Chapter Three
Quinton stared at me for a second with an open mouth and wide eyes. Only for a second, though. He snapped his mouth shut, going from shocked to looking arrogant in a heartbeat. I did not like the gleam in his eyes. That gleam spelled out possible trouble ahead for me. The kind of trouble Quint was going to enjoy.
Oh boy.
Yeah, I regretted opening my mouth and blurting out words before my brain had a chance to get with the program.
Quinton reached out towards me and trailed the tip of his finger across my cheek, directly under the twelve stitches. The touch was feather soft and barely there. If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have felt it, it had been that soft.
“I’ll be back,” he said.
Then he was out the door and gone, and I was the one left with my mouth hanging open. Why did he always have to be so weird and difficult to deal with? I did not know the why of it, I just knew that if I tried to figure it out, figure Quint out, I would lose my mind.
Ignoring the fact he’d said he would be back, I decided to take a shower. He hadn’t said when he would be returning, and if he got back before I was done he could just wait or go find something else to do with his time. If I was lucky (and I usually was not) he would come back with a large cup of coffee for me that he took the liberty of adding a heavy dose of both sugar and cream for me. Wouldn’t that be nice. With my luck, he would come back with a tray overflowing with eggs, toast, and greasy meat even though I told him food would likely make me barf.
Of course, I could always go downstairs to the kitchen and get my own cup of coffee. A glimpse of myself in the mirror hanging above the dresser told me that leaving the bedroom before bathing was out of the question. I hadn’t showered since that first day in the hospital, and I only did it then in order to wash the blood off of me. When I accused Quinton of looking like crap, I’m surprised he didn’t laugh in my face. My hair was a rat’s nest, and I probably smelled like body odor.
It was an attractive look for me, especially with my vampire pallor and bloodshot eyes.
I had no business giving Quinton a hard time for the way he looked or his lack of sleep. Doing so made me a hypocrite.
I pulled open the top drawer on the tall dresser and froze. These were not my clothes. I hadn’t checked out the contents of the dresser yet because I had been living out of one of my cute beach bags that one of the boys had been kind enough to pack for me.
Whoever put these clothes in the top drawer clearly had no clue about what kind of clothes I liked to wear. There was a whole lot of lace and… pink? I thought hard and couldn’t remember when the last time I wore anything in the color pink and drew a blank. A complete and total blank. It’s not that I had a problem with the color because I didn’t, honest. Pink was a perfectly good color for an oversized beach bag, a stud in my ear and maybe a cute little teddy bear. Oh, and fuzzy socks. I would absolutely sport some fuzzy pink socks. But anything else? Not likely for me. I didn’t even wear pink nail polish.
I pulled a lacey piece out of the drawer and held it up in front of my face for inspection. And it was a definite no-go. The fabric was see-through, the front a small triangle, the back nothing but floss. I wanted underwear that was comfortable, not something see-through that would ride roughshod on my crack and wedge its way up there.
Who in the world picked this nonsense out for me? Quinton? Tyson? No, not Ty, he knew better than that. And Quinton wasn’t stupid.
I threw the offensive object back into the drawer and pulled out another pink thing. This one was a lot less offensive than the first one had been. Pink boy shorts with white, lacey trim. Something I would normally wear if not for the bubble gum Barbie color. Success, I had myself a keeper here. If I put them on under my clothes I could forget about the color and be comfortable. And, besides, all the underwear in my bag had been worn and needed to be washed. I had run out of options until I found the washing machine in this place.
I dug around in the drawer until I found a bra that looked similar to the panties. Pink with lacey white trim. I held it up for inspection. Hmm… too big. Wishful thinking on some poor fool’s part? Yeah, probably. The rest of them in the drawer were the same size.
I closed the drawer and sighed. Braless it was. I could work with that, as long as I didn’t have to leave the house.
I pulled open the second drawer and prayed for a miracle.
God totally hated me.
More pink and white. I would put my dirty clothes back on if they hadn’t all been slept in, wrinkled and probably didn’t smell all that great. And I really didn’t want to get out of the shower clean and put on dirty clothes. That sounded like a terrible idea, and I felt gross just at the thought.
I shut the drawer with a slam and pulled out the third one and this time I didn’t bother with the hoping and praying bit, it would do me no good.
The third drawer was full of blue jeans. I pulled out a pair and held it up in front of me. I shook my head. No good. They looked like they would be super tight on me, were worn out in places even though the price tag meant they were brand-new, and had serious bling on the back pockets. It was fake bling, but still. I checked the tag on the inside and shook my head. They were a size too small and there would be absolutely no squeezing my thighs into those pant legs. More wishful thinking on someone’s part? I hoped not because whoever had picked out the new wardrobe was going to be seriously disappointed in me.
I dropped the jeans back into the third drawer and pushed it shut. I hoped they kept the receipt because those jeans were expensive and needed to be returned or they would be wasted and taking up space in the drawer.
Since the third time wasn’t a charm maybe the fourth would be? Doubtful, very doubtful.
I was wrong. The fourth drawer ended up being my favorite by a long shot. I don’t know why, but the pajamas were in the fourth drawer, the bottom drawer. And they weren’t all pink!
I squatted down and dug around in the drawer. Super soft baby blue pajama shorts. More of the same thing but in light green. And in yellow. Pajama pants that were in the same colors as the shorts. It was like I had struck textile gold. I didn’t understand why there was color here that wasn’t matching the pink and white upstairs, but I certainly wasn’t about to question it.
It would seem that the person who had picked out this wardrobe for me had multiple personalities. Good to know. Now I simply needed to figure out who it was and exactly how many personalities they had.
I grabbed a pair of sleep shorts out of the bottom drawer, the baby blue ones, and a white spaghetti strap tank top out of the second drawer. I tossed the underwear on top of the pile and headed for the bathroom.
One thing that did not suck about this bedroom was that it had its own bathroom. And the space was huge. There was a deep tub with multiple jets that looked like it had been made specifically for relaxing and soaking in. Maybe I would get around to using it before Dash and I went back to his cottage in the forest. The shower was encased in glass and had three different shower heads hanging down from the ceiling. When the water came on I imagined it was like rain falling down from the sky onto your body. There was a bench along the wall in there with several bottles in various colors and sizes placed on top of it.
I dumped my armful of clothes on top of the closed toilet lid and padded across a soft, white rug to the shower. After opening the glass door, I fiddled around with the knobs, trying to figure out how to work the damn thing. I finally got it turned on and the water temperature set how I liked it, to almost burn your skin off temps. I liked the water extra hot, it made me feel cleaner for some insane reason.
I stripped off my clothes and left them in a neat pile on the floor in front of the sink. I stepped into the shower and closed the glass door with a soft click. The water that hit me felt fantastic, and the tension slid right out of me. Which would have been a good thing if my body wasn’t so worn out, and I wasn’t utterly exhausted. I felt like I could sit down on the hard floor under the cascading rain shower, curl up into a ball, and fall into a (hopefully) dreamless sleep. It didn’t sound like a bad idea but waking up covered in weird wrinkles and freezing cold didn’t sound all too appealing.
The only part of the labels on the various bottles sitting atop the bench that I paid attention to was where it told me what the bottle contained, whether it was shampoo, conditioner or body wash. There were a bunch of other things as well, but I paid them no mind. I had a feeling they were expensive, and if I knew how much each bottle had cost it would probably make me extremely uncomfortable. More so because I knew they were bought specifically for me, and I wouldn’t use even half of them.
I made quick work in the shower before shutting the water off and reaching for a fluffy, yellow bath towel.
Whoever had picked out the towels clearly wasn’t the same person who’d filled three of the four drawers in that dresser in the other room. Canary yellow was my favorite color. All of the towels hanging up around the bathroom were the same yellow color.
Hanging on a hook on the bathroom door was a fluffy black robe that looked big enough to swallow me whole. It was nothing like the silk number I had at the cottage that had been a gift from Dash and matched the one he wore. I hadn’t even been able to wear the thing yet. I wanted that robe to be hanging off of a hook inside my bathroom. Better yet, I wanted to be standing in the bathroom in the cottage.
I was wrapping the towel around my body as the door opened wide without so much as even a knock.
Quinton froze in the open doorway. Of course it was Uncle Quint, he was notorious for barging into rooms. I ignored him and stepped clear of the shower.
“I told you, I don’t want food right now,” I said as I walked to the toilet and picked up my small stack of clothes. I dropped them on the marble counter top and went to swipe my palm across the fogged-up mirror.
I froze mid-swipe as my dream came rushing back to me at warped speed. I honestly did not care that I would have a scar on my face for all to see. But how did the others feel about it? Quinton felt, but was that all of it? I knew I was a pretty girl. Not because people went out of their way to tell me how pretty I was. I looked remarkably like my mother, who might not have been my birth mother after all, but my father’s sister and a goddamn kidnapper. But she had been incredibly beautiful. Slutty and dirty and crass always, but still incredibly beautiful. People had told her so all the time (not about her being slutty and all of that other negative business, of course). And, if I looked just like her, then that made me beautiful too.
Would I still be considered beautiful with a scar on my face? Would the others still find me attractive with it? Would Quinton? I didn’t even know if they were all attracted to me in the first place. Tyson was. So were my Salt and Pepper twins. And Quinton. I was almost positive Dash was as well. Who knew with Julian and Damien. I knew Julian was nice to me, while Damien was a bit of a dick. And they were all attracted to the fact that I’m a female with magic. There were so few of us to go around that when a coven of males was lucky enough to have a female join them, they shared her amongst themselves. And yes, I mean romantically. Supposedly none of the women seemed to mind. Somehow, I doubted the truth behind this. I felt it was something the Council of Elders probably made up so they didn’t look like the group of misogynistic, phony A-holes that they likely were. Anyway, female witches were like the finest, most precious jewels amongst the covens and I was now one of those precious jewels.
I struggled with this. My mother had been more than happy to be treated like an expensive object, to be taken out and played with whenever it pleased the owner to do so, just as long as she was appropriately compensated for the role she played. I wasn’t into role play, and I didn’t want to be treated like an object, precious or otherwise. Not that I thought any of the guys would ever treat me like that, because I didn’t think they would ever do that to me.
But I also wanted to be liked for more than the fact I was female and had magic. I wanted someone to love me because I was worthy of being loved, and I wanted it to have nothing to do with magic. Did love like that even exist? If it had, I had yet to see it in action.
The big questions, what I think my dreams had, in part, been about?
Well…
I stared into the green eyes of the blonde girl standing in front of me in the mirror. Those green eyes were mine, and that blonde girl was me.
A jagged, angry red line started about two inches away from my mouth and curved inwards towards said mouth and upwards. The stitches started about an inch and a half away from my nose and headed in the direction of my ear. There were only twelve of them, stitches, that is. The angry red line thankfully stopped where the stitches did, but the entire thing would scar. Maybe one day the angry red color would fade to pink, then, if I was lucky, to white. To most people, I would no longer be considered beautiful. And if someone were to refer to me as a “looker” it wouldn’t be because I was nice to look at. Did I have a problem with this? Nope. So, what was the problem?
Back to those big questions, the ones I felt were partially responsible for triggering my dreams.
Would they, any of them, ever be able to find me attractive with a fucked-up face, or would it always be about the magic now? Would I one day wake up, take a good long look in the mirror and suddenly blame Quint for the permanent mark on my face? Would they expect me to have plastic surgery? Lord knew they could afford it. Would Ty and the twins still look at me with lust in their eyes? All important questions that were unanswered and would likely drive me insane while thinking about.
The only thing I was certain of? Dash wouldn’t look at my face and be appalled. And didn’t that thought make me incredibly sad. That man had more scars on his back than I could count, and he understood dysfunctional family dynamic much better than even I could. He deserved a fucking medal.
“Babe.”
Shit. I had forgotten all about the man standing behind me in the open doorway.
I had to clear my clogged-up throat twice before I could force out one word.
“Yeah,” I croaked.
“Are you alright?” Quinton asked me in a kind, gentle voice.
No. Absolutely not.
I closed my eyes. I had told him I didn’t want lies between the two of us, yet I did not want to answer his question honestly. I couldn’t do that to him, though. Not after all my crap about honesty. If I expected it out of him, then he certainly deserved it out of me.
“No,” I croaked out. “I am not okay.”
Boy, it was a whole lot harder than I would have imagined to push those words out past the massive lump currently taking up residence in my throat. I would tell you it felt good to get those words out, but that would be a big, fat lie.
I heard him as he entered the bathroom and made his way towards me.
The only thing I saw in the mirror was my big green eyes, my demons dancing right at the surface for all to see. I desperately wished I knew how to mask them from others, so I didn’t come off as damaged goods at first eye contact.
Big, warm hands gripped my shoulders from behind as Quint leaned into my back. He rested his chin against the side of my head as his dark eyes met my green ones in the mirror.
Quinton met my eyes without flinching this time. I should have been happy and relieved because of this. I felt nothing of the sort.
“What do you see when you look at me?” I asked him.
Immediately, I regretted asking the question out of fear I wouldn’t like his answer.
What I really wanted to ask him, what I wasn’t brave enough to ask him, was whether or not he found me ugly, but I hadn’t been able to force those words out.
Quinton’s hands dropped away from my shoulders and he wrapped his arms around my chest. His eyes met mine in the mirror.
“You don’t already know?” he murmured.
I shook my head. How would I have known if he’d never told me before? And why would I ask a question if I already had an answer for it? Wouldn’t that be a waste of time?
“How can you not know?”
I frowned. “Because you’ve never told me?”
“Babe, it’s obvious.”
Now he was starting to piss me off. I wasn’t in the mood to pry an answer out of him or get into a verbal tussle with him.
I tried to pull away from him, but his arms tightened almost to the point of pain. I wasn’t going anywhere, and I knew it. I gave up the struggle before I ever really started.
“What do I see when I look at you? Hmmm…” His voice took on a teasing tone. “Well, I see this crazy girl. She has really big hair in the mornings. Like, we’re talking,” he unwrapped his arms from my body and held them out wide at his sides, “biiigggg. Don’t you worry, though, I think it’s hot. Not sure if the other guys are going to be into it. I bet Damien gets you some kind of hair care product that reduces volume. Then again, he might surprise us and be less of a dick with you than he’s been with other chicks. One can hope. And, sometimes you can get this look. I don’t know how to describe it, but I’m thinking it’s the face you make right before you blow.”
“Excuse me?” I muttered angrily as he wrapped his arms back around my chest. I was amazed that I could stand there in a towel and not be uncomfortable with him wrapped around me. “I do not… blow. Whatever that means.”
“Babe. You threw a rock at my head.”
I was never going to hear the end of that horrible rock business. One bad decision and I was in for a life sentence. Wasn’t that a bitch.
“You tried to burn Marcus’s house down.”
I sighed. That was a gross exaggeration. Accidently light one shoe on fire with your magic and suddenly you’re a pyromaniac. I didn’t even own a damn lighter or a book of matches for goodness sake.
“Then there’s the shit that comes out of your mouth.” His body started to shake with laughter. “Fucking crazy.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked snottily. I absolutely did not say crazy things!
“Babe… Come on, be serious right now.”
I glared at him in the mirror. This was not going how I had expected. I didn’t think he’d actually laugh at me, but here we were.
“You told me you were going to super glue my lips shut after you stuck a turd in my mouth.”
I winced. I had said that. And in front of Dash of all people. How embarrassing. I was too upset to blush. Small miracles.
“You called one of our female clients an asshole to her face. Granted, she is an asshole, but still, this is you we’re talking about. You, Ms. Stick Up Her Ass, Prude herself. Fucking crazy.”
I pursed my lips angrily. I had done that too and the lady had ended up slapping me in the face, proving me right, that she really was an asshole.
Quinton took one look at my pursed lips and burst out laughing.
He looked good laughing. Softer. Relaxed. A lot less hollow.
I hated to ruin it, but I had promised myself I would try not to keep things inside anymore when it came to the guys.
I pointed a finger to my cheek and asked, “Does this make me ugly now? Do you think the rest of them are going to only want me for my magic now, because of this?” Not that I didn’t think that was already a distinct possibility for some of them already.
Quinton immediately stopped laughing and scrunched his eyes closed tightly.
“Fuck no,” he grunted, sounding pained. “Never, Ariel. You could never be ugly.”
He said the words as if he truly believed them, and I instantly relaxed into his stiff body. I couldn’t help but believe him. That didn’t mean the rest of them didn’t find me ugly, just because Quinton didn’t. But for now, I would focus on the fact Quint didn’t and that would be good enough for me. Until he left me alone or I was forced to come face to face with Damien and his Prom King face.
“Julian has something for it that will help with the scarring, if you’d like. It won’t remove everything, and I honestly don’t know how much it will take away, but it’s an option that is open to you. Julian will offer it to Dash as well, even though Dash won’t take it. But I think you should, take it, that is.”
I opened my mouth to protest as he shook me gently to keep my mouth shut.
“And, no, it’s not because I think you are ugly so don’t even fucking think to say it. It’s not for you, it’s for me and the rest of the guys. For me? I’m gonna hold onto this guilt for being the reason you and Dash got hurt until the day I fucking die. But that’s my problem, and I’m not trying to make it yours. I swear, that’s not what I’m trying to do here. I would, however, like to beg you to consider letting Julian work his magic and that is solely for selfish reasons. Every time I see that mark on your face my guilt is going to grow stronger until, eventually, I choke on it. You have the opportunity to make this a little easier on me, and I know it’s selfish to ask but I’m going to ask anyways because I don’t have a problem with being a selfish prick. That’s a part of who I am. So, please, do me the favor of letting Julian take care of you. For him as well.”
There was a lot to take in there, but I focused on the last part. “Why for Julian as well?” I asked quietly. I had a lump lodged in my throat the size of a baseball and it was hard to force the words out around it.
I didn’t want Quinton to feel guilty for what happened. I didn’t want him to feel blame for what Chucky did. Quinton was just as messed up as I was over this. The only difference was I didn’t blame myself for what happened to Dash. I could have, but I didn’t. I could put myself at fault because the only reason Chucky had been there was because I had stayed there. If not for my presence in Dash’s home, Chucky would likely have never met the man and none of those horrible things would have happened to him. But I chose not to think about it in that way. If I went down that road I would go insane. Just like Quinton was going to drive himself insane.
Quinton took in a shuddering breath as he placed his face in the crook of my neck.
“Julian has a way about him with healing. He always has. It’s funny because he can destroy just as easily as he can heal. He’s always been like that, ever since we were kids. Destroy with one hand, heal with the other. Dash has never let him help with the marks on his body, not even when they were new and raw. Julian took it personal and has always seen it as some kind of failure on his part. This will be no different. If you turn him down too, and he has to watch that eat at me, he’s really going to feel like shit. Please, do me a favor, and just think about it.”
I sighed, long and loud. I knew Julian was capable of healing with the things he created because I had allowed him to use some kind of cream he had concocted on my face and neck after a particularly violent interaction with my mother. I knew he was capable of great things first hand.
Tentatively, I raised my hand to my cheek and traced over the mark in a whisper-soft touch, light as a feather.
I met Quint’s dark gaze in the mirror.
He had more demons now, too.
“Alright,” I heard myself whisper. “Whatever you want.”
Anything to make those demons in his eyes retreat from the surface. Anything for Quinton.
I think I loved him. Maybe just a little bit.
I was in so much trouble.