Qhuinn didn’t. He seemed prepared to stand in the doorway to the sitting room forever.
“Come here,” Blay said, drawing the male inside and shutting the door. “Over on the couch.”
Qhuinn followed behind, shitkickers shuffling instead of marching.
When they got to the sofa, they sat down facing each other, their knees touching. As Blay looked over, the resonant sadness touched him so deeply, he couldn’t stop his hand from reaching out and stroking that black hair—
Abruptly, Qhuinn curled in against him, just collapsed, that body folding in half and all but pouring into Blay’s lap.
There was a part of Blay that recognized this was dangerous territory. Sex was one thing—and hard enough to handle, fuck him very much. This quiet space? Was potentially devastating.
Which was precisely why he’d gotten the hell out of that bedroom the day before.
The difference tonight, however, was that he was in control of this. Qhuinn was the one seeking comfort, and Blay could withdraw it or give it depending on how he felt: Being relied on was something altogether different from receiving—or needing.
Blay was good with being relied on. There was a kind of safety in it—a certainty, a control. It was not the same as falling into the abyss. And hell, if anyone would know that, it was him. God knew he’d spent years down there.
“I would do anything to change this,” Blay said while stroking Qhuinn’s back. “I hate that you’re going through…”
Oh, words were so damned useless.
They stayed that way for the longest time, the quiet of the room forming a kind of cocoon. Periodically, the antique clock on the mantel chimed, and then after a long while, the shutters began to descend over the windows.
“I wish there was something I could do,” Blay said as the steel panels locked into place with a chunk.
“You probably have to go.”
Blay let that one stand. The truth was not something he wanted to share: Wild horses, loaded guns, crowbars, fire hoses, trampling elephants…even an order from the king himself could not have pulled him away.
And there was a part of him that got angry over that. Not at Qhuinn, but at his own heart. The trouble was, you couldn’t argue with your nature—and he was learning that. In the breakup with Saxton. In coming out to his mom. In this moment here.
Qhuinn groaned as he lifted his torso up, and then scrubbed his face. When he dropped his hands, his cheeks were red and so were his eyes, but not because he was crying.
Undoubtedly his decade’s allotment of tears had come out the night before as he’d wept in relief that he’d saved a father’s life.
Had he known that Layla wasn’t doing well then?
“You know what the hardest thing is?” Qhuinn asked, sounding more like himself.
“What?” God knew there was a lot to choose from.
“I’ve seen the young.”
The fine hairs on the back of Blay’s neck tingled. “What are you talking about.”
“The night the Honor Guard came for me, and I almost died—remember?”
Blay coughed a little, the memory as raw and vivid as something that had happened an hour ago. And yet Qhuinn’s voice was even and calm, like he was referencing an evening out at a club or something. “Ah, yeah. I remember.”
I gave you CPR at the side of the goddamn road, he thought.
“I went up to the Fade—” Qhuinn frowned. “Are you okay?”
Oh, sure, doing great. “Sorry. Keep going.”
“I went up there. I mean, it was like…what you hear about. The white.” Qhuinn scrubbed his face again. “So white. Everywhere. There was a door, and I went up to it—I knew if I turned the knob I was going in, and I was never coming out. I reached for the thing…and that’s when I saw her. In the door.”
“Layla,” Blay interjected, feeling like his chest had been stabbed.
“My daughter.”
Blay’s breath caught. “Your…”
Qhuinn looked over. “She was…blond. Like Layla. But her eyes—” He touched next to his own. “—they were mine. I stopped reaching forward when I saw her—and then suddenly, I was back on the ground at the side of the road. Afterward, I had no clue what it was all about. But then, like, so much later, Layla goes into her needing and comes to me, and everything fell into place. I was like…this is supposed to happen. It felt like fate, you know. I never would have lain with Layla otherwise. I did it only because I knew we were going to have a little girl.”
“Jesus.”
“I was wrong, though.” He rubbed his face a third time. “I was totally fucking wrong—and I really wish I hadn’t gone down this path. Biggest regret of my life—well, second-biggest, actually.”