Chapter 14
Quinn
I chew on my pencil eraser. Crushed blackberries…
Lying on my stomach in the field off one of Fallstown’s tracks, I jot down the ingredient in my notebook and add chocolate sauce.
But then I scratch it out and write chocolate chips instead. Milk chocolate chips. Sauce will only overpower the brown sugar and butter, and I want pockets of sweet.
“Oh, he looks like fun,” Mace coos.
Pockets. Of. Sweet. I write in my notebook. I like how that sounds.
Dylan, Aro, and their friends sit around me with their Bluetooth speaker and coolers, Codi hugging her knees and Mace leaning back on her hands with a couple of other girls whose names I don’t remember.
“Who is he?” Mace asks.
What else, what else… An extra egg yolk, for sure.
“Quinn?”
Cornstarch, sugar, salt, vanilla, baking powder…
“Quinn,” Mace says sternly.
“What?”
“Who is that blond in the black T-shirt?” she asks me. “The one under the hood with your brothers? Like Farrow, but with more muscles.”
The compass sits open on the grass, the needle wavering.
I lift my eyes to the track, seeing Lucas with Jared, Madoc, and Jax, all of them standing around someone’s car, smiling and talking about whatever’s so interesting under the hood.
My body instantly stirs, taking in his jeans and thick arms crossed over his black T-shirt. Broad shoulders, the lean lines of his chest…
My legs crossed at the ankles, I swing my feet back and forth and bury my eyes in one of my many notebooks. “Lucas Morrow.”
I kind of hoped he would’ve been up when I left this morning.
I’ve never slept in a house alone with him before, and I was barely able to sleep.
All I kept thinking about was getting up to make pizza and wondering if the scent would lure him out of bed.
A month ago, I would’ve enjoyed entertaining fantasies about what could happen with a house to ourselves.
Now, I’m too pissed. Still.
“Morrow…” she murmurs. “That name sounds familiar.”
“The party the other night was for him,” Dylan points out, taking a seat next to Aro.
Lucas stayed in the guest room all night, and he let me leave without any interference, interrogation, or commands this morning.
And without his scent hovering over my shoulder.
I glance at him again, seeing his hands in his pockets now and looking at ease as he jokes with Jax. The pulse between my legs knocks, and I heave a sigh, carving the ingredients into my damn notebook over and over again. Flour. How does a baker forget flour?
My phone lights up, and I see a text from my mom roll in.
Do you have a ride home?
I arch an eyebrow. Even from all the way in Bermuda, my parents are tracking me.
I pick up my cell and tap out a reply. Everyone’s here—no worries.
I have all the rides in the world to choose from.
I’m not even sure why I’m here. Not only does my dad hate me hanging out at the track around groups of traveling motorheads who have girls in every city, but I’m not a fan of the scene, either.
I just couldn’t move stuff out of my room with Lucas there tonight, nor did I want to be home alone and pathetic with no social life in front of him, either. I could’ve gone to the gym, I suppose.
But turns out, he was coming here too. Maybe he was trying to avoid me.
Love you, my mom texts.
I shoot her a heart emoji.
And Dad says he loves you and not to forget the meeting with Tom next week.
I let out a long breath and push my phone away. Tom Snyder. Our financial counselor. My dad wants me to start investing.
He won’t be happy until I have a cooking show, a magazine of my own, and a Martha Stewart empire. It’ll be another bomb to drop, in addition to me moving out, when they discover that I have no money left to invest. I spent it all on the down payment on the house.
I’ll call Tom tomorrow to cancel the appointment.
“Is he married?” Mace asks.
Dylan tells her, “No.”
I flip the page and start listing half-assed instructions for the blackberry blondies.
“Is he seeing anyone?”
“Do you care?” Aro retorts.
I tip my eyes up, gazing at Lucas again.
I saw him kiss more than a few girls growing up.
I saw that body on a young woman in my brother’s pool.
He’s not so high and mighty when he’s not playing babysitter.
Someone—probably many someones—get to see a side of him that no man is allowed to display with me.
“Quinn?”
I avert my eyes, tracing the words I already wrote. “What?”
“Is Lucas Morrow seeing anyone?” Mace asks again.
“I have no idea.”
“A guy with arms like that doesn’t let them go to waste,” she jokes.
I pull on my headphones to get out of the conversation, but I forget to turn on some music.
Dylan chides Mace. “Cool down. He lives halfway across the world. He’s only visiting.”
“So I’ll move quickly.”
Why did I think Mace liked girls?
“He’s in his thirties,” Dylan warns.
Mace flashes a smile. “He knows what he’s doing then.”
Her long legs stretch out, crossed at the ankle, with her tawny, toned legs bare in black jean shorts.
“And you’re nineteen,” Dylan continues.
“So I’m old enough, you mean?”
Dylan chuckles, and I try to hold back my scowl, but then Mace pushes herself to her feet, and my heart thunders like it’s five times its size inside my chest.
Fluffing her long dark hair, she saunters over in her tank top and combat boots and sidles up to Farrow’s side, propping her arm on his shoulder with the other hand on her waist. The one girl in a group of men crowded around some kind of Honda—I have no idea. I’ll bet Mace knows.
I lower my eyes but raise them again. And then again, seeing her confidence, easy stance, and how her hands move as she talks.
Lucas and Jax smile, Lucas’s gaze on her for so long.
Too long…
I look down. Then back up.
Why wouldn’t he be interested? Why wouldn’t anyone? She’s sexy and can handle herself with anything and anyone. I knew that the first time I met her.
What would I look like with a tattoo?
Dylan reaches over, grabbing a soda from the cooler. “I thought he was leaving.”
I draw a picture of my blackberry blondies, pretending I can’t hear her.
“Quinn?” she says.
I still don’t respond to her, pretending there’s music coming out of my headphones.
“Dylan!” Hunter calls, saving the day. She lays the unopened soda can down and runs over to him.
I let out a breath, finally alone. Lucas still lingers with everyone under the hood, Mace leaning her ass on the edge and looking over her shoulder at him.
He wouldn’t take her home, would he? To my parents’ house? And I don’t think she lives on her own. There’s always his car, but…
Suddenly, someone straddles my back, and I look over, recognizing Aro’s high-top Chucks. She starts tugging at my plaid button-down that I wear over my white tank top.
“What are you doing?” I yell, not giving a shit who hears me.
My arms flop out of the sleeves as she rips the shirt off me and then sinks her fingers into my hair, fluffing and teasing.
“Aro!” I growl.
She slaps a tube of lipstick in front of me, instructing, “Just a little dusting.”
“Why?”
“You let me know if he looks at your mouth,” she whispers, leaning into my ear, “and later, I’ll tell you exactly what he was thinking.”
Huh?
I pick up the tube and uncap it, seeing it’s a fire engine red. It’s not my color.
She must notice me hesitating because she adds, “Don’t you want to know if I’m right?”
Right about what? Lucas not being able to take his eyes off my mouth? What do I care—
She pushes me over, so I’m on my back, and takes the lipstick from me. Brushing it over my lips, she smiles as if unwrapping a present.
“Now, fluff your tits.”
I dig in my eyebrows.
“Do it!” she growls.
Quickly, I reach into my shelf bra and shift my breasts back into place as I rub my lips together. “Now get off me!”
But instead, she tickles my stomach, and I squeeze my eyes shut, laughing. “Stop!”
I’m laughing so hard, though, and I can barely breathe with her weight on my gut.
“You got a good blush on your cheeks now,” she tells me, leaning in. “Here he comes.”
I pop my eyes open. “Huh?”
In a moment, she’s gone, walking away, and I’m rolling back onto my stomach. Lucas stands at the edge of the track, looking over at me, a lightness in his eyes.
Where did Mace go? Farrow, Dylan, my brothers…everyone is invisible except him.
He strides over, his hands in his pockets.
I try to write the next recipe instruction, but my train of thought is gone.
“It’s good to see you having fun,” I hear him say over me.
I look up, returning his small smile as he takes a seat on the ground next to me. For some reason, everyone has disappeared, Codi and the rest of Dylan’s friends having walked off.
“Dylan and Hunter seem in love,” he says, his arms hung over his bent knees. “They were always a pair, I guess.”
Following his gaze, I see Hunter standing behind Dylan, his arms wrapped around her as she tips her head back and looks at him. Her lips move, the blush on her cheeks meaning she’s saying things only meant for him.
“It used to be Hawke and Kade,” Lucas muses. “Now it’s Hawke and Aro. Who’s Kade with?”
“Everybody.”
He laughs, looking down at me. And his eyes drop to my mouth.
I part my lips as the air leaves my lungs.
One…two…thr—
He clears his throat and glances to the ground beneath me and then back up to my eyes.
I have to turn away a little so he won’t see the corners of my mouth lift in excitement. Okay, Aro. You were right.
“That, um…” he stammers. “That looks like the notebook you left the last time we were here.”
“I dug it out.” I continue drawing my dessert bars. “Wanted to look back on how silly I was.”
The last time I saw him here, I was thirteen. He gave me the hat, and I gave him the compass. I dart my eyes over to it, making sure it still sits on the grass next to me.
I’d left the notebook here that night, and I was heartbroken to find out he’d dropped it off at my house while I’d been asleep. No one woke me up so I could tell him thank you.