Chapter 33 Gray
Lying her gently on the bed, I pulled a blanket over her and backed slowly out of her room, closing the door softly behind me. My head rested on it for a moment before I turned to Ash and Jett, both standing in the middle of the room, waiting.
“She’s asleep.” It was a redundant thing to say; they knew that. She’d fallen asleep on my lap on the way home, and I hadn’t wanted to wake her to go into her house. I may have my hand in a splint, but I could still carry my girl.
“What now?” Ash asked as he rocked back on his feet, his hands in his back pockets.
“It’s a Saturday night,” Jett spoke up. “Getting drunk and fucking shit up sounds like a good idea.”
“Mayhem?” Ash perked up and grinned when I pulled my bandana from my neck.
“Well, I’m dressed for it.” I looked back at the closed door. “I don’t want to leave her though.”
“We don’t need you for Mayhem,” Jett said quickly. “Ava’s gone to see her mom in Knoxville. She isn’t back until the morning.” He nudged Ash with his shoulder. “Let’s go cause some trouble.”
I felt torn. I wanted to go — I could do with a good fight — but my hand hindered me, and as I glanced at the door again, the idea of leaving Quinn to wake up and me not be with her didn’t feel right.
“You are so wifed up,” Ash mocked me as he shook his head in disgust.
Jett snorted as he made his way to the bathroom. “Gotta piss, be back in a minute.”
Which left me and Ash with no Jett as buffer. “Wifed up?”
“You may as well get down on one knee and get it over with. Put us all out of our misery.” He turned to look at the framed pictures Quinn had, and I knew it was now or never.
“I don’t expect you to be okay with this, but you’ve been over for almost two years. You still telling me that the heartache is there?”
“You never touched her before we broke up?”
“I never touched her when she was your girlfriend.” I was making sure he got the distinction. “What I did and didn’t do before and after isn’t your concern.”
His teeth tugged at his bottom lip as he stared at the wall. “Fuck, that’s cold.”
“Not cold. Honest.”
Ash smirked and looked at me. “Honest? Aren’t you about two years too late for that?”
“I’ve never lied to you.”
“But you were never very truthful either.”
“If you had asked me, I would like to think I would have been straight with you.”
“If I’d asked you?” Ash’s eyes were wide. “On what fucking planet would I even think that this was a thing?”
I shrugged. This was pointless. “This solves nothing. Changes nothing.”
“What if it helps me understand?” he challenged me, and I tilted my head back to look at the ceiling briefly.
“Okay, you’re right. Ask me.”
“When did you have sex with her?”
“After you broke up.”
“How long after we broke up? The next day, the next week, the next month? When?”
“The same day.” I saw his reaction, and I braced myself for his rage.
“Are you shitting me? The same day? The same fucking day?”
I nodded. I wasn’t ashamed. Okay, I felt guilty, but I wasn’t ashamed, and more importantly, I didn’t regret it.
“When?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes! I think it fucking matters, don’t you?”
“No. You broke up. I had sex with her. Then I had sex with her again, and then I spent the night with her, then she was pregnant, she miscarried our baby, and now here we are. Nothing for you has changed, Ash.”
“You’re un-fucking-believable.”
“Why, cousin?” My own temper was building.
“Tell me why. Because once she and you were over, she never looked back? She never tried for a second chance with you, she didn’t regret breaking up, and what you’re failing to recognize in your outrage is neither did you.
Quinn walked away from you that day, and you were fucking Carlie that night.
” I shook my head. “Why is that any different?”
“Because Carlie isn’t my fucking cousin.”
I gave a half-shrug. “The point is neither of you were cut up about it. You tried it, it wasn’t meant to be. You have remained friends. It’s more than most people get.”
“Remained friends?” Ash’s eyes were wide. “Have you been paying attention for the last year and a bit?”
“Yes, and I see a guy who’s wounded because his ex didn’t sob into her cornflakes or try to get him back.
Your pride was hurt. You then made sure her feelings were hurt by making sure every single one of your hookups told her that they’d been with you, and you made fucking sure you let them know how they compared to the Queen of Cardinal Saints High School.
They rubbed it in her face, and you did that for a reaction, only she never gave you one.
All you did, and all she did, was make eighteen months very fucking awkward for everyone else. ”
“You’re a massive dick,” Ash said as he shook his head at me. “A really fucking massive dick.”
He barged past me and out her front door, and I looked to the bathroom door where Jett was standing.
“So, it could have gone better,” I hedged.
“Why do you have to be so relentlessly brutal?” he asked me as he came into the room more.
“He needed to hear it.”
“And you’ve been dying to tell him since they split up.”
“No, I’m not a dick. But he did need to be reminded that neither of them was fighting to get back together.”
“Gray, I . . .”
“I know,” I said as I gestured to the front door. “Go. Fuck shit up with him. When he calms down, tell him what I said was true.”
“Well, I don’t agree with everything you said,” Jett muttered as he passed me.
“Okay. Well, bond with him over that. Just don’t let him do anything stupid.”
Jett grunted as he closed the door behind him, and I stood in her living room alone.
With a sigh, I went to the bathroom and opened the cabinet.
The blue toothbrush stared back at me beside her purple one.
With a grin, I reached for her toothbrush.
It made no fucking sense to me why I could put her pussy in my mouth but not her toothbrush.
After I rinsed, I went back to the main room, and then with a sigh, I kicked my boots off and stripped down to my boxers. Making sure the front door was locked, I quietly entered the bedroom and slipped into the bed beside her.
It was ten o’clock on a Saturday night, and it felt right, being in bed with my girl as she slept after a hard day. I was wifed up — the thought made me smile.
“You were harsh,” she whispered as she rolled over to face me.
“You heard?”
“Neither of you were exactly quiet,” Quinn said as she reached out to trace her fingers over my forehead, pushing my hair back.
“I’m not going to apologize for loving you, ever. He knows me better.”
Quinn gave me a sad smile as she leaned toward me and placed a kiss on my lips. “You were wrong, you know,” she said quietly.
“Was I?” My hand trailed over her hip. “When?”
“I did react, once.”
“Elise?” I guessed. I remembered the fight; I remembered Quinn going absolutely crazy as she fought her.
“Yeah.”
“The night of the mix-up?” I was confused, as I had thought that Quinn hadn’t cared.
“No, Elise told me she had slept with Ash,” Quinn told me. “And then that she slept with you right after. I saw red. The thought of her with you . . .”
My finger pressed against her lips to stop her words. “I have never slept with Elise, or either of the other two. None of them. They never appealed to me.”
“Promise me?”
“Baby, I swear. Yes, I’ve had sex with other girls — I’m no saint — but them, no.”
“I was so jealous,” she whispered as she moved closer to me. “The thought of you and her, ugh!”
“Seriously, you never need to have that thought, I haven’t. Christ, even Jett’s only been there once.”
“Once is too many.”
I nodded in agreement. “You okay?”
Quinn rolled onto her back. “Yeah, I’m sad for him. You were blunt and unkind.”
“I was honest.”
“And he was really amazing in the car, and now you’ve ruined it.”
“No, I haven’t. He’s mad at me, not you.” I pulled her back to facing me. “However, you are awake, and you started something in the car, and I don’t mind finishing it, if you want?”
Quinn chuckled as she raised herself up on her elbow to look at me. “That your moves?”
“I’m all wifed up,” I quipped back, using Ash’s term with a grin. “This is what couples do; I say gimme some, you say you have a headache, you slept that off, and I’m still at gimme some.”
Quinn laughed out loud. “That is not how it works!” She slapped my arm as she laughed again.
Quickly, I had her on her back as I pressed my knee in between her thighs, spreading her open.
“Tell me how it works,” I said as I kissed her neck and moved over her jawline to her mouth.
My lips hovered over hers, and my tongue traced her bottom lip softly.
“I’m willing to learn.” Her hand slipping inside my boxers made me arch an eyebrow at her.
“Or we could just get right to it?” I teased.
As her hand started to move with sure, confident strokes, I watched her, seeing her pupils dilate in pleasure.
“I want something, and I’ll understand if you aren’t willing to give it to me.” Her hand hesitated, and my hips moving forward encouraged her to keep going.
“Tell me.”
“Don’t freak out.”
“If it’s a threesome, it’s a no, I refuse to share.”
I grinned as she rolled her eyes. “No. Idiot.”
“Okay, good.” I rolled my hips again to remind her she had a task very much in hand.
“If you freak out, I’ll understand,” she continued.
“Just tell me, I need to be doing other things than talking,” I groaned as she picked up the pace. “Also, so you know, this is an excellent distraction technique. I approve.”
Quinn winked at me before she licked her lips nervously. “I want . . .” She looked away, and I balanced on my elbow to move her head back to facing me. “I want you to come inside me.”
I frowned, and I saw her reaction. “I usually do that,” I said slowly.
“Bare.”
I know my eyes widened as I looked at her. “Quinn?”