Page 27 of Confession (Constantine Brothers #2)

TWENTY-TWO

Vitali

“Ah, fuck,” Quinn mutters.

I peer over his shoulder to see what the problem is. He starts trying to fish a bit of eggshell out of the bowl. On his fourth failed attempt, I hook my arm around his waist and pull him away from the island.

“That’s enough,” I tell him. “Wash your hands.”

“I’m making breakfast,” he protests irritably, resisting when I try to turn him toward the sink.

“Let Sasha cook. She can handle it.”

“Yes,” Sasha agrees. “She can handle it. Go away. There are too many men in here right now.”

“There are only two of us,” I point out.

Quinn is still resisting, so I pinch him in the side. He jerks away from me. “Hey!”

“It’s a small space,” Sasha argues.

“Not really,” I say as I usher Quinn toward the sink.

“Every space is small with you in it, Vitali.”

Quinn grumbles under his breath, “That’s certainly true.”

I harass him again, this time pinching his ass through his gray sweats. He flinches, spraying water. It splatters the window and the counter.

“The fuck, Vitali,” he mutters, glaring at me over his shoulder. He flicks water at my face. At my flinch, the corner of his mouth tugs. There. That’s better.

When I smile, pleased, he shakes his head and goes back to washing his hands. I move ahead, snagging both our coffees from the island.

Quinn dries his hands and mops the water from the window and counter. Then he glances from me to Sasha.

He says, “I can do the—”

“Go away,” Sasha tells him without looking up from chopping green onions. “I can make eggs and drop bagels in a toaster. I’ve done it before.”

Quinn sighs and starts to follow me. Sasha snags his hand, letting their fingers brush as he walks by.

The fact that she doesn’t look at him as she does it tells me how well she knows him, and I have a sudden, overwhelming, poignant sense of family.

I haven’t felt anything like it in years, and it’s so sharp that I have to have to turn my face away.

When I hear Quinn’s bare feet following me, I walk out into the sitting room.

Except for the fireplace, I don’t love this room.

I like style and fine structure, but it’s too formal with its wingback chairs and elegant tables.

Sometimes I think about changing it or other parts of the house, but I haven’t been able to make myself do that.

My mother chose the style of the room, and I’ve been stuck in it. I’m not sure I actually realized that until I go to sit on the cream-colored couch with Quinn. I don’t know why I realize it now. I feel like things are moving that haven’t for years.

When I hand Quinn his coffee, he rests it in his lap because his hands are shaky.

The egg wasn’t the first victim of his unusual clumsiness this morning. There’s a cut on his neck from shaving. He’s still on overload.

I don’t see the depression right now, but I’m going to have to watch out for it. I’m going to have to learn what he needs. I think he’s going to have to learn that too because all he’s ever learned is how to ignore it.

I curl my hand around his thigh. I love being allowed to touch him. His hazel eyes flick to me. He takes a deep breath. I sip my coffee and try not to worry. I make myself stop staring at him. It’s hard.

Quinn’s hand curls around my thigh, mirroring my action. I feel him relax. From the corner of my eye, I watch him sip his coffee. His hand is steady.

My fingers flex on his thigh, stroking idly as I drink my coffee.

He complains, “I’m gonna get hard if you keep doing that.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“There are things to deal with. I need you to catch me up. Cecilia had a reason for giving you that information.”

“Hm.”

“Oh, hell no. You are not keeping me out of this.”

“I can deal with it, Quinn. I’d rather you—”

His hand pulls away from my thigh. “I don’t give a shit what you’d rather I do. You’re not keeping me out of it.”

I take in the anger in his eyes, the tightness of his jaw. It’s very familiar to me. His stubbornness. His toughness. But I know what’s underneath it now. I saw it last night.

“You almost got yourself killed a few hours ago,” I remind him, keeping my voice as soft and steady as I can manage. “On purpose.”

“ For a purpose,” he tries to argue.

My temper lashes up inside me, but I force it down. I can’t let him turn this into an argument. I can’t let him evade the point, even though it’s hard for me to pull back from my anger, which is so much easier than making myself say, “You scared me, Quinn. You really fucking scared me.”

His anger vanishes. His stubbornness melts. I watch him swallow hard. I watch him accept what I’ve said. His hand settles on my thigh again.

I don’t know what to do next, where to go from here. Then Quinn says, “Please, Vitali. Don’t keep me out of it. I won’t handle it well.”

I sigh. “I didn’t know this was going to be so hard.”

“You thought it was just going to be sex.”

“No, you thought it was just going to be sex. I thought it was going to be …” I shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Easy,” he supplies accurately. “That’s because you’ve never had an actual, um, whatever this is.”

“Relationship, Quinn, Jesus.” He blushes. Fuck, he’s cute. “And when have you ever had one?”

He huffs in annoyance.

“I’ll take that as a never.”

It’s strange maybe for two people who’ve never had relationships to have one together. But Quinn is right for me in a way that no one else could ever be. I feel it. I know.

I knew it from the beginning when I felt the impulse to claim him as my own. He’s mine. It’s that simple.

“So Cecilia,” he says. “You were going to tell me about her paying you a visit.”

“Was I?”

“Yes, Vitali. You were.”

Reluctantly, I tell Quinn about her visit to Eclipse. It’s hard to talk about it after the way I confronted him last night, after everything that happened.

We get through it, but after I’ve relayed everything, I get up. I need to move around. I go to the fireplace, where I set my lukewarm coffee on the mantle. My fingers drum by the cigar box.

“It doesn’t bother me if you smoke,” Quinn says from the couch.

I open the wooden box and extract a cigar, clipping the end and lighting it. I toss the silver lighter aside and draw the smoke into my lungs. I blow it out.

I don’t smoke often, but sometimes it helps me think. I guess Quinn knows that about me.

He says, “She hoped you would seize my evidence and turn it in.”

“Which would have rid her of her brother.”

“And you of me.”

I take another drag on the cigar and blow it out. “We’re destroying it.”

“Not yet.”

“I can’t use it, Quinn. I never would have. I already loved you, even if I didn’t how I loved you. Or how much.”

I watch the emotion intensify in his eyes until he can’t bear it. His eyes close. He really doesn’t know how to be loved. It’s hard to stay back, but I do. He needs to learn how to hear things like that.

He’ll be hearing a lot of them. For the rest of his life.

He opens his eyes and refocuses. “They don’t have to know that you won’t use it.”

“I think they know. About us. I think that’s why Cecilia thought it would work.”

“How would they know? We haven’t been together in front of …” He trails off as he comes to the same conclusion that I’ve also reached. “The night Cohen took me in.”

“I was pretty obvious.”

He fiddles with his coffee cup. “Looking back … yeah.”

“You somehow missed it at the time?” I tease automatically then instantly wish I could take it back. That was such a dark night for us. Such a terrible fucking night.

But Quinn saves me with a slight smile. “Right over my head.”

“So the flash drive goes away,” I emphasize.

Quinn looks thoughtful. “Cecilia is smart. Smart like you. She would’ve known there was a chance it wouldn’t work.”

“True. Why, what are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that you always have a Plan B. So would she.”

“Like what?”

“If nothing else, she’s accomplished one thing: alerting you to the fact that she’s willing to act against her brother. You said she showed you pictures. How?”

“On a … fuck.”

When I push away from the mantle, Quinn gets up, setting his coffee cup aside. We go down to my office, where Cecilia’s burner phone, sitting on my desk, is blinking with a text alert. Of course it fucking is.

When I pull up the text from an unidentified number, all it says is, Well?

I huff. “You were right.”

“So what do you want to do?”

I smile. “Play her game, of course.”

“She’s dangerous, Vitali.”

“Oh, I know,” I reply as I text back, Let me buy you dinner. Dulce. 8 p.m.

A reply pops up in seconds. To celebrate?

I type, To commiserate.

Unknown: Why, has someone died?

Not yet , I answer.

Unknown: Intriguing. Then, I can do 8:30. I prefer red.