“I’ve never felt—” Quinn paused when his mother held up her hand to stop him.
“Ye step carefully. Around me. Around everyone. Ye’re honest with yer father. I watched ye grow and mourned that I could never reach you. Aloof, yer grandmother once called ye, and I about scratched her eyes out for it. I didn’t know—none of us knew—the differences ye had.” Brigid took a deep breath, her body quivering with held-in emotion. “I’m asking ye to be honest with me, my Quinn. To toss aside the masks ye wear and the words ye queue up to smooth out my ego and just be honest about how ye are.”
Brigid was a storm unto herself. It was easy to see her in his brothers and sisters, intensity layered in with their father’s pragmatism. He had very little of her in him, save her eyes, and he’d spent his childhood shoring himself up against her sallies of affection. She’d been too much, too loud—too Brigid—for his fragile, miswired brain to handle, and he hid himself from her, cloaking himself behind behaviors and calm words.
“Answer me this, Quinn. Why Rafe? Why now? After everything… with what is happening now… ye turn to Rafe instead of….”
She almost said me. Quinn was sure of it, but she stopped, shifting her words as he always did.
“Ye and I might have a valley between us at times, but ye’ll always be my son. Always.”
“You want me to be honest?”
She nodded, but Quinn only saw the motion out of the corner of his eye. He couldn’t look at her—his mother—couldn’t force himself to see the glimmer of pain on her face and the tears falling uncontrolled from her drenched lashes. Sighing, he tried to find the words he didn’t have to explain why Rafe.
“I’ve spent my whole life living in a world where I don’t speak the language everyone does.” It was difficult, digging into wounds he’d let heal over, hoping they wouldn’t fester into poison beneath the surface of his heart. “I understand what you’re saying, but everyone moves and acts so oddly. Like I’m living in a world made up out of broken mirrors, and every time I try to reach for one of you, I cut myself on the edge of the glass.
“And this world, Mum.” He sighed as she took his hand, squeezing back when Brigid laid her head on his shoulder. “This world… it’s all grayish. Monotones of muted hues where sometimes I can’t tell the difference between a door and a window, but everything’s sharp and everyone hurts. And there’s so much noise. Everything chattering and demanding, pushing into me.”
“We love ye. Ye know that, right?”
It was a mother’s anguish roughening her voice, so Quinn bent his head and kissed her temple.
“I know I’ve ground some of that pain into ye, and I’m sorry for that.”
“You’re… loud. See, some people are like splashes of color against the gray. Sometimes it’s too bright, and my eyes bleed from it… from them. That’s when I have to pull back. I have to fold in on myself.”
“And Rafe, he brings ye… color?”
“Mum, Rafe’s a fucking spectral smear.” Quinn chuckled. “He doesn’t just bring color to my world. He peels back the gray and shows me the world as it is. Rafe takes the silver off of the backs of the mirrors and lets me see through the glass. He wraps the edges so it doesn’t cut me, but he doesn’t try to bind me as well. I’m not breathing in pain when I’m with Rafe. I understand how he works, and I don’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing or not doing the right thing when I’m with him.
“He knows I don’t like my food to touch and that I want to eat things one at a time. Rafe doesn’t mind me getting excited over the smell of old books.” He caught a breath, recalling Rafe’s mouth on his heated skin and purring with pleasure when Rafe murmured Keats in his ear. “He listens to me when I unhinge and my thoughts bubble out… not only listens but enjoys it… enjoys me.”
Brigid’s murmuring dissent slithered free from her parted lips, and Quinn braced himself for what he knew was coming.
“He’s one of the reasons ye tried to kill yerself, breac. Have ye forgotten that?”
“I was the reason I tried to kill myself, Mum. Because I was living in a minefield I’d laid down for myself, and no matter where I stepped, I ended up bleeding a little bit inside. I couldn’t take being different… having to think about everything I did and said.” He choked, forcing himself to stay at her side. Every nerve in his body told him to run, to hide from himself, but his mother asked him to be honest. And Quinn was tired of running. “I was tired and fifteen, with no end in sight for the misery I was steeped in. I’d spent my every waking moment trying to be normal. I hated taking medication to make me appear human. I still hate it, but I understand it now. But then? Back then? I broke, Mum. I broke myself. Putting my blood on Rafe? You might as well put it on the sun because it burned too bright for me to see.”