Savage Savior (Savage People 3)

Three long months in which Quinn doesn’t give me the time of day.

It’s been three months since Quinn and I met Mandy on the street, and I still beat myself up about it every single day. How I froze there, like a bloody plant, like a useless tree, nothing more than a pile of bones, muscle, and shite. I should have explained everything right then and there, but the words wouldn’t leave my mouth. It frustrated me beyond belief. I wanted to kill Mandy. I wanted to heal Quinn. I didn’t manage to do either. And by the time I snapped out of whatever it was that came over me, she was gone.

I go to her every day.

I use the key.

I use the balcony.

I would use a fecking helicopter if I thought it’d help.

Her belly is becoming quite round already. I know that she should know by now the gender of her baby. I read What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I subscribe to weekly emails that tell me that my baby is the size of a papaya. I am dying to know. I’ve asked her a trillion times, but she just ignores me. Even when I get into her personal space. Even when I crawl under her sheets and try to hug her. Every time I bring food to her table and take Gia out and give orders to Stiles and the other guards who take care of her. Every time I pay her bills on the phone while she is right next to me, because I know she’s skint as feck because she’s not working—Selene has been covering her shifts—she simply acts as though I don’t even exist.

And on some level, it is true.

I ceased to exist when Quinn realized how bad I had fucked up. I broke her. This woman has overcome the death of her mother, the abuse of her father and the man he subjected her to, kidnapping, and God knows what else, but I’m the one who broke her. I’ve explained and apologized until I was blue in the face, to no avail. But I won’t give up. I’ll never give up.

I tried asking Jade the sex of my baby, but it just pissed her off even more. She said that I fucked up royally by not defending Quinn to Mandy. By not telling Quinn about our sexual history, or even about my past at all. And I can’t argue with that. I feel even worse after finding out how Mandy treated Quinn when she was desperate for help. I could kill the cunt.

I didn’t let Quinn in on my past. I didn’t want that part of my life to taint her. She was my beautiful, albeit broken, Quinn. My own little piece of happiness.

And I didn’t tell her about my sexual preferences before her, because it didn’t matter. Everything before her felt irrelevant. I get off on hurting her—physically, not emotionally—but I never felt the need to sanitize her first. And when I tied her up, it was because she liked it, not so I wouldn’t have to feel her hands on me. My night with Jade and Carter never came up for two reasons. The first being that I was bloody embarrassed to have to be shown how to touch a woman. The second being that we were sworn to secrecy.

I couldn’t figure out how Mandy knew about it to begin with. That mystery was quickly solved when she was brought in for questioning at Hot N’ Bothered. Cole immediately recognized her as the blonde who was “lost” the night the Italian lost his eyes. She admitted to following me down there, looking for a good time. Knowing I had feelings for Quinn just made it even more of a challenge to her.

Jade isn’t doing so well. She feels guilty for hurting Quinn, even though I was single at the time. She is nine months pregnant now, and apparently, this kind of stuff can do a number on hormones. Cole says he won’t even so much as remind her to turn off the oven when she’s done cooking because he’s afraid she’ll stab him with the steak knife or break down in tears.

And, of course, Quinn wasn’t angry at Jade or Cole, but at me for not telling her.

So now I alternate between apologizing about Mandy and apologizing about Jade and Cole.

Like right now, when I wait by her building for her to come home from Pilates. It’s springtime, and she looks gorgeous with her red hair flipping in the wind, her skin glistening, her belly swollen with my baby. She walks with the kind of determination only Quinn has toward her door. She has a yoga mat tucked under her arm, and she doesn’t stop to look at me.

“Please,” I say, my hands in my pockets, waiting at her door. “I never knew Mandy was your cousin. She was just another shag for me. A means to an end.”

She unlocks the door to her entrance and tries to slam it in my face, but I push it back as gently as possible, shouldering my way in as I chase her. “And if you’re still mad about Cole and Jade, then let me tell you, it was nothing. I never would have initiated it. I just wanted you out of my bloody thoughts, but I was also fucked up in the head, thinking I wasn’t enough for you. I just wanted to learn how to please you. Quinn, I’m fecking mental when it comes to you. When are you going to realize that everything else is just bullocks? It’s just you and me. You, me, and our baby.” I point at her stomach, breathless.

But she just stares at me. Vacant. Again.

I’m starting to lose hope.

I’m starting to hate myself for ever having hope to begin with.

Then Quinn opens her mouth and gives more reason for the earth beneath me to shake.

“It’s a boy.”

It wasn’t about Mandy, and it wasn’t about Cole and Jade.

Well, it was and it wasn’t. Because they were just the catalysts to an even bigger problem. Carter refused to share anything with me. His past. His relationships. His life. Everything was tucked away and shelved so I wouldn’t see it.

Every time he chases me, though, he gives me one more truth about his life.

He’s opening up to me in a way he never has. Through my tough love, I found out how his parents neglected him. How his Catholic school failed him. How he became so independent, he didn’t even need to be touched, physically touched, not even once in his adult years when he came to America. He told me how Graham is actually his cousin, and he saved him from the abuse and neglect he endured at the hands of his grandmother, and that he didn’t think anyone really knew they were blood-related. He told me that there was one person who was nice to him as a child, a little blonde girl with freckles across her nose. He told me he thought she was an angel, and that’s why he subconsciously gravitated toward blondes. In his mind, they were the complete opposite of his grandmother.

I listen. And when he doesn’t watch me, I cry for him, too.