Page 21 of Rehabbing the Beast
Chapter Thirteen
“So, your legs are feelingbetter?” Quinn asked, trying to hide a smile. They sat on the porch, drinking iced tea, enjoying a spectacular sunset painting the sky and mirrored on the lake below. Mercifully, Siobhan had allowed him to put his jeans back on.
“Yes,” he grumbled, but there was no real bite to it. He sighed. “At least I didn’t have to worry about hiding wood like I did whenever you touched me.”
Quinn’s eyes widened, then she laughed. He’d never heard her laugh before. The musical sound filled his chest with light. Before he knew it, Seth was smiling, too.
“You are the only one who’s ever believed in me, Quinn,” he said quietly, slipping his hand over hers. He concentrated on looking at her fingers. Slim and dainty, but with surprising strength. “I’ve been racking my brain trying to figure out why, but I just can’t come up with anything.”
“You’re not so hard to believe in, Seth.”
“But I said such awful things to you, Quinn. How could you even stand to be around me?”
“You didn’t mean them,” she said quietly, looking down to where their hands intertwined.
“You couldn’t have known that.”
“But I did,” she insisted. “And believe me when I tell you that I’ve been called worse. It stings a lot more when it’s genuine, trust me.”
“Your family,” he said knowingly.
He saw momentary puzzlement, then her features cleared in realization. “That’s how you found me, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “Danny?” she guessed.
Seth nodded. “He seemed like the most reasonable of them.”
“Danny is only a couple years older than me,” Quinn said. “He doesn’t remember our mother as well as the others. Her death hurt him, too, but not as much as the ones who had more time with her.”
Seth nodded. That was exactly what Danny had told him. “They blame you for her death.”
“Yes,” she exhaled heavily. “And they’re right, you know. My mother died giving birth to me. If not for me, she’d still be with them.”
“You don’t know that,” Seth said, slipping his arm around her shoulders. It felt so natural, so right to offer her comfort. The beast purred at the feel of her against his side, pleased when she made no attempt to move away. “Destiny isn’t something that can be thwarted. If it was her time, it was her time.”
She turned moist, hopeful eyes to him. For several long moments, his heart stuttered. “Do you really believe that?”
“Cupcake, I spent nearly ten years as a soldier in the worst pits of hell you can possibly imagine. I’ve seen buddies of mine walk away from horrendous shit that not even a cockroach should have been capable of surviving, and I’ve seen others die from little more than a scratch. There’s no rhyme or reason to it, nothing comprehensible to our minds, anyway. Bottom line: there IS a plan. We just don’t know what it is.”
They sat in silence for a while, rocking back and forth on the porch swing until the golds and reds darkened to purples and blues. “If there is one thing I have figured out, though, it’s that I want to be with you. I’ll understand if you don’t feel the same. Hell, I can’t imagine why you would. I don’t even know what I’m going to do now—”
She put a finger to his lips. “We’ll figure it out together, Seth.”
“I don’t deserve you, Quinn. I am so sorry. For everything I said, everything I did.”
“I know.” Quinn curled tighter into his side and that was enough for now.
His inner beast purred.
“I’m sure not looking forward to the walk back down the mountain in the dark,” Seth said, when Siobhan peeked out and told him, in no uncertain terms, that his courting time for the evening was over and he’d best be on his way.
“I’ll drive you,” Quinn said. “Just let me get my keys.”
“Drive me?” Seth said, astonished. “Cupcake, I know you’re amazing and all, but not even you could drive down that path.”
She blinked, bemused. “Don’t be silly. Why would I use the path when there’s a road just out back?”
Seth narrowed his eyes at Siobhan. “You never mentioned a road.”
“Ye never asked,” Siobhan sniffed. “Besides, she’s already made it far too easy on ye. Ye needed te work a bit at courtin’ her, as any male of worth should.”
Seth glared at her for a moment, then pressed his lips together and nodded. After how he’d treated Quinn, he deserved to walk that path a hundred times over, maybe more. And for her, he would do it without complaint. “Fair enough.”
