Chapter 20
Graham
She hadn’t wanted to sleep in my room again, which was fair, but I would’ve given it to her in a heartbeat.
I led her down toward the guest bedroom. Quinn was surprisingly steady on her feet, and other than the slight flush of her cheeks and bleary quality of her eyes, I wouldn’t have any idea she’d been drinking.
“Your house is always so…clean,” she mused, as she followed me into the tidy bedroom.
I shrugged, looking down at the bed with crisp, neatly made-up bedding. I’d always liked order. It comforted me, made me feel like I was in control of something.
“There were six of us growing up, so the house was always a bit chaotic and messy. Mom did the best she could in those days, but I always preferred things a bit more…orderly.”
She didn’t say anything right away, but she walked farther into the room. She slipped off her jacket and threw it over the end of the bed with a sigh.
“Six kids…” she muttered. “Raleigh is a saint, I think. That’s crazy.”
She plopped down onto the edge of the bed, and I let out a low chuckle. “I have no arguments there.”
Quinn fell back onto the mattress, her arms spread out on either side of her as she stared up at the ceiling.
Perhaps she was drunker than she first appeared.
I frowned as I looked her up and down, pausing at the large tear near the hem of her jersey. That hadn’t been there before.
“What happened?” I asked sharply, stepping closer, but still giving her space. “To your jersey?”
She reached for the ripped fabric without looking at it, her fingertips trailing along the frayed material. Her expression pinched.
“Nothing.”
I didn’t believe that. She’d gotten fired; something had obviously happened.
I approached her cautiously until I stood at the end of the bed. I leaned over, pressing my palms onto the soft mattress until she was looking up into my face and not staring blankly at the ceiling.
“Quinn,” I said, low and calm. “What. Happened.”
She suddenly looked so young. For a moment, she seemed lost and scared. But then she blinked, and her pale blues frosted over into a glare that lanced right through me.
“Why do you even care?” she asked, but the sharpness didn’t reach her tone. She just sounded tired.
“Why wouldn’t I?” I tilted my head, giving her a small smile, but she didn’t thaw.
“You don’t know anything about me, Graham.” The words were almost a whisper. “Not really. So stop pretending like you care what happens to me.”
My jaw clenched, a spark of irritation igniting in me. The fact that she was so unconvinced that someone could care about her was…frustrating. Heartbreaking.
I wasn’t sure whether she sensed the sudden ire radiating off me, or whether she read it in my face, but some of that ice cracked and she looked away.
“Why don’t you tell me then,” I said, steadying my voice. “Share with me who you are. Tell me all the things you’ve never felt like you could say out loud. You can trust me.”
She jerked back, like I’d asked her to do something totally inappropriate. Her mouth opened. The red in her cheeks deepened to crimson.
She searched my face like she was trying to decide whether I was serious.
I waited.
After a while, her jaw snapped shut, lips pressed into a tight line. “If you’re asking for secrets, Graham, you’re going to have to give up some of your own.”
My fingers dug into the comforter as I fisted my hands. There was a challenge in her stare, one as transparent as black ice. Her confessions came with a price, and from what I could tell, no one had been willing to pay it before.
I wanted to look away, but I didn’t. My gaze latched on to her. Maybe she was used to people letting her go, but I wasn’t one of them.
My heart rate spiked as I stared at her, laid out on the bed beneath me. Her hair was fanned out around her head, making her look like a damn lost angel. Slowly, inch by inch, I leaned down toward her.
Her chest started to heave with her rapid breaths. I stopped when only a few inches stretched between our faces. She smelled faintly of the bar, but mostly of herself…wild jasmine and something warmer—vanilla, maybe. I inhaled deeply before I whispered, “What do you want to know?”
She blinked rapidly, like she was trying to hide that she was flustered.
“What was the worst day of your life?”
Cutting right to the heart, then. I shouldn’t have been surprised, but my stomach sank and roiled against the idea. Quinn wouldn’t have asked for anything less than the moment that broke me, I supposed.
My gaze dipped to her mouth briefly before I pulled away, straightening.
Her chest hitched, like she’d been holding her breath. She sat up, turning to look at me. I could tell she didn’t expect an answer.
“I have two,” I said softly, folding my arms over my chest.
There was a pause as I gathered my courage. It had been a long, long time since I’d spoken of the things I was about to unleash on her.
“Two?”
I nodded. “One was the day I found out that my little sister was murdered.”
She flinched, sadness taking over her features.
“But you already knew about that. So it’s not much of a secret.”
She nodded, her eyes darting from mine for a moment.
“The second,” I continued, my ribs feeling like they were collapsing around my lungs, “was the day I lost my fiancée.”
She froze. Unmoving to the point I wasn’t sure she was breathing.
My pulse thundered in my ears as my mind went back to that day, the moment I heard the news…the vision of walking into that morgue to identify her body. A lump formed in my throat too large to swallow.
“What happened to her?” Quinn whispered.
A headache throbbed in my temples. I turned away from her, suddenly not able to look her in the face as I told this story. I lowered onto the end of the bed, sitting with my back to her.
I blinked at my reflection in the mirror on the wall across from me. I was too pale. Quinn’s body was blocked by mine, but she was still sitting up, waiting.
“I got my doctorate from a criminal justice school in New York,” I said, voice flat. “I lived in the city for a while. I liked it at first. It was so different from Ember Hollow.”
I’d liked how there was always so much to do there. So much to see and experience.
“I—I eventually met someone. She was a nurse at the hospital where I was completing my internship.” I cleared my throat as that lump surfaced again, choking off my next words. “Her name was Blair.”
I closed my eyes. It had been four years now, but some days it was never easier. I hadn’t said her name for so long. Like scratching off a healing scab, it felt good for a moment, but it made you bleed.
“We got our own place and even though I had always planned to come back home after I completed my schooling, I was starting a different life there. After about a year working as a licensed professional, I started teaching a couple of college classes on the side—” Fisting my hands, I let out a slow breath through my nose.
“School was something I always enjoyed, and I loved teaching.
I had this student in my criminal profiling class who took a special interest in the subject.
“He was always staying after class to ask me questions and doing extra work on all aspects of the criminal mind. I thought—” I let out a shaky, humorless laugh. “I thought he was dedicated to the work. Curious and driven. I always made time for him when I could, thinking he was a good kid.”
Dread pooled in the pit of my stomach, the cold spreading through my veins as I remembered him. His face. His voice. The way he would smile and greet me in the mornings. Nausea shuddered through me.
Quinn shifted behind me, but she didn’t say anything.
I looked away from the mirror and down at my lap. “Blair came to have lunch with me a couple of times at the college. I didn’t think anything of it—didn’t put everything together until it was too late.” I gritted my teeth, spitting out the next words. “I didn’t see it.”
The bed moved again, and I felt the heat of Quinn’s body at my back. “What didn’t you see?” she asked quietly.
My eyes bounced back up to the mirror and met hers. She was looking into it from over my shoulder, her face mostly composed besides the slight crease on her forehead.
“I had spent years at this point working with violent offenders, making psychological and competency assessments. I thought that I was well acquainted with the criminal mind. What I hadn’t prepared myself for was coming face-to-face with it in everyday life.”
My hands shook, and I pressed them against my thighs to still them. “I was prepared in the prison or the hospital. Not in my classroom.”
Quinn’s lips drained of color as she gaped in shock. She was smart, putting the pieces together.
“My attentive student wasn’t interested in my class at all. At least, not in the way I had assumed. He was only interested because he was looking for some insight about himself. Maybe picking up a few pointers here and there as we studied other offenders and their crimes.
“I didn’t realize that he started approaching me more often after the first time Blair came to have lunch with me.
We had gotten so familiar with each other that I didn’t find it off when he’d ask small things about my personal life—what I’d done over the weekend or recommendations for good restaurants to take a date.
It was little things that seemed normal, but he was fishing for information.
He eventually found out where I lived, and he stalked Blair for weeks.
He knew her patterns, her schedule. He knew when she would be alone and vulnerable. ”
A sharp intake of breath came from behind me. I watched Quinn’s composure crumple into utter horror through her reflection.
“He killed her?”
I held her gaze like she was the only thing grounding me. “He murdered her on her morning jog. But she fought him. His DNA was all over her.”
There was a long, agonized pause.
“I’m so sorry, Graham,” she finally said, putting a hand on my shoulder.
I stiffened at her touch—not because I didn’t want it, but because I felt too on edge. My skin was prickly and oversensitive and everything was suddenly too much.
My chest expanded as I attempted a deep, calming breath that did nothing to slow my frantic heart.
My gaze was still locked on hers in the mirror.
“So,” I went on, my voice shaking, “when I tell you that I care about you, you should believe it. Because I didn’t want to.
The last thing that I wanted was to care this much about another person…
because I know too well how much it hurts when they are ripped away from you. ”
Some color returned to her cheeks as she swallowed, her throat dipping. Her mouth opened like she was going to say something else, but I didn’t want to talk anymore. And I was suddenly exhausted.
I jumped to my feet, pulling away from her warm hand. Part of me was afraid that if I didn’t physically distance myself now, I wouldn’t be able to keep away. I turned toward the door.
“I’m sorry if I didn’t want to see you get hurt if I could prevent it.” I walked toward the door, needing to be alone. I paused at the threshold. “Good night, Quinn.”
She didn’t stop me as I left the room and closed the door behind me.