Page 103 of The Puck Bunny

I can hear his mother’s excitement on the other end of the line as she says, “Fabulous” and asks who.

“We’ll surprise you. I gotta go if we’re going to get there for one-thirty.” He ends the call and Mom gives him a return nod of respect.

“You’re a ballsy one,” Bobby says.

Quinn throws his signature dimpled grin and I don’t know if I want to jump him or slap the smugness off his face. Wow. That’s some progress. A couple of days ago, I’d never have dreamed of such a thing. Now… I want hi— all of him—for all the right reasons, but with my eyes open and my soul ready to handle him.

The question still lingers about what he wants from me.

* * *

After we make a pit stop at my house so I can change and update the rest of the family on our new dinner plans, Bobby drives Billie Mae, Mom, Dad, Aunt Yolanda, and Grandma Zanetti to Portsmouth while I ride with Quinn.

We make it to the highway before I burst out with the question that can’t be contained.

“What the heck are you doing with me, Quinn? What do you want?”

CHAPTER 32

QUINN

“Everything. I want everything.” I chuckle and shake my head because I have to say this right no matter how difficult or impossible it is. “A lot of things,” I say. “But what you need to know is that I want a relationship, not a fling, not a friendship, and not an acquaintance.” That much I’m sure of. What a relationship with a woman feels like, I’m not so sure of. I’ve never had one. But I’ve seen it with my parents and my brother and his wife. I know what it’s supposed to look like.

She nods and I wait for her response as I pull onto I95 north. It’s an hour drive and after a minute or two I’m worried I’ll have to wait the whole hour before she talks again.

“What do you want?” I ask.

“Same. But more.”

“More?” I keep the car in the lane.

“Don’t worry. You asked what I want, not what I expect.”

“You should expect everything you want, Sara.” I put a hand over hers and she turns it over and holds on.

Driving to my childhood home is instinctive, , my driving muscles take me where I need to go without my mind’s involvement. That’s how we found ourselves on this back road, a short-cut home from the highway. A road that goes directly by the cemetery.

Shit. Why did I take this route? Fuck. My eyes flicker to the side of the road, grazing past the wrought iron fence and the headstones beyond, nestled among trees and grassy knolls. The car slows down like someone else is at the controls. Probably my buried baggage spontaneously unburying itself and taking over.

Re-gripping the steering wheel, I hold on tight to make sure I don’t turn into the cemetery’s driveway, and I press down on the gas.

Except my foot hits the brake. The car comes to a stop at the side of the road near the gate.

“Your father is buried here,” Sara says, putting a hand on my knee and staring at the side of my head because I keep it facing straight ahead. “What are you thinking? You want to visit him?” she says quietly, like she doesn’t want to spook me.

“I wasn’t thinking,” I say, honestly, every bone and muscle in my body stiff so that I don’t think I can’t move.

“Let’s go inside,” she says, her words soft and musical like a little bird.

“I haven’t been since…” I don’t bother finishing my sentence, but I turn and I look at her. I need to.

“Since you buried him.”

I nod. When we buried him in the ground, I buried everything about him deep down under my bones because it felt like the pain of facing the loss, of not having a chance to tell him—to show him—I cared, and to have him tell me he still cared… it was more than I could handle. It was that one last devastating blow that knocked me out.

I turn the car off, but stay planted in my seat, turning my body to face her. That much I can do.

She faces me, taking her hand off the door handle, getting the cue that we’re not getting out of the car. At least, not right now.