Chapter 6
Cecily
I t had been a mistake. Not the kiss. Kisses that hot are never a mistake. The mistake had been getting cocky and thinking that I could handle it, that I could have a little make-out session in the kitchen with the man who literally taught me everything I know.
Even after our speedbump of a marriage was supposedly annulled, there really hadn’t been anyone.
Oh, I dated. I went out with a few guys.
Even slept with one or two while thinking I was single.
Part of me feels guilty about that, but I don’t think Quinn was exactly a monk in the decade and a half since we parted ways.
And no one can blame you for what you do when you truly have every reason to believe you’re single.
And yet, here I am, feeling more like an adulteress because I kissed him.
Because kissing him means that he and I aren’t done.
It means that what’s going on between us is a fuck-ton more than just sorting out a clerical error.
Thoughts like that shine a big-ass spotlight on all the shit that went sideways, and contrary to what I always liked to tell myself, it wasn’t all him.
I’d pulled a page from my father’s book.
I hadn’t just been honest with him and told him I was afraid—afraid of what would happen to him if he joined up.
Afraid he would get hurt, that he would come home mangled and broken and someone else.
I was afraid to be without him. I was afraid that if we let that much time and space between us, he’d bolt.
He’d see that he could have more than me, more than someone who was perfectly content to sit on my ass in the hometown that had never done right by him.
I held my breath and stamped my feet like the spoiled little shit I was, and he fucking called me on it.
So when my dad said it was time to fix my little rebellion and get it annulled, I didn’t fight for him.
I ran, I hid, I cried… and I let go of the one thing I should have been holding on to for dear life.
Because there had only ever been two people in the entirety of my life who were always a safe bet. My grandmother and Quinn Carter.
“Fuck my life,” I breathe. Then I get out of the car and make my way into Liz’s shop. If I’m going to job hunt, I’m going to need to look like I haven’t been doing my own hair. Which I have. Poorly.
“Hey, Cecily! Long time no see!” Liz says, not exactly bright and chipper, but still warm and welcoming.
“How’s my credit here?” I ask. “I need to get my shit together and find a job, but cash is tight.”
“Cut? Color? And if I have to hold you down, we’re doing your damn brows. You ever pick up another pair of tweezers, I swear to you, I will whip your ass up and down Main Street.”
“Color is too expensive. But definitely a cut, and if you want to fix the mangled mess of my eyebrows, I’m not gonna fight you on it.”
“And you don’t have to pay for this with anything but tea,” Lizzie says as she waves me into her chair. “What the hell is Quinn Carter doing in your house?”
“Currently sleeping in the guest room.”
“Then you are dumber than I thought!”
I can’t stop laughing at that. Because Lizzie has no idea just how right she is.
An hour and a half later, freshly shampooed, cut, highlighted under protest, waxed, and tinted, I leave the salon.
It felt good to have some girl time. To talk to someone I truly like and enjoy.
It’s easy enough now to see that I had curled up into a ball like a dog that had been kicked one too many times.
I went into self-protection mode, and that meant isolating myself from anyone and everyone.
I bailed on friendships. I bailed on my damn self.
And it’s a full circle. Because I’m back to an uncomfortable truth.
I bailed on Quinn too. When he joined the military and last night, in my very own kitchen, when I all but dared him to kiss me and then ran like a scared little girl.
Heading for home, I pull up out front and see Quinn just getting into his truck. “Going somewhere?”
He shrugs. “Wasn’t sure you’d want me to be hanging around all night,” he says. “I gotta tell you, Cec, if the signals you give me were any more mixed up, they’d be in another goddamn language.”
I’m not confusing myself any less. “That’s fair… Take me for a drive. Let’s see if we can’t uncross a few wires.”
He cocks his brow. “You know what happens when we go for a drive. Every damn time we’ve ever been alone in a vehicle. That always leads to trouble.”
“Does that mean you don’t want to?”
He shakes his head. “Never said that. Just making sure we’re on the same page.”
“Quinn Carter, are you gonna just stand there? Or are you going to open that door for me like the gentleman I know your mother raised you to be?” I ask with all the sass my still broke and unemployed ass can muster.
He doesn’t grin at me. But I can see him fighting it as he lets the truck door swing open and then steps back.
As I climb up into the seat, I know this is a bad idea.
I know what I’m about to do is probably going to bite me in the ass later.
But I tried doing everything right. I did what my dad wanted and it was a mistake.
I did all the right things at work and still got fired for it.
I did all the right things after I got fired and I’m still hovering on the brink of poverty and foreclosure.
So I’m tired of doing everything right. And if I’m going to do something wrong, I’m by god going to have something to show for it.