Chapter 10 - Wraith
I'm an idiot.
I lie in my bed gripping the sheets so hard my knuckles have gone white, staring at the ceiling, replaying the whole day in my head on a loop and hating myself more with each repetition.
I kissed her. Actually kissed her in my kitchen with cookie crumbs still on the counter and my daughter upstairs, kissed her like I'd been thinking about it for years instead of hours, and it was incredible.
Perfect. The kind of kiss that rewrites your understanding of what kissing can be when you're actually present for it, when you actually care about the person you're kissing.
And then what did I do?
Tucked her hair behind her ear and smiled at her like some kind of awkward teenager before walking away to my own room like we'd just finished a business meeting instead of something that changed everything between us.
I didn't kiss her goodnight. Didn't pull her close one more time. Didn't do any of the things a man who knows what he wants is supposed to do. Just smiled and retreated like a coward.
What the hell is wrong with me?
I know the answer, of course. I'm scared. Terrified, actually, of wanting something this badly, of reaching for it and having it slip through my fingers the way everything else I've ever wanted has.
Kate walking out taught me that lesson thoroughly, that wanting someone doesn't mean they'll stay, that needing someone doesn't make you worth staying for.
But Quinn isn't Kate. I know that. She's proven it in a dozen ways in the span of twenty-four hours, proven it most definitively by putting herself between five armed Vipers and my daughter without hesitation.
And she kissed me back. Kissed me back with enthusiasm and this breathless little sound that's been replaying in my head ever since, the sound that tells me she wants this as much as I do.
So why the hell am I lying in my bed alone instead of doing something about it?
I sit up abruptly, done with this spiral of self-recrimination.
We've already kissed. We've already crossed that line.
She's already made it clear she's interested, and Ranger—her brother, my friend, the person who has every right to object—basically gave us his blessing with that comment about us looking good together.
Yes, we only met twenty-four hours ago. Yes, this is fast, complicated and probably inadvisable by every conventional standard. But there's something here worth exploring, something real and too important to ignore just because the timing isn't perfect.
When is the timing ever perfect? When is anything in life neat and simple and convenient?
I swing my legs out of bed and pull on sweatpants.
My door opens quietly. Years of not wanting to wake Mariah have taught me how to move silently through this house at night.
The hallway is dark except for the small nightlight we keep plugged in near Mariah's door, casting everything in soft shadow.
Quinn's door is at the end of the hall. I can see light underneath it, which means she's still awake. Good. That makes this slightly less insane.
I'm halfway there when I hear it, a sound so quiet I almost miss it, so unexpected it stops me in my tracks.
Crying.
Not loud, not hysterical, but definitely crying. The kind of quiet, broken crying someone does when they're trying very hard not to be heard, when they're hurting and don't want anyone to know.
My hand is raised to knock before I consciously decide to do it, some instinct overriding the part of my brain that says maybe she wants privacy, maybe this is none of my business.
But it is my business. She's in my house, under my protection. Not just employed by me but part of my family now whether she planned for that or not.
I knock softly. "Quinn? Can I come in?"
Immediate silence. Then rustling sounds, like she's moving quickly, probably trying to compose herself. "Um. Just a second."
I wait, giving her time, but I'm not leaving. Not now.
The door opens after about thirty seconds. Quinn stands in the doorway wearing the same sweatpants and t-shirt from earlier, her hair loose from the braids now and falling around her shoulders, eyes red-rimmed but dry. She's trying to look normal, composed, like I didn't just hear her crying.
"Hey," she says, and her voice is almost steady. "What's up?"
"I heard you crying."
"I wasn't—" She stops, seeing my expression. "Okay. Maybe a little. It's nothing, really. Just a long day catching up with me."
"Can I come in?" I ask again, gentler this time.
She hesitates for just a second, then steps back, opening the door wider. "Sure."
I enter her room: the guest room that I prepared for her but which already feels like hers, already has small touches of her personality scattered around.
Her floral bag is on the dresser. A framed photo of her and Ranger, both of them younger and in uniform.
A pair of yellow socks with bees on them draped over the back of the chair.
Quinn sits on the edge of the bed, and I take the chair, giving her space, letting her control the distance between us.
"You don't have to tell me," I say. "But if you want to talk about what's wrong, I'm here."
She looks at me for a long moment, and I can see her weighing something, deciding how much truth to hand me. "It might make you see me differently."
"It won't."
"You don't know that."
"Quinn." I lean forward, elbows on my knees, meeting her eyes directly. "Nothing you tell me right now is going to change what I see when I look at you. Nothing."
Her eyes fill with tears again, and she blinks rapidly, trying to keep them from falling. "You say that now."
"I mean it."
She takes a shaky breath, wraps her arms around herself like she's trying to hold something together that wants to break apart. "I can't have children, Dean. Medically, permanently, nothing to be done about it. I found out four years ago and it broke something in me I'm still trying to fix."
"I'm sorry," I say. "I'm so sorry, Quinn."
"It's not your fault. It's not anyone's fault.
Just medical reality." She laughs, but it's bitter, broken.
"I spent months after the diagnosis being angry, you know?
At my body, at the universe, at every woman I saw with a baby who didn't seem to appreciate what they had.
Then I was just... sad. For a long time. Still am, sometimes."
"Is that why you were crying? Tonight?"
She nods, fresh tears spilling over despite her obvious effort to hold them back.
"Today in the kitchen with you and Mariah, making cookies and playing games and just being a family, it broke something in me and healed something at the same time.
Broke me because I'll never have this for real, never have my own child to bake with, never be someone's mother the way I always thought I would be. "
"Quinn—"
"But it also healed something," she continues, voice thick with tears, "because even though it's not mine, even though this is just a job and I'm just the hired protection, it still felt real.
She still smiled at me like I mattered. You still looked at me like I belonged here.
And for a few hours I got to pretend that this life could actually be mine, that I could be part of something this good. "
I'm out of the chair before I consciously decide to move, crossing the small distance between us and kneeling in front of her, taking her hands in mine. "This isn't pretend, Quinn. And you're not just the hired protection."
"Dean—"
"You matter to her. You matter to me. In one day, you've become essential to both of us in a way I can't fully explain and probably shouldn't feel this strongly about given the timeline, but I do.
" I squeeze her hands gently. "And the fact that you can't have biological children?
That doesn't change a single thing about who you are or what you're worth. "
"You're just saying that."
"I'm not just saying anything. I mean every word.
" I reach up, wipe tears from her cheeks with my thumbs.
"You want to know what I see when I look at you?
I see someone brave and capable and kind.
Someone who keeps promises, who protects people who need protecting, who makes my daughter laugh and feel safe. "
"That's the job—"
"Fuck the job," I interrupt, probably too intensely, but I need her to hear this.
"This stopped being just a job the second you put yourself between those men and Mariah.
The second you sat on my couch last night and told me you don't make promises you can't keep.
The second I kissed you in my kitchen and you kissed me back like you meant it. "
She's crying harder now, but her hands are gripping mine like I'm the only thing keeping her grounded. "I did mean it. I meant all of it."
"I know you did. That's what scares me. How much you mean it, how easy it would be to fall for you completely, how badly I want to let myself do exactly that."
We're both crying now: for her pain and my own, for everything we've both lost and everything we might be finding in each other.
"I wanted to be a mother," Quinn says, voice breaking. "Wanted it so badly. And when the doctor told me it wasn't possible, it felt like someone reached into my chest and carved out this essential part of who I was supposed to be. Like my future just vanished."
"Your future didn't vanish. It just looks different than you thought it would."
"I know that. Logically. But knowing it and accepting it are different things." She looks at me with red, swollen eyes. "What if I can't give you what you need? What if being around Mariah every day is too hard, too painful, too much of a reminder of what I can't have?"
"What if it's exactly what you need?" I counter gently. "What if loving her, and she will love you, Quinn, she already does, what if that's not a substitute for what you lost but something valuable and real in its own right?"
"You make it sound simple."
"It's not simple. Nothing about this is simple. But that doesn't make it wrong."
She closes her eyes, fresh tears sliding down her cheeks. "I'm so tired of crying about this."
"Then stop trying to carry it alone." I pull her forward gently until her forehead rests against mine. "Let me help. Let me be here for this. You don't have to be strong all the time, Quinn. Not with me."
She makes a sound that's half laugh, half sob. "I'm supposed to be protecting you and Mariah. Not falling apart in my room."
"You can be both. Strong and vulnerable. Protector and protected. That's what family does. We take turns holding each other up."
"Family," she repeats, testing the word.
"Family," I confirm. "If you want to be. If that's not too fast or too much or too—"
She kisses me.
One second I'm kneeling in front of her trying to find the right words, and the next her mouth is on mine, salt-sweet with tears. I kiss her back with everything I have, pouring four years of loneliness and one day of overwhelming feeling into it.
When we finally break apart, both breathing hard, she says: "I want to be family. I want this to be real. I want to stay, Dean. Not just for the job, not just to protect Mariah. For this. For us."
"Us," I repeat, and the word feels like a promise. "Yeah. I want that too."
We stay kneeling on the floor of her bedroom, holding each other while she cries and I murmur reassurances into her hair, and I think about timing and plans and how nothing about this situation makes logical sense.
But some things are more important than logic.
Some things are worth the risk of wanting them.