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Marcus's eyebrows shot up high on his forehead as his eyes rounded in surprise.
"I'll do whatever the fuck I need to do," Quinton countered with a confidence that had me slumping in my booth. There was the Uncle Quint I knew and loved. Lucky me. "You just make sure nothing happens to you and that you stay safe. I can trust you to take care of yourself for the afternoon, can't I?"
How dare he? Like I couldn't look after myself? Like I got into trouble all the time and needed him to watch out for me?
As if!
I pulled the phone away from my ear and clicked the red button on the screen that ended the call. I wasn't going to argue with him anymore, it was a waste of my time and would only drive me insane. Quintonalwaysdrove me insane.
I tossed my phone down onto the tabletop and slumped back in the seat. I raised my hands to my face and rubbed my eyes tiredly.
"Did I hear you correctly?" Marcus asked in a voice that shook with laughter. "Did you say that Quinton Alexander wanted to fight your father?"
I squeezed my eyes shut tightly and prayed for either a miracle or a lobotomy. Either would work for me at the moment.
"I don't think we should talk about Quinton anymore," I grumbled, then groaned when I heard Marcus's quiet laughter.
"Would you like to talk about Rain instead?" he inquired and I whimpered.
"Nooooo."
"Everyone in your life seems to be quite the handful," he remarked, and I had the distinct impression he was laughing at me.
He wasn't wrong. Even though my life wasn't hard anymore and I wasn't getting kicked down at every turn, my life was still kind of crazy all the time. It was crazy before Rain came into it and the chaos had doubled since his arrival. As it was turning out, I actually enjoyed chaos in the extreme.
"Are you laughing at me, Marcus?" I asked, as I lowered my hands and peeked at him across the table. He smiled at me and shook his head, but I didn't believe him.
"I happen to like my life as it is at the moment," I informed him snottily. "Thank you very much."
Okay, so that wasn't exactly the entire truth because I could have actually done without the phone call from the psycho boyfriend and the looming threat from my psychotic father. I figured Marcus was aware of that, which is why his smile grew even larger.
As much as I enjoyed seeing him smile and acting like he was happy, I couldn't pretend that things were normal between us when they weren't. I was working really hard to not hide from things anymore and confront them head on. It made my life a whole lot easier if I stopped avoiding things and dealt with them right away. It made me worry less and it actually made it a little easier to just breathe.
"Why are we here, Marcus?" I questioned him plainly. "You avoided me because of Rain, you said, and I can completely understand that. Really, I do. Then you pop up out of the blue to take me to lunch and I would really like to know why. I love that we get to spend time together again, honestly, I do. I missed you so much and I'm glad you told me why you haven't been around. But now I want to know, really know, why you're here now. And don't try to lie to me because I've gotten really good at telling when people are lying to me."
I was also working really hard with Julian to try and come up with some type of spell to ink onto my body that will let me know when someone is lying to me. It had been something I'd been thinking about ever since I found out about Ty's, which let him know when people were trying to use magic on him. I figured I'd start little with the lies and work up to something big like the magic. It wasn't working out very well because Julian excelled at healing people, and I feared he had no idea what he was doing when it came to anything else. I'd never tell him that though.
Marcus sighed heavily and then I watched as he slumped back into the seat.
The waitress showed up with plates of our food and placed them on the table before heading back the way she came.
I watched him while I started eating. Marcus unwrapped his silverware and placed his napkin in his lap.
I tried for patience while I ate, but it was hard. Thankfully, he set his fork down and started talking.
"You're right," he admitted quietly. "I did have something I needed to share with you, which is why I took you out for lunch. I didn't want to discuss it with any of the others around because I’m not ready for this information to get out amongst our community yet."
He paused to take a sip of his Diet Coke and I shoveled another forkful of food into my mouth. I didn't like the way this conversation was starting out. My boys wouldn't run their mouths off to anyone and share his business within the community. They kept to themselves. And Rain... well, he lived on the very, very outskirts of the community and had no intentions of changing that any time soon. In fact, he hid from the Council and they had no idea he'd returned to my life. He didn't want them to know anything about him and I couldn't say that I blamed him in the least, because I, too, wanted absolutely nothing to do with those creepy assholes.
"The Council has asked me if I'd ever take any interest in joining them."
I choked on the food I'd just put into my mouth. I swallowed and quickly chugged some of my pop. I slammed the cup down on the table with more force than necessary and some of the Coke sloshed out.
"You said no?" I croaked out. At least I hoped like hell he'd said no. Anything else would be unacceptable to me.
"I told them I'd think about it."
"No," I whispered. How could he say such a thing to me? Was this some kind of a sick joke? This was Marcus, and after what had happened with his sister I would never have thought I'd hear these words come out of his mouth.
