The Last Thing (23 page)

“Shoot.”

“What exactly are we doing?”

I moved closer to my laptop. “What do you mean?”

“I mean. I can’t ever fit in with your life. What are we
doing?”

I wasn’t sure how to answer her. This all came out of
nowhere.

“Why are you bringing this up?”

“Just answer my question, Chase. What are
we
doing?”

“I thought we were falling in love.”

Her face turned cold, and she bit her bottom lip. The
computer screen wasn’t the clearest, but I detected a tear falling down her
cheek.

 No, I must be imagining it. I can’t tell

I always made her cry. She needed my reassurance again.

“I’m not going anywhere, Quinn. I won’t give up on us. You
need to trust me.”

“Trust you?” She held up a few tabloids printouts from the
internet. Pictures of me and Chloe, me and Harlow, and me and Lena covered the
screen.

“You know that is only gossip,” I told her as calmly as
possible.

“Gossip? Here you are with your arm around some model only
hours ago, and look at this one. Chloe ‘gushes’ on about how great of a kisser
you are.”

“We kissed for the movie.” My voice was monotone. “My
publicist wants the press to believe we are together. It’s to promote the
movie, nothing else. I swear.”

What else could I say? She was overreacting.

“Our relationship is too new to handle this type of distance.
This
picture shows the two of you tonight leaving the movie premiere
together!”

“She jumped in the limo. I couldn’t kick her out.”

“So?”

“Does it look like Chloe is here?” I held my hands up and
stared around my empty hotel room. “I’m coming home this weekend. What else do
you want from me? This is my livelihood, my dream.”

“I don’t know.”

“Then I don’t know either. I need to go. I’ve been working
all day, and I really don’t feel like fighting.” I closed my laptop without
giving her a chance to reply. I loved her, but she was right. We both wanted to
separate things out of life. I wanted the spotlight and red carpet events. She
wanted…well I wasn’t sure what she wanted, but it wasn’t the same thing as I
did. She wanted privacy, a quiet life.  I needed to do something before I lost
her for good.

Quinn

Rolling up my last piece of sushi, I wiped my hand on my
apron to pull off remaining pieces of rice.  I took the apron off and set it on
the counter leaving me in a pair of comfortable pajama pants and a large t-shirt.
 I turned to Chase, who was playing some stupid game on his phone.

“How was your plane ride home?” I asked.

“Good.”

“Did you have fun?”

He shrugged and continued to stare at the screen.

“Did you get to see your mom?”

“Not really.”

“Are you gonna talk to me at all or are you gonna play on
your phone all night?”

He raised his head from the small screen in his hands.

“What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t seen each other in weeks. I
thought…”

Aren’t we supposed to be in that giddy love stage?
Something had
changed between us since he’d been gone. He was quiet, deep in thought.

“ Yeah, I know what you
thought
, and I decided that
our only solution is to move in together.”

It was blunt, catching me off guard. Was this the reason he’d
been quiet all evening?

“Wh—what?”

He paced across the room, his hands clasped behind his back.

“I know what you’re thinking. Crazy, right? Well I’m not
crazy. I need you to be in this relationship one hundred percent.  No more
hiding. No more excuses.”

What could I say? This was happening all too fast.

“I don’t—”

His hand came out to stop me from speaking, and he took a
step closer so that our bodies pressed up against each other. His breathing was
steady, my heartbeat erratic, while we stared into each other’s eyes.

It’s time, Quinn. You need to go for it. Put yourself all the
way out there.

“Okay.”

“Okay? I figured you’d put up a fight.”

“I said okay.”  Why not? Our relationship was already moving
at an alarming pace, no matter how hard I tried to slow it down.

“Okay,” he repeated. “Well that’s good because I found a
perfect home that we can move into this month. Let’s go check it out.” He
grabbed his keys off the counter.

“Wait! What about all this sushi I made?”  I motioned toward
the twenty rolls I’d cut up and elaborately displayed on a large wooden boat.
Each roll had been hand crafted impeccably.

He peered across the counter before leaning over to pop a
piece into his mouth.  I opened my mouth to protest.

“Hey, that was my piece.”

“So what? Have one of mine.”

“No, my pieces don’t have raw fish in it. I can’t eat raw
fish because of the baby… I read it in a baby book.” I told him with a proud
smile on my face.

“Aw, dear. You’re reading baby books now.” His fingers came
up to lightly caress my warm cheek.

“Yeah, what you said to me before you left. You were right. I
need to take this pregnancy more seriously.”  I’d bought a handful of books
from the store a few weeks ago and devoured them all. I was a pregnancy guru
now. Chase attempted to pick me up in his arms, but his plans fell short when
we realized that my stomach was now in the way.

“You’ve gotten so much bigger since I’ve been gone.” He
reached out to rub my stomach.

“Imagine being the whale. Eating all this blubber.” I popped
a piece of sushi into my mouth.

“You’re not a whale. You hate the water, remember?”

I stuck my tongue out at him and scowled.

 “By the way, I don’t have any movies booked until after
Christmas so I was thinking we could visit our families for the holidays.”

What?

I coughed, choking on a stubborn piece of sushi. I leaned
forward, accidently throwing a piece of sushi right at his forehead. My hand
flew up to cover my mouth in humiliation.

Did I really just throw food at his face?

“I’m so sorry.”  I scrambled to pick off little pieces of
rice that had fallen from the roll.

Chase laughed and before I knew it, he picked up a few more
pieces of sushi and stuck them right to my forehead.

“Paybacks a bitch,” he declared proudly.

 I leaned back to glare into his dark eyes. They were full of
something I couldn’t recognize. A need, perhaps? No, they were full of desire
regardless of the fact that I had rice stuck to my face.

“Oh no you didn’t….I just spent two hours perfectly preparing
that sushi.”

One of the pieces fell off my forehead right into his lap. He
examined it closely.

“I wouldn’t eat this now. Your make up rubbed off on it.”

Though he found this amusing, I decided to play dirty. I grabbed
the jar of pickled ginger off the counter and smirked as I dumped it all over
the top of his head. My nose crinkled as the sour stench wafted my way. Chase
growled something incoherently before lifting his hand and rubbing it back and
forth along the top of his head. Juice sprayed out towards me as he did so,
making me squeal. He shook his head like a wet dog.

“This is gross, Quinn. I’m gonna smell like a hot pickle for
weeks.” He covered a deep laugh with his hand.

In a brilliant attempt to turn the table, I whimpered and
buried my face in my hands. “Oh…”

Chase’s laugh stopped suddenly, and he put a hand out to
console me. “What’s wrong?”

“You shot ginger juice in my eye.”

“Well there’s a first time for everything,” he teased

What the hell? He wasn’t taking my bait. I sat up and gave
him another glare. I was so tired of glaring at him.

“I know you’re pretending,” he told me with a straight face. 
I hadn’t realized until that moment just how much I’d missed him over the past
few weeks. I’d grown dependent on him, something I promised myself I wouldn’t
do again.

“That’s not fair….” I used my fingers to walk a path up his
leg. As I neared his crotch, I let my hand linger across the broadness of his
jeans. I could feel him twitching beneath my touch. Pieces of ginger littered
Chase’s shoulders and lap. Rice and fish randomly covered us. Who knew a food
fight could be so sexy? The tension between us had broken, and left nothing but
raw and uninhibited passion. I wanted to let him in. But would I freak out
again afterwards? I used my hand to apply pressure against him while his hips
lifted up to greet me.

“Quinn…” he mumbled.

 I’d barely touched him, but he was already coming undone.  I
didn’t want to take all the credit; this had to be the longest he had ever gone
without. All the feelings inside of my head jumbled together like the lotto
pick. This could turn out so many different ways. Each option required a
sacrifice, but in many of them, I was a happy normal twenty-one year old. His
hands moved up and down my arms. His soft hands caressing my body, making me
shutter in want.

 “I missed you.” My whisper was furious but unraveled the
longing that I kept hidden deep.

“Would you rather take things slow?”

“Slow? Our relationship has never been slow.”

He put his hands on either side of my head and pushed our
heads a bit closer together.

“Slow went out the window when you agreed to move in with
me.”

“Slow went out the window when I got pregnant.”

Our foreheads touched, pressing slightly together.

“Quinn.” He sighed and reluctantly pulled his head back. “Now
about seeing our families and telling them about the baby…”

Shit, he wanted to bring that up again. I wasn’t going home.
Not now, not ever. And especially not pregnant.  In a panic, I did the only
thing I could think of to make him stop talking. I reached over to our sushi
plate and dipped my finger into the pile of wasabi sauce.

 Before he could react, I popped my finger right into his
mouth, making sure to rub the paste all around his tongue. His eyes opened up a
bit in a husky surprise, but after he realized what was on my fingers he began
to tear up. It was a mean thing to do, but he took it like a man. When I tried
to pull my finger out, he clamped down on it with his teeth.

“Ouch! Hey!”

When my finger was safety away from his bite, he grabbed me
by the side of the head and roughly pressed our mouths together. His tongue
danced along my lips and swirled it along the edge of my teeth.

He understood that I wanted him to stop talking. He took the
burning in his mouth and shared it with me. The tears rimmed my lids and the fiery
taste made its way down from my mouth into the pit of my stomach. Long after
the taste of wasabi left our mouths, the kiss continued feverishly. My hands
went up to trace the side of his freshly shaven face attempting to meld our
mouths together. A kiss like this couldn’t ever end. A kiss like this was hot (literally)
with passion and desire. It deserved a standing ovation. And a standing ovation
it got.  I felt lightheaded and out of control, and from the sounds of it,
Chase wasn’t far behind me. I was ready to let him in completely to fill every
void in my heart. He wouldn’t let me down. He’d be the one to stand by my side
no matter what happened.  Suffocating brought back horrific memories, so I
reluctantly pulled away so that I could catch my breath.

“Two weeks is a very long time. Especially for me. Listen, I
know we fight like crazy. We annoy the hell out of each other at times. We
haven’t done a single thing in this relationship right. Everything has been
ass-backwards, but I love you. I love everything about you, Quinn. I love that
you pretend not to care, but you secretly do. I love that you carry such
emotion in your heart. I love that you have this incredible strength to move
past everything horrible that has happened.  You don’t pretend to be perfect. ”

Love? He was in love with me? Love complicated things, and
love made people act crazy. Did I love Chase? I wasn’t sure, but I needed to
give him an answer. If I didn’t say it back, he’d be hurt.

“What does your heart tell you? Do you love me?” Chase
whispered. He pressed my hand to the middle of my chest, covering it with his
own. My heart told me, yes. The love I’d felt with Bash was childish. It was passionate
and disturbing. That love for Bash had been comfortable and easy. It had
developed out of responsibility.

My feeling for Chase had blossomed right from under my feet, knocking
me over right on my butt.  Now it was hitting me in the head like the apple
that fell on Sir Isaac Newton. It screamed at me to yes. Just say yes.