She wouldn’t meet my eyes. She picked at her cuticles along her nails and hunched her back.
“He touched you.” I new form of rage ignited in me. I was bloodthirsty. I wanted to drain the bastard’s blood. “Tell me everything, baby,” I did my best to speak softly, but the predator inside me clawed at my chest, rumbling my voice.
“He straddled me and pushed his hand up my shirt and cupped my breast,” she said, her voice so small and weak, I could hardly believe it was the same woman speaking.
I tightened my jaw. My teeth ground together, threatening to shatter. I nodded, hating myself that I wasn’t there to stop that assault from happening. “I’ll be back.”
“No. It’s okay. I just want to be with you, Jaxon. Come on. Let me be with you. I want to forget him forever. He has taken up so much of our time already. Let’s let it go.”
“I can’t,” I said, gently kissing her with my injured lip Sebastian gave me earlier. “I’ll be back. “Don’t move from this spot.”
Turning around, I held my side to ease the ache of the broken rib and marched through the doors. I still pushed them open because I needed to release some of the anger. The metal knobs slammed against the wall with a smack, and they bounced back from the extra energy.
“Give me the knife,” I said just as they picked him up.
I did what I said I would, not emphasizing on the details or how it sounded because I was too focused. Nothing else in the world mattered to me. I was only satisfied when his head fell free. I dropped the knife; the men stared at me in awe, and Owen nodded in appreciation and understanding and heaved the body over his shoulder, leaving a trail of red in his wake.
I walked to Quinn, feeling better that I got my revenge for Brian touching her. I got my confession; I got the girl, I had everything I wanted and needed to move on with my life.
“Come on, baby. You’re safe now.” I kissed the side of her head, and she sighed, sagging her weight against me. I bet she was exhausted. Especially after lugging around that heavy cast. “We won’t go back to that bedroom. We will go to the one I stayed in while you were in my room.”
“Okay,” she said, halfway asleep. I had to nearly drag her the rest of the way because she was so tired. She fought so hard, and I couldn’t be prouder of her. I had the best woman as my sidekick, my partner, and my strength. Quinn was stronger than she realized, and I’d make sure I reminded her of that every damn day.
Her eyes fell to our bedroom door, the one without a knob, and she tensed beside me. I turned the knob, kicked the damn door open, and carried her inside. I slammed the door harder than I meant to, but I was so fucking glad this day, these problems were over.
“You have a mirror that looked into the room,” she said, pointing to my two-way mirror.
Okay, the day wasn’t over just yet.
I cleared my throat and pressed the button to cloud the mirror so she couldn’t see into the other bedroom. I hoped she wouldn’t remember when she touched herself because I didn’t have the mental capacity right now to come up with a lie. I started to undress, leaving the sweaty, blood-soaked clothes on the floor.
“Were you watching me when I masturbated?”
“That’s not important right now, baby. Let’s shower. We have had a hell of a day, and it’s only six in the morning. Let’s wash up and sleep.”
“You perv,” she said on a yawn. “You totally watched me.” She had dark circles under her eyes with a new bruise on her cheek.
“I should cut off his arm for doing that to you.” I ghosted my finger over the black spot forming on her jaw.
“Nice change of subject.”
“I don’t want to joke right now,” I stated and reached in the shower stall to turn the water on. “What happened today shouldn’t have ever happened.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t blame yourself. If we want to play the blame game, blame me for not believing in you ten years ago because if I had none of this would have happened.”
“That’s not true. He would have found a wa—”
She laid her finger across my lips and silenced me. “Then it doesn’t matter. I just know that I love you. And I wish our past could have been different, but it can’t be changed. You know what can be? Our future. It’s ours now. We own it. There are no threats to haunt us anymore. It’s just you and me against the world now.” She wrapped her arms around my neck, tilted her head back and looked into my eyes while she started to sway. Not because she was tired but because she wanted to dance. There was no music. No sounds.
It was our breathing. Our heartbeats. The rush of our blood. The beat of the water against the stall. I closed my eyes and breathed her in, smelt her hair, felt her skin, and I got lost in the sensations of having her close, safe, and all mine.
“God, I love you, Quinn.” It hurt how much I loved her because I couldn’t express how much love I possessed for her. Quinn was my obsession; had been since the moment I saw her licking that damn vanilla cone outside Sweet Tooth back in our hometown.
I knew right then and there she’d be mine.
“Whatever. You only love me because I fucked myself on my fingers, and you got to watch when I had no idea.” She smiled against my lips, and I couldn’t help but to grin in return. I was caught.
“Okay, this time I am guilty,” I said, then roamed my hands down to her ass and squeezed, “but I’d bet you’d like to know that I jacked-off myself watching you. I came all over that mirror when you did. It was the hottest thing I had ever seen.”
“You’re insatiable,” she giggled, and her hand slid down my torso and then cupped me. “I know a way we can forget about the day.” Quinn kissed the side of my throat. It was impossible to deny her what she wanted. She obviously needed to get lost for a while and have her mind on something else other than Brian.
“When it comes to you, I’ll always be insatiable.”
Until the day I die, I’ll want Quinn. I knew after that, when I was long gone and nothing but dust in the wind, my ghost would want her. I’d wait until our next life, where I knew I’d get to love her all over again. A love like ours, it isn’t once in a lifetime for us, it’s through all time, until the end of this universe.
Chapter Thirty
Quinn
Six weeks later
A lot had happened in the last six weeks since Brian’s death. Sebastian had been able to give the confession of Brian to the police, and today, we were going to court to testify and clear Jaxon’s name. His record would be expunged, even if the memories couldn’t be.
But all good things come with bad, as if Brian wasn’t enough bad, that night when Brian died, he ended up killing Ingrid and Louis.
We thought they had slept through the entire ordeal, but when Grayson went to check on Ingrid, they found both of their necks snapped. Their funerals were three weeks ago, and even if Ingrid was so new to us, we missed her lively rough and tough nature of telling it how it was. We missed the smell of her cooking everyone’s favorite cookies, even when she was just cooking for herself.
Jaxon took Louis’s death the hardest, but we grieved, and we were moving on with our lives. This was the last chapter we had to close, and we’d be free. I didn’t tell Jaxon, but after court, I was going to take him to the tattoo shop and get my name on his chest and his name on mine. Might as well because the man was seared on my soul, and I knew he wasn’t going anywhere.