His Paladin Page 4

  “Raine.” I nodded in greeting, trying to stifle the excited sparking in my chest that stirred at the sight of him.

  “What -- uh --” I started, and then cut myself off immediately as I realized, far too late, that there wasn’t any appropriately conversational reason for anyone to be in a cemetery.

  Thankfully, Nicole was there to save me. “We’re visiting great-grandpa,” she said, turning to point to a small grave that was only a few feet away from Grace. “We do it every month.”

  Raine patted the top of her head. “He was always there for me,” he said, his tone soft and familiar. “I try to be there for him, now.”

  I felt the tension evaporate from the air, expelled a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. It’s funny, how much easier it all seems when you know someone else has the same invisible wound, bears that same pain, and, like you, knows the only way through it is forward.

  “That’s good of you,” I told him, “I’m sure he appreciates it.”

  “Who are you here to see?” Nicole asked curiously, and Raine gave her an admonishing look.

  “Nicole, sweetie --”

  “It’s fine,” I said quickly, not wanting to embarrass either of them. “Just someone...very important to me.” That wasn’t a lie, but it made me feel guilty regardless. “I wanted to give them an update on how things were going with me.”

  Raine huffed a little laugh. “We do the same thing for my grandpa. He could never stand not knowing the latest gossip, so we try to keep our ears to the ground to have something to tell us when we visit.”

  “I told him about Jeremy Stoutmeyer,” Nicole informed me, adding in a loud, conspiratorial whisper, “He snuck out of school at recess and got in big trouble.”

  I smiled down at her. “I bet he did.”

  “He’s probably going to be suspended forever,” she continued, “like, until fourth grade.”

  “Until he’s old and gray, huh?” Raine asked fondly, and Nicole made a face.

  “Dad, everybody knows you don’t get grey hairs until you’re super duper old. Like twenty.”

  Raine and I shared a laugh. When we finished, he quirked his head at me, his eyes twinkling.

  “So,” he drawled, with a teasing edge that spiked my heart rate, “did you have any plans to return to Lochmire Castle any...” He trailed off suddenly, eyes wide in horror. “Shit, I mean --”

  “Swear jar,” piped up Nicole, her palms up.

  “Sorry,” he told her, sounding genuinely contrite, pressing a pair of quarters into her waiting hands. Nicole looked satisfied by the offering. He looked back up at me with a sheepish smile. “And sorry to you, too.” He glanced around at our surroundings. “I sort of...forgot where we were.”

  I shook my head. “No need to apologize. I did have plans to come back to Lochmire, actually. I think it’d be a great place to take my squad for a weekend.”

  He furrowed his brow. “Your squad?” Realization clicked on his face. “Oh, you work at the base?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I need a place to take them for an officially designated good time. Lochmire Castle seems like it should be a great fit for all three of them.” And me.

  Raine’s face brightened. “That’s awesome, really!” I saw his teeth graze against his lower lip for just a moment. “But I wanted to know if you would, uh, maybe be interested in a private combat training session before that? Like, just you and me?” He waggled an eyebrow. “Chainmail, foam swords, heroic action?”

  Private training session. I blinked at him, something inside me curling tight in excitement, but I couldn’t get my mouth to say anything other than, “Oh.”

  Raine paled at that, his mouth twisting into a worried line. “I mean, uh, only if you --”

  “Yes,” I blurted, too loud, wincing at the volume of my own voice -- Nicole covered her ears, shooting me an irritated glare. Raine’s eyebrows shot up, but I watched the corners of his mouth pull into a delighted smile.

  I cleared my throat. “What I mean to say,” I said, concentrating on keeping my voice even, “is that I’d like that. A private training session sounds...really nice.”

  Nicole, her hands now off of her ears, looked from me to Raine, her eyes growing wide, a large, goofy smile spreading across her face, visible even past the hand that leapt to cover her mouth.

  “Great!” Raine replied, and tilted his head to the right, his grin gaining a cocksure edge. “I figured you wouldn’t be the kind of guy to turn down a challenge.”

  I found myself grinning back. “I don’t give up,” I told him. “Ever. And especially if I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  Raine laughed, a sound that made me feel far better than it should. “I’ll keep that in mind, Quinn. How does next Friday night sound?”

  “That should be fine,” I told him, retrieving my phone from my pocket. “As long as you’re okay with me giving you a call if anything big at the base comes up.”

  “Sounds good to me.” He pulled out his own phone, and we exchanged numbers.

  Nicole was pulling on his hand, jumping up and down, looking between the two of us, her smile widening more and more with every passing second. He winked at her, and then turned to me.

  “Well, we’ve got a dinner to eat,” he said, slightly swinging the hand Nicole clung to. “But I’ll see you soon, Quinn.”

  I smiled back at him, gave him a nod. “Raine.”

  He waved, the pair of them turning around and heading back towards the parking lot, a flurry of words pouring out of Nicole in an excited rush, like soda from a shaken bottle, speaking so fast she was impossible to understand. I watched the two of them go, my chest pleasantly light and thrumming with joyful excitement.

  Then I realized what I had actually just agreed to.

  A private training session. Just me and Raine, the two of us together, alone. That sounded suspiciously -- and tantalizingly -- close to a date.

  And I hadn’t been on one of those in years.

  6

  Raine

  I could barely wait more than a couple days after we had met at the cemetery before shooting Quinn a quick text, scarcely able to believe that a date with him was an actual prospect.

  Hey, are we still on for Friday for combat training at Lochmire? I know you said stuff might get busy at work for you, so I just wanted to make sure. :)

  After I fretted back and forth over the smiley for about an hour, Roux finally plucked my phone out of my hands and sent the message, much to my loud dismay. It wasn’t until I was halfway through doing inventory two hours later when I felt my phone buzz inside my pants pocket. Heart in my throat, I dared to glance at who had sent it.

  Quinn.

  I swiped my finger across the screen so fast I thought it would leave scorch marks, my eyes darting across the text message, a reply to the one I had sent earlier in the day.

  Yes. Work is no issue.

  I sucked in a quick breath, bubbles of excitement rising in my chest.

  Awesome! I’ll pick you up at 7?

  7 is good. I’ll see you then.

  Okay, so he wasn’t going to win any awards for being a poetic texter or anything, but that hardly mattered. Date was confirmed. It was a real thing that was actually happening.

  It took me more than a minute to calm back down.

  The remainder of the week somehow both crawled and flew by at the same time. In-between fulfilling special orders, helping with armor fittings, and putting together more weapons, I kept up a steady stream of daydreams centered around one thing and one thing only: Quinn. Watching the corners of his mouth curve into a smile. Imagining the rough warmth of his hand in mine. Picturing us out in the grassy fields of Lochmire, watching the sunset together, a chill autumn breeze causing us to inch closer to each other as Quinn gently leaned in and --

  “-- and once Robert’s leather stuff is fixed, that’ll be it. Sound good, Raine? Raine? Earth to Raine?”

  Roux waved a hand in front of my face. I blinked, startled back into rea
lity.

  He frowned. “So tell me the part where I lost you.”

  “Uh, when you started?” I tried to hide between my shoulders, smiling sheepishly. Roux heaved a heavy, long-suffering sigh, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “You still have six hours until your big date,” Roux said, scowling, and Nicole giggled from somewhere behind us. “And if I know you -- which I do -- you’re going to drive yourself crazy once you get your head out of the clouds and crash back to earth like a meteorite and see you didn’t finish everything you decided you had to do.” He leaned forward, towards me. “So consider this a message from Future Raine: get all your work done, then you can make kissy-faces all you want for your new boyfriend.”

  “Well, I can’t argue with me,” I replied, and Roux rolled his eyes. I gave myself a little shake, trying to enter work-mode. “All right, from the top, if you don’t mind.”

  “Hey,” Roux said gently, his eyes worryingly serious, “You know, I could handle most of this on my own if you wanted to --”

  I gave a dismissive wave. “I got it, Roux. Thanks.”

  He pursed his lips, looking mildly hurt, but he didn’t push the issue.

  Thanks to Roux booting me back into focus, everything that needed to be done at Lochmire was finished by the time I left for home. After I had secured Nicole safely in the backseat, I giddily rolled the idea of the date around in my mind throughout the entire drive home. Tall, outrageously gorgeous, and a career military guy. What would my parents think?

  A great question. And one I frankly gave zero shits about the answer to. I hadn’t talked to either one of them in years, now, and I wasn’t about to start. They had never even met Nicole, not that I’d even let them near her with a twenty-foot pole.

  People say rules are meant to be broken, right? Like they’re a kind of cage, keeping you trapped, something stuffy and confining you constantly want to shrug off of you. I’m living proof that’s all bullshit. Rules are the ground you walk on, the bare minimum of knowing what you’re supposed to be doing in life, a foundation that’s there to give you an idea of how you’re supposed to live it.

  My parents didn’t believe in rules. Or time. Or common sense, really. As a toddler, I slept, ate, and screamed whenever and wherever I felt like it. Getting used to school, a place with regimented, segmented times for activities and sets of actual authority figures, was a pure nightmare. And forget about all the shit I pulled as a teenager. The fact I didn’t have a criminal record to this day was thanks only to several kind-hearted judges and my own knack for avoiding getting caught. Every waking moment of my life was a cry for help -- for structure, for stability, for solid ground -- and every time my parents answered with dead silence.

  It wasn’t until I finally exercised my limitless freedom in a way they didn’t approve of by applying to get myself literally shipped off via the Navy that my folks finally balked. They didn’t understand, not that they even tried to, either. How could their little, free-spirited Raine, who so obviously enjoyed his freedom, ever want to be one of ‘those people’? They argued with me, told me every terrible thing that was undoubtedly going to happen to me, shot down every counterpoint I tried to make, and then, finally, they told me that they couldn’t support me any longer if I was determined to do this.

  And that’s right about where I left. I walked right out of the house and never looked back.

  Of course, I never actually got into the Navy. Washed out during application process, everything coming to a screeching halt well before it ever started. That rejection that stung me to hell and back. I drifted aimlessly for a long time, learning how to get myself together after a lifetime of having nothing beneath my feet.

  It wasn’t easy. I made some incredibly poor decisions. A lot of incredibly poor decisions, to be fair. But they were my decisions, choices I made on my own. And after all that, I got a life I didn’t hate, Lochmire Castle, and, most importantly, Nicole, whose selflessness, good manners, and maturity far beyond her age were all things about her I truly treasured.

  “Your butt looks too big,” she told me, wrinkling her nose, after I had changed -- okay, squeezed -- into an old pair of pants that I had paid way too much for once we got home. I studied myself in the mirror, frowning, and saw that she was one hundred percent correct.

  “Really?” I asked, my shoulders sagging, unable to keep the disappointment from my voice.

  Nicole shook her head. “Really.” She walked over to my bed, where I had laid out several options, examining each one carefully before holding up a well-worn and slightly torn pair of jeans.

  “Put these ones on,” she said, throwing them in my direction. I failed to catch them, grinning as I scooped them up from the floor.

  “Probably not the best pair to wear on a date, sweetheart.”

  Nicole turned to face me, looking at me very seriously. “You’re going to Lochmire to teach Quinn how to do sword fighting for your date, right? And these are the most comfy pants you have. You won’t have fun if you’re not comfy, and Quinn would want you to have fun more than look super fancy.”

  Sometimes I wondered how I ended up with the best kid in the world, especially since her mother was so eager to get out of the picture as soon as possible. Being a single dad had never been anywhere close to easy, but Nicole and I got through every rough patch life had thrown at us so far as a real team, working together.

  “You’re right,” I told her, watching her smile in reply.

  “I know,” she said, tossing her hair, and then brought her attention back to clothes I had out on my bed. “These shirts are all bad, too.”

  We wound up pulling every shirt I had out of my dresser drawers, where I pointed out the ones that were older than Nicole, much to her amusement. Together, we found a green and blue checkered collared shirt that didn’t look half-bad on me.

  “Good,” she said, nodding in approval once I finished putting it on. “I think Quinn will probably kiss you.”

  I laughed, peering at myself in the mirror over my dresser. “Only ‘probably’?”

  “Well, you have to not mess it up,” Nicole explained, as if it was obvious.

  “And how, oh wise Princess Elora, do I not mess it up?”

  Nicole tapped her chin, face scrunching in thought. “You have to be nice,” she said. “Don’t yell at him if he messes up. Or laugh at him if he falls down.”

  I snorted at the mental image of Quinn falling down, and Nicole fixed me with a sour look.

  I held my hands up in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, noted.” I started to run a comb through my hair, nerves making me shoot for something close to decent, even though it would wind up under my helmet anyway. “What else should I keep in mind?”

  “Ask him lots of questions. Like what his favorite color is.”

  “Are you going to quiz me when I get home?” I asked her, raising an eyebrow at her over my shoulder.

  “Maybe,” she said, putting her hands on her hips. Then she grinned. “And, mostly, you have to tell him a super important thing.”

  “What’s that?”

  Nicole’s smile disappeared as she frowned at me in disbelief. “Dad, that you like him!”

  This was, honestly, probably the best dating advice I’d ever received. I crouched down to her eye level, smiling.

  “You’re very right, Princess Elora,” I told her, and she grinned back, pulling me into a tight hug, resting her chin on my shoulder.

  “Hey, you ever think about writing a dating advice book?” I asked. Nicole reared back, rolling her eyes.

  “Dad.”

  “I’m serious. I bet you could make millions.”

  “They don’t let you write dating books in second grade,” Nicole replied primly, and I laughed.

  We were interrupted by the doorbell, three short presses and then one that lasted until I finally ran down the stairs and threw open the door. Roux appeared in the threshold, waggling his eyebrows as he looked over my ensemble, the smug grin on his face wid
e enough to be split in two.

  “Well, well, well --” he began in a smooth tone, but I immediately shook my head, holding up a hand.

  “Don’t even start,” I said, and while Roux acquiesced, his grin didn’t leave.

  “Babysitter party!” Nicole shouted, spotting Roux as he entered into the foyer.

  “Heck yeah!” Roux replied, equally loud. The two of them hi-fived, then erupted into an impromptu dance number. I watched, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “Please make sure I come back to an unburnt house,” I told both of them.

  “Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” Roux replied, his dancing uninterrupted. “I promise I won’t try to cook anything on the stove this time.”

  “Microwave mac n’ cheese!” Nicole crowed, now spinning in place.

  “And the carrot sticks in the fridge,” I reminded her.

  “And carrot sticks!” she amended, and I was forever grateful vegetables had never been an issue.

  “We’ll take care of ourselves,” Roux said, gently pushing me towards the door. “You just get going and start enjoying your date.”

  “Wait!” Nicole abruptly stopped dancing, racing off deeper into the house. After a couple of minutes, she returned, a glitter-encrusted, star-shaped wand held firmly in her grasp.

  “For luck,” she said solemnly and I knelt down. “Now your dreams will come true,” she told me, tapping the wand against my forehead.

  “Thanks, Princess Elora.”

  She smiled, shifting from foot to foot, and then threw her arms around my shoulders again, smushing her lips against my cheek in a quick kiss.

  “I love you, Dad,” she whispered, and I felt my heart melt inside my rib cage.

  “Love you, too, kiddo.” I gave her an extra squeeze. “Make sure Uncle Roux doesn’t get into shenanigans.”

  “Promise,” Nicole replied, in a tone of voice fit for someone five times her age.

  “Have a good time!” Roux called from the doorway as I stepped into my car. I gave them both a final wave, starting the engine, and typing Quinn’s address into my phone. When I arrived, I took a couple of deep breaths, pulling up alongside the curb and glancing up at his apartment. It took me a couple more minutes of rummaging around in the trunk and putting on the final touches of my outfit before I finally got up to Quinn’s door, but I had a strong feeling it was going to be well worth it.