herself as the victim, but she certainly never thought of herself as the perpetrator of her own problems.

  She was toxic.

  She was toxic to herself.

  It was a horrible realization to face, but she couldn’t hide from it any longer.

  She needed to regroup and figure out a plan. She’d go to the Thanksgria celebration with Baby because he was planning to let his friends and family know about his dyslexia. She wouldn’t cancel and leave him unsupported. Boy and Girl Riley wouldn’t be there since they were visiting a MS specialist in Atlanta.

  But after tomorrow, she would need to keep her distance until she could figure out why she was acting this way. What was it about her that kept drawing the bad? To take some time to figure out why she was self-sabotaging and what she could do to stop.

  Grizzly came over and laid his head in her lap, which made Quinn cry harder. A deformed dog who barked at the darkness was her spirit animal.

  If that wasn’t fitting, she didn’t know what was.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The secrets we keep control us.

  Quinn’s words bounced around in Baby’s head throughout the Thanksgria celebration. He knew he needed to spill his secret to his friends and family. It had controlled him for too long.

  But still, forcing the actual words out of his mouth was more difficult than he’d ever thought it would be.

  They’d all finished their Thanksgiving feast and soon would be heading outside to play football. This was the time.

  He knew everyone in this building loved him. He knew he would die for them and the reverse was also true. But it was only after he caught Quinn’s quiet brown eyes from where she stood in the far corner talking to Kendrick that he found his strength.

  “You guys,” he raised his voice so he could be heard over his family’s chatter. “I’ve got something I need to tell you. Something I should’ve said a long time ago.”

  The sudden drop in volume made this harder. He found Quinn’s face again, and she gave him an encouraging smile and nod. But he still couldn’t seem to force the words out.

  It was Finn, his big brother, his hero, who finally spoke up. “Say what you need to say, brother. We’re all family here.”

  The fact that no one had cracked a joke meant they all were taking this seriously.

  He closed his eyes as he said the words. “I can’t read.” Being blind to his family’s reaction made it worse, so he popped his eyes back open. “That’s why I dropped out of high school. I’m dyslexic. I have severe double deficit dyslexia, as far as we’ve been able to research.”

  Baby finally understood the term deafening silence as the people he loved most in the world just stared at him. The silence seemed to stretch on unbearably.

  It was Jess—of course, it was Jess—who finally broke it. “Like Ethan. He has dyseidetic dyslexia, but it’s similar.”

  And then everyone started talking at once.

  “I thought you were gay.”

  “I thought you’d gotten someone pregnant.”

  “See, he’s not leaving town, you owe me ten dollars.”

  “Does this mean you’re not going to be a mechanic anymore? Because I don’t want to drive all the way into Reddington City, and everyone knows Gringford Auto can’t be trusted.”

  The questions and comments all came out so quickly, he couldn’t tell who was saying what.

  But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they knew, they still accepted him, and it wasn’t long before everyone was clamoring to play football.

  He spent the rest of the day having in
dividual conversations with those he was closest to. People who felt like they’d failed him—his mom, Finn, and Wavy in particular. They’d all grabbed their desserts and sat outside so they could talk alone as a family.

  His mom cried, and Baby felt like shit. But he’d explained to her that over the years, he’d become an expert at compensating and keeping it hidden. Like Quinn had said, he’d developed a lot of other interpersonal skills because he lacked reading ability. He was actually a very good reader, just of people, numbers, and blueprints rather than words.

  It also had meant he had to have a serious talk with Cade O’Conner, who had been his best friend since they were in kindergarten. He would have every right to feel betrayed.

  But Cade shook his head. “I guess this explains why you did all our math homework and I did all our English homework when we were growing up.”

  “I know that since I made this big announcement it seems like I kept this some sort of secret, like a third nipple, but growing up it was how we did things. I didn’t think of it as a secret I kept. It was just business as usual. It’s only been the past few years that I realized how much I was keeping everything hidden.”

  Baby explained a little about taking college classes, leaving out the part about Pop’s will.

  “You know Peyton and I are more than willing to do whatever that will help. I can pay you back for all the times you helped keep me out of a fight by getting you a tutor or whatever you need.”

  Baby glanced over and saw Quinn and Charlie in deep conversation. He pointed toward them. “I think I might have the two best tutors already available in my life.”

  Cade slapped him on the back. “That you do, my friend. Charlie will have you scheduled for daily sessions, probably starting tomorrow.”

  “If I get to wait that long.”

  “And if Charlie can’t figure it out, let me know, and I’ll get Jess right on it.”

  They laughed, although they both knew Cade was serious. There wasn’t much that kid couldn’t figure out, despite her young age.