Page 46 of Forbidden Eyes
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It’s getting dark out now. It’s past ten in the evening. I haven’t known what to do with myself the entire five hours I’ve been here, but I do know I’ve been waiting for a knock on my door. The laptop came out for a while so I could do some work, but I shut it again after twenty minutes because I couldn't concentrate on a damn thing. I spent an hour smashing my hands into the punching bag, taking out all the frustration I felt thinking about Fia on the heavy sand bag, and yet I couldn’t find the calm that usually comes and gives me the ability to function without the rage that builds. And now I’m pacing and still waiting for Quinn to get here.
My eyes flick around my home, just like they have done for the last hour. It’s not my home. It’s Quinn’s home. A Cane home. I’m not one, not technically. Never have been, no matter how much he’s treated me like one. I should pack some stuff in a bag and get ready to leave. That could be coming for me now. I knew it was a possibility the second I saw him get in between Fia and me, and I definitely understood it when I answered him back and stood my ground.
I stop pacing and smile at the image of those dainty fingers holding a glass of scotch as if she was suddenly all grown up and ready to deal with the life she’s found out about. Good. I hope she’s given him hell in there. Shown him that she is grown up and won’t be manipulated into believing this is all for the greater good or whatever other crap Quinn might pour down her throat. It isn’t. It’s done for power and control, things both her father and her uncle know all about. Hopefully, if she’s kept her spine, it’ll give her enough guts to go deal with her father after this is done, whichever way she chooses. I couldn’t give a fuck if it’s in this world or out of it, just that she knows enough to make those choices for herself.
The knock I’ve been waiting for comes as I’m heading upstairs to pack a bag. Whether he throws me out or not, I should probably get out of here for a while. Give this whole situation some space so I can think clearly. He can open the goddamn door himself for whatever he’s got planned. I might have fucked up, and I’ll take whatever he’s about to throw at me, but after that I’m gonna go do some serious talking with myself about what the hell came over me. Although, I know the answer already. It’s her. Everything. Every damn minute she’s in my head, burrowing in with her smile and her snappy attitude. And those curves. And the feel of her on my dick.
Through fucking clothes.
Heavy footsteps echo to me as he comes in, each one of them filling me with indistinct feelings about my place here.
“Carter?”
I don’t answer him. I pull the shit out of my overnighter that hasn’t even been unpacked and start loading it up with fresh clothes. Two weeks. I’ll get away, take some time off, if he still wants me here at all. It isn’t until I hear those feet hitting the stairs that I consider what all this means to me. I frown and look at the inside of the suitcase, remembering him all those years ago when he turned up at my door and offered me a new life away from the grime I was living in as a child.
“You going somewhere?” he asks from behind me.
Sadness sweeps over me, thoughts of what I would have been without him in my life making me hate what I’ve done for her. Stupid. Warranted. But fucking dense.
“Yeah. Think I need to,” I reply, lifting a shirt into the case.
“Look at me, Carter.”
I shake my head and carry on packing. I don’t want to look at him. Don’t want to see the disappointment in his face when I admit all the shit I’ve done. I snort to myself. I’m a fucking child again, just like that snot-nosed kid who came back here with him, wide eyed and dazzled at all the wealth. He was everything to me then.
Still damn well is.
“You fuck her?” he asks.
The crudeness of the question makes me furious and I stop packing to stand up tall, twisting my body to look at him.
“I said I didn’t, Quinn. I meant it.”
He stares at me, dice turning in his hand and his face full of thought. “What you running for then?”
It’s a good question, one I don’t really have a solid answer to other than to clear my own damn head of Fia. I shake my head again and go back to packing, attempting to ignore him and wondering what the fuck made me stand up for her in the first place. He chuckles and turns away, his feet taking him back to the ground floor. “Get your ass downstairs, Carter.”
My hands dump the clothes and I walk after him, knowing whatever he’s got to say can’t be put off any longer. He’s over at the drinks cabinet before I get down, opening my fifteen-year-old tequila as if he owns it. He takes a swig and then holds it out to me, offering the bottle up. “Drink it.”
I frown and take the bottle from him, tipping some down my throat.
“Funny thing about decent women,” he says. “They get inside your head. Makes the space in there fucking senseless.”
I lower the bottle and look him over, wondering where the hell this is going. Fatherly talks about women have never been his thing. That’s always been Gabby’s job. “You eaten? Injected?”
I nod.
“Good, drink some more. Might take the sting out of it.”
I do, slowly, eyes still looking at him as he starts pacing about. If that’s not a fucking announcement I’m about to get a beating I don’t know what is.
“She’s just like her mother. Full of fire. Add Vico into that mix and I didn’t get a fucking word of sense out of my own mouth, let alone into her head.”
My lips smile around the bottle as he arrives back in front of me, and I lower it again to place it on the table. Good girl. “Good.”
The speed of his fist coming at my face, and then the impact of it, send me staggering a few steps backwards. Fuck, that hurt.