“Good boy. I don’t want you out there with whatever creatures of the night are wandering around. Now let’s see if we can figure out what happened in here.”
She was no fire inspector, but it didn’t take her long to put everything together.
“Oh no,” she said to Grizzly, who still hadn’t wandered far from her side. “It was my fault.”
She couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe she would be so stupid. It was the candle she’d bought—the pumpkin-scented one that reminded her of fall. She’d bought it on a whim a couple of days ago when she’d walked by the general store on her way to Baby’s apartment. She thought it would be a nice, homey touch for her house now that she had newly painted walls and some relatively nice, if mismatched, furniture.
It had signified the first purchase she’d made with the intent of staying here long-term.
Plus, she loved the smell.
She’d lit it tonight when she’d gotten home, the stress of the day already wearing on her.
She must have forgotten to extinguish the big, three-wick candle. Then somehow, the curtains must have blown into the flames.
She thought she had blown the candle out, but obviously, she hadn’t.
She sat at her tiny kitchen table and put her head in her hands. In the greater scheme of things, there hadn’t been too much damage done. Hopefully, the smoke smell would air out after a few days. The curtains that someone–she thought it was Violet—brought by when her house had been vandalized were ruined and needed to be replaced. And there was some paint damage on the walls that would need to be repaired.
Not bad unless she circled back around to her earlier thoughts.
Self-sabotage.
Maybe Peter was right. And Gavin had insinuated the same thing—that she was going through some sort of mid-life crisis. It happened; she was the right age for it. After everything she’d screwed up today at work, and now this, she had to admit she could be self-sabotaging.
She and Baby had discussed the possibility of him seeing a psychiatrist to help him through the transition of telling his secret to his friends and family, but she’d never considered that she might have her own secrets that she needed to dig into.
She couldn’t stop the tears that fell from her eyes.
How much of the stuff that had happened over the past year had she brought on herself? She’d tried not to think of herself as the victim, but she certainly never thought of herself as the perpetrator of her own problems.
She was toxic.
She was toxic to herself.
It was a horrible realization to face, but she couldn’t hide from it any longer.
She needed to regroup and figure out a plan. She’d go to the Thanksgria celebration with Baby because he was planning to let his friends and family know about his dyslexia. She wouldn’t cancel and leave him unsupported. Boy and Girl Riley wouldn’t be there since they were visiting a MS specialist in Atlanta.
But after tomorrow, she would need to keep her distance until she could figure out why she was acting this way. What was it about her that kept drawing the bad? To take some time to figure out why she was self-sabotaging and what she could do to stop.
Grizzly came over and laid his head in her lap, which made Quinn cry harder. A deformed dog who barked at the darkness was her spirit animal.
If that wasn’t fitting, she didn’t know what was.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The secrets we keep control us.
Quinn’s words bounced around in Baby’s head throughout the Thanksgria celebration. He knew he needed to spill his secret to his friends and family. It had controlled him for too long.
But still, forcing the actual words out of his mouth was more difficult than he’d ever thought it would be.
They’d all finished their Thanksgiving feast and soon would be heading outside to play football. This was the time.
He knew everyone in this building loved him. He knew he would die for them and the reverse was also true. But it was only after he caught Quinn’s quiet brown eyes from where she stood in the far corner talking to Kendrick that he found his strength.
“You guys,” he raised his voice so he could be heard over his family’s chatter. “I’ve got something I need to tell you. Something I should’ve said a long time ago.”
The sudden drop in volume made this harder. He found Quinn’s face again, and she gave him an encouraging smile and nod. But he still