“He just needs to find a new cause to fight for, or against,” Quinn said. “And he may have found it. Last week Mom suggested he might like to join the campaign to bring down the wall between us and Mexico, and his eyes lit up with the old fire.”
Kerry is now nine years old and has both her front teeth. Her eyes, gray like Quinn’s, sparkle when she marches up to Robin and demands, “Don’t you have something for me? You said you were bringing me a present.”
“I did not forget,” he says. “It’s in the trunk of the car.”
“We should probably be on our way,” my mother says.
The O’Rileys agree, and the whole crowd of us walk around the side of the building to the parking lot out front. Robin disappears and then reappears a minute later carrying a large parcel untidily wrapped in red paper and tied with a jaunty purple bow.
“Wrapped this yourself, did you?” Kerry asks.
“It’s what’s inside that counts, young lady,” Robin says in a dignified tone.
Kerry rips off the paper and pulls out a skateboard. It’s Robin’s, the one that hung above his bed ever since the plague started.
Kerry gives a loud squeal of delight, puts the board on the ground, climbs unsteadily onto it, and smiles at Robin.
“Teach me!” she commands.
“Faith, she’s got him wrapped around her little finger,” Quinn says, watching Kerry skate down to the gate and back while Robin runs behind, shouting instructions.
“The O’Rileys are charmers, all right.”
My mom and Quinn’s parents have moved off and are chatting down by the cars. The rest of us stand on the stairs of the entrance, watching Robin and Kerry getting in the way of the departing visitors. We’ll all be going our separate ways, soon. Thailand and Texas and Wyoming.
“Hey, guys?” I say. “Let’s not ever get so far apart that we can’t get back together.”
Cameron nods.
“Why don’t we set a date for a reunion?” Quinn says.
“Yeah! Get the old crowd back together, shoot the breeze and down some brewskies,” Bruce says enthusiastically.
“Labor Day? Or Thanksgiving?” Neil suggests.
“No,” I say. “Halloween. I want a proper Halloween this year, I want to dress up and, okay, maybe not go trick-or-treating, we’re a bit old for that. But have a street party or something. I want to be outside and watch the kids go by, see everybody out having fun.”
I’ll go as Robin Hood. Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll go as a vampire, or a fairy, or a wizard. I could go as anything.
It’s heady stuff, this freedom.
Evyan checks the calendar on her phone. “Cool,” she says. “I’ll be back stateside by then.”
“I’m in,” says Cameron.
“Me too, and I’m sure Beth will want to come.”
“Yeah, man, let’s do it!” says Bruce.
We exchange hugs and numbers and promises to stay in touch. And then one by one, the gang drifts off and leaves.
Quinn and I stand on the steps, holding hands, watching them go. The sun is warm on our faces, and a light breeze stirs my hair. The gate, still wide open, beckons to the world beyond.
“You know,” Quinn says with a frown at Bruce, who blows a kiss at me out the window of his sports car as he drives off, “Bruce wasn’t the only one who lost a part of himself last year.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He may have lost a kidney —”
“And his spleen, and a bit of stomach, too, I think.”
“Yeah, alright, very heroic, I’m sure. But I, mo chuisle, I lost my heart.”
“You did?” I say, laughing up into his gray eyes, dark today with just a hint of blue, like a cloud before the rain. “You shouldn’t go about losing your organs. What if you never find them again?”
“Oh, I know where it is. It lives outside my body. You carry it, here.” He places the warm palm of one hand softly over my heart.
We kiss then. And it’s a meeting of more than mouths, a merging of more than bodies, a sharing and a blending beyond words.
It feels like Quinn and I are alone in the world. Especially when Mom and Robin drive off with a jaunty honk of the horn, and the O’Rileys leave in their pickup, Kerry waving goodbye from a window.
“But,” I say, watching them disappear out the gate, “how are we going to get home?”
“I never told you what my family got me for my nineteenth. Sure and it only arrived day before yesterday,” Quinn says, grinning mischievously and tugging me down the stairs. “They brought it today on the pickup.”
At the end of the parking lot is a sleek silver motorbike with a helmet hanging off each handlebar.
“Yours?” I ask, grinning in delight.
“Mine!”
He climbs on the bike and hands me one of the helmets, looks surprised when I put it on without any objections.
“You know me — I always like to play it safe,” I say, fiddling with the straps under my chin, until he brushes my fingers aside and secures the fastening.
“Here, you wear this.” He grabs a black leather jacket from a storage compartment on the side of the bike, and I slip it on. It smells of my pirate.
I zip it up and climb up behind him, glad again that I’m wearing sneakers.
“Hold on tight!” he says over his shoulder as he kicks off the stand and starts the motor.
“Always!” I call back.
I wrap my arms around his waist and snuggle up against him, my face curved against the back of his neck. He revs the engine a couple of times, and then we’re off — through the lot, out of the gates and onto the open road.
And though I’m flying, moving faster than breath and thought, I’m also still. There’s a calm, quiet spot in the center of me, a place of peace and contentment that I feel at my core.
I used to think that freedom was a place, and maybe it is. But it’s a place inside of me. A place where I choose, where I decide, where I hold the ones I love.
It’s the spot where the heart of me is now. And I think it’s where Quinn’s heart must also be, beating gently inside of me.
— The End —
Dear Reader,
Thank you for staying with Jinxy and Quinn to the end!
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- Joanne Macgregor
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank my magnificent beta-readers, Nicola Long, Emily Macgregor and Edyth Bulbring, and my editor Chase Night, for their invaluable help and feedback, and to express my gratitude to James Bristow of Magnum Shooting Academy for his patient advice on weapons and shooting — any inaccuracies are on me!
The Recoil Trilogy 3 Book Boxed Set: Including Recoil, Refuse and Rebel Page 73
