So I didn’t.
“We do everything possible to preserve life at all costs. The vast majority of the time, we can. Once in a while, we can’t, thanks to circumstances beyond our control. We try to prepare for every possible eventuality, but people are panicky, unpredictable things. You can never know what one is capable of doing.”
“That’s fair,” she agreed, nodding.
“You want to get this work shit over with?”
“God, yes.”
NINE
Aven
Telling my boss and coworkers about my ‘mugging’ went about as one could expect. There was shock and outrage. There were hugs, and insistence that I take as much time as I needed to recover, both body and mind.
There was also a somewhat unexpected outburst from Benny about all these ‘motherfucking assholes in this town raising their hands to women.’ This was directly followed by him promising me that we would have a chick flick movie marathon as soon as I was feeling better.
“Take care of our girl,” he insisted, giving Quin a hard look before he led me away.
“You seem beat,” I told Quin as we got in his car, sitting at a light, watching as he raked a hand down his scruffy face, making the memory of that scraping over my face as he kissed me overtake all other thoughts. It felt like forever ago. It felt like it had been a dream.
“It’s been a long couple of… weeks,” he admitted, snorting a little.
“You don’t need to babysit me,” I felt compelled to say, though I was enjoying his company perhaps more than I should have. “Go home and get some rest.”
“When there’s work to be done?” he asked, turning to me, the side of his head resting on the headrest, the most relaxed I had ever seen him, a small smile tugging at his lips.
“I feel compelled to quote The Shining here, Jack.”
That made the smile spread even more. “King fan?”
“Is that an actual question?” I shot back, rolling my eyes. “Who isn’t a King fan? The Shining, Shawshank, The Green Mile…”
“You’re naming all the ones that broke his usual style.”
“Alright. Then Mercy and It also come to mind.”
“Did you see it?”
“See what?”
“The new It?”
I shook my head, shrugging a shoulder. I didn’t get to the movies often. Not because I didn’t have time or because it was too far away. I just tended to need to psych myself up for it, and by then, it was already out of theaters.
“I usually wait for things to come on DVD to watch them,” I told him. “I kinda prefer being at home in sweats where no one can judge me for eating a whole pizza myself, and scoffing at the completely unrealistic action scenes.”
“Remind me to put on the Bourne movies around you sometime.”
“Don’t get me started,” I warned, smiling a bit when he did even though it pulled at the healing cut on my lip. “And then we could put in some Fast and Furious franchise movies, and laugh at how they defy the laws of physics!”
Even as the chuckle rolled through him, reverberating into my chest, I realized how much I actually wanted that. To do something normal with him. Watch a movie. Hate on it. Eat pizza. Just, be two people. Not a fixer and his client. Not a white knight and his damsel in distress. Just a man and a woman.
I wondered if that were possible, if things would be different. If we would get along; if we would enjoy each other’s company.
If maybe something could come of it.
Silly and fanciful of me?
Possibly.
I barely knew the man, after all.
But there just seemed to be a tug there, slight, but unmistakable.
And the attraction factor? Yeah, that was definitely part of it too.
“What’s that look for, babe?” he asked, hand raising, his cufflink catching the sun, blindingly bright for a moment, before his hand went under my jaw, tilting my head up higher.
The bigger part of me wanted to lie, to deflect, to not expose a small bit of vulnerability. But, for some reason, the smaller part that wanted to share somehow won out.
“I was thinking it would have been nice to meet you outside of this whole mess of a situation.”
“Why’s that?” he asked, deep eyes watching, looking for a lie.
So I gave a half-truth instead.
“I think we would have gotten along. I could…” I broke off shaking my head a little. “I could have used a friend in town.”
“A friend, huh?” he asked, something in his voice that I didn’t know him well enough to interpret, but it was deep, heavy, something that weighed down his words. It was something that my mind really, really wanted me to interpret as disappointment in that being all I wanted, something I was sure we both knew was a lie.
There were times, though, for wishful thinking.
This wasn’t that.
I couldn’t get wishy-washy with Quin.