Through the Fire

by Donna Hill

  “Yeah, I do,” he replied softly, knowing that secret place quite intimately. Yet, almost jealous of her ability to find refuge there where he had not.

  Without further words, she found herself cocooned in Quinn’s arms, the strength of him warding off the ghosts that still haunted her, the ghosts that she’d valiantly kept at bay—until now. It felt right, natural. For a moment she could let her guard down, and allow herself to be comforted, protected by someone other than herself. Yeah, she was tired, too.

  How long had it been since he’d allowed himself to get this close, beyond the veneer of another person, and let it touch him? He held her and the overwhelming sensation of being needed again, sharing someone else’s vulnerability, seized him. It struck him in a totally unexpected way. In the past, seeing their pain without recriminations, without judgment was almost his undoing. That blind empathy often left him without any protective shell, left him without any defenses, opening him to the kind of pain that took years to recover from.

  For certain, he had worked hard at protecting himself from the world, from people, being sure that his guard was always up and in place. Maybe it stemmed from the life he’d lived on the street, the unspoken rules of keeping your feelings in check to ensure that they would not be used against you. The unspoken code was that your exterior should never betray your interior. Or as someone once told him, “No one should be able to look at your face and know a damn thing about you or your soul.” He had become very good at separating himself from the man he was inside. But how could he merge the two, and finally become whole?

  His sister, Lacy, had always seen through the facade. She knew who he was behind the mask, beyond the posturing. Nikita had tried to do that and for the most part succeeded. She was the first woman to win his heart, but only part of his soul. And that was something he would always regret. There was a part of him that was locked away in an iron box, for which even love, in all its power, didn’t have the key. At least that’s how it had always been. Now there was Rae, who’d snuck up on him like a mist, like a spirit, found a way to seep into his pores, make him start thinking beyond the moment—and about someone other than himself. But was that enough?

  Rae raised her head from Quinn’s chest and sniffed loudly. “I feel like such an idiot.” She sniffed again, thinking she may have revealed too much about herself too soon, and swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. As many sisters often said, it didn’t pay to tell too much about yourself right away. Some brothers stored all of this info, knowing all of your weaknesses, and then hurled it back at you when the opportunity presented itself. Somehow Quinn didn’t seem to be that kind of man. She trusted him, maybe from the moment she first met him.

  Quinn reached for a napkin and handed it to her.

  “Thanks,” she muttered and blew her nose. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what—being an idiot?” he teased lightly, lifting her chin with the tip of his finger.

  “For falling apart like this. I didn’t want you to see me like that.” She turned her head away, ashamed now of her blatant display of weakness.

  “Like what, Rae? Open, honest with me, yourself? Admitting things out loud that you’d only whisper alone in the dark? I know how hard that can be.”

  She got up and moved away from him, away from his prying eyes, away from the truth that rang like a church bell at high noon.

  Suddenly he saw himself through her eyes, through the eyes of those who had been in his life. His bruised inner self mirrored in her words, her admission. How hard he’d worked to keep his front intact. Seamless. The role, the image was all important at the expense of everything. The words like hot lava boiled in his throat, rising to the surface unstoppable now that the earth had moved, shifted beneath his feet, unsettling everything in his world. What he’d feared for so long was about to happen, the splintering of his shield, the exposing of his vulnerable, private self.

  “It…was my fault,” he began in the halting words of a child who’d just learned to speak. “From…the beginning…my mom…my sister…Nikita. All my fault.”

  She turned to him, alarmed now by the carnal agony of his tone. She remained as still as a portrait—waiting. How could she help him?

  He sat down heavily, as the images of his life passed before his eyes like a movie in slow motion, and the powder keg of emotions that he’d hidden from formed an explosive knot in his chest waiting for the match to ignite it. The rising to the surface of things long left unsaid, left unrecognized, took the wind out of him and caused him to weaken before her. How would she view him now? What woman wanted some guy with a lot of emotional baggage? He now felt the first pangs of guilt, and maybe shame, but if she was who she said she was, it wouldn’t matter. None of it would.

  Cautiously, Rae approached, seeing the tightrope upon which she walked and the bottomless canyon beneath her feet should she misstep, lose her balance.

  “Say it, Quinn,” she gently whispered. “Say the words.” Now it was she who needed to hear the confession, to assuage her own pangs of guilt, to free herself, absolve herself.

  “I…I…I…” He was struggling to find the right words for his feelings. The strain of his inner battle showed on his pinched face, in his frightened eyes.

  She came up behind him, carefully, and gently took his hand. “I know it’s hard,” she whispered, pushing, needing him to cross the line, to take her with him. “Very hard. But if you’re the man I believe you are, you’ll confront this…if you ever want to be free. Otherwise, you’ll be locked inside that place in your head and heart forever.”

  “Why is all of this so important to you?” he snapped, seeking to steady himself by putting her off balance. “What kind of pleasure are you getting from watching me go through this?”

  She was now beside him, looking down at him. “I’m not your enemy. Your enemy is someone else—you. And you can choose to fight it or let it beat you. And I can’t imagine you letting anything beat you. Tell me if I’m wrong,” she challenged. Her heart pounded as she waited to see if he would pick up the gauntlet she’d thrown.

  His hands went to his cheeks as he hunched over, staring at the floor. He knew she wasn’t wrong, maybe too right. But could he trust her, trust her enough to let go, take the hand that she offered him? “…the Lord sees fit to put folks in our way to help us…if you let them.” The words of Mrs. Finch whispered in his ear. If you let them.

  His jaw clenched as if trying to seal the words inside his mouth, and then without warning they poured from him, like welcome rain. “My mother…she left me, left us…and I was responsible for my sister. I…I…was all she had, the only person between her and the world. I was responsible for her and I failed her.”

  “How did you fail her?” she asked softly. “What did you do?”

  “I…I killed her.” He said it so abruptly and with such force, Rae was momentarily taken aback.

  “I…I don’t believe that. You couldn’t kill anyone. That’s not who you are. That’s not the man I see sitting here. What really happened?”

  “What really happened?” he tossed back nastily. “I’ll tell you what really happened, I did to her what our mother did to us,” he said, his voice losing some of its power. “I was responsible, and I didn’t do what I was supposed to do, too wrapped up in my own world, my own choices. I didn’t think about her, what she needed. I should have been looking out for her and I didn’t do it.”

  “How old were you when your mother left?” she asked gently.

  “Sixteen…”

  Briefly she shut her eyes, unable to imagine the fear and enormous responsibility that had been heaped on his young shoulders. Though she’d left home at sixteen, it was her choice, not something thrust upon her. “Quinn, you were just a child yourself—”

  “I was a man,” he ground out. “I had to be—for both of us.” His eyes grew dark with the memories of the things he’d done to survive.

  Rae could feel the chasm opening between them, the distance.
She needed to pull him back before he shut down again, cut her off.

  “Why did your mother leave?” she asked, giving him some much-needed breathing space. “Did you ever find out?”

  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?

  Chapter 11

  Rae 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.