Darling Obsession

Chapter 14

Harlan

I lie sprawled on my back under the sheet, too warm for blankets, my heart still pounding. Quinn lies next to me, snuggled into my armpit, her head on my chest.

I don’t know how we got here. I just kind of fell over after the sex, untied the bra from her wrists, and we ended up like this.

I can’t move.

But my thoughts are racing.

Obsession never rests. It only feeds, which just makes it more hungry. And now mine needs to be fed—with more data.

“Are you looking for another bakery job?” I ask her.

“Oh. We’re doing this, are we?” She gazes up at me with wide eyes, ridiculing me. “Pillow talk? Really?”

“Humor me,” I growl.

“Why would I do that?”

“Because if you don’t,” I say silkily, “I’ll hold it against you.”

“That was a very sexy-sounding threat,” she says. “I thought we weren’t having sex, ever, ever again.” She rolls her eyes.

I consider that. And how I should spank her for sassing me in my bed.

I know what I said to her.

I’m not sure my body agrees with my words.

My words were a lie meant to force us apart after we fucked. Clearly, since she’s laying in my arms, it didn’t work.

I war with it for a moment.

Then I tell her, “We aren’t. Since that’s the case, you might as well answer me.”

She considers, but seems too tired to argue further.

“Yes, I’m looking for another bakery job. I’m not desperate about it, though.”

“Don’t you need somewhere to bake your cakes?”

“Yes. But I’ve learned from experience. I’ve been desperate about jobs before. And I’d rather be in a good working situation than a bad one out of desperation.”

I’m not sure how to take that.

“Was it bad at Crave?”

“It… wasn’t great. There was a lot of pressure. And Justin was a very stressed-out boss.”

I’d rather she never mention another man’s name in this bed, especially one she was fucking so recently. I’m a jealous man. But I’m also compulsively curious when it comes to her, apparently. It’s an itch I need to scratch.

“He didn’t treat you well?”

“As an employee? No. As a semi-girlfriend, or whatever I was to him? No. I mean, yes, he let me use the facilities at Crave so I could make cakes for my clients. But the trade-off was that I was at his beck and call. I was always working overtime for him last minute. Doing him extra favors without being properly compensated, while he strung me along with vague promises that he’d promote me.”

“I should fire him.”

She lifts her head, looking up at me with wide eyes. “He’s working for you?”

“We kept him on after buying the bakery. He’s still running it.”

“Ugh.” She settles her head onto my chest again. “Well, please don’t fire him on my account. If he’s the best person to run the bakery for you, so be it. He’s good at his job,” she adds grudgingly. “That’s why I wanted to work for him. To keep learning.”

I make a vague, grumbly noise.

After a moment, she says, “Harlan? I know tonight was just a one-more-time thing… but can you please not fire him now? I know you want to.”

“I never said that.”

“You just said that,” she says patiently. “I realize ethics may not always be your first priority in business, but it really wouldn’t be ethical to fire him because a woman in your bed talked shit about him.”

“Thank you for the business advice, Quinn,” I say evenly.

“Do it for me?” she says softly. “Please?”

I think it over. “Okay.”

“Can I trust you?”

“About this? Yes.”

“Hmm,” she says. “Look, it was my fault for buying what he was selling, and letting him take advantage. But he did make unrealistic demands on my time and energy. That said… he’s a great baker.”

I don’t agree that it’s totally her fault. She seems to take on responsibility for things that don’t always need to be on her.

But it’s admirable that she’s so self-sufficient and responsible. I suppose.

Admirable and irritating.

“Why did you put up with it?”

She blinks up at me. “Okay, maybe this isn’t a reality that you can comprehend, but some of us don’t have ten-digit bank account balances. We get these things called jobs and we rely on them.”

“Thank you,” I tell her, equally condescending. “I didn’t actually go to business school or learn math. My family just handed me the job of CFO straight out of high school.”

Her eyelids lower, unimpressed. “I’m sure you worked very hard to prove yourself.”

“I did, actually.”

“But you have to admit you had a giant head start.”

“I’m not denying that.”

“Anyway… I’m used to supporting myself. It’s not that big a deal. It’s just that…” She hesitates, then says quietly, “When I had to start supporting Mom, too, that’s when things got hard. I wasn’t ready for it. But my new job at Champagne has been a huge help. They already offered me six nights a week, if I want them.”

“But doesn’t that take time and energy away from making cakes?”

“Yes, but it puts money in the bank. The tips are worth it. Right now, I need money more than I need to make cakes.”

I don’t like that. “You’re not giving up on Quinn’s Cakes, are you?”

“No. But there’s only so much of me to go around. And only so much I can get done in our cramped kitchen anyway. Mom’s cupcake orders take up space, too.”

I consider this. And the fact that she was very adamant that she didn’t want me to arrange a job for her. I’m still calculating if I can work around that.

“What would your ideal job be?”

“One that pays enough to cover my bills, and that I don’t hate. And frees me up to make cakes. That’s all I want. To make Mom’s dream a reality.”

“You’re talking about the bakery thing?”

“Yeah.”

“You just said it’s your mom’s dream. I thought it was your dream.”

She sighs. “It’s both. She’s always wanted her own bakery. There’s no way that’s happening now, if I don’t make it happen.”

When she’s silent for a moment, I ask her, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“About what?”

“Her illness.”

She takes a deep breath. Then says, “I forgot that you knew about that.”

“It was… evident. But I don’t really know why you were taking her to the doctor’s office.”

She looks up into my eyes. “You really had surveillance on me?”

“It’s just what I do. I need to have all the information about something, all the facts, before I make a decision.”

“And what decision have you made about me?”

I don’t have an answer for that.

I mean, I do.

I just don’t feel like sharing that I’ve decided she’s a threat to my sanity. I’ve already made it clear we’ve fucked for the last time. That there can be nothing more between us.

She doesn’t need to know how completely mixed up I am about it.

I can’t stop wanting to fix all her problems, control her life, make her do dirty things in my bed. But that’s the problem. It’s better if we just say goodbye. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy.

I’m indulging myself here, lying in bed with her, drilling her for information, when I know I shouldn’t be.

“I already know,” she says softly, when I don’t answer. “That we’re not going to see each other again.”

We lie here, naked and entwined, and the futility of that declaration, which I’ve made so many times, feels grossly obvious.

She’s kind enough not to mention it.

“What’s her prognosis?”

She doesn’t reply, but I feel her heart beating against me a little faster.

“Since this is the last time we’ll ever talk like this… you might as well tell me.”

“You didn’t uncover that while stalking me?”

“Your mother’s private medical files? No.”

“Just checking. You do seem to have godlike powers.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment, Harlan.”

“Sure it was.”

“No wonder you have such a large house for one man to live in alone. Your ego wouldn’t fit in a regular-sized one.”

After a moment, I say, “Some of my staff live here.”

Quinn is silent for a long moment. Her breathing deepens, and I actually wonder if she’s falling asleep.

“Her prognosis isn’t good. But what do doctors know?” she says softly.

“Sometimes very little. Sometimes a lot.”

“Yeah,” she says sadly. “Sometimes too much.”

“We don’t have to talk about it. You can go to sleep.”

The words are out of my mouth before I really hear myself.

I expect her to make some sarcastic remark about how I just gave her permission to sleep.

And get up to leave.

She only seems to enjoy my orders when we’re having sex.

But she doesn’t do that.

“For the last three years,” she says quietly, “I didn’t even make her a birthday cake, until after her birthday had passed. I just can’t stand the thought of her not getting to eat it. And I cry on her birthday, because she made it to another one. Then we make a cake together, and go down to the waterfront to eat it. Her birthday is in summer, so at least there’s that.”

We lie in silence as I try to picture Quinn and her mom sitting by the water, eating birthday cake.

I’ve never had a moment like that with my mom. It seems foreign to me.

And utterly beautiful.

I think, when I was a kid, I wanted that kind of life more than anything. But even then, maybe I knew it was an impossible dream.

I just didn’t have that kind of mother.

But I don’t long for that anymore.

I wonder, when was the last time I actually had a dream like Quinn’s dream about her bakery?

“If you could have anything,” I ask her, wanting fiercely to know, “what would it be? Even if it seems impossible.”

She considers for a long moment, then says, “A view of the water.”

“Really?”

“Yes. My dad used to love the water. He never had a boat or anything. He always wanted one, but we never had that kind of money. So he would take me down to the waterfront as often as possible, and we’d look at the water, and talk about the boats going by, imagine the lives of the people on them and where they were floating off to. And when I’m feeling overwhelmed or scared, I still go down to the water. I walk along the beach, or on the Seawall. And I feel close to him. And everything just feels… better.”

I take that in.

I never had moments like that with my dad, either.

“My granddad was obsessed with the water,” I find myself saying. “He told me that when he was a teenager, he met a man who owned a skyscraper downtown. It was some friend of his grandparents’. And he got to go up to the top and look out at the city, and he could see these buildings all along the waterfront. And he decided that one day, he was going to own them.”

I pause for a moment, considering. “He had no reason to think he could do that. His dad owned a modest auto repair business and his mom was a librarian. And those buildings he saw out the window weren’t the actual buildings he ended up buying, but before he died, he’d acquired an entire waterfront neighborhood in downtown Vancouver. All the properties along Bayshore Drive, and others close by. And the arena, too, and a resort on the ski hill. Every one of them with a water view. He not only achieved what he set out to do, I think it became his obsession.”

Quinn takes that in.

“That’s wild,” she says after a moment. “Like, what makes one person see a waterfront neighborhood and think, ‘I’m going to own all these buildings one day,’ and then go do it , and another person just sit on the shore and watch the boats go by?”

I consider what she’s saying, and I don’t have an answer.

I’ve always felt my own success was driven by a desire to dominate in business.

But more and more, I’m understanding that it’s a distraction.

The need to dominate keeps me focused. An extreme work ethic and the demands of perfectionism give my obsessive compulsions an outlet. I work hard. I work a lot. I expect perfection from myself and everyone around me, and when I don’t get it, I keep pushing for it until I get it.

The thing is, there is no perfection, so, it’s an endless pursuit.

It’s also a selfish pursuit.

Maybe Quinn’s father wasn’t selfish enough. He prioritized his family, and forfeited his chance to acquire boats.

Clearly, Quinn is driven by her love for her mom. She wants to take care of her.

She also wants to achieve their shared dream.

But there’s no reason she can’t do both.

“You’re not going to let the boats go by, Quinn,” I tell her. “You’ll get your bakery, if that’s what you set out to do.”

I’m not even sure if she hears me.

She seems to have fallen asleep in my arms.

I know this dream well.

It has the familiarity of a well-worn nightmare, one that never changes.

But it’s still deeply disturbing every time.

I’ve just come home from school.

I’m standing in the foyer of my family’s home. I’m alone. But I can hear sounds in the distance, coming from upstairs—a door closing. Then the muffled voices of my siblings. My mom.

More than I can hear them… I can feel their sorrow.

I’m supposed to be there, with them.

I climb the stairs to the second floor.

When I get to the top, I see the door to the room where the terrible thing is going to happen, and I know they’re waiting for me.

I walk toward it.

When I finally reach it, I start to open the door.

But before I can see what’s inside, I wake up in a panic. I feel the whole bed shake as I jolt awake, panting.

“Hey. Harlan?” It’s Quinn. Her soft, sleepy voice next to me in the dark.

I swear and rub my hands over my face. “I was just dreaming,” I mutter, disoriented. “I was in my house. The one I grew up in. I haven’t been there in years. In my dreams.”

I don’t know if I’m making sense. The dream is still so vivid in my head and my body. That crushing feeling, of being too late…

“Just try to breathe,” she says gently. She sounds concerned.

I take a deep breath and try to relax.

My heart is racing.

I feel her warm body against me, and it’s grounding.

“What happened?” she says. “You had a nightmare?”

“Graysen still lives there,” I try to explain. “But… the house was different back then. It feels different, in the dream. It sounds different. My mom is… crying.”

When I don’t say anything else, she asks softly, “Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

The dream was the same as it used to be. It was always the same. How can it be exactly the same, after all these years?

She slides a hand over my chest, maybe trying to soothe me, and I reach for her. I roll toward her, right on top of her.

She sighs a little, her hands sliding around my back and down to my ass. “Harlan,” she whispers, and it’s all I need.

I kiss her, hot and slow. Deep. Losing myself in the feel of her. So soft and warm beneath me. I dig my cock into her thigh, already getting hard. And she shifts her hips to accommodate me.

I find her opening, slick and ready for me, and push inside.

I swallow the soft sounds she makes as we kiss, needing to consume her. To possess her again.

To lose myself in her body, completely.

In the back of my mind, I know what I’m doing. I’m fucking her again, when I said I wouldn’t.

But I don’t care. I sink into her again and again. I don’t fucking care.

It’s dark in here, and the hunger between us is insatiable. And all I want is the feel of her, sucking me in. I thrust into her again and again, drowning in the sweet oblivion.

But no matter how deeply I fall into her, I know I need to be careful.

I can’t let her in.

I can’t start to need her.

Need this.

No matter how good it feels.

No matter how many times we come together tonight, I just have to make it clear to her that this won’t last.