Page 25 of Confession (Constantine Brothers #2)

TWENTY

Vitali

I cannot believe how fucking close that was.

If I hadn’t looked at that file immediately .

If I hadn’t been so desperate to talk to him again and believe something other than what my brain wanted to tell me about this being another betrayal and me being a fool.

If I hadn’t gone looking for him and found him gone and his weapons gone?

Thank god we have trackers on all the cars.

Thank god I asked Sasha to help me. Thank god she had the sense to be silent and let me think and figure shit the fuck out. Because it was all pretty obvious really when I thought about Quinn instead of myself.

But if I hadn’t.

If I hadn’t …

My fingers tighten on Quinn’s, but he doesn’t look up. He’s somewhere inside himself.

When we get home and park in the garage, I let go of him to get out. He gets out too, watching numbly as Sasha pulls up beside us with his car.

She gets out, hauling out his weapons rigs. She slings them over her shoulder. I can tell, in the way she stalls, that she wants to talk to him, but she sighs and walks off, leaving us alone.

I take Quinn’s hand. He walks with me through the garage then through the house and up the stairs to my room, where I close us in.

Like Sasha, I want to talk to him, but he’s not ready. I tug at the hem of his compression shirt, pushing it up until he raises his arms. I pull it over his head and toss it on the floor. I crouch to unlace his boots. He makes a sound of discomfort at my actions, but I ignore him.

Once I’ve got his boots and socks off, I straighten to get him out of his tactical pants and boxer briefs. He’s not aroused and neither am I.

“Get in the bed,” I tell him.

As he complies, pulling down the covers and sliding in, lying on his side with his back to me, I get undressed.

I turn on one of the distant accent lights and turn off the main lights.

Then I slide into the bed behind him. I hook my arms around him and tug him against me.

I bury my face against the back of his neck and just hold on until his tremors fade.

Once he’s relaxed, I whisper, “Why did you think that was okay to do?”

“What?” he asks quietly.

“You scared me,” I tell him. “Do you understand how much you scared me tonight?”

He doesn’t reply. He doesn’t understand.

“Why is it so hard for you to believe that people care about you? And it’s not just me, you know.”

No answer.

“ You care about people,” I point out.

“Yeah.”

“Well, they care about you too.”

He exhales a frustrated breath.

“I love you, Quinn.”

His chest rises and falls sharply.

I don’t know if it’s subconscious or what, but my hand moves to his forearm, lightly curling around the burn scars. When he pulls his arm away, I let go.

“Nobody should have done that to you.”

“He’s dead,” Quinn tells me like that’s all that matters.

I breathe against the back of his neck, deciding whether to ask. Then he volunteers, “I killed him.” Fuck, I was afraid of that. “He was going to kill her.”

“Your mother?” I ask.

He doesn’t reply, which is answer enough.

He’s silent for a long time. I want to him to continue, but this isn’t something I can ask him for. He’ll give it or he won’t.

I hope he does. I want to understand him, and while this part of his past might not have anything to do with tonight, it also has everything to do with tonight.

After a while, Quinn says, “He didn’t like what she’d cooked. Shit started. When I tried to stop him, he—well, that’s when I got burned. With the pan.”

“Jesus Christ,” I murmur as anger rolls through me. I shift against him, restless with it, frustrated that there’s nothing I can do.

Except listen.

“I did manage to kill him eventually, but she died anyway. It was just as well maybe. She was an addict, not really there, you know?”

There’s a lot packed into that, but I don’t think Quinn’s ready to unpack it. But there is something I have to know.

“So who took care of you? After.”

I feel him shrug. “I went into the system.”

No one, then. Just Quinn, adrift and traumatized. No family. No stability.

He’s had a lifetime of locking himself down, shutting things out. Shutting people out.

That’s how I’ve felt since he closed off from me yesterday. Shut out. But that’s not what was actually happening.

I just watched those videos of him and Alesso, and I saw a different Quinn. A colder one. I saw him talking and fake smiling while his eyes were completely empty. There was no submission, no fear, no need. There was no truth.

That was Quinn shutting people out.

What he did with me was different.

I lift myself up onto one elbow so I can see him. I let my hand rest on his side.

“Why did you panic?” I ask. “Yesterday. What changed?”

He takes a deep breath. I make myself be patient. I make myself wait until he’s ready.

It’s hard for me. As soon as I understood that I wanted him, I wanted all of him, instantly. That isn’t fair.

“Everything changed,” he says, not really telling me anything.

“The way we had sex?” I prompt, trying to be careful. He’s so tough that I haven’t been careful enough.

“That and … I started to—” He breaks off. “ Fuck .” He covers his face with one hand.

“You started to what?” I ask when he doesn’t go on.

He’s silent for a long time, but I think he’s trying, so I wait.

“Want things,” he finally says. “Things I’d worked really hard to not let myself want.”

“But you’re right to want those things.”

“No, it’s dumb.”

“ I want those things. Is that dumb?”

“No.”

“I want those things with you.”

He turns onto his back, looking at me, finally. But he’s looking at me to say, “You could do so much better than me.”

“No, I couldn’t.”

“Don’t be—”

I grab his face when he tries to turn away. “I couldn’t do better in a million fucking years. You are everything I could ever, ever want. I fucking love you .”

Tears pool in his eyes. “Don’t, Vitali.”

“I fucking love you.”

“ Stop .”

“I fucking love you.”

He completely shatters. His whole body starts shaking. He pulls away from me so damn hard that he’s out of the bed before I can react, but I’m right behind him as he falls to the floor, hunched in on himself and shaking with sobs that he refuses to let out.

I force my arms into the curled-up space of his body, grabbing him around the middle and hauling him back into the bed.

“Please,” I beg because I’m crying now too. “ Please , Quinn.”

I don’t even know exactly what I’m asking for, but he’s gives it to me anyway.

He rolls over in my arms and wraps his around me.

His body fully entwines with mine. His face buries against my throat, like he finally believes me, like he finally trusts me.

And he finally cries like I think he’s needed to for years.

And so do I.