Quinn got another five steps when his phone sang out at him. He set the coffee down on a café table outside of a boba shop and dug his cell out of his jeans.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, I’m only a block away. Promise—” A tingle in his brain told Quinn to shut up. The ringtone wasn’t the one he’d chosen for Rafe. No, there was no rolling hips slither song about drips this time. The music he’d heard was the telltale jingle he’d assigned to Kane, not the person he’d ever want to tell he’d fled the penthouse in search of coffee. “Hey, Kane. What’s up?”
“Where are you?” his brother snapped. His Irish was up, slapping Quinn in the face.
He was going to lie. Quinn fully intended to lie, but the lack of emergency vehicles in the area became a thing of the past as a pair of fire trucks screamed down the hill past him. Quinn waited a second for the ringing in his ear to stop, then another few moments for Kane to stop yelling at him through the phone.
“Are you done?” Quinn moved out of the way of a jogger, tucking himself in closer to the wall. The coffee sloshed about in its container, and he briefly gave a thought as to how hot it would still be by the time he got home.
“No! I am not fucking…. Kel, bus. The bus!” Kane swore again, this time at his partner. “What the fuck am I thinking letting you drive.”
“Hanging up now,” Quinn threatened. “Look, I went out for coffee. I kind of cooked the machine Rafe has at home.”
“Get inside. I’ll have a unit come pick you up,” Kane ordered. “They can be there in ten minutes.”
“Bullshit. They still haven’t shown up yet for the pregnant lady.” To be fair, Quinn reasoned out, any cops coming in probably veered and went off to do other things since the ambulance showed up. “I’m close to the building. I’ll go through the garage to use that elevator. You need a pass code to get under there, and there’s a security guard at the gate. I’ll be fine.”
“Fucking Rafe should have done his job and kept you inside.” It was a faint mutter but one Quinn caught anyway. “Q, listen—”
“Did you just say Rafe was supposed to keep me inside? Like I’m some fucking dog to be kenneled when everyone leaves?” The coffee wouldn’t get a chance to be cold. His anger would be enough to boil it back to molten once he picked it up. “Look, I get that Mum was hurt. And yeah, I understand it’s not safe to be out in the open, but I spent a damned good amount of time keeping my ass covered—”
“We lost Graham Merris, Quinn.” Kane cut through Quinn’s rant. “I just left Merris’s house, where there’s blood on the floor and shit tossed to hell and back. So while I don’t know if your friend’s alive or dead—considering what this fuck bastard’s done in the past, things aren’t looking good. So, little brother mine, you get your fucking skinny ass someplace safe and let me call someone to pick you up.”
Not Graham.
As exacting and sniffy as Graham could be, Quinn was fond of him, even loved him a bit, because no matter what oddness Quinn expressed, Graham let it roll off of him. No teasing. No sarcastic remarks about his behavior. Instead, Graham Merris merely accepted Quinn at pure face value, enjoyed contemplating silly theories about books and events starring people long turned to dust.
For all his prim, tight ways, Graham Merris definitely counted Quinn as his friend, and Quinn’d always been thankful for it.
Then the thought of Rafe lying in a pool of his own blood, his life smashed out of him, chilled Quinn so deep his balls pulled up in fear.
The building’s security had been tightened, but Quinn knew better. There were always cracks, always places someone determined to get in could do just that, work themselves through a gap by any means necessary and no one would be the wiser—not until it was too late, and by then Rafe would be dead.
Quinn didn’t think he could survive another loss… not like Rafe. Fear tightened the spit in his mouth, and a heavy pressure formed over his breastbone, punching down into his lungs and spreading over his ribs.
He wasn’t going to not wake up next to the man he’d had in his heart since they’d shared a stolen pudding cup under their school’s bleachers as a thunderstorm tore the skies apart. His mouth still tingled from their first kiss, his body holding in the hum of Rafe’s touch invading him. He wasn’t going to lose the sunsets they’d watched over the phone nor the sparse few they’d had on the penthouse balcony.
And Quinn sure as hell wasn’t going to lose the man who’d given his bidet over to a cat with less sense than a damp loaf of bread.
Not Graham. Not Rafe.
His heart couldn’t take the emptiness, and his soul ached at the thought of a life without Rafe’s calloused fingers stroking his lower lip or the insides of his thighs, Rafe’s playful, oh-so-skilled mouth teasing out one last kiss before they wrapped around one another and slept.