Catching Serenity (Serenity #4) (5 page)

“How is she?” Autumn asks, brushing her fingers in my pink hair to push away the few strands that had flown across my forehead. My friends worry over Rhea nearly as much as I do. It’s hard not to. The girl has an infectious personality and a quick, easy laugh. Two summers ago when Rhea was six, we took her white water rafting in Jefferson County and then stayed at a nice cabin with views of the Smokey Mountains. By lunch the next day Rhea was in love with Declan, and all of my friends were convinced she’d grow up to conquer the world. We’d eagerly agreed to be her minions.

“She still wants your man.”

Autumn has a warm laugh, one that isn’t forced or faked. I’ve always loved that about her. “Well, she can’t have him.” She winks at the man in question as he smiles our way, handing over the cases to Joe to place on the table.

“Which I told her. I even suggested that she set her sights on Quinn since he was younger.”

“Oh, honey, I wouldn’t wish that even on Heather.” With Autumn’s curled lip I laugh, shaking my head at the attitude she still has about Heather Matthews, the manipulative bitch who tried to blackmail Autumn into staying away from Declan when he first came to Cavanagh. Last I’d heard Heather had hooked up with Autumn’s ex, Tucker, and then later my ex, Sam. Good riddance on both accounts.

“That bad, is he?”

She slips her gaze across the patio, then quickly focuses on me again, seeming unwilling to pay more than a second’s attention at Declan’s errant half-brother. “Girl, you have no idea.” Autumn dips her head, stepping closer as though she is afraid someone will hear her. “He and Declan haven’t stopped fighting since I picked them up at the airport. Other than the ride to the store for more beer, we haven’t had more than an hour alone this whole time.”

“That sucks.”

“It really does, friend. Oh but listen to me babbling. You were just with Rhea?” She steps closer, rubbing my back. “How are you doing with all of this?”

I don’t want to burden her. Autumn would be mad if I told her that’s what I am thinking, but that’s just how I navigate my thoughts. Sorting them on my own, fracturing apart what should and shouldn’t be done, who to tell about my frustrations and worries, it’s all how I manage my life. Autumn has been my best friend since we were kids. I can tell her anything, but Rhea’s illness, and focusing on getting her better is far more important to me than harping on how I feel about it all. People get sick all the time. I could easily. There is no reason to burden my best friend with all the things that bring me the greatest amount of fear. So, I deflect.

“She’s running out of comics. I’ve got to pick her up some more.”

Autumn knows me too well, manages to keep from frowning, but the glare is there, the worry that I’m not being honest with her. Still, because she knows me, she doesn’t dig, doesn’t prod into what’s really in my head. Now isn’t the time.

When Mollie comes through the back gate with her boyfriend Vaughn at her side, Autumn is distracted with greeting them. I take that moment for the reprieve it is, sipping on the beer Joe served me, steeling myself against the questions I know will come.

Mollie greets Joe, mumbles to Autumn about Layla and why she’s absent from the party, but I don’t pay too close attention to them. My thoughts are scattered, frayed with the continuous urge to get back to Rhea. It’s that central focus, that desire that distracts me, that has me forgetting anything until the sensation from earlier returns, the same one that hadn’t completely died when Autumn distracted me.

The wind kicks up only slightly, brings a small gust that moves the table cloth on the picnic table and disturbs my bangs again, picking up my hair so that I have to pull the ends together to keep it from flying all around my face, all while feeling the strange sensation of being watched.

I block everything—Joe laughing with Vaughn, Mollie and Autumn’s whispered worry about Layla—I am too curious to know where the sensation comes from and how to be rid of it. Shifting my gaze around the patio, I pause only for a second on Joe at the grill and then to Declan and Donovan across the patio, beers in both their hands. And then, just like that, the sensation intensifies and suddenly I find I can’t breathe.

There is a small flush moving across my skin, and the fine hairs on my arms and near my scalp stand at attention. As my gaze slips to my left, away from Declan, from Donovan, it lands on the man next to them. And there it stays.

Autumn had described Quinn O’Malley, saying that he was just as beautiful as Declan, just as tall and athletic. But the dark color of their hair, the fierce shine in their eyes is where those similarities end. Where Declan is broad, massive, Quinn is slender, lithe. He has the body of a runner, all long, lean muscle, thick thighs, limbs that dominate, tower, but it is his eyes, the piercing sharp stare that flies straight at me, that has me forgetting who and where I am for a moment. That gaze penetrates, it seduces, it leaves me stunned. There is no real expression on his face. Nothing that tells me he wants me, no smirk or smile, no typical manner that announces what Quinn thinks. There is only that stare and the delicious threat it promises.

In that moment I feel every movement of his gaze, the one that penetrates me, keeps hold of me like I am is a potential conquest. Like I am his to own, a likely possession. That is a feeling I have never wanted, never toyed with needing. Still, I can’t help but catch my breath with how beautiful he is.

But Quinn, Autumn has related, is trouble—an entitled trust fund kid with too much money and too much time on his hands. He is the brother Declan never knew he had; the legitimate son of the man Declan’s mother had tried to steal for her own. Declan had been raised by his mother and aunt, then by Joe when the situation went bad. But Declan had managed. He’d done what most survivors do: he endured. Quinn, Autumn had said, had never been made to endure a thing but privilege, and he’d squandered a big chunk of his parents’ hard earned savings in the process.

Looking at Quinn those revelations echo in my brain. Autumn’s voice in my head warns me to stop staring at him. It is Declan’s and Joe’s heavy brogue that insists I remember what men like Quinn offer—heartache and misery. These are rational observations my brain makes. They are loud, fiercely stern, but that still doesn’t pull my attention from that beautiful man. Sire of heartache and misery or not, Quinn O’Malley is a beautiful,
beautiful
man.

One look tells me all I need to know—those fingers are long, uncalloused, meaning he’s never done a hard day’s work. Those eyes are unlined and no wrinkles crowd around his mouth, meaning he’s likely never had a worry aging his face. His mouth is wide, the bottom lip plumper in the center, the cupid’s bow pronounced. Quinn’s jaw is angular, sharp and his chest and shoulders are finely sculpted, as though some artist had carved him with precision.

Look away, idiot
, drums in my head and I finally manage to pull my attention away from O’Malley when Declan and Donovan block him from my view. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to know what they’re saying to him and when Quinn spits at the ground and storms into the house, my suspicions are confirmed. They’ve warned him not to mess with me, probably mentioning how fragile I am, how Rhea’s illness makes me worthy of kid gloves—and unwelcome pity.

“Sayo, love,” Declan moves to greet me and the frown he hurries to hide as he kisses my cheek tells me he still sees me as delicate.

“How was Ireland?” I mean to distract him, keep that sad little grimace off his face. I even manage a smile, but it feels forced and awkward.

“Ireland was grand. The company, though… ah, well, my brother is…” the Irishman pauses, rubbing his fingers through his hair. “He’s a pain in the arse, is Quinn.”

“You know,” I say, forcing myself to maintain the smile I don’t quite mean, “I remember Autumn saying the same thing about you not so long ago.”

“Aye, well, I grew on her, didn’t I?”

Now I’m the one to frown, but half-jokingly. “Not the visual I want.” He shakes his head, laughing at my lame response. “Besides, maybe Quinn will grow on you.”

“Oh I’d not hold my breath on that hope, love. I’m likely to suffocate him whilst he sleeps before too long.”

“Seems a waste,” I say, glancing back at the house, near the gate as Quinn emerges from behind it with an unlit cigarette hanging from his mouth. Instantly my stomach rumbles with a sensation somewhere between excitement and disgust. “Although maybe if you beat him enough he’ll start to appreciate how precious life is.”

“Sayo…”

I wave at him, disregarding the concern in his tone, offering him a grin. Everyone knows how I feel about smoking, but it’s his business what he does with his body. Why should I care? Still, thinking about Rhea hacking and coughing, struggling for a clear breath while Quinn wastes his own, makes me angry, rational or not.

I try to keep from bristling as Declan tries to sooth me. “I’m fine,” I tell him, nodding at Autumn when she joins us. “A little
maudlin
today, is all.” I spot Mollie and run to greet her, knowing full well that Declan watches me, likely wondering why I haven’t spoken to any of them about Rhea’s illness. It’s been four years since my cousin was first diagnosed, but only four months since the doctors told our family that the cancer had returned and the tumor had doubled in size.

No one wants to tell the truth. Not when you’re a kid and wide-eyed and eager with hope for all the impossible things in life. No one tells you that some kid your age in China sat in a sweat shop, their fingers bleeding, their family starving as they sew together the pink and green swimsuit your mother buys you for your first swimming lesson. No one tells you that in order for you to live in that big white Victorian with the wrap-around porch and twenty foot high ceilings, that some woman in another land had to sign away her rights to you. She had carried you inside of her, but couldn’t keep you. Maybe she had loved you, but had signed the paper full of words she might not have been able to read, had signed away the claim she had on you. Just so you could live in that Victorian and wear that swimsuit and eat in abundance. But no one tells you that after all that, you still might have everything taken away from you too.

My parents love me, but even they never told the truth. They never mentioned how tough life forces you to be. They never made me realize what a gamble it is to love blindly, completely. They never told me that loving Rhea as I did would mean I would have to deal with losing her, and that in losing her, I’d lose a part of myself.

Rhea has eyes shaped exactly like mine. She has the same small cow lick at her temple, and skin the exact color of mine. She could have been me at eight, and now I was having to watch her die a slow death. My friends, no matter how much they love me, would never know this. Not really. Yet, they had their own struggles, their own demons to exorcise. I wouldn’t bother them with mine.

And so, I don’t.

Mollie talks a mile a minute. Laughing when Autumn fusses at Donovan for some other stupid thing he’d done to Layla that had kept her away from the party.

“Wonder if he and Layla will ever figure out that they want each other.” Mollie’s smile is effortless, sweet, and when her boyfriend Vaughn stands next to her, the affection in her expression only strengthens.

“Didn’t take us that long.”

“Sugar, I wanted you the second I saw you,” Mollie answers, weaving her arm around his thin waist.

“Yeah? So did I.”

“Well Layla and Donovan have been doing this dance around each other since they were kids.” She takes a sip of her water, head shaking as Donovan withers under Autumn’s fussing. “Sometimes I think they’ll never get to it.”

That was the way of things with my friends: Declan and Autumn carrying on like they needed to touch each other every so often to maintain a normal heart beat. Mollie and Vaughn casting long glances at each other as though they could hardly believe the other was smiling the same smile right back at them. Donovan and Layla being stubborn to realize that all the teasing, all the insults and pranks they leveled at each other, was the longest bout of foreplay to ever happen in the history of Cavanagh. And me, smiling wide, laughing with my friends, loving them for the support they offer, all while hating myself for holding my own burden to my chest because it was mine to carry.

It is dark when I finally leave and Joe has asks twice if I want him to drive me home, just one time more than Autumn and Declan asked. They are sweet. And stubborn and mostly all drunk. So I slip from the house before anyone notices I’m gone, jotting down a reminder in my phone to meet Autumn in two days for a Saturday breakfast she made me swear I’d show up for. She understands that I need space, but that doesn’t mean she’ll let me keep sequestered for long.

The sweltering heat has eased, but I still knot my hair to keep my neck cool and tangle my pink waves at the back of my head as I move down the front porch steps, breathing easier now that I have left the party and everyone’s attention. But then I am accosted by a plume of cigarette smoke that wafts right in my face as I come to the street light on the corner of the sidewalk.

Quinn O’Malley is leaning against the light pole, flicking ashes on the ground, stretching his arms over his head as he exhales. The light from overhead casts shadows onto the pavement and his silhouette is one of glorious precision and finely honed perfection. Too bad all that beauty is attached to a smoking, entitled asshole.

Though I know it’s rude, I pull my collar up, covering my nose and mouth from the stench of the cigarette as I walk behind him, hoping he won’t notice me pass.

“This bother you?”

Walk away. Keep quiet and walk away,
I tell myself, knowing that it would be sensible to ignore him, that Autumn and Declan have warned everyone what a prick Quinn is.

“Yes,” I say unable to help myself, turning around to face him. “It does.”

He holds the smoke between his fingers, squinting at me, likely at the small snarl making my top lip quiver before he takes a drag. “And why is that then?”

“Because,” I say, “It stinks.” Quinn pushes off the street lamp with the cigarette still between his fingers and I try like hell not to notice the thick scent of his cologne cutting through the reek of tobacco. “It’s rude to smoke out in the open where someone can pass by you and be subjected to…” I wave my hand in the direction of the cigarette, “that disgusting thing.”