"Well, thank you. That explains that. I'll see you around." She started for the door.
"Wait!" It was Quinn. She couldn't wait, she had to leave. She had to leave now. Her hand desperately reached for the doorknob. She turned and pulled, but it didn't work. She tried again. She had to leave. Desperate, she turned the latch above the knob, but it made no difference, and that was when she saw the hand above her head, holding the door shut. Kara leaned her forehead against the cool wood of the door in defeat.
"Need to go, Quinn," she whispered into the wood.
"Wrong brother," Ben whispered into her ear. She turned her head and laid her cheek against the door so she could see Ben. She found herself surrounded by the curtain of his hair, so that they were cut off from the world, staring into one another's eyes.
"Need to go, Ben."
"You might want to go, Kara. You don't need to go. Why do you want to go? Why can't three people who were friends once just talk? We're going to live in the same town, from now on." She could smell the shampoo he used and the hint of spice that was Ben. Why did she have the urge to plunge her nose into his neck and just take a deep breath?
"We're way past the point of friendship."
"So, for the next twenty years, we're just going to ignore each other?" Twenty years?
She looked back up into Ben's eyes. They were so warm and caring. "Why did you move here?"
"Because of you. Because we had a plan." His eyes stayed steady on hers.
"Ben, you knew I was serious, right?" Kara asked in an even lower voice. She realized this was the brother who would understand her and wouldn't try to roll over her thoughts and feelings without any regard.
"I know to the bottom of my heart that you meant every word you said. You were done with us."
"Are done," she corrected. Ben took a step back, and Kara could now see that both brothers were standing side by side, blocking out all other things from her view.
"You're right, Kara. Our relationship is in the past, and there will never be a day that I won't mourn that." It was easy to see the truth etched across the plane of Quinn's face. "But our lives aren't over. Ben and I realized that just because part of our dream isn't going to come true doesn't mean we have to abandon all of it."
"But why here?" she cried, then grimaced at the sound of her own voice. Where they decided to start a business shouldn't matter to her. She was relieved to see that neither of them smiled at her show of emotion. Maybe, just maybe, they were done, as well.
"Kara, we're here because we love it here. We planned to make Fate Harbor our home years ago. You know we want a triad relationship, and it's even more accepted here than in Sitka." Kara willed her stomach not to clench at the idea of them finding another woman, but she couldn't stop the acid from churning.
"Ben's right. We desperately wanted that woman to be you. To be honest, we still do, Kara. But I've come to realize just how badly I fucked up with you. Right now it's still a raw wound, because for me, this breakup only happened three weeks ago. But now, I understand that loving you means I have to listen to and respect your wishes. You want us to leave you alone, so that's what we'll do … for now. But we have to at least be cordial, don't we? After all, we will be neighbors."
Kara's head was spinning. She didn't know what was freaking her out the most. The fact that Quinn Shotbrook was talking about listening and respecting her feelings, or that they were going to be neighbors and needed to be cordial. She threw a desperate look toward Ben, who just grinned and shrugged his shoulders. Kara had absolutely nothing to say to that, so she just turned and left.
* * * *
It had been a week since they had seen Kara at Hart's, and Ben still couldn't help but grin at Kara's shock when she realized Quinn was actually listening to her. Unfortunately, Quinn didn't realize just how much progress that showed. He was sitting morosely, nursing his beer at McCann's. It had been their sixth straight day of hard labor. They'd paid for a lot of the refurbishment of the two boats, but when it came to the details, they both agreed they wanted to take care of them.
"She's never going to come around."
"Kara came over to our apartment and listened to us. That was a huge step, Quinn." Ben took another bite of the sliders. They were going to have to get another order, maybe two, if Quinn ever decided to eat some.
"She still doesn't want to have anything to do with us." The onion rings were great, too. Ben nodded for the waiter to come over and placed another order of food.
"Would you like another round of beers?" the man asked.
"Nope, the drinking portion of our evening is at an end," Ben said with a grin. Quinn gave him a hard look but didn't say anything.
"What the hell was that about?" Quinn demanded after the waiter left.
"I'm sick of your surly bullshit. You've had a month to deal, now we need a plan."
"Ben, you've been on my case forever to listen. Well, I listened last week. She said she is done." Ben couldn't help the groan that escaped.
"Fuck, Quinn, talk about zigging when you should be zagging. You're making me fucking crazy." For just a moment, he considered hitting his head against the table, but it was too small and it was covered with plates of food. "You've got to also watch what she's doing. She came to our apartment. She stayed and talked to us. These are both forms of non-verbal communication that say she is open to keeping a dialogue open. It's up to us to find ways to continue to keep those lines of communication up and running."
"Now, you're just making shit up to make me feel better."
"Think about it. You were always so good at knowing how to read us boys. You knew when to offer us a hug or a kick in the ass. You knew when we needed you. Why is your radar so off with Kara?"
"You think I'm good at this? Look how badly I failed Tim! Hell, Kara was an outsider, and she told me that Tim had a drug problem, but I didn't listen. He almost got Levi killed, and he ended up in juvie. Then I read her so wrong that I not only ruined things for me, I ruined them for you. So I don't know what you mean about my having good radar. My radar sucks!"
"Fine, you fucked up on two things. But, Quinn, for years you knew exactly what we needed, when we needed it. I have always known that I could count on you."
"Well, then you're stupid. I've lost you the woman you love, and Levi and Tim almost died." Ben hadn't realized the depth of guilt Quinn had been shouldering regarding Tim's battle with drugs, but he should have. No wonder this thing with Kara was hitting him so hard. He was seeing it as another example of his failings. In actuality, Quinn wasn't to blame for Tim's spiral into drug addiction, and as soon as it came to light, he had moved heaven and Earth to help both Timothy and Levi. As for Kara, everything Quinn had done, he'd done with Kara's best interests in mind, at least from Quinn's misguided point of view. Thank God his brother was built like a sumo wrestler, because he needed wide shoulders to carry the burdens he chose to take on!
"Quinn, I'm sick of arguing the past with you, so I'm not going to. What I am going to tell you, again, is that Kara has shown signs of being open to listening to us. It's now up to us to continue to keep the door open."
"Do you really think so?" Ben was relieved when he saw his brother start to dig into the food. Quinn's not eating always meant that he was brooding. Quinn's eating meant that he was thinking and receptive. "So, little brother, what do you have in mind?"
"I think this deserves a two-pronged approach. Have you ever noticed that Kara never has more than one beer or glass of wine?"
"Except at the gallery opening. She had at least two glasses of champagne that I saw that night." Quinn handed the empty appetizer plate to the waiter as he took the new plate and set it down on the table. "So, you want to get her drunk, to what purpose?"
"I want to find out what happened with the doctor, Jim. I want to find out how she really feels about us. I know she's angry and hurt, but what's behind and beneath all of that?" Ben grabbed two sliders and put them on his plate, knowing it was the only way he was going to get any at the rate Quinn was now wolfing down the food.
"Okay, we get her drunk. What's the second part of your plan?"
"Getting your sorry ass out of the doghouse. We know I'm sensitive and appreciative, now you need to be."
"Fuck you. If I wasn't so sensitive to her, I wouldn't have cared enough to tell her she needed to lea-" Quinn stopped himself. "Okay, yeah, I need help getting out of the doghouse. What did you have in mind?"