Page 11 of The Fire We Crave

One that will keep me busy all day.

Because when I’m busy, I don’t have time to think.

By the time I return home six hours later, I see Quinn’s car on the drive.

Mixed feelings wash in. What I wouldn’t give for some peace. And I swear I can smell sugar and lemons on the breeze. Must be that thing, Pavlov’s dogs or whatever it’s called, where the dogs were conditioned to associate a bell ringing with being given food. Now, whenever I see anything to do with Quinn, I associated it with those scents.

I park the truck and realize that getting the groceries out of the back is going to be even more painful than getting them in. A guy who was collecting shopping carts saw me struggling and gave me a hand by lifting everything up on the tailgate.

Once it was up there, I worked through the pain to shuffle things along with my feet.

But now…

Lowering the tailgate hurts. Lowering the steps to the tailgate hurts. Dragging the first few bags to the edge of the tailgate hurts.

In fact, I hate the fucking tailgate so damn bad, I stamp on the fucker, which hurts me a lot more than it hurts it.

“Are you going to ask me to give you a hand, or are you going to force me to watch you injure yourself some more?” Quinn says, stepping out onto the porch.

I don’t want her help.

I don’t know why it matters that I don’t seem incompetent in her eyes.

But before I can answer, she’s already by the truck, reaching up for the three bags I just nudged to the edge.

Bones yaps and barks around her feet. So much for being a guard dog. He’d more than likely lick me to death.

“I’ve got it,” I say, although I swear, she must be able to see the sweat popping on my brow.

“Given enough time, I’m sure you would,” she says. “But I made dinner, and it’s going to spoil if we don’t eat it soon. So, let’s just get this done.”

“Where’s the prospect who’s supposed to be watching you?”

Quinn gestures behind the house. “Out back somewhere. Something about a perimeter walk.”

Of course, he’d be nowhere in sight when he could help carry shit in.

She takes the three bags and carries them into the house, and I try not to look at the way the hem of her sundress swishes around her thighs as she walks barefoot to the door. Bones prances between the truck and the porch. Like he can’t decide whether he should stay with me or run after Quinn.

“It’s okay, bud,” I say to him. “You can go with her.”

Bones barks and runs inside.

When Quinn comes back out, she’s humming some song I can’t catch, and when she reaches for the twelve-pack of beer I’ve just kicked along the truck bed, I see the scars on her wrist. Don’t know why I hadn’t noticed them before. They’re faint, but still there.

“They tied you up?” I ask, as the reality I’ve been ignoring hits me. They hurt her. Like, really hurt her.

She stops, quickly, then rubs a hand over the marks on the other wrist.

“The second time, yes.” She grabs the beer. “Where do you want me to put this?”

“The second time?”

Jesus. I need to catch up with Atom to properly understand exactly what happened while I was away.

She nods. “Cable ties. They dug into my skin while I tried to break them to get free.”

The matter-of-fact way she says it bothers me. Because her eyes—which make me think of dark moss on the trunk of a pine, more brown than green—tell me a completely different story.

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