7
With her facein my hands, we were closer than we’d been in months. Closer than I’d even gotten to her the few times she’d appeared in my dreams. And I’d willed her there so many times.
Her cheeks were cold and her nose light pink. She was so stiff she could have been a statue.
“Are you cold?”
“Yeah,” she whispered, still enraptured by my question.
I let go of her cheeks, took off my jacket, and wrapped it around her. She turned her nose into the lapel and took in a big sniff.
“You still smell the same.”
Fuck. I wanted to throw her down and ravage her. I wanted to recover the millions of kisses I had painfully lost all these weeks. I’d made a mistake bringing her somewhere public.
I took in a deep breath and let it out audibly, trying to force out the tension building up under my skin. Before I touched her again. Because before I let myself fall back into service of this goddess, we had some real things to talk about. Not the lawsuit. Not Jay. Not her mom.
I led her to a bench. Despacito filled the air, wafting out from the nearby arcade, and a group of high school kids spilled out, laughing. If we worked this all out, I’d bring her back and we’d laugh like that. We’d get some shrimp, too.
But that wasn’t the vibe right now. Not the cotton-candy smell, nor the joy of the Ferris wheel in the background could distract me from what we needed to do. We needed to either open the door or we needed closure.
We sat.
“I need to know what happened,” I dove right in. “From your point of view. I know what you told me. I know that what was going on with your mom was a lot. I know the distance was hard. But was there something else, too? It felt so nuclear to just break up like that. From my point of view, we’d been great, and then bam… done.”
“Yeah…” She glanced away. “I lost my mind with stress. I was stupid. Just like you said.” She took a deep breath, and her sincere eyes met mine again.
“Maeve, I know what happened. I get the process. I understand stress and that sometimes people fight or say dumb things because the world becomes a bit too much. But what made you… do it? What made you willing to lose this thing we had rather than hang on to it? I need to know what could make you go that far. So that’s the real question. I don’t have that in me. I don’t have it in me to abandon the people I love.”
She squirmed. Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed it that far. I didn’t want to make her feel bad. I really didn’t. But at the same time, that was how I’d felt. She’d given up. And much as I understood her needs and troubles, I wanted to know what would make her give up when I wouldn’t.
“When you put it that way… it’s… ‘giving up’ sounds terrible.” She hung her head.
I lifted her chin. “I’m not here to judge. I’m here to understand. I want to know you.”
She smiled thankfully. “I never really thought about it much before, but I think my flight response is pretty damn strong. I couldn’t run from my mom. I couldn’t run from my grief. Maybe, and this wasn’t on a conscious level, I absolutely promise that, but maybe you were the only thing I could run from.”
“Just your mom then? And your grief?” I knew there was more to it. We had to get it all out on the table. Every last nasty detail.
“My life was just so full of so much darkness and pressure. I wasn’t as strong as I thought I was…” She paused. She fidgeted. Probably hoped I’d interrupt and change the subject. “There was more than my mom, too. Jealousy is the devil itself. I know it’s ugly. It makes me sound small and trite and insecure, but it’d invaded me like the plague. It was debilitating at times.”
“So… Quinn?”
She nodded. “It’s embarrassing to admit. I hate that I could stoop so low…”
“You had reason. It wasn’t just you. I’m sorry I never saw it, but she probably wanted you to feel that way. Sending an undercurrent of threatening energy. I see Quinn for who she is now.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean she showed her colors. She’s not a good person. I get that now. I’m only sorry I put you through it by ignoring some of my intuition.”
“I’d known she wasn’t a good person for a long time. Maybe I should have told you.”
Why had she acted so cool? Had Quinn done something to her? “What do you mean?”
“Honestly, I don’t want to talk about it. I know you two have to work together which is why I kept it all to myself in the first place.”
I scratched my head. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that. I told her I wouldn’t perform with her anymore.”