Immortal Healer (19 page)

Abigail stood the second her eyes lit on him, but as he stared harshly at her, she sat back down. She was shivering, and her teeth looked like they were going to start chattering any moment. The moment she met his cold glare, her head dropped to stare at her lap. Quentin couldn’t seem to move, let alone speak. They were alone, and he was speechless. A tear dripped from her eye to her lap, and it left his heart feeling like someone was stabbing it, but at the same time, he couldn’t stow the fury.

He finally sat across from her. His leg was up against hers, and her eyes softened for a moment until he pulled his leg back. He didn’t need to yell to hurt her, and even though it hurt him to do it, he struggled to quiet the anger that raged like a roiling hot steam pot in his chest.

“Care to tell me what happened?” His voice was quiet, but his tone was seething. She looked at him. She looked petrified as he stared back at her expressionlessly.

“Some guy… I don’t know what happened.” Her eyes were on her lap again.

“Completely. Fucking. Avoidable.” He was still furious, and while his tone was controlled, his fury was not, and she knew it. She looked heartbroken, but he was heartbroken too.

He stood without another word and walked from the room.

Chapter 20

Six weeks. When the judge said the words, she grasped at the table in front of her. Devlin, beside her, leaned over. “Nice work, sweetheart.” And then the bailiff came and took her by the elbow to lead her away. She looked back to Quentin. He was sitting next to Ember, and Ember’s jaw was tight as she glanced to Quentin. He was staring at her passively. Abigail knew he was upset, but he was giving her nothing. No response, no encouragement, nothing. He was giving her what she deserved. Nothing…

She’d spent the last three days crying. She’d fucked up. It was so easy to see after the fact. The guy had been a dick, but he wasn’t hurting her. Why was it always so easy to see after the fact? Why was it so fucking hard to just be sane? Six weeks alone in a cell. Six weeks without Quentin. Six weeks for him to decide she wasn’t worth the trouble. And she wasn’t sure she was.

The first week was hell. She slept all day, she ate almost nothing, refused to speak in group therapy, and when she was alone in her cell, she stared at the cinderblock wall by her bed. Maybe she could just sleep through her sentence.

On the first visitor day just shy of a week in, she made the mistake of assuming she’d have someone there to see her. She didn’t assume, she knew. She knew, because there was no way he’d leave her in there to suffer this alone. She clung to the thought, that understanding, the pathetically fabricated fact that he cared enough to forgive her. The officers walked around notifying the lucky miscreants they had a visitor scheduled for the day, and Abby waited.

She gnawed on the inside of her lip as she waited, and she waited and waited and waited. She stood at the cell door watching one of the officers make her rounds. She couldn’t seem to still the deep rise and fall of her chest as she waited. The woman even made eye contact with her, but there was nothing there. Not the affirmation she was looking for, not even a rejection. Her eyes simply passed by as though Abby was nothing, and she’d barely even seen her. She spent the next hour crying and eventually fell asleep.

* * * *

All he could think about was her, and they were the most painful thoughts he’d ever had. He felt closer to Abby than he’d ever felt to anyone in all his long existence. He wasn’t sure he knew how to function without her anymore or if he even wanted to. Six fucking, pointless, avoidable weeks. Why couldn’t she have seen this coming? How could she not have? There was a very rational clinical explanation for exactly why she couldn’t logically operate the same way the rest of the world did. But he didn’t give a shit about any of it.

He spent days on end in his lab, trying to work, forcing himself to collaborate with his colleagues, knowing he’d have to be accountable to someone other than himself and his misery. But he caught himself staring at the wall more often than not, and he couldn’t seem to get the last image of her he’d seen out of his mind. He’d just stared. He’d said nothing, letting his expression speak for him, and it did. He could see it as her facial muscles slackened in her depression.

He made the mistake of falling asleep one day, thinking it would have to be better than facing the pain of her absence. But that pain was nothing compared to his dreams. They started out blissful and as arousing as he found her in real life, but they didn’t stay that way. He saw her destroying herself, yelling at him, hating him, hating them. He saw rage and fear and absolute lunacy in her that left him on his knees, begging her to see him and what she was doing to them. He woke himself yelling her name out to his empty bedroom, and as he slowed his racing and panicked heart, he listened to the silence.

He used to enjoy the quiet of his world, but now, he hated it. She understood him, and more than that, she shared that love of silence and peace. But this silence was torture. He’d gotten used to her sounds. He could almost hear her rolling over quietly next to him in bed, humming out her comfort at his touch, her quirky little sarcastic comments that fell off her tongue constantly, even the soft breathing as she relaxed in his arms. She filled his world with her own quiet, calm noise, and he missed it. But he was angry. He was exceptionally angry.

When he hunted that night, he was predatory—even more than usual. His rage and fury were aimed at stalking his prey. It was a physical pain to hold back that rage when he killed. The man deserved his end as much as any of his victims did, and it wasn’t Quentin’s habit to torment his food—not even the very worst of them who had doled out enough suffering to deserve nothing less. But this night was different.

He fought the urge to bite without killing, to bring pain but not a swift death. He wanted to bestow agony on the monster he was tracking—as much as he could possibly inflict. None of it was very Quentin at all. Rage just wasn’t his style, but then, he was miserable. It was exceptionally difficult to bite the man and drain him quickly, but he knew, as much as he may not want to face it, he would have a hard time forgiving himself if he toyed with the man, rather than just ending him and being done with it.

When the man was dead, and Quentin’s anger still raged like a hurricane ready to destroy the world, he flattened a tree to the ground to expel the energy. It was a dark desolate, moonless night, and his hunt had taken him out of the city to a quiet black landscape, and when the man was dead and the tree was destroyed, he dropped to his knees and screamed as loud as he could. It was more a cry of defeat, and his jaw was so tightly clenched shut that the sound was more a pained moan, and as he sat on the ground and let the blackness surround and consume him, he let his mind wander back to the nightmare of a dream he’d had about her. This was not a hell he was sure he could endure.

* * * *

Her first visitor came after she’d been there for a week and a half, and it was Brit. She’d been allowed to visit, though it was outside of the visitor’s schedule. Abigail was escorted to a small room, much like the interview room of the precinct. She assumed it was Devlin who would be waiting, but when they opened the door, there she was, looking stern, stoic and stunning as always.

“How are you holding up?” Brit smiled. It was a small smile. Abby was guessing it was the most she usually gave anyone. Brit still intimidated her a bit, but not because she thought the woman was mean—she was just difficult to read.

Abby shrugged in response to her question. She wasn’t holding up. She was sinking down, and it was exactly what she wanted to do. It was hard being trapped in this place, unable to see Quentin, make him come to see her, know what he was thinking. The biggest worry of all was that she’d lost him, and it destroyed her to think of it, but she said none of that out loud.

“You know, if you were Lindsey Lohan, you’d be outa here by now.” She was trying to cheer her up. Abigail tried to smile, but it hurt.

Brit didn’t stay long, likely because Abigail wasn’t saying much, and when she stood to leave, Abby stood too. “Will you tell him I’m sorry?” She could barely hold Brit’s eyes as she asked. She couldn’t let the only link to him walk out the door without at least saying that. She wanted to send groveling tears and desperate cries with her, but … she was guessing Brit wasn’t quite the right person to carry that message.

“Sure. Of course.” Brit looked nervous, uncomfortable, and it left Abigail feeling suspicious and paranoid. Maybe he’d already made it clear he was no longer going to be involving himself with the emotionally fucked up disaster he’d made the mistake of sleeping with. Maybe that’s why Brit looked so uncomfortable. Maybe they were done, and there was just nothing more to be said about it. Maybe she had no business trying to be a woman after what Mason had put her through, and it was finally catching up to her with a big painful punch to the gut. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. The maybes were endless, and they were all unsolvable, because she’d put herself here where she could do nothing about it. She’d fucked up again. It had just … happened.

* * * *

When he opened the door to see Brit and Ember standing there, he knew it was about Abigail, and he didn’t want to see either of them. Brit didn’t wait to be invited in. She pushed past him, walked to his living room, and flopped down on his couch. He simply followed with Ember, stared at Brit without sitting and glared at her.

“What?”

She glared back. “Oh, I don’t know, how about your girlfriend looks like hell, and you didn’t even bother going to see her on visiting day!”

“It’s not your business, Brit.”

“That’s twice now you’ve told me what I should and should not concern myself with. Say it again. I dare you!” She was obviously in a peachy mood.

“It’s. Not. Your. Business!” His glare turned furious, but that was just his state of being at the moment. He was livid constantly, hurting incessantly, and nothing he did seemed to soften his rage. He felt guilty for being angry, and he felt angry for feeling guilty. His brain was one long and painful loop of emotions he’d never had to deal with before.

Brit stood, pinning him to his spot with her glare. “She doesn’t deserve this.” Suddenly she had tears sitting on her lower lids. The woman who likely didn’t even cry as a baby was ready to cry in front of him. He was in hell. He shook his head before walking from the room, leaving them staring after him. He slammed his bedroom door hard, essentially telling them to fuck off without saying the words, and he stalked into the bathroom. He started a bath, and once the water was high, he sank down into it, closing his eyes. All he wanted was some reprieve from the nightmare. It wasn’t as though he thought six weeks was the end of the world. It wasn’t that at all. He’d simply failed.

He’d failed to make some positive improvement in her life, and on top of all that, he’d fallen in love with the woman. How could he attach himself to a ticking bomb that could and most likely would explode at some point? This couldn’t go on forever. She’d end up in jail and not some minor sentence. This was going to destroy her life, and he was going to suffer through that loss, unable to help her in any way. All he wanted was to be attached to her, but could he simply sit around and wait for the next time? He couldn’t fix her, he couldn’t help her, but he also couldn’t stop thinking about her or loving her.

He missed her so much he could hardly think of anything else. In one moment all he wanted was to scoop her up in his arms, and the fact he couldn’t was infuriating. The next moment, he wanted to yell at her, scream at her, and let her feel how helpless this felt. Guilt usually followed that, and he was left thinking he was a monster.

His eyes lit on the crumbled edge of his granite bathroom counter, and he closed them to escape it. But closing them was no better. The moment he did, he saw her, kneeling on the floor in front of him, peering nervously up at him. She’d looked so stunning, so sweet, so innocent, and so fucking trusting. But it was the trust she’d shown in him that morning that had sent him over the edge. That and nothing else. It was all he needed, but it wasn’t all she needed, and it was heartbreaking.

* * * *

Here next visitor came on actual visiting day, and when the officer showed up to tell her she had someone there to see her, she instantly combed her hair, pinched her cheeks, and licked her lips. She looked like hell. She felt like hell. Her eyes had dark circles under them, and it wasn’t even difficult for her to make herself sleep all day now. It was simply all her body wanted to do. She’d been there just over two weeks. She would definitely be out by now if she was Lindsey.

She was almost giddy as she walked with the officer. She was terrified, but she was excited. She couldn’t help it. It wasn’t wise to be so optimistic. The little mean, petulant brat in her brain was warning her, but she ignored the witch. She was imagining him. She could see his smile, she could hear his voice, could almost feel his hands on her skin. It was all she needed, and so, she gave in, and she imagined it. If she could only have him, she’d be just fine.

Her heart started to pound as they neared the door. She was gasping for breath as the officer beside her stopped and turned to her. “You okay, girl? It’s only visitor’s day. Not like it’s release day or nothin’. Got a special man comin’ to see you?” She smiled nervously as the officer opened the door.

The room was large, and there were tables with families and couples spread out from wall to wall. She started searching, her eyes moving quickly from one table to another. When they lit on a familiar face, she froze and gasped. She started choking back the sobs that wanted to erupt from her throat, and she held her breath, waiting and praying for the pain to pass. Ember sat at the table, biting her lip as she watched Abigail.