Catching Serenity (Serenity #4)

by Eden Butler

  But Sam didn’t get that smile he was hoping for, and I left McKinney’s feeling sad, wondering when Autumn would tell me her plans. She can’t deny it, not to me. Autumn will follow him. She’ll follow Declan anywhere. Just like I know Mollie will move in with Vaughn in Maryville and Layla and Donovan will have their baby, maybe stick to the plan to give it away. Maybe move onward separately. But move on.

  This is what clouds my head as Quinn sketches in his book. Because it keeps my thoughts from Rhea.

  A turn of my head and I watch him sketching, his arms moving, his muscles flexing as he works, as he huddles close over that tabletop, naked, breathless.

  He is beautiful. I think that often enough, but never tell him. That is not why we come together. That isn’t who we are. But the strong stretch of his back, the narrow dip of his waist, the lean muscles of his thighs reminds me that he is delicious. If I had to fall apart with someone, I am glad it’s Quinn. That’s what I think when I leave the huddle of clothes to watch him.

  “You can stop staring, love.” Am I staring? I hadn’t realized I was. My mind is a muddle of thoughts—thoughts of what this has been, Quinn and me, his accent, his body and what we are doing. Why? What had driven us here. But that is a reality I won’t allow myself to think of. In this place with this man, there is only us, together, and the urgency I feel to have him back inside me. “O’course were you to keep staring, maybe step a bit closer, I could paint you again.”

  I let him touch me because it feels good when nothing else does. I let him take me because only Quinn knows the sharpness of this ache. He speaks and I feel, taste, touch. “You’re smooth, love. But you burn.” That makes two of us. It isn’t a slight he makes. Quinn doesn’t want to insult me, but he knows, like I do, what this is between us. “You’re like something I know I shouldn’t want. A habit I can’t bleeding stay clear of.” He holds my face, as though he can’t believe how effortlessly he can control me. How quickly I surrender my body to him. “I could paint you all day.” I’d promised myself he’d never get more from me than a look. I promised myself there would be no surrender.

  I am a liar.

  “Look at you, beautiful. So small, so fragile. I could touch you, never stop touching you, but not how I want. Not as I’d like.” A tug on my hair and his mouth on my ribs, easy comfort, numbing blindness that I welcome. “I don’t want to break you, love”

  The pending loss.

  The unknown past.

  An uncertain future.

  I am not the woman I once was. I am fractured, frayed. My spirit has been split and rendered useless. It has become something that feels like can never be mended.

  “Nothing left to break.”

  Even to my own ears I sound pathetic and I know Quinn thinks so too, I can see it in the way he looks at me, in how his voice softens. “Sayo. Love.”

  “Don’t, O’Malley.”

  I can’t have that. I don’t want him to comfort me. I only want to be numb to all but his touch, yet I answer him. I explain when he asks, “How broken are you?”

  “Enough that there is nothing left for anyone else.”

  This isn’t who we are. We will never be a couple. We will never have more than this ache in common and so I remind him. I remind myself. “Take what you want, remember? Take what’s left.”

  “Aye, I remember.” Back again is that frown, that protective expression I’ve come to rely on. He tastes me, touches me and my mind is no longer muddled. There is only sensation. For a moment, there is only this. “I could taste you, always. Sometimes I think I could never stop tasting you, don’t I?”

  Then that look, the possessive expression that Quinn has only let me see sometimes. It shifts something inside my chest. It breaks apart my guard, the same resolve I have asked him to loosen. And I do. I let it slip, my nails running across his forehead, his scalp, and it has him pausing, giving me that amazed, astonished look as though he cannot breathe, cannot move until I explain myself.

  “Sayo…”

  But he won’t finish. He won’t ask me what this small, insignificant gesture means. I won’t let him. “Make me forget for just a little while longer.”

  Quinn has his entire mouth over my pussy, he opens me wide, licks and teases with his tongue, with his fingers until I cannot breathe, until I flood his mouth, grip his hair, ride my orgasms so hard that I do not feel him turning me, do not realize that my cheek is against the floor, until Quinn’s soft, easy grips against my body have turned aggressive, commanding. He is behind me, moving me, filling me so completely, so surely that I come again, an effortless feat that only Quinn has been able to manage.

  Sweat and dried paint clings to our bodies and afterward, our hearts settle. I let him touch me softly, kiss me. It is bliss, for just that slip of time while Quinn’s delicious kisses, his drugging grunts against my skin again take me completely from the building, from the town.

  I am free then.

  We are free together. For a while I displace the knowledge of what connected us in the first place.

  Quinn’s hands down my back, rubbing, touching in a sweet, absentminded gesture is soothing, has me smiling, nearly drifting asleep. Each of his touches makes my skin buzz, makes my heart hum.

  When the sharp ring of my cell phone sounds, I push him away, ignoring his sleepy admonishments that I let my voice mail pick up.

  My mother’s name and number fill the screen and the quiet bliss Quinn worked in my body disappears the moment I hear my mother’s voice.

  “Mama?”

  “Sweetie,” she says, her voice cracking. “Rhea is going. Get to the hospital.”

  He knows. With just a glance in my direction Quinn’s face loses the pleased, contented expression. One look at me and his mask slips back on. As it always does. Sometimes when we are together, I let myself dream a little. I let myself think of a life with Quinn when things are settled, when the future is certain. He smiles, honestly smiles at me and I think that one thread could be pulled, that it would stretch and loosen until there is nothing Quinn can keep to himself. No more masks at all to hide him. But it’s just a fantasy. This is all too real.

  I think maybe he’ll reach for me, hold me because he knows what lies ahead for us. I even tense, hold my breath waiting for his touch, telling myself it’s okay to feel anything for him, that maybe he’s capable of feeling something too.

  But Quinn trusts no one. Let’s no one see his real face. Not even me.

  That mask remains in place as he walks to the pile of clothes, dressing mechanically. I can only watch him, sitting naked on the floor with that stupid phone resting in my hand.

  “Come on then,” he finally says, nodding toward my jeans and shirt on the floor next to him. “Let’s get this over with.”

  LOVE IS A vibrant, living thing. It starts small, a faint heartbeat, the idea that becomes thought, the thought that becomes feeling. Then, comes the breath of beginning, the form and mass of that small creature beginning to grow. Love is a creature that only grows when it is nurtured, when it is given limitless cultivation. When it is permitted the infinite possibility of hope.

  It exists inside us all. We hold it, cradle it, until it is time to fly. That small love can soar, fly into the ether, become part of the great cosmic well that connects us all. Or it can fester, rot and not move an inch from that first idea to the last hope.

  What love—thriving, living love—can never do, is die. That is the truth of this moment. That is the reality that I will cling to.

  Rhea is surrounded by family. Cousins, parents, her sister, all of us watching her take in every farewell. She gives, receives kisses that linger, holds tight as she can to necks as she is hugged. It must be chaos for her. It must make her dizzy, all that filter of comfort, of love and fleetingly, I wonder what this would be like, this dying moment, had she never been taken from that orphanage. I know my life, all of our lives would have been duller, the color of our world paler without her in it.

  Booker, Adriana, A
lessandra, join Claire in their goodbyes, followed by the sweet tears my mother and father leave on Rhea’s pillow. Then there is only my aunt and uncle waiting for Quinn to say whatever it is he needs. He is silent, brief, one hand against her face, his gentle kiss on her forehead and he whispers to her, something that makes her smile, something that gives her peace.

  And then, just like that, he walks away. No backward glance. No look at me to see if I want him at my side.

  “Sayo?” Rhea asks and I go to her, nestle at her side so that she rests against my chest, like she did when she was two. Like she did when she was still a baby, still willing to let me hold her. “I hear your heartbeat,” she says, rubbing her ear against my chest.

  A glance at the monitor, that slow beep that only grows dimmer and I squeeze her. “I hear yours.”

  “Can I ask you something?” Her voice has grown thin as though the rasp in her tone has weakened her right along with the cancer and the treatment.

  “Sure,” I say, more confident than I feel. Rhea’s breathing quickens, but she still manages to lean back, looking up at me as though she’ll find the truth. As though I have the answers she needs. “Mama cried when I asked her,” she whispers, like she doesn’t want Carol to hear her. “She still thinks I’m a baby, but you Sayo… Sayo, you don’t lie to me.”

  “Never.” We turn toward each other, face to face, hands held together and I block out the sounds around me, my uncle’s low crying, Carol’s litany of a soft prayer and the constant beep of the monitor. I only see this beautiful face, look at every curve, every dip, every shadow. I want them inside my mind, living there so Rhea will never die. “What… what do you want to know?”

  Her eyes are the color of chocolate, the exactly hue of the most decadent dark chocolate, but she is sweeter. “All this,” Rhea tugs at the IV connected to her arm, points to the oxygen tube resting in her nostrils. “I won’t need any of this soon.”

  “No, baby. No, you won’t.”

  It was a slip she doesn’t call me on. She isn’t a baby, not really and I haven’t called her that in years, but this isn’t a moment for saving face. She’s my baby, our baby. Always will be.

  “Well, what I want to know is… is… where? Where do I go, Sayo? When I leave, when it’s… time… where do I go?”

  I want to tell her the truth. I want to tell her I’m not sure. I can’t be sure. I want to tell her she would be safe. She would be warm. She would be finished, but I just don’t know.

  “Sayo?” Rhea touches my face, clearing the tears from my cheek. “Where do I go?”

  I try like hell to remember precisely how her small hand feels against my cheek and the smell of strawberry lotion on her fingers. Her skin shines luminous against the fluorescent light. “Oh, Kiddo,” I say, unable to keep my voice from shaking or tears from building in my eyes. Rhea doesn’t seem to notice either. “Everywhere. You go everywhere.”

  One smile. The brief twitch of her mouth moving up and the shudder of her breath as it weakens.

  I kiss her then, put everything I cannot say into that soft touch. It will be the last. My sweet girl. My little kiddo.

  The monitor dips, the peeps slowing and I leave the bed so that Carol can hold her daughter, cradle her tight. My aunt’s sobs are quiet, but still sound to me like thunder across a still sky. They breech the quiet of the moment and pierce my chest.

  “Everywhere, baby,” I say, words muffled by the thickness clogging my throat. And then, the beep flat lines and there is no noise. There is nothing in that room at all except for goodbye.

  QUINN LAYS ON the cluttered wood floor of the warehouse. Around him are sketches—drawings of Rhea that are a cruel reminder. Images that I will not see, that force my eyes close as I lean over him.

  I told him not to move.

  I want to take this time. I want to take and vanish and diminish everything.

  He lets me.

  We are naked and wet, from our sweat, from our tears and I do not feel pleasure in this.

  There is only the sound of our bodies, the low grunts, the heady call of need and desire.

  There is no love here because it has been stolen from us.

  She took it with her.

  And so I sob, taking him inside me, straddled across him, not asking permission.

  I take.

  He lets me.

  THERE IS A mirror hanging above the table that holds the guest sign-in book. It’s the first time I’ve bothered to look at myself in two days. My hair is completely black now. Not even the smallest hint of pink can be found among all that straight, thick hair. Autumn offered to braid it for me this morning. My friends had barged into my apartment because I hadn’t bothered to charge my cell. Because when your world has fallen apart around you, it is your friends, your family, that keep you from slipping between the broken crevices. Autumn is that for me, she and Mollie and Layla.

  “Leave it,” I’d told her, too exhausted to care that I look a mess. Layla, wobbling toward me, dared me with a glare to reject the simple black dress and heels she’d held in front of me.

  “Put this on. No arguments.”

  Pregnancy has made her assertive.

  “You ready?” Autumn asks, holding my hand to pull me away from the mirror, to allow the long line of guests to write their names in a book Aunt Carol will likely never read. I had not wanted to be with the family when they viewed the body. I hadn’t been ready, but now with Autumn, Mollie and Layla standing sentry, my legs don’t wobble quite as much and the fierce tremble in my fingers isn’t quite as bad.

  Still, as my friends lead the way into the nearly empty room with low lights and muted swags, that nervous feeling takes hold and something burns and coils in the pit of my stomach. Declan, Donovan, Vaughn and Joe stand when we walk in and I barely notice those somber expressions, the worry and concern that pulls their mouths down.

  “You can do this,” Autumn whispers and for a second I believe her. For a second more I want to believe her.

  “Okay.” Only Autumn hears me and as we step closer, I tighten my hold on her fingers. “Okay,” I say again, coming closer to Rhea.

  Nothing could have made me ready for the sight of her in that coffin.

  Autumn catches me when my knees give and Layla and Mollie stand at my back and side as I stare down at the little girl I still love.

  Carol had done as Rhea wished. She is finally the fairy she’d dreamt of being. Vivid colors cascade around the room, the coffin. The entire space has been transformed into a Technicolor vision—blues and greens, purples, all so brilliant they reminded me of a sunrise in spring, the backdrop of a vibrant field of lavender. And in the center, surrounded by all that color, by of flowers and cards, sprays that carry images of fairies and superheroes and versions of comic book characters, rests Rhea in a silver coffin.

  She is dressed in a beautiful fairy costume of soft blue with a green tutu skirt, a flowing cascade of matching ribbons that fall around her from waist and to hem. On her face is the mirror image of the make-up Quinn had given her just days ago—swirls and loops of white, blue and green, accented in silver and gold, arching around her pink dusted eyelids and gemstones near the corner of her eyes with a flare of colored glitter sparkling around her eyebrows and across her forehead.

  Rhea is an ethereal character out of one of her more creative comics—both woodland nymph and powerful sorceress. She would have found herself beautiful, just as I always had.

  “You’re colored up, kiddo.” She always wanted to be. She wanted wings that stretched and grew. She wanted lights and colors and the brilliance of magic to pump from her veins. She had that now. She had it all.

  My friends hold me up as I cry. The tears come uninhibited. They should. We are in the midst of our grief, surrounded by the warmth of love. Now is the time for tears. I watch Rhea through the blur of moisture with my best friends tending to me, making certain that I feel every emotion this day requires. Today, I will not allow myself to be numb. I will not allow
myself to forget.

  After a time, with the strength I borrow from my friends holding me, I notice the book next to Rhea in the coffin. It lays by her hand, between her body and the padded fabric; a thin, colorful book that I know. I take it, flip through the pages as Omnigirl and Sovereign Smash battle Death Doctor C and his engine of darkness. Rhea flies, fights alongside Quinn, a powerful team ridding the world of those who would see the cloud of illness come to children—those who would fill small veins and bodies with medicine that harms, not heals. This was their work. This was their legacy. Partners in crime working to make this small dream Rhea dreamt a reality.

  “It was here when they opened the coffin,” Carol says, standing behind me with her arms around my waist. “I don’t know how he got it in there.”

  “He has ways,” I offer, rubbing my thumb across the glossy pages. “He has so many ways.” I slip the sketch book back into the coffin, making sure it is at Rhea’s side, so she can have it with her, always.

  Carol’s attention is divided by her friends and those that have come to pay their respects. Cavanagh is a small town with a generous heart and it seems that all of those generous hearts have come to say goodbye to a sweet girl they didn’t know. The crowd increases and I reluctantly leave Rhea’s side, to get lost in the shuffle of well-wishers, in the mass and ceremony meant to send her onward.

  Before I know it, I’m standing at the graveside. Around me, the crowd is silent, heads bowed as the priest offers final prayers, but I do not follow the others. My gaze slips around the solemn faces, searching, greedy for a glimpse of his features. But Quinn isn’t here. I stand alone as we leave Rhea behind.