Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
FLORENCE
We don’t talk on the journey back from Pickering. It’s not an uncomfortable silence so much as there’s a longing there, an inconvenient dose of possibility that’s far darker than either of us assumed.
I think we were both hoping the meeting with Albert would offer some insight into how to help Quinn, or maybe just some reassurance that his future isn’t as cursed as we feared.
Even with my caution and the warning in Cam’s expression, I certainly didn’t expect the outcome to be so bleak.
And I’m not the optimist in this relationship, so I dread to think how Quinn is feeling.
I could have taught him not to fear immortality.
I’ve certainly adjusted well enough, and it’d be even easier with someone there by your side.
But the uncertainty? The years spent wondering when it could happen, if your body will give up before you make that final transition to the undead?
I can’t help him with that. I’m not sure I could cope with it myself.
I trail a finger gently over the warm skin on the back of his forearm and he turns to smile at me, but there’s something missing from the expression. There are no creases at the corners of his eyes, no depth to his dimple. We pass a field of cows and he doesn’t point them out.
I feel like I can’t quite catch my breath even though I haven’t depended on oxygen since the nineteenth century.
I haven’t had my fill of his humanness yet – I’m not sure I ever will – but I would trade it in a heartbeat if it meant keeping the essence of him, the undefinable qualities that make him Quinn. My Quinn.
He blows out a long breath and slips his arm around me.
I fold into him in an instant, resting my head against his chest as we watch the world go by.
It seems a little dimmer than it was on our journey out.
He smells so familiar, that warm combination of spearmint and salt and spices, that it should be easy to ignore the tang of something bitter and acrid that lies just beneath.
It’s the scent of fear.
I’ve smelled it on him before – every time I’ve taken blood from him, in fact – but this is a deeper fear, so consuming that it’s difficult to concentrate on anything but the burn of it in my lungs.
I pull him closer as the train speeds on. I’m out of my element here. Normally I’m well versed in reassuring people, in healing them – I’ve done it for over a hundred years, after all. But nothing I’ve done in all that time has prepared me for this.
Quinn’s terrified. I don’t need to be able to smell it on him to know that.
And I haven’t the faintest idea how to make it better.
* * *
It’s late afternoon when we get back to Whitby, and Quinn keeps striding straight on past Flowergate. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t even look in the direction of Bitten, just keeps heading on through the back streets and up the hill towards my flat.
‘Come up with me,’ I whisper, just in case his particular stage of transition requires an invitation. He nods, very slightly, as if that was his intention all along.
I close the door to my flat and we fall wordlessly into each other, his mouth soft against mine while insistent hands move from my hips to my waist to my face, never settling, always seeking more.
He’s mapping me, memorising me, filling his lungs with the scent of me, like this is the last chance he’ll ever get.
When he begins to undress me it’s deliberate and reverent, with no sign of the urgency from the other night. His eyes stay mostly on mine, occasionally roaming over a part of me he’s uncovered.
‘Let’s pretend we have all the time in the world,’ he says quietly, before he pulls my dress over my head and kisses my bare shoulder.
I turn, catching his lips with mine. ‘What if we do?’ I mutter against them.
He doesn’t answer.
His hands go to his own shirt buttons and he pops them in turn, shrugging out of it as my fingers find the warm skin of his stomach and feel the muscles ripple and flex under the surface.
I trace the path of his aorta, straight down the middle of his torso, its deep thump radiating through his entire body.
It’s steady, like a metronome, like a reminder that whatever happens, he’s here now. He’s alive now.
He carefully strips me of the rest of my clothes and kicks off his own jeans and boxers, pulling me with him onto my bed.
His breath catches as we come back together, the lightest of trembles to it.
He kisses my jaw, my neck, the small hollow between my collarbones.
He whispers my name so quietly that I almost don’t hear it.
I reach between us and ease him into me, my mouth not leaving his even for a second, even through his momentary pause.
And then I’m moving, or maybe we both are, slow, indulgent rolls of my hips that push him deeper and bring us closer.
He murmurs something I don’t catch, a bitten-off sound he breathes into the crook of my neck.
His arms gather me up, holding me together, pulling me in. I feel like I’m flying and like I’m grounded all at the same time, at once weighed down and weightless. Like I’m falling, and he’s catching me. Perhaps that’s exactly what’s happening.
I didn’t know that sex could be like the sex we had the other day, but I didn’t know it could be like this either, all quiet words and loaded silences.
It’s a conversation we’re having – the most meaningful of any of them – and though neither of us is speaking a word, I know exactly what he’s telling me.
It’s there in the pattern of his heartbeat, in the whisper of ragged breaths on my skin, in the unwavering strength of his arms caging me.
I’m too afraid to even think it, to consider what that would mean for me if anything happened to him, but I know it. And though I’m too scared to name it, I still try like hell to say it back.
As his rhythm starts to falter, he stops kissing me, pulling back just a little way but keeping his eyes on mine.
The intensity is almost too much. I feel like he can see all the way into my soul.
Like he’s reaching in and making his mark, his name scrawled onto the walls of my heart for all eternity.
And then I’m breaking, splintering into pieces in his arms while he loses control entirely, driving into me in short snaps before reaching a shuddering climax with the ghost of my name on his lips.
We don’t move for a long time. He buries his face in my shoulder, his fingers tracing featherlight circles on my skin as I soak up every last ounce of his warmth, of his body alive against mine.
When he finally pulls away, he looks for me, as if I haven’t been pressed up against him this entire time.
‘I’m in love with you,’ he whispers roughly as his eyes search mine. ‘I thought you should know that.’
A lick of flame heats my sternum, its warmth rippling outwards until my whole body feels like it’s glowing. How improbable that five simple words could have such an effect on my physiology.
‘Oh yeah?’ I try to catch my smile, but it can’t be contained. At the sight of it, Quinn smiles too, the first genuine smile I’ve seen on him since we met Albert.
He nods, slow and sure, and I trace along his cheekbone, fitting my fingertip into the hollow of his dimple.
‘I’m in love with you, too,’ I say, just loudly enough for him to hear it.
He blows a breath out, something between a smile and a laugh. ‘So much for not dating humans, eh?’
I shrug. ‘You’re only mostly human.’
He does the same little breath-laugh again, his eyelids half closing as he does. ‘I guess I am,’ he says, and then he pulls me back against him and his eyes flutter the rest of the way closed.
I don’t know how long I watch him sleep. It must be an hour, maybe more. I savour every slow breath, every subtle twitch of his muscles. It’s just as I’m watching the flicker of his eyelids that I feel the bite of cool air past my ear, and Josiah says…
My heart falls to my feet. Josiah says nothing.
I haven’t heard him since the other night – the night he asked if I wanted him to leave and I said yes. There’s been so much going on that I’m not sure I even noticed, and realising that makes my fallen heart shatter into thousands of pieces.
‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper out into the darkness, and still he doesn’t say anything.
I turn under the sheets and cry silent tears into the warmth of Quinn’s sleeping body, holding on as tightly as I can, like I’m grieving them both at once. These two men – the past and the present – who between them have taken every ounce of my heart.
Losing Josiah almost broke me. I don’t even want to think about what would happen if I lost Quinn too. But as I slip into a thick, dreamless sleep, I can’t get the idea out of my head.
* * *
When we wake up it’s light, that early morning brightness that casts the world in a strange hue, like you’re still trapped on the edges of sleep.
‘Hi,’ Quinn says as he rolls towards me, a small, sleepy smile brightening his face.
He reaches for me and pulls me against him, his body soft and warm, pillow creases etched pink on his cheek.
Something tugs at my chest, a line that draws me towards him.
When I breathe him in, I find something new mingling in his scent.
I’ve smelled love before, occasionally, on some of my friends, but never like this.
It’s stronger, bolder – sharper, perhaps – definitely more addictive.
I bury my face in the crook of his neck and inhale shamelessly, until he laughs and rolls me onto my back, pinning my wrists above my head and pressing the weight of his body between my spread legs.
When he kisses me, it’s almost desperate, his mouth devouring, his free hand searching, and he pushes into me with a strangled noise that sets my skin on fire. I manage to pull one hand free and use it to grab a handful of his hair, pulling him into me, kissing him back like the world is ending.
When we pull back from each other afterwards, we’re both smiling. Real, honest smiles too, not the fragile things from last night. He’s feeling better, he must be.
‘Do you want to talk about it?’ I ask. ‘Yesterday, I mean.’
But he just shakes his head, his mess of waves falling into his eyes. ‘Not yet.’ He plants a kiss on my chin, another on my temple. ‘I think I need to work it all through in my head first.’
‘Ok.’
I turn my head as he aims a kiss for my cheek and catch it on my lips instead. He hums in surprise before grinning and going for another. ‘I’m here,’ I say, ‘when you’re ready.’
I almost tell him I’m not scared of what could happen, but I know that’s a lie. I can’t promise to be his rock; I’m not nearly steady enough myself. So I say nothing, and do the only thing that feels honest in this moment: I hope for the best and drag him back towards me for another kiss.
‘It’s ok,’ he says, against my mouth. ‘I’m young. There’s time to figure it out.’
And though it’s obvious he’s only feigning confidence, he’s right. There is time.
Until there isn’t.