34
Walls and Shattered Pinatas
Q uinn couldn’t imagine a more perfect moment, the way Alex looked at her now with such tender affection her heart felt full. This was the best Christmas ever.
After a moment, Alex rolled to the side and onto his back and threw an arm over his head. Quinn nuzzled into the crook of his other arm and stroked his chest.
“That was an unexpected Christmas present, Sergeant Mackenzie,” she teased.
“Aye,” his breath was a heavy sigh.
Quinn didn’t miss the change in him. She suddenly sat up and looked down at the man who’d just made crazy amazing love to her. Her heart hitched because the tenderness she saw in his face mere moments ago was gone, and instead, very clearly on his too-handsome face, all she saw was regret.
Bitter tears pricked her eyes, and a lump wedged in her throat. How the heck could he regret what just happened? She couldn’t understand. It had been the most incredible lovemaking she’d ever experienced. Didn’t he feel it too?
Scrambling up, she grabbed a blanket from the chair and wrapped it around herself. She needed to get some space from Alex, who still lay tense and gloriously naked on the floor. It hurt how good he still looked despite the fact he was a total ass.
Quinn tucked herself onto the far end of the couch away from him. He stared up at the ceiling. His only movement was a slight tick in his jaw. Then he rolled over, lumbered up, and strode to the bathroom without a glance back at her.
Quinn’s heart felt heavy, and she wrapped the blanket a little tighter around her as she looked out the window. She desperately wished she could be anywhere but here in his cabin—where he clearly didn’t want her.
The bathroom door opened a moment later, and he stepped back out dressed in sweatpants and a black police t-shirt. Catching sight of him, Quinn’s heart flip-flopped, and she felt a burst of anger that she would still react to him even now… Even when he didn’t want her.
Stalking towards her, he dropped the hoodie and sweatpants she’d been wearing in the morning beside her. And it felt like a not-so-subtle hint that he didn’t want to see her body or know she was naked under his blanket on his couch. That he wanted to pretend that they hadn’t just had the most incredible sex. Quinn snatched the clothes, throwing them on as quickly as she could as Alex moved to sit in one of the chairs. His forearms rested on his knees, and he rubbed his thumbs in the corner sockets of his eyes as if he could rub away what just happened between them.
With a heavy sigh and without even looking back, as if she wasn’t physically sitting there behind him with her heart shattering, he spoke.
“I’m sorry, lass. I dinnae want to complicate things.” His voice was hollow and distant.
She scoffed at his halfhearted apology. “Yes, I know. God forbid you let yourself feel something for me.”
“Dinnae say that.” He lifted his head to look at her, and she could see the weariness in his stormy blue eyes.
“Why not? It’s true isn’t it?” she challenged him, feeling raw.
Alex rubbed a tired hand over his jaw, leaned back in the chair, and said nothing.
“I’m not her, Alex,” Quinn said quietly, afraid that his walls were already too high to break through.
“Do ye no’ think I ken that? Ye’re nothing like her, thank Christ. Kate has nothing to do with this.”
“No?” she questioned. “Perhaps your mystery woman in the photograph then.” She shot him an accusing look, daring him to finally lay his cards on the table.
Alex sighed heavily. “Trust me. She has nothing to do with this either.”
“Oh, I’m to trust you now?” she snapped, frustrated by the whole situation. “You are all warm and fuzzy one minute and then cold hard ass cop the next. What am I supposed to think? I’m starting to feel like a hostage here.”
His piercing eyes snapped to hers, and for a moment, she regretted her words. “I would never keep ye here against yer will.” His voice was cold steel. “I cannae help the situation we find ourselves in.”
“I’m well aware.” She stiffened refusing to look at him. The silence drew out between them, and Quinn stared out at the thick snow outside. Only a few short hours ago, it brought feelings of Christmas coziness, and now, it just looked bleak to her.
She tried to understand what in the heck happened, but deep down, she knew. She knew it was Kate Cameron. Kate Cameron haunted Alex. Thinking about all the things that made him so amazing didn’t matter, because, in the end, he was still shackled by his past. Walls that were erected at the drop of a dime. Any time Quinn felt like Alex was opening his heart to her, feeling something for her, it was as if his heart would suddenly snap closed like an oyster trying to protect itself. And he would lock her out.
She was locked out now, and it smarted. Her own heart felt battered and numb while her body cruelly felt the lingering vestiges of their lovemaking.
Alex’s mind battered him. He’d lived by the oath of being immune to women for so long that he didn’t know what to do or think about his current predicament. Perhaps Quinn was right about Kate. He thought that woman was long behind him. Talking to Quinn the night before made him realize even more, that everything with Kate and what had happened all those years ago was truly over. Long over. He’d moved on with his life. Hadn’t he?
Being immune to women, not letting them in, not letting them close had become second nature to him. He didn’t think twice about it, but now, a lass had done the impossible. She’d slipped past his walls. Quinn West had bloody well obliterated his walls like a kid with a stick, smacking into a fucking reindeer pinata. Alex’s proverbial candy was strewn everywhere, and he had no idea how to get it back in the box. She'd had cracked him wide open, and it scared the shite out of him.
It was his conversation with Quinn last night that had shown Alex how far in the past Kate and all the hell she’d put him through was. The old reactions and feelings he’d had when he allowed himself to stew had all but fizzled out. Kate Cameron was a non-issue in his life. She was long gone like the misery she’d caused.
Alex had awoken in the morning with that newfound knowledge, and he genuinely felt as if the grip she’d had on him had been released. He felt lighter than he had in years. Those feelings were short-lived because now he felt almost dizzy with anxiety. Fear. And he didn’t do fear. He wanted to roar. His carefully constructed life felt tipped off its axis, and he didn’t have a clue how to fix it. It terrified him more than anything ever had.
“Talk to me, Alex. Help me understand.” Quinn’s voice cut through his fractured thoughts.
She appeared so fragile sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees. Her face barely poked out from the oversized hood of his sweatshirt. Part of him wanted to scoop her up into his arms and kiss away the sadness that was etched on her beautiful face.
Instead, he said nothing. He didn’t know what to say, what to think. He was spiralling, freaking out, and the only thing he could think to help it was to have her gone. As if reading his mind, a shadow seemed to cross over her features before they set in a hard line.
“I wish I’d never met you.” Her words could have shattered him, but he already felt shattered. Lost. Fucked right up.
As she stood, they both heard a sound in the distance, and it quickly grew louder. Quinn’s big eyes looked at him questioningly, but before he could say anything, a loud thumping on the front door made her jump.
“The ranger,” Alex said, feeling numbness seep through him. If it was the ranger, the road back to town was likely open. Thank God. Quinn West could leave. Leave his cabin. Leave his life. And maybe, he could put his world back to rights and breathe again.
Quinn didn’t say a word, but he could see in her eyes what he felt. The final nail in the coffin had just been hammered in.