“Exactly,” he agreed, giving me a small smile. “Look at that,” he added, watching me.
“Look at what?”
“That boulder fell right off your shoulders. You just needed to get out of there for a while.”
He wasn’t wrong. That knot that had been settled in my stomach, twisting ever tighter by the hour felt unraveled suddenly. And this had been the longest I had gone all day without thinking of the body, of the eyes wide-open in death, of the blood, of the way my finger had squeezed that trigger.
“It’s nice to be able to forget for a while.”
Quin watched me for a long moment, something in his deep eyes that I couldn’t read. “If you need to forget for a little while, just let me know.”
Was he offering me – this intimidating, successful, lawless man, offering me, boring, no one me – friendship?
What’s more, was I actually considering it?
Hell, did I – alone as a person could be in the world – even have a true choice in the matter? I was in no position to turn it down. Especially because, with Quin, I wouldn’t have to pretend. He knew all. And because he was who he was, he wouldn’t judge me for it.
“I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you,” I added, meaning it more than I knew was even possible.
“And maybe consider getting out more in general. I know you are a homebody, and I don’t want you going out to the bar, and getting wasted every night, doing shit completely out of character. But maybe take that beast to the dog park. Maybe hit a movie, or come hang out here with a book. Just don’t let those walls start whispering to you.”
“Whispering to me? That’s an odd way to put it.”
“Is it?” he countered, but said nothing else, leaving me to wonder what walls whispered to him. And what they said.
“If I can wrestle Mackey into my car, I will give the park thing a try. Maybe he will like other dogs more than he likes me.”
“I’m assuming you got him from the pound exactly because he seems like he hates everyone and everything. He’ll warm up to you. You are, after all, the one in charge of the can opener.”
“I think–”
Whatever I was about to say was cut off by the insistent ring of Quin’s phone. If I wasn’t mistaken, there seemed to be regret in his eyes as he reached for it. But I guess both of us knew that a man as important as himself couldn’t just ignore his phone when it was going off. Not just for something so simple as coffee with a woman he barely knew.
“Jules, get your ass home already. You’ve pulled thirty-hours of overtime this month already. You’re young. You need a life to…” He paused as, I assumed, Jules spoke to him. There was a deep sigh and a resigned nod after that. “Yeah. Alright. I’ll be in. Tell that sonofabitch that this is the last goddamn time. Yeah. Okay.”
He hung up his phone, looking up at me. “You have to go,” I said before he could tell me himself.
“Repeat client,” he agreed with a nod. “He’s got as much sense as a sloth crossing a highway,” he added as he moved to stand. Left with little choice, I moved to stand as well. “Come on,” he said, holding out a hand and, when I moved to walk past him, his hand pressed into my lower back. It was a common, chaste contact, but I somehow felt a spark at the touch, a little electrical current that seemed to run up my spine and move through my very bloodstream.
It stayed there, an anchoring presence, as we wove through the tight tables, then out the front doors, and out onto the sidewalk, the autumnal air full of moldering leaves and dampness – a combination I always found comforting. He tossed his coffee into the bin, and I tossed mine as well – too cold to drink anyway.
His hand pressed harder as we rounded the hood of my car, as he led me right to my door.
“Thank you for this,” I told him, turning to face him, making his hand slide away, the absence something I seemed to miss instantaneously.
“Shouldn’t thank me for a little common decency,” he said, shaking his head.
That was all this was.
Common decency.
Of course.
Somehow, with the touch of his hand at my back, I had started to entertain ideas of something more.
I had always been more of a realist than anything else. I don’t know what possessed me to think anything that fanciful.
I guess an argument could be made for my head just not being in the right place given what had been happening over the past several months.
“Hey,” Quin said, his voice softer. Before I could raise my head to see his face, I felt the gentle brush of his fingers down my jaw, his finger and thumb snagging my chin, and tilting my head back up. “Don’t take it all back on,” he said, his tone at once both pleading and demanding. The weight, I was sure he meant. “Make a plan for tomorrow. Get up. Go to work. Come home. Take Mackey to the dog park. Drop him at home. Maybe come back out for a bit to grab dinner. Then only go home when it is time to sleep. Don’t let the walls close in on you.”