Chapter 5 Ash #2
Quinn became a shadow of who she used to be, and now, slowly, I could see the old Quinn coming back, with Gray being a constant by her side.
She’d always been sassy, quick-witted, and yeah, occasionally an out-and-out bitch.
But not to us. Quinn was loyal to those she loved, and she had never once shirked from being a Devil.
Or I thought she’d been loyal, until she told me that she slept with someone else.
Then her loyalty was in question, but the whole gut-wrenching betrayal had stayed with me, too.
But when she miscarried, I realized that pride was one thing, but seeing someone I cared about, would always care about, hurting .
. . that was too much. When Jett told me at the beginning of freshman year that he wasn’t sure her story of her loss rang true, he asked me to do some digging.
She’d been evasive about how many weeks pregnant she was.
I wasn’t asking her, and she wasn’t sharing the information with Jett.
Which was an alarm bell for us all.
When Gray started pressing too, she clammed up and shut us all down. Since our breakup, she’d been present but no longer really in our circle. She’d been shut out, and my cousins had done that for me.
Or so I thought.
Eyeing both my cousins as they spoke to the girls in the kitchen, I realized they had both lied. Jett had never really cut Quinn out — that much was now obvious — and Gray . . . well, he had stood back, but now I understood it was for completely different reasons.
And Quinn? I watched her laugh at something Ava said as she diced the chicken breasts and then dipped them in a marinade she’d quickly made up.
Her dark hair was in some fancy braid. Her loose sweater and dark jeans fit her perfectly.
She’d always been gorgeous, but what I noticed more as I studied her was that she was happy again.
Chewing the inside of my cheek as I watched her interact with our friends, I realized she deserved to be.
I was so done with the bitchiness and the insults between the two of us.
No one should go through what she had. If I tried, if I really tried, I could maybe see how she and Gray fit.
Were they actually perfect for each other?
Probably. It was obvious that they were the real deal, so maybe I needed to loosen up with my own drama.
Movement caught my eye, and my gaze landed on Gray. He raised an eyebrow at the perusal of his girlfriend, and I thought of everything I had just said to myself. The mature rationalizations I had just gone through.
Gray smirked, and I really wished I were a better man, but nah, fuck him. I wasn’t ready to forgive and forget. My cousin could go fuck himself before I forgave him.
When I turned my attention back to the main kitchen, I saw Red watching me, and cocking my head to the side, I waited. The others were too busy making food, and I saw Red glance at them before she looked back at me.
“We have that assignment due tomorrow.”
She wanted to talk to me about schoolwork? “Yeah.”
She shifted in her stool so she was facing me more, and my eyes dipped to the V in the sweater she was wearing.
“Have you done it?”
“Done what?” When I heard the impatient sigh, I knew she knew I’d been checking her out. “The assignment? Yeah, finished it earlier.”
Red nodded, and I thought that was it until she surprised me. “Would you want to look over mine?”
I saw her uncertainty, and I wondered what her angle was. Was this a peace-making exercise? “Is it shit?”
She rolled her eyes as she looked at me, exasperation evident in her face. “No, I just want to make sure it’s as good as it could be.”
“And you’re asking me?”
“Well, you’re, you know . . .”
“Better? Smarter?”
“Such a jerk.” Her jaw clenched as she went to turn away from me.
Reaching out, I caught her arm gently. “Show me when we get back, okay?”
Wetting her lips, she looked like she was waiting for the punch line. “Yeah?”
“Sure, I’ll look over it when I watch the game.” I saw her frown, and I couldn’t imagine what she had to complain about now.
“I need to practice.”
“Okay.”
“But you want to watch the football?”
“Not seeing how this is a problem,” I told her truthfully. “Thought you got stage fright?”
Her hands ran over her thighs nervously. “And?”
“You’ll do better knowing I can’t hear you.” Perfectly reasonable in my opinion. Generous even. Here I was offering to not only read her paper but watch the game instead of listening to her screeching.
“You think you’re so clever,” she snipped at me.
My shit-eating grin pissed her off as I knew it would. “Obviously so do you, or you wouldn’t be asking for my help.”
I watched her struggle with her reply before she opted not to say anything at all and instead turned her back on me completely.
Looking over to the oven, I saw Jett watching me, and I rolled my eyes at his obvious disapproval.
I wasn’t even allowed to play with her? To hell with that; they pushed me into this situation, I’d be damned if I didn’t get to play a little.