#rifp....

Or rather, the car slams into something else. 

She can’t tell if it’s a few minutes or a few seconds where there’s a gap in her memory. Dully feels the sting of pain against her face, catches sight of the airbag pinning her back against the seat before it deflates. Her hands shake, struggling to unbuckle her seat belt, grab her purse. Check her phone, to see the notifications blinking at her.

Another missed call. Grady, O. Quinn doesn’t think, only hits the small green icon underneath his name. He picks up on the first ring.

“Owen,” Her voice doesn’t sound like her. The heel of her hand scrubs at her face, and comes away red. She never calls him by his first name. The voice on the other line pauses, a slow breath held in suspense. He already knows something happened. He doesn’t need to ask what. 

“Do you know how to send me your location?” He asks her. She nods, mutely, realizing only after he can’t hear her. 

“Yeah. Just -- just give me a minute.”

It takes him less than thirty minutes to reach her, his car pulling up slowly adjacent to the accident. Gives a brief scan of the area, jaw tense, shoulders squared, before looking at the car. At her, lingering by the trunk of her car, head bowed. She’d long since wiped her face, but the blood from a busted nose has a way of staining the skin. 

“Let me check you over--”

“Please, just. Don’t.” Quinn looks away, fingers curling into the lapels of her coat. Owen approaches, but doesn’t push the subject. Only looks at her, something unreadable in the cold dark. 

“I just wanted to go home. To see Shaun. To sleep.” And it’s there that Quinn laughs, and it feels more like she wants to cry. Here, she’s not a grown woman. Here, she’s not a representative for her state, her country, her people. Here, she feels like something small. Someone not in CONTROL.

She doesn’t see a car accident. She sees her mother’s face. Her father’s disappointment. Hears their words, clear as day. ‘How could you be so stupid, Quincy?! How could you jeopardize everything we worked for? How could you do this to your mother?’

“I’m so tired. There was -- there was a deer, and,” Quinn cuts herself off. It doesn’t matter. The reasons don’t matter, only the effect, the CONSEQUENCE. Fingers that would normally pinch at the bridge of her nose, as if to push back whatever nerves and tension lie, instead come to wince at the sting of pain. “I’m just--” 

“It’ll be okay,” Owen says softly. She thinks she hears disappointment. Thinks she sees it in the tense grit of his mouth. Quinn wilts, closing in, closing away, before she turns. She shouldn’t have called him. She shouldn’t have been so sloppy. Her mother would be right--

“I’ll take care of it.” His hand settles at her back, a source of warmth over shoulder blades that dig out against her skin from such a rigid posture. A crease forms between her brows, already charting the possibilities of what could occur from here. The mess. The cleanup. The insurance claim, the news that will result from it, the possible media circus, and then, her parents finding a way to try and spin this in their favor AS THEY ALWAYS DO. 

No. It needs to disappear. It needs to all go away. But it can’t, and it won’t, and once again Quinn is merely a vehicle to her own life instead of the driver. The proverbial sedan wrapped around a tree, helpless to the fate of its shitty owner.

“But what about--”

“Quinn, no,” Owen cuts her off. Levels her with a stare, a curt shake of his head. “No what-about’s. No what-if’s. Everything will be okay. I’ll make a few calls, take care of it. I promise.”

Quinn stills. She looks at him, now, as if seeing someone different. Seeing something she hadn’t before, peering out from those dark green eyes. Has the feeling that he’s seeing the same in her, here, now. Her hands reach for one of his -- a pitiable way to express gratitude where words can’t. Can’t. Can’t. Her head bows. And just like that, she concedes.

“Okay,” Quinn tells him. Her fingers curl around his hand. Thank you, she tries to convey, in the way her thumb smoothes over him, feeling a cobweb of nicks and scars and callouses across his skin. Thank you. Heat bleeds through, and with it, the twitch of his own fingers returning the gesture. It’s only when Quinn speaks, that their look disconnects, that the moment passes.

“I’ll wait for you in the car.” 

“Okay.” He answers softly. Looks down at her, something unguarded. Just barely, she feels his hand squeeze her back, before pulling away. “I’ll be right here. I promise.” 

Her father would say it’d be a foolish thing, to believe in him, then. But she does.