I Dated Brian Quinn

Chapter Eight

Where are you?

Jackie stared down at the text from Brian. She was sure he knew by now that something was up. How should she respond?

She laid her phone in her lap and looked around Times Square. There were tourist bustling about in all directions. And she knew it would only get worse as the night fell and the lights in the square got brighter. Her cell phone buzzed again and she glanced down at it.

You deserve an explanation and I deserve the chance to give it. Please tell me where you are.

Jackie knew she couldn't hide from what was going on. She picked up the phone and texted back.

Red stairs. Times Square.

She pressed send and looked around at the faces surrounding her. It wouldn't be difficult to see Brian coming in the crowd. As she continued to search for him, she thought about what she would say. She wondered what he would say.

Jackie wasn't a weepy female who cried about everything that didn't go her way. In fact, the exact opposite was true. She'd usually ran toward the nearest tattoo parlor and inked her skin to remind her of the difficult times in her life. She wanted to be able to look back on everything she'd been through and know that she was going to be ok because she'd already made it this far.

She glanced down at the two blue dots on her wrists. She'd hoped when she got them that they would remind her not to trust anyone ever again. Now, with the jagged scars running through them, they reminded her that there was one person in her life that she knew she'd always be able to trust.

Brian had never told anyone else what she was going through. He seemed to sense exactly when she was at her lowest, and was always at her door. She remembered the time that he had knocked down her front door when she didn't answer. He found her sitting on her tiled bathroom floor, blood pouring from both wrists and tears streaming down her face.

He'd wrapped her arms in towels, and pulled her in to his lap. At some point she'd cried herself to sleep and he'd tucked her in to her bed. When she'd woken up, he had been sitting by her window watching her.

Each of her wrists had been bandaged. She later learned that she had passed out and he'd made a call to a doctor friend of his, ensuring that she was safe through the night.

It was the last time she'd ran a blade over the skin there. They'd never talked about it, but she'd caught him looking at the scars more than once. It pained her to see the hurt he often had in his eyes. Like her pain was his fault.

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As soon as Jackie had texted him, Brian picked up the pace to get to the red stairs.

He stopped when he spotted her sitting near the bottom. She was focused on her wrists and he knew what that meant. She was reliving that last time.

"Fuck." He said under his breath as he moved toward her.

He wasn't going to let his careless words take her back to a time when he thought for sure she would die.

"Hey." He sat down on the steps beside her.

She looked up at him and stuck her hands between her thighs, quickly hiding her wrists.

"Please don't go back to that place." He pulled one of her hands out and brought her wrist up to meet his lips. "Whatever you heard me say is not worth it. Trust me."

"Thank you for that night, Brian." She sighed. It felt good to finally say it. "I am acting like a fucking teenager."

"No, you're not." He held on to her hand. "You did hear what you think you heard. But you didn't hear the whole conversation. I told Joe that I used to think I'd never fight for another woman. Now I know that there's a woman I would lay down my life for. I was stupid to even talk about it."