31. Rafe
RAFE
IT MAY BE HAUNTED.
Quinn kept touching the locket as if she needed the confirmation that it was still there.
Her fingers would drift to the base of her throat while she listened to the music, or while she laughed at something I said that was, by any reasonable standard, not funny enough to deserve the warmth she gave it.
“You’re staring,” she said, cutting into the last bite of her dessert with theatrical precision.
“Yes.”
Her mouth twitched.
“You look happy.”
That made her pause.
It hadn’t been a clever answer. Perhaps that was why it landed. Quinn had a gift for taking a compliment if it came disguised as observation, as though praise became less threatening when delivered without ornament.
“I am,” she said, softer. “It’s been a really good night.”
“I’m glad.”
“Very normal. Very suspicious.”
“I’m capable of normal.”
She gave me a look.
“I’m attempting normal,” I amended.
“Better.”
Candlelight moved over Quinn’s face, catching the new locket and the small green stone at its clasp. The sight produced a feeling I did not know how to categorize without becoming sentimental in public.
My family’s necklace had brought Quinn into my life because I needed something back.
This necklace was different.
It didn’t ask anything of her. It didn’t pull her into my history or make her part of a debt she had never owed.
It honored what had already been hers before I knew her: her courage, her strange and brilliant eye for beauty and value, and the dog she loved with a devotion I understood more every day.
“Do you want to dance again before we leave?” I asked.
Her eyes brightened with delight. “I thought you’d never ask.”
The color in her cheeks deepened.
I stood and offered my hand. She took it with a smile that made the rest of the restaurant less important.
We danced through one song, then half of another because Quinn declared the second “too good to abandon.” She rested one hand against my shoulder, the other held in mine, her body close enough that every breath felt slightly less innocent than it should have.
I had kissed her in ruins. Held her in my bed.
Told her I loved her before I had fully understood how saying it would make my life feel both less stable and more like mine.
This, somehow, unsettled me more.
A woman I loved in my arms while music played and no danger pressed at the door.
It was all so ordinary.
I had spent so long believing ordinary was for people who had fewer obligations. Fewer histories. Fewer ways to be divided by blood and duty and other people’s expectations. But Quinn moved with me, and ordinary began to feel less like a smaller life than a fuller one.
When the song ended, she stayed in my arms.
“Rafe?”
“Yes?”
“I’m going to say something honest and possibly damaging to my image.”
“I’ll prepare myself.”
“This is a very good first date.”
I looked down at her. “Possibly damaging?”
“I have a reputation for mystery.”
“You do?”
“In my mind, yes.”
“That must be difficult to maintain.”
“Very.”
I bent and kissed her because there were only so many things a man could survive without response.
She smiled against my mouth.
The drive to Avery’s was less dignified than dinner.
That was mostly Quinn’s fault.
I had chosen to drive myself, which she liked more than I had expected. She said it made me look “alarmingly boyfriend-coded.” I’d disliked the phrase on principle until she leaned across the center console at a red light and kissed the corner of my jaw.
Then I reconsidered.
“You’re enjoying this,” I said, turning onto Ninth.
“You driving?”
“Yes.”
“I am. It’s very handsome and slightly threatening to the concept of chauffeurs.”
“My driver has other responsibilities.”
“Sure. But does he know you’re out here parallel parking like a man of the people?”
“I’m not parallel parking.”
“Coward,” she said with a grin.
The locket rested against her breastbone, rising and falling with her breath. Her dress had slipped slightly off one shoulder beneath her coat. The image made concentration a more complex task than traffic ordinarily required.
“Your thoughts are loud,” she said.
“My thoughts are private.”
“Not from your face.”
“My face has been unfairly maligned by you and Avery.”
“Because it tells on you.”
I turned down Avery’s block in and found parking.
We headed up the stairs to the door. Avery opened before we reached it.
She wore black joggers, a faded sweatshirt, and an expression that assessed Quinn’s hair, her locket, my face, and our proximity in less than two seconds.
“Gross,” she said.
Quinn hugged her. “Hi to you too.”
“You both look happy. It’s invasive.”
Max pushed between them and came straight to Quinn, tail wagging in slow, heavy sweeps. She dropped to her knees in her dress without hesitation and wrapped both arms around his neck.
“Hi, baby. Did you have a good night?”
Max pressed his head against her shoulder.
Avery looked at me. “He spent most of it judging my puppies and sleeping in front of the office heater.”
“Productive,” I said.
“He thinks so.”
Quinn lifted Max’s chin and showed him the locket. “Look. It’s you.”
Max sniffed it, then licked.
“No,” she said. “Respect the art.”
Avery leaned closer. Her expression changed when she saw the miniature. “You did good,” she said to me.
It mattered more than effusion would have.
“Thank you for helping with it,” I said.
“Octavia did most of the yelling.”
“I remember.”
“She said you listened well for a rich man.”
“High praise.”
“From her? Extremely.”
Quinn stood, one hand still on Max’s collar. “We should let you get to bed.”
“I was in bed,” Avery said. “Then a Malinois opened a cabinet.”
Quinn winced. “Steve?”
“Jocko. Steve supervised.”
Avery kissed Quinn’s cheek, scratched Max behind the ears, and gave me a look that contained at least six warnings and three approvals.
“Drive safe,” she said.
“I will.”
Back in the car, Max settled across the back seat. Quinn buckled in, then leaned back and sighed.
“Tired?” I asked.
“No.”
It was clearly a lie.
“You can sleep.”
“I’m on a date. Sleeping is rude.”
“The date has gone well enough to survive it.”
She turned her head toward me, smiling. “You’re confident, aren’t you?”
“Hopeful,” I said.
Her smile softened.
Her hand found mine at each red light. Once, when traffic slowed, she traced her thumb over my knuckles in a lazy motion that made me think of my room, her skin, the way she had said my name when she forgot to be careful.
I wanted her again.
I suspected she knew. Quinn had become increasingly skilled at reading the places where my restraint thinned. She seemed to enjoy finding them.
At the next stoplight, she lifted our joined hands and kissed my knuckles.
I looked at her.
She smiled, slow and sleepy and pleased with herself.
There were several things I considered saying. None of them were enough.
By the time we reached her building, however, Quinn’s head had tipped against the window. Her eyes were closed. The city lights passed over her face in soft bands. One hand rested over the locket at her throat.
“Asleep?” I asked quietly.
“No,” she murmured.
Max huffed from the back seat.
I smiled.
Her building door latched properly when I opened it.
I would never admit the degree of satisfaction that gave me.
Max stepped out carefully, leaning against my leg for a moment before following us upstairs. I carried Quinn because she muttered something about walking and then immediately failed to open both eyes. She was warm and pliant in my arms, one hand curling instinctively into my jacket.
“This is excessive,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
Inside her apartment, Max walked straight to his dragon bed, circled once, and collapsed with a groan that suggested the burdens of luxury had finally caught up with him.
I carried Quinn to her bed.
She woke enough to help with her shoes, then fell back against the pillow while I pulled the blanket over her. The locket still rested at her throat. I touched it once, very lightly, then tucked the chain so it wouldn’t catch while she slept.
“Stay?” she asked.
There was no seduction in it now. Only trust.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
I kissed her forehead.
She made a small sound and turned into the pillow.
Max opened one eye, so I crossed the room and bent to kiss the top of his head too.
He accepted it, as always, as tribute.
When I straightened, Quinn was asleep.
The apartment settled around us. Pipes in the wall. A siren somewhere far below. Max snoring softly. The faint city light at the edges of the curtains. This room had once seemed too small for her. Too unsafe. Too far from everything I knew how to manage.
Now it held more of my life than any estate wing ever had.
I took off my jacket, loosened my cuffs, and sat in the blue chair with the book I had left here two nights ago. The chair creaked under me in a way I still distrusted. I had asked before repairing it. Quinn had told me I could tighten the screws but not “replace its soul.”
So the soul remained. Loudly.
I opened the book, but for a while I simply watched Quinn sleep.
My life was nothing like I had imagined it would be. It was less orderly. Less insulated. Less mine alone.
There were dog beds in rooms that had never had them.
A scarf on my entry table. Soup containers in Quinn’s refrigerator that my staff now labeled for her because she had once complimented the broth.
My mother asked after the sunshine girl.
My father smiled more when I said her name.
Avery Teddington had my phone number and used it without qualm.
Quinn slept in the bed across from me, trusting me to stay. I loved all of it.
Not despite the disruption.
Because of the shape it had given my days.
Because love, I was learning, didn’t make life smaller or less serious. It gave seriousness somewhere to go. It gave responsibility a face, a name, a dog snoring on an expensive bed in a tiny apartment.
It gave me this.
A quiet room.
A sleeping woman.
A book in my hand.
And no desire whatsoever to be anywhere else.