J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [392]
“I didn’t know— Motherfucker!”
“Stings, huh.” Qhuinn went around the table, to his buddy ’s back. “I’m going to do this one now, and I think you’d better brace yourself. It’s even deeper.”
Qhuinn put another towel under the wound and hit it with shit that smelled like Lysol. As Blay hissed, he winced. “It’ll be over in a second.”
“Bet you say that to all the—” Blay stopped right there.
“Nah. I don’t say that to anyone. They take me as I come. They can’t handle it, it’s their problem.”
Picking up a sterile pack of gauze, Qhuinn tore the thing open and pressed the white weave against the wound between Blay’s shoulder blades. “I’ve absolutely thought about us . . . but I see myself with a female long-term. I can’t explain it. It’s just the way it’s going to be.”
Blay’s rib cage expanded and compressed. “Maybe because you don’t want another defect?”
Qhuinn frowned. “No.”
“You sure about that.”
“Look, if I cared what people thought, do you think I’d do what I do already?” He went around and blotted the slice on Blay’s chest, then tended to the wound on his shoulder. “Besides, my family’s dead. Who’ve I got to impress anymore?”
“Why were you so cruel?” Blay asked in a dignified voice. “Back in the tunnel at my place.”
Qhuinn picked up a tube of neomycin and went around to his buddy’s back again. “I was pretty sure I wasn’t coming back, and I didn’t want you ruining your life over me. Figured it was better for you to hate me than miss me.”
Blay laughed for real, and the sound was nice. “You are so arrogant.”
“Duh. But it’s true, isn’t it.” Qhuinn smoothed the milky ointment onto the break in Blay’s skin. “You would have.”
As he came back around in front, Blay lifted his head and his eyes. Their stares met, and Qhuinn reached out and put his palm on his friend’s cheek.
Rubbing his thumb gently back and forth, he whispered, “I want you with someone who’s going to be worthy of you.
Treat you right. Be only with you. I’m not that guy. Even if I settled with a female . . . shit, I tell myself I could be with just her, but in my heart of hearts, I don’t really believe that.”
The yearning in the blue eyes staring up at him broke his heart. It totally did. And he couldn’t imagine what it was that Blay saw in him that made him so special.
“What is wrong with you,” he whispered, “that you care so much about me?”
Blay’s sad smile added about a million years to his age, lining his face with the kind of knowledge that came only after life kicked you in the nuts a number of times. “What is wrong with you that you can’t see why I would?”
“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that.”
“Promise me something?”
“Anything.”
“Leave me if you want, but don’t do it for my own good. I’m not a child, and I don’t break easily, and what I feel is none of your goddamned business.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You weren’t. So promise me?”
Qhuinn exhaled hard. “Fine, I promise. As long as you swear you’ll look for someone real, okay?”
“You’re real to me.”
“Swear to it. Or I’m going to do that I-am-an-island bit again. I want you open to meeting someone you can really have.”
Blay’s hand crept up Qhuinn’s forearm and squeezed his wrist, the pact becoming solid on both sides. “Okay . . . all right. But it’s going to be a guy. I’ve tried females, and it just doesn’t feel right.”
“As long as you’re happy. Whatever makes you happy.”
As the tension eased between them, Qhuinn wrapped his arms around his friend and held him close, trying to absorb the male’s sadness, wishing there were another way for them.
“I suppose this is for the best,” Blay said into his shoulder. “You can’t cook.”
“See? I’m so not Prince Charming.”
Qhuinn could have sworn Blay whispered, “Yes, you are,” but he wasn’t sure.
They pulled apart, looked into each other’s eyes . . . and something shifted. In the silence of the whole training center, in the vast privacy of the moment, something changed.
“Just once,” Blay said softly. “Do it just once. So I’ll know what it’s like.”
Qhuinn started to shake