Accidentally Aphrodite - Dakota Cassidy Page 0,75
and dropped down into it.
Shit.
His grandmother dropped down next to him and ran her knuckles over his head. “I’m sorry, kiddo. Sometimes you’re the windshield, sometimes you’re the bug.”
His mother took a seat on the other side of him, blowing a long strand of hair out of her face. “Love stinks.”
In the esteemed words of the J. Geils Band, yeah, yeah.
Chapter 15
“Hey. You okay in there?” Ingrid asked, peeking under the gel pack Quinn had over her eyes.
No. Right now, she was not okay. She patted the gel pack back in place. “I’m great. Just resting my eyes.”
“I heard you matched anus-head with Cantaloupes. You’re a better woman than I am. He’s lucky I’m not Aphrodite or I’d have given him an arrow in his stupid ass.”
“Wasn’t it you who, just before we got on the plane to Greece, said I was frightening you when I went through my I’ll-leave-Igor-drooling-in-his-own-spit-slash-Lorena-Bobbitt revenge phase and that I should knock off all thoughts of payback immediately? You said it wasn’t healthy.”
“Very fair. But looking back, you have to admit, you were super scary. I mean, I knew the Quinn who was rainbows and puppies and suddenly you were all three-sixty, looking to gank him.”
“I was not going to gank him. I was just going to scare him—with a chainsaw. Remember, lots of great romances, in fact, some of the classics, end in tragedy.”
Ingrid laughed. “You’ve come a long way since that day on the plane, baby. Especially if you matched Igor and Miss Cantaloupes.”
Yeah. A long way. “Something you should know, by the way. Igor claims he didn’t cheat on me. He said Shawna wouldn’t allow it. Sure, they were emotionally involved, but nothing physical. He’s more of a man than I thought.”
“You believed him?”
“I did.” She couldn’t explain why, but she did.
“So where’s our resident hottie Khristos?”
She shuddered a breath and scrunched her eyes shut to keep more tears from falling down her cheeks. “He went home.”
“Where is home, anyway?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered. But she hoped it was somewhere nice with a stupid soul mate just waiting for him to show up and sweep her off her delicate feet.
Ingrid lifted the gel-pack again. “Let’s talk about whatever’s making you so glum, chum.”
“I’m not glum. What makes you think I’m glum?”
“This,” she said, pulling at the downward turn of Quinn’s lower lip, “all thin, followed by the occasional tremble, is definitely glum.” Cocking a pierced eyebrow, she gave Quinn’s lip one last tug for good measure. “So let’s talk about it.”
“Let’s not.” Please let’s not. She was still trying to do the right thing and the right thing was eating a hole in her heart.
“Why is Khristos gone then—which ironically happens to coincide with you trying to hide the fact that you’ve been crying? Don’t bother to deny it. Your eyeballs look like someone plucked them out of your head and stuffed them back in. What’s going on, Quinn?”
“Nothing’s going on.”
“It’s because Khristos left, isn’t it?”
“I told him to leave. It was time he got back to his life.”
“And why did you tell him to leave, Quinn? Because I don’t know if you were getting the signal, but he was pretty into you, and you were really feelin’ him.”
“Maybe you should be the Goddess of Love. Wanna bite my apple, little girl?” she joked to hide the dread in the pit of her stomach.
“I like human just fine, thank you. And you didn’t answer the question. Why did you tell him to leave?”
“It was all just too soon, Ingrid. I’m fresh off an ugly breakup with Igor, and even though we mended fences today, I learned a lot about myself making these matches and why I make the choices I make where men are concerned. I don’t want to make more wrong choices. Isn’t that the smart thing to do? No rebound relationships unless they’re wham-bams, was what you said. Just to help me get over the hump. Remember those words of wisdom?”
“He’s no wham-bam, Quinn, and you damn well know it.”
“I don’t even know his last name, Ingrid. Does he even have a last name? How does he sign his Christmas cards? Khristos Aphrodite? Khristos hyphen Goddess of Love’s Spawn?”
“That’s a reason to chase him out of your life?”
She didn’t respond. She couldn’t.
But Ingrid wasn’t letting go. “Still avoiding the question.”
“Because he has a life, too.”
“Nope. That’s not why you did it, Quinn. If you’re going to do all this reality, let’s do it right. You did it because you’re afraid