Chapter 8
Quinn
I put my hand on my stomach hoping that will curb the queasiness. Just keep walking, I tell myself, feeling his eyes on my back. If I hang on his every word until he leaves, I’m scared I’ll cry. It’s better this way.
“I have thirteen minutes.” I stroll across the lawn, Dylan and Aro at my sides. “Pizza’s in the oven.”
Plenty of time for him to get back to the party and start making the rounds of goodbyes.
“Plenty of time to make him nervous,” Dylan teases instead.
Noah hauls himself up over the side of the first bounce house and disappears inside. We start climbing a ladder of plastic stairs. “Make who nervous?” I ask, still keeping up the charade that every decision I’ve made since I was thirteen hasn’t been with Lucas Morrow in mind.
Dylan looks down at me from above. “Quinn.”
“Dylan,” I mimic but more curt.
I want to be left alone, and my family is about as skilled at reading body language as they are at reading ancient Greek.
The steel in my eyes better be clear. Are they really so dense that they can’t imagine how I’m feeling right now?
That I’m dreading every passing minute, and I’ll wake up tomorrow without the hope he’ll ever come home again?
What would she be feeling if it were Hunter?
Not to mention, I’m still pissed about them keeping a secret hideout right under my nose, too. Other than locking it up, I’m still deciding whether to confront them just yet.
I won’t take anymore meddling where my life is concerned, and that includes Lucas.
“It was a crush,” I state, downplaying it as we all climb up to the top of the slide. “When I was thirteen.”
“And when you were twelve and eleven and ten…”
“Just stop,” I tell her, looking behind me to Aro too. “And I don’t appreciate you two thinking it’s fair to use Noah or Farrow to make him jealous, either.”
Sending them to Astrophysics, putting them in my path, and not telling them why?
But Aro retorts behind me, “I promise you they are only interested in being used by you.”
“Fu…” I toss my head back, letting the swear word die on my tongue.
I find it hard to say “fuck” in front of others.
Dylan chuckles, and I can feel Aro’s smile at my back.
We reach the top and jump down, into the obstacle course. “Everything is better in hindsight,” I explain.
I don’t need to be twenty years older than them to know that.
“Lucas has changed.” I shrug. “He’s not very friendly anymore. Almost snobby, actually.”
I don’t admit to them that some things are so much better than I remember. His eyes on me and how they linger. His body and how much stronger he looks. The electric current that races through my blood when he’s close.
Other things have turned sour. He never acted like he was raising me, and it’s too late to start now. He treated me more like an adult when I was a kid.
I go on. “It’s like any connection I manufactured as a teenager never happened. It was all in my head.” I realize my brow is pinched and relax it. “He’s a stranger now,” I tell them, hoping I sound convincing. “And old.”
“And hot as hell,” Dylan blurts out. “Men get better with age. Did you smell him?”
I glance back and spot Hunter approaching behind her. Scowling.
“His body feels like he was made in the most elite factory,” she says, completely unaware her boyfriend is right behind her.
He reaches around and gently grabs the front of her neck, hauling her back into his chest.
Tilting her head back, she looks up at him, her eyes widening. “Well, I wasn’t trying to feel—” she stutters as he twists her around and backs her into the wall. “…feel him up. I just hugged him, and it was hard not to notice.”
“Notice what?”
She presses her lips together because she’s about to smile. “How. Hard. His. Body. Was.”
Her voice is filled with mischief and laughter, and Hunter bites her bottom lip.
I suppress the gripe rising up at the sight of my niece and nephew.
No, they’re not blood-related—their fathers are stepbrothers—but it’s still an adjustment.
I grew up with us all being family, and I haven’t been around much the last twenty or so months that they’ve been together to get used to seeing them maul each other.
She breathes out, blushing up at him. “I forgot what I was going to say next.”
I leave them to it, climbing the blow-up rock wall with Aro. We descend the little slide and start making our way through the maze of columns.
“Dylan’s just trying to help you get what you want,” she says behind me. “She means well.”
“I know.”
I know that’s what they think. They all mean well.
“But you are unhappy he’s leaving,” Aro says matter-of-factly.
“I’m unhappy my younger family members, including you, for all intents and purposes”—I throw her a look—“see me as pitiful and unhappy because I’m not in love.”
“Are you happy?”
“That’s not the point!” I scold. “It’s invasive!”
I didn’t mean to yell, but I want to put them all in their place once and for all. I’m not a failure just because I won’t play games to seduce my childhood crush on his last night in town.
Even though I am trying to avoid thinking about what I would do if he was sticking around. At least for another night.
I should’ve stayed with my pizza back at the oven. I was just angry. Didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of having all of my attention as if he mattered. When we clearly don’t matter to him.
“You’re right,” Aro says softly. “But family is like that, I’m learning.” A smile touches her eyes. “They’re the only people who ever get to see your true colors. But that also means you see their no-filter, advice-when-you-didn’t-ask-for-it, beautifully suffocating colors too.”
Yeah.
I close my mouth, remembering that her parents weren’t there for her. Not many people were, and she obviously prefers her new life full of interfering parents and people to count on. Am I out of line? It’s hard to think clearly now.
I climb the next ladder, and she follows.
“If you did want Lucas,” she broaches. “Where would you take him?”
“Aro…”
“Come on.” She sounds playful. “I know you haven’t thought about it at all, but where would you do it?”
I reach the top and look to my right, seeing him in his white shirt that fits him perfectly. It’s not hard to see what’s underneath. He stands on the patio, but his head is turned toward the bounce house.
I draw in a breath, murmuring, “His place, I guess.”
“He’s selling his place.”
True.
My mind whirls, thinking about how it would happen.
Uncontrollable. That’s the word that springs to mind. He wouldn’t be able to control himself, and neither of us could stop.
“His car,” I say quietly.
She smiles. “Ah,” she sighs, looking lost in a memory. “I took Hawke’s virginity in a car.”
An unwanted picture of the two of them in some cramped back seat, sweat making their skin stick to cracked leather, floats through my head. “Ugh…” I grunt. Seems so uncomfortable, and I’m not even talking about the car so much. This family overshares.
We leap down, bouncing out of balance and crashing to our stomachs. I laugh for the first time.
She turns on her side, and we continue to rock with the motion others make in the obstacle course. “You need a place of your own,” she says. “Maybe it’s time we help you with that.”
Hawke’s words from a couple days ago drift through my head. We’ll tell her when she’s ready to use it.
They were talking about their hideout. That’s what Aro’s referring to. A place where I can screw around like they do.
“I might have a place.” I sit up, the wall we just leapt from swaying and jerking with someone else ascending from the other side. “I put in an offer on a house today.”
She shoots up. “What?”
“Don’t tell anyone.” I lower my voice, but I can’t keep the joy off my face. “I don’t want to deal with my brothers until there’s no turning back.”
“Why are you telling me?”
“Because I think you’re the best at keeping a secret,” I explain, “and I’m too excited to keep quiet.”
She gapes at me, and I feel even happier about that. I surprised her. I don’t surprise anyone.
I called Mace, who called Farrow, who helped me take a look at my very own house. He had his own place, knew the area, and I trusted him to keep quiet, because if he knows something the ruling elite of Shelburne Falls—my brothers—don’t know, then that might amuse him.
I’m still nervous, though. What if it’s a huge mistake? It would take damn near the last of my safety net in the bank, and it needs renovations. At least the mortgage wouldn’t be bad.
I see myself standing at my new living room window, looking at the street outside in my new neighborhood, and I can’t stop feeling this incredible warmth inside my chest and down my arms.
My brothers are going to be so pissed.
“Then I’m excited for you.” She climbs to her feet and helps me up. “A new place to party.”
Oh, that’s right. Jared, Madoc, and Jax won’t worry at all if they’re at my house because Quinn never has parties.
I stop to think. Will I have people over?
I’m sure I will, but I can’t say the thought of an alcohol-infused bash with a bunch of people, many of whom are younger than me, is enticing.
Images of small get-togethers hit me, and that might be nice.
Girls’ nights. Intimate chats with friends.
Suddenly, goosebumps break out across my legs, the idea of my own space solidifying in my head.
I love it. No more constant questions. Are you home?
When will you be home? A little early for work, isn’t it? Who was on the phone?
I draw in a huge breath, so large I didn’t realize my lungs could hold so much.
Soon, I’ll be able to cook in a home kitchen and not have someone who’s worried about me or maybe loves me a little too much making a pressuring comment or asking a question that feels like I’m still fifteen.
I’ll have empty rooms, all to myself, and I can come home whenever I want, because I’m the only one with a key.