Godspeed

Chapter 27

Quinn was first back to the house after Jib’s service. The others stayed behind to have a meal with the family, to fulfill one of Jib’s last requests.

The hour was late, and I imagined he’d just been out walking, as he was prone to do when he needed more room to think than pacing his laboratory allowed.

I was in my bedroom, still staring out the window into the dark when I heard the knock. This time, he actually waited for me to answer.

When I saw the look upon his face, it took all my strength not to immediately take him into my arms. He needed to be held — I was certain of it — as much as I needed to hold him.

Seeing him this way, none of my questions about his past mattered any more; nothing but loving him mattered at all.

“I have a gift for you.” His voice broke as he spoke the words and finally entered the room. “From Jon.”

“Jon?” I asked, momentarily forgetting.

Quinn shrugged. “I never did call him Jib.”

My eyes filled again as I took the box and stared, unsure what to do.

“Open it,” he said. “Jon specified that no one was to wait to open them.”

I began to unwrap it and found inside a beautiful wooden music box.

“Try it,” Quinn instructed.

“No, I…”

“He would want you to.”

I shivered and turned the crank. A lovely song played, a waltz. The same waltz Jib had played on the piano the night I first met his beloved “Freak’s Chorus”.

Before I knew it, Quinn had removed his coat and approached me. Then, all at once, his arms were around me, and we were dancing.

Eventually the music box wound down, and so did the motion of our bodies as we swayed gently, side to side. It was as though, for a moment, he forgot about everything and everyone else in the world but me. It was the moment I had lived for, and I thanked Jib in my heart for this, the real gift.

Finally, he stopped still and stared so intensely, it was more through me than at me. There was a look of passion in his eyes, for an instant, so strong and true I could barely stand the sight of it. It burned in me and through me with a power I knew that I could not control.

I felt his breath against my cheek as I closed my eyes. He was so close now I reveled in the warmth of his body, and I wanted nothing more than to learn, at last, of all the things that I had until this point in my life only imagined in my darkest, secret dreams.

I forgot myself completely and leaned closer to him.

His hand brushed against my face; first my cheek, then down over my chin. Next his fingertips traced along the sloping line of my neck and I heard him sigh a certain way — a sound I had never in my life heard a man make — and that immediately led me to want to know what other sounds a man could make, if he finally gave free reign to his passion.

That was when I made the mistake of a lifetime.

As his hand boldly moved from my shoulder, closer to my heart, I couldn't stop myself from whispering to him — and in so doing, I deprived myself of what I was sure would come in the seconds to follow had I but been able to hold back; his lips upon mine, at last.

"Quinn." I breathed his name more than spoke it, and my heart raced to the point that I didn't know if it could stand the strain, but neither did I care. If he would kiss me, only once, I could close my eyes and die here, in his arms without a single regret but that I would never feel that kiss again.