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Octavia gave her a funny smile and handed Quinn her phone.
She tapped out her text and passed it back. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I’m glad you’re reaching out to him. I’m not condoning what he did or asking any questions. But there was a lot of emotion between you two.”
“Yeah. There’s more there than I want to admit. It feels a little . . . complicated.”
“Ready?” the orderly asked.
“Ready.” As they began to move, she remembered Octavia’s unfinished sentence a moment ago and turned toward her. “Hey, what were you going to say before everyone came in—‘But I really think . . .’”
A knowing grin broke out on Octavia’s usually serene face. “I was going to say, But I really think you should get in touch with him.”
10
NO REASON TO LIE
“You can see her now,” the guy at the nurses’ station told him. “Third door on the right.”
Jonathan was practically at Quinn’s room by the time the man finished the sentence, although he paused for a second in the open doorway, hands in his pockets. Her brief text said she was fine, but he needed to prepare himself in case she wasn’t.
She looked up at him, then immediately dropped her gaze. The eye above the bandage on her cheek was surrounded by black and blue, and a few spots of dried blood flecked her puffy lower lip. Octavia—or at least he assumed the woman who had been dripping hot wax on Quinn’s body at the club earlier was Octavia—stood beside her.
“Hey,” he said, not sure what kind of greeting was in order after she had ripped him a new one at the club but then texted him she was sorry and in the ER, could they talk?
“Hey. You came.”
He went to the bed and stood across from Octavia. “Of course I came. Did you really think I wouldn’t?”
“I wouldn’t blame you. I owe you a big apol—”
“So I should get back to the club,” Octavia interjected, gesturing toward the door.
Quickly, she took hold of Quinn’s forearm with both her hands. “I’ll check on you in the morning. If you need anything tonight, call me. Any time. I’ll get your number once I’m back at the club and text you mine.” She hurried out before Quinn could answer.
He held onto the bed rail to keep from touching her. She had spoken the brutal truth outside the club—she didn’t want anything more than a fuck buddy, and he wasn’t in a position to offer more, anyway. He might have caught himself falling for her these past weeks, but she was right. He wasnotrelationship material.
A nauseating realization had hit him as he walked home from Octavia’s earlier, that the fact he was a cheater was actually why she had chosen him that first night, that to her he was just the type of guy for a one-time fuck.
He had been right to think each time she texted him would be the last; he was lucky it took as long as it did to end. He had only come here because it was Quinn, and she had reached out to him. And he could not stop caring about her, or stop wanting to protect her, so easily.
The ache in his chest throbbed; it wasn’t easy to be near her now, knowing their arrangement was over. “You don’t look so fine. What happened?”
“I fell.” She stopped worrying the edge of the thin white blanket and looked at him. “How did you know I was there, at Octavia’s?”
“May I?” he asked, pointing toward the side of the bed where the railing ended.
“Please.” She shifted her legs over to make room for him. He didn’t want to answer her question. It didn’t seem like the right time to tell her that her colleagues at Leigh’s had been gossiping.
“How’d you fall?”
“I was running, and I tripped.”
Why would she be running?
“Sorry to interrupt.” It was the nurse who had been at the station when Jonathan arrived. He came into the room holding out a white plastic bag with blue capital letters. PATIENT BELONGINGS. “The ER sent up your things,” he told Quinn.
Between the N and the G, a pointy black patent heel poked through the bag.
