Chapter Nineteen
QUINNFELTLIKECRYING. And like laughing. As she drove back home shaking inside, she was glad that he hadn’t asked her to stay. Part of her wanted to. Part of her wanted to climb into bed with him. But part of her needed the distance, and if he had asked her to stay, she wouldn’t have been able to tell him no. She needed to process what had just happened, and she was very aware that she was driving home without her shoes, wearing a very large pair of boot socks that were clearly not hers. And that it was late.
She really hoped—she really, really hoped—that her sisters had gone to bed.
She just wasn’t ready to talk about it. She wasn’t even really ready to deal with it in her own soul, but it was what it was, she supposed.
When she turned onto the road that led to Four Corners, she really looked at it in a different way.
A big, mysterious collective that no one else in town could access unless they worked there.
A gigantic ranch that almost nobody could compete with, that had been there since the dawn of time.
Of course it was a big deal for Levi to agree to work with them. It would probably even make other people feel like he was a sellout, or like he was suspicious.
It was... It was difficult. Of course it was.
But he’d said yes, and now they were just working together.
Not just working together.
She felt something. She felt something.
She pulled up to the house and got out of the car, wincing as the gravel bit into her sock-covered feet. She squeaked, and then started humming as she hopped up the front steps.
“There you are.”
Her hum turned into a short scream, and she turned and saw her sister Fia sitting there in a rocking chair.
“You’re back late,” she said, accusing.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
“Why?”
“Work,” she said.
“You’re in pajamas.”
“I’m not in pajamas,” she said. “I’m in sweats. I got cold. I was working inside today, and...”
“You were working inside?”
“Yes. I told you, I’m going to be helping more with his paperwork. He needs somebody to organize.” That was all she was willing to share. Because Levi didn’t want to share about his dyslexia, and neither was she. And she certainly wasn’t going to make it sound like he was failing in some way when he wasn’t.
“I guess that means we can get moving opening the store.”
“Yeah. We can set a grand opening and everything. He and I need to work out some papers. And we’re going to have to get lawyers.”
She knew that he’d said he trusted her, but she wanted to take that a step further by making sure she demonstrated to him that she was protecting his legal interests.
He’d been through enough. And she wasn’t going to be part of putting them through any more.
And she just...
Standing there in the socks, and his clothes, in front of Fia, she felt vaguely ridiculous. And a little like she was falling apart.
She felt happy, in the strangest way. Felt like there was finally something good happening in her life. Something that she wanted.
But it wasn’t something she could share.
It was like she had met herself for the first time tonight.
A woman who could be passionate in a positive way. A woman who could feel everything, but it wasn’t just anger.
It was amazing, and she wanted to continue to examine it on her own time. She wanted to keep on thinking on it, without allowing anybody else’s opinions to change it.
Because one thing had become clear tonight when she’d been talking to Levi. The way that her dad had hurt her had shaped her.
For better and for worse.
There were no decisions to make. She was having her first fling. Which felt like a really bad word for it. Because it didn’t feel like a fling. A fling, as far as Quinn was concerned, sounded light. Fluffy, even, and this was not that.
She’d told him things she’d never told another person. She had a feeling it was the same for him.
She understood why he didn’t want forever. She didn’t want it, either, but that didn’t make this shallow.
It was too personal to share with anyone.
After what he’d told her, she didn’t want to fight him. But she did want to fight for him.
“Gideon Payne contacted us,” Fia said. “He wants to rent one of the houses for a few months.”
“Gideon... Rory’s friend’s brother?”
“Yes. He’s coming back to buy his old family homestead. They lost it when his dad died. I want you to look over the agreement I drafted for him.”
“The rentals are kind of Rory’s purview, aren’t they? Plus, she knows him. He used to drive her to school every day. I swear, she was closer to his family than she was to ours.”
Fia shrugged. “I really value your input on things, Quinn.”
Quinn looked at her sister. “What’s sparking this?”
“Well, sometimes I feel like I don’t acknowledge enough the work that you put in to get the education that you did. I understand that it took a lot for you to get there. And believe me, we all understand how little support you had. Mom and Dad certainly didn’t...”
“Fia, you don’t have to be Mom and Dad. It isn’t your responsibility. You’ve done so much.” And it was knowing Levi that really underlined that. Really drove the point home. And suddenly, she wondered... She wondered how much Fia held herself back because of them. Was her sister living a relatively celibate life because she felt like she had to set an example or be responsible? And now Quinn was out having hot sex and her sister wasn’t because...
Well, she knew that there was a possibility that Fia had been with Landry, but her sister never dated. And she didn’t spend nights away.
“You don’t have to give your whole life for us,” said Quinn. “We’re not kids. We don’t need for you to act like you’re some kind of a saint for our benefit. Anyway, Alaina already entered into a life of sin.”
Fia laughed. “Do you think that I...? You think that...”
“I know that you’re not dating anyone, and in my memory you haven’t.”
“Nothing that I do in that arena is self-sacrificial. Believe me.”
“If you’re sure. It’s just I’ve been spending a lot of time over at the Grangers’, and Levi’s sister Camilla was there.” She chose her next words carefully, because she didn’t want it to sound too intimate, but there were many things that she had found out about him prior to the kiss. Prior to them making love.
“And he raised his siblings, and I can see the places that he sacrificed everything. Absolutely everything for them.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Believe me, if I wanted to bang a guy, I would bring him back here, hang a tie on the door and do it in the living room. I’m not worried about your delicate sensibilities. What I do and don’t do is about me.”
They’d never talked about it. They’d never talked about a lot of things. They loved each other and they bonded over the ranch, but in so many ways it was like they’d gone off to lick their wounds in separate corners. Alaina had Elsie. Rory’d had the Payne family. Fia had been their sister and their caregiver.
Now that she’d spent time talking to Levi...she fully realized how lonely that must have been for Fia.
“Do you ever need to talk about it?” she asked.
And suddenly Fia looked desperately sad. And what Quinn could see right then was that the real cost of being the strong one, the parental figure, was that she couldn’t share. She felt like she had to be strong and stoic and she was alone in whatever her pain was.
“Maybe someday. It’s not something that I know how to talk about. Not with anybody. Anyway, you don’t need me to heap my problems on you. You, Rory and Alaina have been through enough.”
“We love you, though.” And she felt disingenuous because here she was, not sharing her own situation at all. Not telling Fia what she had been up to tonight. Though, she had a feeling Fia could hazard a guess if she really wanted to.
Maybe that was part of how they all got along so well, in truth. Fia just pretended not to see what she didn’t want to. And that kept them all out of each other’s hair.
“But you know what’s really not fair about us?” said Quinn. “It’s that our parents are still alive—they’re just not around. And that means that half the time we have to manage their emotions along with our own.”
Fia nodded. “That’s the truth. And it is indeed the most unfair part.”
“I’m heading upstairs to have a shower.” The word shower made her feel fuzzy and fizzy.
“Okay. If you need something, you will ask me, right, Quinn?”
And that was the first time Fia really showed that she might not fully believe Quinn’s story.
“Yes. I promise. I do know that you are there for me no matter what.”
“I appreciate that.”
She went upstairs and walked into her bedroom, looked around for her nightgown and then stopped. She realized that she wanted to sleep in his clothes. And she also realized she didn’t even actually want to shower. Because that would wash his touch off. So she sat down on the edge of her bed and looked at the faded yellow wallpaper. She wasn’t a virgin anymore. But the virginity thing never really mattered all that much to her. It hadn’t been about not doing something. It had been about not especially wanting to yet. And so she had, and she did. She closed her eyes and thought about him.
How intense he had been. How beautiful.
How for all that she had only known this man for a few days, she now knew something about him that was intimate. Deeply so.
He had been with other women—she knew that. But maybe he hadn’t also told them about his dyslexia. She was sure that he hadn’t.
She knew about his dyslexia. About his parents. About how her dad had taken advantage of him and made him feel stupid. About his first experience with sex. She had worn his socks. She’d been naked in his house.
She had all these pieces of Levi Granger that she didn’t think anyone else in the world ever had.
And if asked, she would say she didn’t know the man all that well. Especially when compared with all the people she’d known every day of her life on Four Corners.
Except she did know him.
She’d seen him naked, and she’d seen him undone. She was wearing his clothes.
She lay back on her bed, her arm slung over her head.
She would see him again tomorrow.
And she didn’t know what was going to happen when she did.
She imagined that some of that was up to her.
She had never been passive. It wasn’t the time to go getting passive now, she supposed.
He turned her inside out.
And right now she was still trying to decide if she wanted to flip herself the other way or not.
Or if she wanted to stay like this. New and different.
The heavy truth was, she might not have a choice.
She had taken a plunge into the unknown.
And for all that Quinn liked to be in control, she had the feeling that she had surrendered that. Utterly and completely.
And as long as she was with him, she wasn’t going to be getting it back.