Before I can ask myself more questions about their relationship, she strides over in confident steps, her Louboutin shoes clacking against the concrete like gunshots. I close my eyes slowly and inhale. Please don’t let it be true. Something like this can downright destroy me. Carter is still frozen, and I no longer tug at his sleeve. I need to see what happens, even if it’ll be my ruin. I need the truth.
“Well, if it isn’t my favorite lad.” She stretches out the last word and winks, peppering the gesture with a lick of her lower lip. Her lipstick is bright red, and her coat is pretty and made of real fur. I hate real fur. I would never wear it. But dammit, it looks good on her, and I hate that she looks like a million dollars and I look like about a hundred on a good day. Even now, after all these years, she’s still the Long Island estate, and I’m still the rundown house in Harlem.
“Carter,” she purrs, placing a hand over his coat, right above his heart. “I’ve missed you. It’s been what, two weeks since we’ve been together?” She giggles. I don’t think I even notice when my mouth slacks open, and I blink away my tears.
Two weeks ago? Surely it can’t be.
Carter is still frozen, his jaw ticking, staring at her like she cast a spell on him. Like he can’t move or speak because of her. I get a sinking feeling in my gut. But she continues.
“You know, when you rushed off to the hospital or something.” She waves her long, red fingernails in my general direction before turning her whole body toward me, acknowledging me for the very first time since we bumped into each other on this street.
Gia starts barking at Mandy’s feet. Baring her little teeth for the world to see. I shush her softly and pick her up to my chest, kissing the top of her head.
“Hey, Mandy.” I try to sound casual. I’m shattering from the inside. It is the same feeling I got when I found out Mom had died. The sense of loss is so profound you can’t even comprehend it. Not at first, anyway. But I don’t let it show, because she can’t see me break. No. This time I will at least pretend that I’m okay, even if it kills me.
“Quinn, you look awful. You should really start investing in some makeup. Maybe a shower. Aren’t you a waitress at Hot N’ Bothered? I’m surprised they let you work there. They’re known for their sexy staff, and I mean, there’s a bit of chub here and there.” She wiggles her devilish brows at my stomach, and I cock one eyebrow, crossing my arms with Gia still in them, waiting for the penny to drop.
“Oh, that’s right.” She nods, whistling. “Preggers, right? And out of wedlock. Well, no surprises there.”
“How did you—?”
“Know?” Mandy interrupts, smugly. “Heard it at the club, of course.” She shrugs. “I hear a lot of things there, actually,” she taunts with a devilish look in her eyes.
“Get the hell away from her,” Carter barks, finally springing into action. At first, I am too stunned to even realize who he is talking to. Mandy or me? I am so unsure of everything that I wouldn’t be surprised if it is her he is protecting. But the arm he uses to secure me, snaking it around my waist and collecting me into his body, says it all.
“Don’t ever talk to her like that,” Carter whispers hotly. And just like that, my doubts disintegrate. Like his words and his touch can make everything better instantly.
Mandy shakes her head and rolls her eyes, flinging her arms in the air, exasperated.
“Carter! Quinn is my cousin. I can’t believe you had sex with both of us. Did you know?” She stubs an accusing finger into his chest. He doesn’t say a word. Just narrows his eyes at her, willing her to say anything else to me.
Oh, God.
He is not denying it.
He did sleep with her.
“Carter?” I ask, breaking from his touch and taking a step back. Gia is shivering in my hands. She really doesn’t like staying in the cold for so long. But I can’t seem to unglue my feet from the situation, so I just press her deeper into my coat. “Is it true? Did you really sleep with Mandy?”
I want to hear the word no, but like anything in life, I know that it is more than likely that I’m not going to get what I am asking for. Carter hangs his head in shame, shaking his head, refusing to look at me. My heart drops to the pit of my stomach.
“Tell me it’s not true.” My voice is quivering. I don’t dare to blink because I don’t want the unshed tears to fall.
“Quinn, it isn’t what you think…” Carter starts by saying, turning toward me. When people utter those words, it usually means the complete opposite. Mandy is quick to interject.
“Come on, it is exactly what she thinks. Not only have we slept together,” she brags, puffing her chest out almost theatrically, “but he also showed me the really kinky shit. I mean, it wasn’t a threesome with Jade kind of kinky, but kinky nonetheless.” She bites her lip suggestively.
I can’t be here. I cannot hear this right now. Jade and Carter? That would never happen. Carter wouldn’t live to tell about it. Cole would annihilate him. I need to get far away from Mandy or I will very literally kill her. My legs carry me as far away from the situation as I can get. Gia is still clutched to my chest, and she is barking like mad, her little body shaking with her rage against my chest, but I don’t stop.
Carter is running after me, and of course, he is faster. He is begging for me to listen to him. I recognize the words, but don’t decipher them completely. It’s like being underwater. Everything is distorted and muffled and I want to step away from this situation, but I can’t. Not even when I lock the door to my apartment behind me, leaving Carter outside.
It’s still in my head. It’s everywhere.
Carter slept with Mandy—my worst enemy—while I was in the hospital finding out that I was pregnant with our child.
Carter betrayed me.
I’m done chasing after him. This time, I’m cutting him loose and letting him go. For good.
They say you never need to tell a true man how to be one. It is, apparently, in our gene pool. We’re either bad or good. Or maybe we’re neither, but those of us who know right from wrong can temper with their behavior to suit the general society.
I’ve been trying to be that man for three months now.
Three long months in which Quinn doesn’t give me the time of day.
It’s been three months since Quinn and I met Mandy on the street, and I still beat myself up about it every single day. How I froze there, like a bloody plant, like a useless tree, nothing more than a pile of bones, muscle, and shite. I should have explained everything right then and there, but the words wouldn’t leave my mouth. It frustrated me beyond belief. I wanted to kill Mandy. I wanted to heal Quinn. I didn’t manage to do either. And by the time I snapped out of whatever it was that came over me, she was gone.
I go to her every day.
I use the key.
I use the balcony.
I would use a fecking helicopter if I thought it’d help.
Her belly is becoming quite round already. I know that she should know by now the gender of her baby. I read What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I subscribe to weekly emails that tell me that my baby is the size of a papaya. I am dying to know. I’ve asked her a trillion times, but she just ignores me. Even when I get into her personal space. Even when I crawl under her sheets and try to hug her. Every time I bring food to her table and take Gia out and give orders to Stiles and the other guards who take care of her. Every time I pay her bills on the phone while she is right next to me, because I know she’s skint as feck because she’s not working—Selene has been covering her shifts—she simply acts as though I don’t even exist.
And on some level, it is true.
I ceased to exist when Quinn realized how bad I had fucked up. I broke her. This woman has overcome the death of her mother, the abuse of her father and the man he subjected her to, kidnapping, and God knows what else, but I’m the one who broke her. I’ve explained and apologized until I was blue in the face, to no avail. But I won’t give up. I’ll never give up.<
br />
I tried asking Jade the sex of my baby, but it just pissed her off even more. She said that I fucked up royally by not defending Quinn to Mandy. By not telling Quinn about our sexual history, or even about my past at all. And I can’t argue with that. I feel even worse after finding out how Mandy treated Quinn when she was desperate for help. I could kill the cunt.
I didn’t let Quinn in on my past. I didn’t want that part of my life to taint her. She was my beautiful, albeit broken, Quinn. My own little piece of happiness.
And I didn’t tell her about my sexual preferences before her, because it didn’t matter. Everything before her felt irrelevant. I get off on hurting her—physically, not emotionally—but I never felt the need to sanitize her first. And when I tied her up, it was because she liked it, not so I wouldn’t have to feel her hands on me. My night with Jade and Carter never came up for two reasons. The first being that I was bloody embarrassed to have to be shown how to touch a woman. The second being that we were sworn to secrecy.
I couldn’t figure out how Mandy knew about it to begin with. That mystery was quickly solved when she was brought in for questioning at Hot N’ Bothered. Cole immediately recognized her as the blonde who was “lost” the night the Italian lost his eyes. She admitted to following me down there, looking for a good time. Knowing I had feelings for Quinn just made it even more of a challenge to her.
Jade isn’t doing so well. She feels guilty for hurting Quinn, even though I was single at the time. She is nine months pregnant now, and apparently, this kind of stuff can do a number on hormones. Cole says he won’t even so much as remind her to turn off the oven when she’s done cooking because he’s afraid she’ll stab him with the steak knife or break down in tears.
And, of course, Quinn wasn’t angry at Jade or Cole, but at me for not telling her.
So now I alternate between apologizing about Mandy and apologizing about Jade and Cole.
Like right now, when I wait by her building for her to come home from Pilates. It’s springtime, and she looks gorgeous with her red hair flipping in the wind, her skin glistening, her belly swollen with my baby. She walks with the kind of determination only Quinn has toward her door. She has a yoga mat tucked under her arm, and she doesn’t stop to look at me.
“Please,” I say, my hands in my pockets, waiting at her door. “I never knew Mandy was your cousin. She was just another shag for me. A means to an end.”
She unlocks the door to her entrance and tries to slam it in my face, but I push it back as gently as possible, shouldering my way in as I chase her. “And if you’re still mad about Cole and Jade, then let me tell you, it was nothing. I never would have initiated it. I just wanted you out of my bloody thoughts, but I was also fucked up in the head, thinking I wasn’t enough for you. I just wanted to learn how to please you. Quinn, I’m fecking mental when it comes to you. When are you going to realize that everything else is just bullocks? It’s just you and me. You, me, and our baby.” I point at her stomach, breathless.
But she just stares at me. Vacant. Again.
I’m starting to lose hope.
I’m starting to hate myself for ever having hope to begin with.
Then Quinn opens her mouth and gives more reason for the earth beneath me to shake.
“It’s a boy.”
It wasn’t about Mandy, and it wasn’t about Cole and Jade.
Well, it was and it wasn’t. Because they were just the catalysts to an even bigger problem. Carter refused to share anything with me. His past. His relationships. His life. Everything was tucked away and shelved so I wouldn’t see it.
Every time he chases me, though, he gives me one more truth about his life.
He’s opening up to me in a way he never has. Through my tough love, I found out how his parents neglected him. How his Catholic school failed him. How he became so independent, he didn’t even need to be touched, physically touched, not even once in his adult years when he came to America. He told me how Graham is actually his cousin, and he saved him from the abuse and neglect he endured at the hands of his grandmother, and that he didn’t think anyone really knew they were blood-related. He told me that there was one person who was nice to him as a child, a little blonde girl with freckles across her nose. He told me he thought she was an angel, and that’s why he subconsciously gravitated toward blondes. In his mind, they were the complete opposite of his grandmother.
I listen. And when he doesn’t watch me, I cry for him, too.
But I’m not angry. I stopped being angry at a very early stage, when I realized Mandy was bullshitting me as per usual. She didn’t sleep with Carter the night I was admitted to the hospital. He blew her off. I know that because he explained himself two days after the incident. After throwing so many truths my way, about his disastrous first time in bed with a girl, and how Mandy shattered his fucking confidence, he finally uttered the timeline of their fling aloud.
Now, he’s given me most of his truth. At least ninety-nine percent of it. He is allowed to keep one percent for himself. Every person has the right to keep a thing or two to themselves. I know that we’re nearing the end of his story because he’s started repeating himself. Telling me the same stories over and over again. He is running out of material about his life. But his life is just beginning. This is our rebirth.
I feel him watching me right now, as I make my way to the grocery store. I blame my newfound addiction to white chocolate and peach ice tea on baby Ivan. Carter chose his name, and I fell in love with it.
After I pick up my brown paper bags and lug myself back to the street, I spot him from my peripheral vision rushing to help me. He never lets me carry them myself.
“Here, allow me.” Carter snatches the brown bags from my hands, and I let him. He puts words between us, as a barrier to the distance that he feels we’ve created. I’ve created. A distance that doesn’t really exist in my heart.
“So, I’ve spoken to Graham about taking some time off when we have the baby. I want to be there every step of the way. I know it’s a long time from now, but…”
“Carter,” I say, coming to a halt in the middle of the busy street. People pass us by, grunting their frustration at our sudden halt in movement, shouldering past us. He blinks at me, as if he doesn’t trust his own ears.
“Yeah?”
“Shut up.” I laugh, happy tears coating my eyeballs.
“Excuse me?” He looks at me as if I’ve gone mad.
“I love you,” I state simply.
“You…?” A look of relief and disbelief crosses his face before he drops to his knees, pressing his lips against my stomach and closing his eyes. It’s silent around us. Maybe the street is busy, but we’re in our own little bubble. It is bliss when I feel his first tear sliding down the fabric of my shirt on my big tummy. He mouths something in Gaelic to my belly, his hot mouth pressing against his child, and shakes his head, like he doesn’t believe that this is true. Then his eyes shoot up to mine, and he smiles.
“Please tell me this is real. Just put me out of my bloody misery, woman. I’ve been going crazy.”
“I’m sorry, Carter. This is so real.” I laugh wholeheartedly, finally accepting it myself.
Mandy didn’t win.
Murray didn’t win.
My dad didn’t win.
Evil, darkness, and despair lost, too.
But us? We won.
Sometimes the most beautiful things are born out of darkness.
Christmas 2017
Our house is a bloody disaster. There are crumbs everywhere, loud music, rowdy kids, and even rowdier adults. We’re having a Christmas party at our new place—Quinn’s idea, of course—and the whole damn crew is here. One of Graham’s spawns tugs on my hand, asking for the “potty” and leaves my hand feeling sticky. Why are little ones always so sticky? I’m feeling annoyed, overwhelmed, and just downright ornery. I’ve come a long way since I met Quinn, but some things never change.
I’m about to hide out in our bedroom w
hen my eyes catch Quinn’s as she looks up and gives me the best possible gift I could ask for—her smile—from her place on the sofa, where she bottle feeds baby Ivan. Instantly, I feel calmer. They have that effect on me. I walk up behind them and slide my hands onto her shoulders.
“How you doing, Daddy?” Quinn asks playfully.
“Daddy? That’s Graham’s kink, baby,” I say loud enough for him to hear.
“Damn straight. Want me to be your daddy, too, Carter?”
I flip him off, unable to control the chuckle that slips out. Dahlia shakes her head, embarrassed, and looks around to make sure no little ears overheard.
“Can you believe it, Carter?” Quinn asks out of nowhere.
“Believe what? That I’m allowing these assholes into my personal space? No. I cannot believe it.”
She drops her head to the back of the couch to look up into my eyes. “We did it. We came from the darkness and made our own light. Neither of us had any family to speak of, and now look around us.” She sniffles, tears swimming in her metallic eyes. “Last Christmas, I was lying heartbroken in my apartment, with nothing to live for, besides Ivan, of course. But now, now we have everything.”
Graham, Dahlia, Cole, Jade, our kids, Sin, Selene, Stiles, the rest of Graham’s men, and even the damn dog…they’re all here, laughing, bullshitting, loving, and fighting like one big, dysfunctional family.
I bend down to kiss her lips, then kiss my sleeping boy in her arms. I would have never thought I could have this, never thought I’d even want this. But now I’d do anything to protect it. And it’s all because of Quinn. She still thinks I’m her savior, but what she doesn’t know is that she saved me, too.
Finally, we have the house to ourselves. Quinn dozed off with Ivan in the rocking chair while I cleaned up. Silently, I lift Ivan out of her arms and place him into his cot. I watch him as he sleeps for a while, and I still cannot believe that this is my life. This is my boy. And my woman in the other room. It’s surreal.
Savage Savior (Savage People Book 3) Page 9
