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“If you were so long without them, how are you still addicted?” she asked. “Isn’t the point of separating yourself from something to break the habit?”
“If you’re a normal person, maybe,” Quincy said. He took a long drag on the cigarette, and turned his head away before blowing the smoke between his lips. Anne was still frowning at him.
“Could I try?” she asked. Her voice was quiet, like a mouse baby squealing for milk from its mother.
Quincy, if it were any other day, would have laughed. Hell, if it were even thirty minutes earlier he would have laughed in Anne’s face. She didn’t seem the type, but who was he to deny her? He passed over the cigarette, noting the feeling of electric sparks going through him where their fingers touched.
“Don’t inhale,” he warned.
“I thought that was the point of smoking?” Anne asked, a slight furrow to her eyebrows.
“Not for your first few times,” Quincy said. He leaned back against the tree, watching as Anne hesitantly brought the roll of nicotine to her lips. He watched with rapt eyes as her lip wrapped around the end of it, plump and lush. Quincy wondered just exactly how amazing those lips would feel wrapped around something…else.
He crossed his legs to hide his growing problem, and laid his hands over his lap. The last thing that Anne needed to know was that he had popped a boner like a middle school boy. It would break his image, and would drive Anne away. She was the first friend, no matter how shy that friendship was. Even if he didn’t know the most basic things about her, she was the only person who had bothered to talk to him. Most were scared away by his dark gloom, let alone by the telltale tattoos all over his body.
In a moment, Anne was passing the cigarette back to Quincy, spluttering and coughing until she couldn’t breathe. Her mouth was on fire, and she couldn’t summon enough saliva to spit to the ground to get the taste out of her mouth. Quincy cracked a smile, but didn’t laugh at her.
“How do you do that so casually?” she asked. Her eyes were watering at the edges, and she turned to spit out another mouthful of disgusting saliva. “That was horrible!”
“I guess you get used to it,” Quincy said. He took the cigarette back from Anne, and took another drag on it. He could still feel the mild wetness from where Anne’s lips had been just moments before. “It’s not so bad after doing it since you got into high school.”
“Don’t you know those things kill you?” Anne muttered. She had a sour expression on her face as she watched Quincy exhale the tar-like smoke. “Why do you smoke like that?”
“I don’t care if I die,” Quincy said. It was almost a whisper, so quiet that he wasn’t even certain if he had truly said it aloud. “I smoke because maybe it will make me die a little faster.”
Anne fell into a reverent silence as she looked up at Quincy. She had never known the pain of thoughts like those, and she couldn’t imagine the true weight of them. Simply hearing the words had put her into a trance.
“Why do you think like that?” she asked. She knew that most people didn’t have a reason, but she knew that Quincy would have to. He was nice, despite his outward appearance.
“Because no one would care if I was gone. I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, and it’s ruined my life for good.” Quincy sighed, and crushed out his cigarette in a near patch of snow. He waited until it melted away in a soft sizzle until the light went out at the end of the cigarette. “There’s no way for me to move forward, so I figure I can do what I want now. If that’s smoking every day and getting into fight after fight when I’m drunk and can’t pay the liquor tab, then so be it.”
Anne looked Quincy up and down, the words weighing heavy on her heart. She leaned forward, and pressed a soft kiss to Quincy’s cheek. He turned to stare at her like he had just been burned or punched in the jaw. His eyes were wide as he looked into Anne’s soft, sincere ones.
“I would care if you were gone,” she said.
Chapter Six
It happened in a flash, in a flurry of snow and limbs. What had once been a casual talk under a tree turned into a sudden pinning of Anne beneath Quincy. He had maneuvered her hands above her head, and had both of her wrists pinned in only one of his large, calloused hands.
Anne felt like a rabbit trapped in a cage, staring up at Quincy as though he might consider harming her in some way. Deep within her, she knew that it wasn’t true. She knew that he wouldn’t do anything that she didn’t want. And in that moment, there wasn’t anything that she didn’t want. She watched him with attentive eyes, large like moons and curious to see the next action play out.
“You say you’d care,” Quincy growled. “You don’t even know me. You don’t know what I’ve done. You can’t say that you would care about me without knowing what I’ve done in this world.” His other hand snaked up Anne’s body, pausing briefly over her breasts before coming to rest on top of her throat. He didn’t press down, but made his presence known.
Anne hesitated at first, the words catching in her throat. Quincy’s hand felt enchanted in that moment, preventing her from producing logical words that could win Quincy over to see her side. Truthfully, she doubted if Quincy would ever see himself as more than he already did, but she would be damned if she didn’t try her hardest.
“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, Quincy,” she said. She wasn’t afraid, and she wouldn’t allow herself to be pressured by Quincy into rolling over and submitting to his negative views. It just wasn’t the way she lived her life. “I don’t care what you’ve done, so long as you don’t plan on doing it again. Mistakes are mistakes, but they’re in the past and they should be treated as such.”
Quincy felt a smirk tugging at his lips, and he allowed it to curl into fruition, baring the first hints of his teeth. He leaned down, pressing his body flush against Anne’s. He knew she could feel the hardness between his legs, able to feel the press of it through his dark-stained jeans.
“What if I’ve killed someone?” Quincy muttered, his voice lower than Anne had ever heard it. It sent shivers up and down her spine, simply thinking of how amazing he sounded.
“I wouldn’t believe it, coming from a person like you,” Anne replied. Her stomach was doing flips in her body, churning up anything and everything that it could. Her blood felt icy cold, and not simply from the chill of the earth leeching through her clothes and into her skin.
“You don’t know me,” Quincy said. He ducked his head under Anne’s chin, and pulled down the high collar of her dress. He lapped his hot tongue against her fluttering pulse, savoring the touch and the taste of her delicate skin. Anne tensed underneath him, and he trailed his mouth to her ear. “Maybe I have killed somebody. It’s easy to do, y’know.”
“I—I can’t imagine,” Anne stuttered, cursing her nerves for daring to show themselves at such a vital, intimate moment. Quincy’s lips were on her cheek, and it didn’t take long for them to find her way to her own lips, and Anne found herself longing for that touch. At the last moment, Quincy pulled away and moved back to where he had been, hovering mere inches above Anne. “But I still don’t believe it,” she said, a weak follow-up to her prior statement.
Quincy’s smirk turned knowing, and he tilted his head. “Maybe you don’t want to believe it, but I can see that you’re scared,” he whispered. His spare had traveled down her chest, over her stomach, and graced the spot hidden by her leggings. “Men like me aren’t common around here—just the thought of a guy with tattoos and piercings is making you all hot and wet.”
