Catching Serenity (Serenity #4) (2 page)

For Grace L. who fought a warrior’s battle.

Your life and legacy is felt everywhere, every day.

Rest well, sweet girl.

You Ain’t Alone
by Alabama Shakes

I Let You Go
by The Lone Bellow

Hold Back the River
by James Bay

In My Veins
by Andrew Belle

Heartbreaker
by
Noah Gundersen

My Love
by Sia

9 Crimes
by Damien Rice

Baby
by Warpaint

Let it Go
by James Bay

To Be Alone
by Hozier

Cigarettes
by
Noah Gundersen

Make It Rain
by Ed Sheeran

“To hurt is as human as to breathe.”

—J.K. Rowling,
The Tales of Beedle the Bard

Love. It breaks your heart.

It fills the fractured pieces, the ripped and shredded shards because, in the end, there is no pleasure without pain.

There is no light without dark.

This is the story of that darkness and the love that fought like hell to breathe.

You have been warned.

QUINN O’MALLEY IS THE
pall I keep in front of my eyes. He is the perfect mask that dulls the ache of certainty.

And I am his.

We are together in this—using each other as balms, the quick numbing relief needed when the day ends too quickly, when the doctors’ voices become too quiet, too soft.

Quinn is my buffer from the ugly truth that runs toward us and Christ, what a beautiful distraction he is.

My body buzzes, hums with the temporary joy orgasms give. It won’t last, that’s not how numbness works. But in the quiet, the small seconds that lengthen around the room, I pretend that it will last. I pretend that I am flying, soaring, not part of the weight that keeps me to the earth or the heartache I feel inching closer to me every day.

Eventually, that buzz dims and the call of that man sitting near the window, naked, focused, is too much to ignore. He is beautiful, after all. I mentioned that.

He doesn’t hear me. The music—Damien Rice pumping from the small iPhone dock next to his fine leather wallet and vintage Ramones tee—interferes and there is no bed, no springs that creak and whine when I leave the huddle of our clothes. This forgotten warehouse is a paltry place for an indiscretion or, maybe the perfect one.

The light is dim, shadowed behind the low sliver of moonlight that peaks between the makeshift curtain of one of Quinn’s shirts and thin, coffee-stained newspaper. His silhouette is perfect, lithe. He never works out, is too casual, too cool for something as mundane as exertion other than the kind we make together.

If I were the woman I’d been before, I’d slip behind him, push at the charcoal pencil in his hand, insist that he forget whatever character he’s bringing to life on that white page, dust away the black lines that darken his knuckles. That Sayo McIntyre would slide her long arms and longer legs around Quinn’s slim waist, she’d let the warmth of her skin, the graze of her nails slip against his cool body, against the pale flesh.

She’d take him because the mood had struck.

But I haven’t been that girl for a long time. I haven’t taken anything that wasn’t offered up to me.

Not since Rhea stopped smiling.

Not since my little cousin began to live at the hospital.

Not since nothing I did, nothing I gave, helped in the least.

“You can stop staring, love.”

Months it’s been and still the gruff lull of his voice, that deep resonance of Ireland thick in his accent twists my belly until I can almost forget I am logical, that I have self-control.

“O’course,” Quinn says, not looking at me so much as glancing in my direction, “were you to keep staring, maybe step a bit closer, I could paint you again.”

There is a thin coat of red paint, acrylic and flaking, splotched up my arms with thin lines of black layered in the bend of my elbow and across my stomach. It’s the brightest color my skin has seen in months. Long gone are my vibrant colors—no more Hello Kitty pink shirts, no more purple headbands that clash with my dyed pink hair. Quinn had painted me an hour ago and though I know I should have; I hadn’t stopped him. Hell, I hadn’t even wanted to stop him.

When I remain silent, those wide blue eyes glance my way again, this time smoothing over my body like it was their right, like Quinn knew exactly what his attentions did to me.

“Red looks good on you.”

The Sayo from before would yell at me for how easily one look, the slightest beckon of his eyebrows bending up has me coming to him, has me forgetting the fight I’ve always put up when Quinn wants me. But here the fight in me is a lesser thing, like something that sticks in my head—an appointment not important enough to keep.

I fit atop him with one slip of his arm on my waist, with his charcoal smudged fingers leaving impressions of black, lines the size and shape of his touch up my back and along my ribs. Quinn’s lips smooth clear the remnant of red paint, his mouth clears a thick patch between my breasts and that low, hypnotic hum his throat makes is a quiet comfort I tell myself I do not like.

“You’re smooth, love.” That comes in a whisper across one nipple. “But you burn.”

Quinn’s voice is mildly awed, cool still, but somehow fascinated that I let him touch me. Like just now with his fingertips flirting down my neck, across my collarbone, he still glances at my face, as though he wants to be certain he doesn’t disgust me. And when I stretch my neck, let my face rest against his palm, the tension in his touch eases. “You’re like something I know I shouldn’t want. A habit I can’t bleeding stay clear of.”

Quinn squints, gaze focused, doling out a look that tells me he doubts my easy acceptance of his touch. As though it is some trick he expects me to reveal. Really, that blank unfocusing of my eyes is just my subconscious hunting for the mythical, fictional thing that will whisk me from reality. I want a broomstick to fly from this warehouse. I want the Milano and Star Lord to carry my little cousin and me from hospitals and criminally beautiful Irishmen who ask for things that they should not be given. I want The Doctor and that brilliant blue box that offers a reprieve from expectation and responsibility.

But there is no TARDIS that can take me away. I’ve looked. The skies are empty.

“I could paint you all day.” Quinn’s touch is like a hit from a needle I know might end me, but I don’t refuse. I’m not sure I could even if I wanted to. He’s had my head spinning from that first day, all those months ago. He’d stood across the patio and time stopped just with the look he gave me; one that kept the breath thick and still in my lungs. One that promised that my life would not be mine if I let that man touch me.

That beautiful dark haired man who’d been brought from Ireland by his brother, my best friend’s boyfriend, had made my time and thoughts secondary, superfluous with one penetrating look.

I’d promised myself he’d never get more.

God, how I’ve gotten good at lying to myself.

For now, I can forget. I let this beautiful, fit body take me away where the good Doctor and his blue box cannot. Quinn doesn’t expect much from me. He gave up trying to elicit my loss of control weeks ago. But that doesn’t mean he will give me a half-hearted effort.

“Look at you, beautiful. So small, so fragile.” Quinn pulls on my hair because I let him. “I could touch you, never stop touching you, but not how I want. Not as I’d like.” He kisses up my ribs, my chest because I never tell him to stop. “I don’t want to break you, love.”

But I am already broken. I am doll parts. Fractures that cannot be repaired.

“Nothing left to break.”

It’s only when the kiss he leaves on my collarbone dries that I notice Quinn has stopped touching me at all.

“Sayo. Love.”

There is too much tenderness, too much sweetness in his tone. It’s different enough that I look down at him wondering what he hides beneath those squinted eyelids. We’ve discussed this. We’ve kept to the unspoken rules that have made release and wordless comfort possible. I’ve managed it by not speaking much. He’s done his part by talking to himself or, when he’s in a particularly complementary mood, my body.

“Don’t, O’Malley.”

But that demand goes unchecked. Instead Quinn’s attention strengthens and some of that unaffected, cool manner he wants the world to see, slips away. It’s in the small stroke of his fingertips on my cheekbone and the feather light brush of his hand down my shoulder. “How broken are you?”

I wait. A handful of seconds that make him squirm. He shifts himself in the wooden chair that totters when he moves. But he does not release me, does not keep the soft inflection from his voice when he clears his throat.

“Enough that there is nothing left for anyone else.” I want him to know, to understand what I won’t, what I can’t, give him. “Take what you want, remember? Take what’s left.”

There had been many small ground rules, mostly implied, but that one we’d both spoken aloud. When the need arose, and it always did, we took from each other what was necessary. There was no soothing sweetness in our words. There was only sensation and touch and then the retreat to our lives away from each other. Away from the news we both know is coming.

“Aye, I remember.” His expression is guarded again. Severe, but that touch remains soft, too gentle for my liking and when I glance at his hand resting on my arm, Quinn exhales, squeezes my bicep because he knows I prefer it.

And then he leans forward, mouth soft and wet, slightly open to take mine. I let him. Tonight I want to be used. I want to feel valuable.

There is nothing I can do to save my cousin.

There is nothing anyone can do.

It is only when Quinn brings me back to that huddle of discarded clothes on the floor, when he covers my body and those long fingers smudged with charcoal—an artist’s fingers—are beneath my waist, holding me still, arching my hips, pulling me closer to his mouth, that I start to feel not so broken. It is always this way; the climb toward sensation. It’s the ache for emotion that does not consume me. That urge for something that doesn’t fucking hurt.

“I could taste you, always.” And he does, mouth, lips devouring my body until my eyes close shut from the sensation. His breath is so hot, a whisper against my hipbone. I don’t have to look down at him to know that my pale skin, my smooth thighs are covered in Quinn’s kisses, in the charcoal from his hands. “Sometimes I think I could never stop tasting you, don’t I?”

I don’t answer. I never do and he doesn’t expect it. That’s not why we are here. I keep silent while he fills the room with hungry words, promises that mean nothing at all. But as Quinn’s touches increase, as his mouth opens wider, that thick, warm tongue teasing me, making a meal of my body, the sensation and sound of us has me floating, flying from reality, I do something I’ve never done before.