It felt so damned perfect to lie there with Quinn resting gently against my chest, my arms wrapped around her lithe body. In that moment, there was nothing standing between us. She was mine to protect, although I’m learning every day that she doesn’t need protection. I’ve never met a woman who can bounce back like she can.
And she was willing to jump in with both feet, despite the way things have been going the past couple of weeks.
The truth is that I just needed time to make the shift.
Nobody’s going to think anything of it.
I’ve taken a few weeks off from my nightly trips to the Swan, only going there once or twice every week, and never with a date. At least, not one that I take home at the end of the night. Sooner or later someone’s going to ask what happened to the Christian Pierce who gleefully adds notches to his belt without a second thought. I’ve long since lost count of the women who have sat by my side at the Swan for three dates and then never seen there again.
At least this way, it won’t be a sudden shock. At least this way, when word gets out that I’m seeing someone—and it will get out—they’ll look back and see that I wasn’t quite so active at the Club, and they’ll chalk it up to a new obsession, maybe even real love.
Real love.
That’s what I confessed to Quinn last night, consequences be damned, and now, as Louis steers the car through the pre-dawn gray of the morning, I don’t regret a word of it. Instead, my heart pounds with a kind of electric thrill. It’s the kind you only feel when you stumble upon something so true, so deep, that to lie about it would be unthinkable.
I rub at my forehead.
Here I am, back at the thorn in my side. The one thing that’s going to bring us crashing back to earth.
Don’t tell her.
It’s the obvious solution, right? I could just keep my secret buried deep inside, like I have for the past decade. I could just let it fade away into memory, take it to the grave with me, just like I was planning to do before Quinn came along and changed everything.
Louis hits the gas and I flash back to that party.
I was drunk, but not that drunk—and definitely not high, like my brother. Cheap beer, a shot or two—I paced myself, like I always did. I was always the responsible one. Always the one who held back, just a little, just in case.
The music was loud, just not so loud that it would draw any attention. Not that the police ever stopped by this building anyway. Too many wealthy apartment owners stacked one on top of the other, all the way up to the penthouse—it was always a waste of time to investigate, a waste of time to prosecute.
I don’t know how late it was by the time everyone filtered out, stumbling off in high heels and short skirts. My brother had invited the best of the best from our class, children of investment bankers and owners of corporations rivaling Pierce Industries. Some of them were far more adventurous than I ever was, going to underground parties that routinely got busted by the cops. It didn’t matter. Money could buy you out of anything.
Maybe that’s what I was thinking when I realized how silent it was in the apartment, realized my brother was nowhere in sight, not anywhere in the cavernous living room.
Where had he gone?
My mind in a haze from the alcohol, I tried to remember if he had been with a girl that evening. He’d been talking to several, his arm around one girl’s shoulders, whispering in her ears, that signature grin on his face—but had he taken her into one of the bedrooms? The last thing I wanted was to walk in on him while they were in the middle of the goddamn act.
At first I tried to dismiss the heavy silence as nothing, but it pounded at my ears until I forced myself up from the sofa and went to find him, straining to hear anything that might clue me in to his whereabouts.
The first bedroom was empty.
The second bedroom was playing host to a couple sprawled out on the bed, passed out, but neither person was my brother.
Dread settled into the pit of my stomach as I made the long walk to the master bedroom at the end of the hall.
My first thought when I pushed the door open was that the room was empty. It was that quiet.
I stepped inside, heart hammering against my rib cage, and glanced around. The lamp atop the dresser was on, and the comforter on the bed was rumpled.
Nobody there.
I crossed to turn off the lamp, and with my hand on the switch, started to turn back toward the door.
That’s when I saw his hand, limp and white on the carpet. It was all I could see of him until I stepped around to the other side of the bed, where his body was crumpled against the box spring…
“Mr. Pierce?”
“Yes?” Louis must have said my name more than once.
“We’re here.”