Page 12 of Quentin
“With all due respect, Quentin Darcy, you’ve been way more interested in my ass than my mind. Why don’t you ask a few questions before you decide you know just who I am and just what it is that I want? The answers might surprise you!”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he’d said. But he did. He wanted to hurt her badly enough that she’d never want him again. That bridge had to be burned because he’d never have the strength just to walk away from her on his own.
She’d turned then and walked back down the stairs, pausing on the one right above him so that they were eye to eye. “You might not want to, but you will…because you might not be a long-term kind of person, but I am. And the fact that you’d assume I’m not, tells me all I need to know.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
She’d looked so sad then, but also completely resolute. “It means that I know my place in this town. I know how people look down on me. I just let myself forget for a moment that you were one of them…so go on and go. I’ll be damned to hell and back before I try to stop you.”
Standing there, watching her walk away from him, knowing that when she reached the top of those stairs, the door would close and lock between them, he’d let it happen. He’d been the one thing he despised above all else, the one thing he’d lied to himself about for most of his life. He’d been a coward.
Pulling himself back to the present and to the woman who sat beside him driving the car that he prized above almost anything else in the world, he said, “We should grab some food while we’re out. There’s nothing at the farm, and I don’t want to cook.”
She snorted. “You don’t cook.”
“I do if it’s prepackaged and frozen. I know how to turn on the oven, Harlow.”
“I’ll cook,” she said. “We’ll hit the Fresh Market before we get out of town. But you’re buying.”
It wasn’t exactly an olive branch, but at least it wasn’t cold and uncomfortable silence. Eventually, they’d have to talk about it. Eventually he’d have to tell her that he ran like a scolded dog because she’d gotten so deep inside him that it terrified him. It wasn’t a conversation he looked forward to, but more than that, he was terrified it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference. So, he turned his attention to another question that was bugging the shit out of him.
“We’ve never talked about your ex…what is this really all about, Lowey?”
She clammed up then. He could see it in the firm set of her jaw. She would acknowledge that he almost killed her following their divorce, but she never talked about the marriage itself, she never shared details. And he had to know.
“Why did Joey Barnes come back and shoot up your bar?”
“Because he’s an asshole,” she replied stiffly.
“He’s an asshole on parole, and he knows that Silas can only do so much to protect him. Why take that risk, Lowey? What was in it for him?”
“Why will you not leave this alone?” she asked. “Does it really matter why?”
“Yes, it does. And if he’s doing this after the divorce, what the hell was the marriage like?”
Eight
Joey Barnes wasn’t a topic she cared to discussever. No one knew the full extent of what he’d put her through, of what she’d allowed him to do to her, because she was too embarrassed and too ashamed to ask for help. To admit those things to Quentin was more than she could bear, but she also knew it was necessary.
“Tell me, Lowey. Or I’ll find out on my own.”
“You know the day the divorce decree was final, he basically lost it. He came to the bar at closing time, waited until everyone had left and then came in and—” She stopped, unable to say all the things he’d done to her. The torment of kneeling in front of him while he held a gun to her head, while he debated with her all the reasons he ought to kill her, or the reasons he should just, as he’d put it, fuck up her pretty face until no one would ever want her again.
“I know enough about that,” he said. “But that wasn’t the only time, was it?”
“No,” she admitted, speaking slowly as she uncovered some of her most painful memories. “He started beating the hell out of me almost as soon as I married him…I was eighteen. Didn’t know any better. Married him and let him move me into the shithole his family lives in. The black eyes, the twisted arms, the bruised ribs, the split lips…I stayed inside most of the time because it was easier just not to see people than to try and camouflage it or have to lie. I didn’t want my Papaw to know how bad it was.”
It was difficult to put into words, but she knew she had to try. “With him, it wasn’t that he was jealous. It was that heownedme—body and soul. If he wanted to hit me, he did. If he wanted to lock me up and starve me, he did. If he wanted sex, and I didn’t feel inclined…well, that wasn’t really an option.”
She watched him for a response, noting the tension in his jaw, his clenched fists. He didn’t say anything, but she understood that. There was no appropriate response to what she’d just said to him.
“How did you get out?”
Lowey shrugged. “He thought he owned me, and it never occurred to him that I would turn him in for doing something illegal…I called Matt Shepherd, and he put me in touch with someone from the DEA, and they busted him while he was out of the house. He got three years, and I got out. While he was in prison, I filed for divorce and moved back in with my grandfather.”
It sounded so simple when she said it. None of that took into account the terror, the fear, she’d lived with every moment of every day, waiting for him to get out, waiting for him to come for her. Then her grandfather had died, and she’d been alone. Completely and totally alone. And she couldn’t tell him that the very reason he’d appealed to her was because he would never want to own or possess her. The commitment phobia that had broken her heart had been one of his most appealing qualities.
“So he got out, and then he came for you,” he replied.
