Chapter 18 Quinn
EIGHTEEN
Quinn
Corporate Sponsorship vs Traditional Krewes: While many historic krewes remain privately funded through member dues, newer “super krewes” often rely on corporate sponsorships to finance large-scale parades and celebrity appearances.
This shift reflects an ongoing tension between preserving tradition and expanding Carnival’s commercial reach.
I stay where I am.
That's the thing I notice first. My body hasn't tensed. My mind hasn't started running through exit strategies or morning-after logistics. I'm just here, my cheek against his chest, my palm resting over his heartbeat.
The ceiling fan clicks in its slow rotation. A car passes somewhere outside of my window. Keller's breathing has steadied, but his hand moves in absent strokes along my spine.
"You're quiet," he says, breaking the silence. "You okay?"
His voice rumbles through his chest and into my cheek. I smile against his skin.
"I'm amazing, actually."
"You are that, indeed."
Heat rises to my cheeks. Luckily he can't see them. There's something about him that makes me loosen my grip on myself, making it easier to set the rules down for a while.
He huffs a small laugh. His fingers pause at the small of my back, then resume their lazy pattern.
I lift my head enough to look at him. His glasses are on the nightstand. Without them, his face looks younger. Less guarded. The sharp edges of the man who runs high-stakes poker tables soften into something more private.
He doesn't push for more. That's part of what got me here.
In the weeks since I pulled back, Keller hasn't asked about my work or fished for information about what I do or who I'm looking at. He's been present without being invasive. Interested without being strategic.
I've spent enough time around people who turn every conversation into leverage. Keller never does that with me.
As far as I'm concerned, he is officially separate from my investigation of Stone Intermodal and possible links to his father's death. Tonight proves it. Allowing things to bring us here, in my bed, is the culmination of that.
My finger traces a slow line across his collarbone and then around his shoulder. He watches me do it, his expression unreadable but not closed off.
He has a short sleeve of tattoos on his right shoulder, ending halfway to the crook of his elbow. I usually sort people into tattoo people and non-tattoo people. A half sleeve is a commitment. One arm seems like restraint.
Keller falls somewhere in the middle, as usual. The more I get to know him, the more I realize he doesn't fit into any kind of box.
I think that's what draws me to him so much.
"What do these mean to you?" I ask him about the tattoos, tracing their lines, appreciating the symmetry.
He looks down like he hasn’t thought about them in a while.
"My brothers and I all got tattoos the first time our brother, Reeves, went away for SEAL training."
"I love that. Are you and your brothers really close?"
"We are but we aren't. Our family is tight, but we are all so different and we've all managed this crazy life we were born into differently."
"Crazy life, huh?"
He doesn't say anything at first. I don't expect him to, but I do want to know more about what makes Keller who he is. Undoubtedly, that comment carries a lot of weight that the investigator in me wants to desperately dig into.
He goes quiet, like he’s deciding how much to give me.
I know I'm falling for him, but now, here with him like this, I don’t fight the thought. I don't shove it down or qualify it with conditions. I just let it exist.
His hand comes up to brush hair from my face, tucking it behind my ear. The gesture is small. Domestic. It shouldn't hit as hard as it does.
"You look different," I say. He’s still thinking. I can see it in his eyes. So I give him somewhere softer to land.
"Different how?"
"Without your glasses. Without the suit." I study the angles of his jaw, the slight stubble coming in. "Less like you're running a room."
Something flickers across his face. It’s not offense, I don’t think. Recognition, maybe.
He turns his head on the pillow to face me more fully. In the low light from the window, his eyes look almost black. I reach up and trace my finger along his jaw.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “Our life took a pretty drastic turn when our mother died. I think it hit each of us differently. My mom balanced out the hardness of him, our father."
He didn’t brush it off. He just needed a minute. Butterflies dance in my stomach at the thought of him opening up to me.
I remember how he reacted at the tarot table when his mom came up. The way he left, blaming it on cramps, as if it had nothing to do with a subject he didn't want to discuss with a stranger. I knew better.
Whenever she comes up, something shifts in him. I desperately want to know more.
"What was she like?" The question leaves my mouth before I fully decide to ask it. "Your mom."
His hand stills on my back. He doesn’t pull away when I ask, but I'm guessing my question is jarring. I immediately wish I could suck it back into my body to avoid risking shattering this moment.
“She died when I was eleven,” he says quietly.
I nod against him. I know that part. He told me once before, clipped and matter-of-fact, like he was reciting something from a file. This feels different. Softer.
"I remember you said that. You were so young."
“I used to worry I would forget her, so I would recite things in my mind about her. The thing that is most recognizable in my memory is her laugh,” he continues. His gaze drifts past me, somewhere toward the ceiling.
“It was loud. Not polite. She didn’t care if it carried across a room.”
A small smile tugs at his mouth, and it’s so unexpected that my chest tightens. I drag a finger down the indent between his abs, letting him know this is a safe space.
“She did everything that way,” he says. “Big. Unapologetic. If she loved something, she loved it out loud. She always said it was her Italian heritage.”
My fingers continue moving, now tracing perpendicularly as I go from one side of his hip bone to the other. Goosebumps rise on his skin.
“She wore jasmine,” he adds. “The whole house smelled like it when she’d just come in from outside. My father hated it. Said it gave him a headache.”
“And she kept wearing it,” I guess.
His mouth curves slightly. “Of course she did. She wasn't going to be held back by anyone, including the domineering Robert Stone.”
The ceiling fan clicks above us, steady and rhythmic. Outside, a car rolls past, tires hissing over pavement.
“She used to tap her nails on the kitchen table when my dad went on too long about something,” he says. “This little impatient rhythm that drove him insane. But it worked. He would realize it and stop going on and on.”
I can see it. A woman who refuses to shrink. A woman who balances out sharp edges with noise and scent and movement.
“She sounds like a wonderful person, Keller,” I say quietly.
His jaw tightens for half a second before easing. “She was. But she was human, too, you know?”
No elaboration on what he means by that, but a lump rises in my throat. I can sense the pain surrounding her loss like it's physical. I wish I could somehow comfort him.
I lost my mom at fifteen, so I do empathize with him in a way that most people who have never lost a parent couldn't. Especially losing one at a young age.
Mothers and daughters have a special bond. There’s no doubt. But I also know there is something so fundamentally necessary for a boy and his mother that losing her before puberty must be devastating for him.
I shift closer, settling my cheek over his heart. It beats steadily beneath my palm, strong and even, nothing like the chaos I expected when I let this happen again.
“She was the buffer,” he says after a stretch of quiet. “Between my father and the rest of us. He is always so… hard. Focused. Efficient.” His mouth tightens slightly on that last word. “She made the house a home instead of an extension of the office.”
He keeps his father in the present tense. The hardness never left.
I trace a slow line across his ribs. The story is simple, almost understated, but it explains more about him than anything else he has told me. The careful distance. The discipline. The way he studies people before he lets them close.
He grows quiet again, but this time he pulls me in tighter, his arm firm around my back. The gesture says enough. He has given me what he can.
I do not ask for more.
His eyes hold mine for a moment longer, searching for something I cannot name. I hold his gaze without filling the silence. After a while, his breathing evens out. It deepens gradually, the weight of him settling into the mattress. I wait, listening, until a faint rasp catches in his throat. Sleep.
I slide out from under his arm carefully and stand beside the bed for a second, watching him. He's a beautiful man, lying in my bed, wrapped in my sheets, looking almost vulnerable. The lines around his mouth soften.
I tiptoe to the bathroom and quietly close the door behind me, keeping the light off until it is sealed shut.
The bathroom light hums when I switch it on. I catch my reflection in the mirror. My hair is tangled, my cheeks still flushed. There is a brightness in my eyes that I do not recognize right away.
I reach in to turn on the hot water and then turn back to the sink while it warms up. I rest my hands on the counter and study myself.
I crossed it tonight. Not the line of professionalism. That line has been separate from him for a while now. This was different. This was the line I drew to keep my balance, to keep control. I stepped over it because I wanted to.
Steam starts to cloud the mirror, so I know the water temperature is where I want it.
I step under the spray and let it run over my shoulders.
Heat sinks into my muscles, easing what remains of tension.
My skin is sensitive everywhere he touched me.
The memory lingers in the small aches and the warmth between my thighs.
I close my eyes and tilt my head back, letting the water run down my face.
I don't catalogue risk. I don’t rehearse consequences.
He is not my target. He is not the company. He is a man who just told me about his mother without turning it into a performance.
That matters.
Soap slides over my skin. When my hand passes between my legs, a slow pulse answers. I inhale sharply and steady myself against the tile. The reaction is not only physical. It is recognition. I wanted him. I still do.
The slight tenderness is a welcome sensation. I think about him inside of me, the way he took control and grabbed me, driving me down deeper. My mouth waters, and a pulse runs through me. I let myself bask in it for a moment before moving on.
I rinse, step out, and dry off slowly. The mirror is completely fogged over now, softening the sharp lines of the room. I rub the towel over it so I can see myself as I brush my hair.
I grab my sleep shorts from the back of the door and pull them on, leaving my tank top there. The air outside the bathroom is cooler.
He hasn't moved.
The sheets are still rumpled where I left them. I slide back into bed and fit myself against his side, curling into the curve of his body. His arm comes around me automatically, even in sleep.
I lay my head on his tattooed shoulder and close my eyes.
There is no calculation running beneath this. No strategy. No second-guessing.
I choose this.
And for the first time in weeks, my mind is quiet.