Chapter 12
Quinn
Nine Months Earlier.
I ndie punk music blasts out of the speakers at a deafening volume when the doors of Weinstein Hall open and a group of college kids stumble out onto the street, stinking of sweat, cigarette smoke, and spilled beer.
The heavy door closes again behind them, and thank fuck for that because I don’t think I can listen to another second of this “music,” and I use the term loosely.
It’s shit. Total shit.
Whoever’s playing the guitar needs some serious lessons, and don’t even get me started on the lead singer. The guy is so off-key he’s not even in the same stratosphere as the notes he’s chasing.
And Cassie had the nerve to call them decent . What the hell? Is she on drugs? I don’t think so. I’ve never got that vibe from her. But seriously, these guys are terrible, and that’s putting it mildly.
I step up onto the soaked sidewalk, shielding my face from the rain while looking both ways up and down the street out front of the dormitories. People are milling all around, but thankfully in dark jeans, a puffy black jacket, and a dirty white ball cap, no one seems to recognize me.
“Quinn?”
A peep in the near-dark has me spinning around on the balls of my feet, and Cassie tilts her head like she can’t believe it’s really me standing in front of her.
“Oh, hey, there you are.”
“What are you doing here?” She steps out farther from under the covered awning at the front of the building. She’s in a tight white sweater, black jeans, and an unzipped windbreaker. I like the whole comfy-but-hot look she has going on.
Before I can respond, a guy dressed in a navy-blue uniform steps onto the sidewalk beside her and asks, “Everything alright here?”
Good to see security is actually doing their job for a change.
He looks me up and down, and his eyes suddenly grow wide. Oh great. I’ve seen that look a thousand times before, and I’m well aware of how this is going to play out.
“Hey, you’re in that band Cold Neptune, right?”
I nod politely, yanking my baseball cap even lower over my hair. But this guy’s already worked out who I am, making my pitiful disguise kind of a moot point. He rummages around in his top pocket for a few seconds, eventually pulling out a folded lottery ticket, as well as a black pen, and he holds them both out toward me.
“Any chance I could get an autograph?”
“Of course.” I smile, and then I sign my name before handing the lottery ticket back to him. “Hope it wins for you, man.”
I shake his hand, and he thanks me profusely. “You guys are smashing it. Maybe you could stop by sometime, play a couple of sets at the dorms.”
“Maybe, yeah, sure.” I tell him.
Never going to happen.
A fight suddenly breaks out inside the building, and the security guy pushes through the crowd, leaving Cassie and I standing alone in the shadows of the tree-lined street.
“I keep forgetting you’re famous.” She giggles. “Why are you here, Quinn?”
She wobbles a little on her feet as she moves closer, and I grab her arm quickly. I study her face to gauge her level of drunkenness. Her eyes are clear, and she’s not slurring her words, so on a scale of one to ten, where one is stone-cold sober, and ten is…well, Kael Jenkins…I’m thinking she’s probably about a four. She’s tipsy, but definitely alert enough to know what’s happening.
“I’m here to take you home.”
She gives me a sexy little smile. “My home…or your home?”
Ah, man. Cassie Brooks can flirt. I’ll give her that.
“Sorry, but party’s over, Alabama.” I reach for her hand, linking our fingers together, and I don’t release her hand until we’re all the way across the street, hunched over while we run, dodging puddles and the pouring rain .
Unlocking the car, I hold the door open, and Cassie slides in effortlessly. Striding around to the driver’s side, I climb in beside her, and soon enough the engine kicks over, and I leave it running for a few minutes while I wait for the AC to warm up.
“Nice car,” she practically purrs, looking around inside, front and back.
“Thanks.”
“Was it expensive?”
“They weren’t giving them away, that’s for sure.” I wink at her. “You should probably cancel your Uber.”
“But I was having so much fun,” she pouts.
Pouts . Fucking pouts.
If she keeps doing that, we’ll both be in trouble. Cassie doesn’t know who she’s dealing with here, and if she keeps pouting at me with those gorgeous full lips of hers, the self-control I’m only barely holding onto when I’m around her will splinter and crack.
“Tell me the truth. Were you really having fun?”
Cassie laughs, shaking her head. “No, not really. In fact, I hated every minute of it. I’m so glad I live off campus. I can’t imagine doing this every night. Those guys are crazy.”
She opens up an app on her phone, and presses a few buttons. The glow of the screen illuminates her high cheekbones, and just like that, my cock twitches inside my jeans. She’s so fucking beautiful it makes my throat close up and my palms grow sweaty.
“There, happy? Uber is officially canceled.”
“Excellent.”
“So, you’re driving me home?”
“I am .
“You’re not a serial killer, are you?”
Leaning across, I bring my lips close to her ear, and murmur. “Relax, Alabama, you’re safe with me.”
Cassie’s cheeks go from creamy-white to bright-pink in a matter of seconds. Setting her chin in the palm of her hand, she rests her elbow on the center console, and tilts her head to gaze sheepishly at me. “I know I am. You make me feel safe, Quinn. You’re such a good guy. Where have you been hiding all these years?”
“I haven’t been hiding anywhere, gorgeous.”
“Maybe I just wasn’t looking hard enough.” She sighs softly, letting out a shaky breath. “Or maybe I was looking in all the wrong places. But I’m glad I found you because you make me happy, and I haven’t felt happy in a really long time.”
I grin at her. “Making you smile is kind of addictive.”
As if on cue, Cassie smiles at me, and just like that I’m lost in the sexy curve of her lips and how good she smells. I can’t name the flowery scent, but it’s delicate and feminine, and when she runs her fingers through her thick ponytail, a whiff of it floats into my nostrils.
I bet she tastes every bit as good as she smells.
Down, boy. Down.
“You were right about coming out tonight,” she says, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Eating pizza on the couch, all snuggled up cozy with a good movie on the television, that’s way more my scene. I don’t know what I was thinking agreeing to come to a frat party.”
I nod, exhaling quickly when she leans across to plant a quick kiss on my cheek. It’s a peck, nothing more, but I can barely see straight with how good her soft, warm lips feel on me.
“Thank you for saving me tonight, Quinn.”
She’s leaning in so close now that I can feel the hard peaks of her breasts rubbing against my arm. I want to rip her sweater off. I want to draw those puckered nipples into my mouth and suck on them. I want to do a whole lot of things to her right now, the thought of which sends a sizzle of lust straight to my balls.
But I can’t. I won’t.
Stop this, an ominous voice cautions.
That voice is my conscience, working to avert a course of action whereby I make a serious mistake.
Cassie doesn’t sit back in her seat. Instead, she leans in again and when she speaks her voice sounds scratchy, and sexy as hell. “You know what you remind me of, Quinn?”
“What’s that?”
“A barbarian,” she babbles happily. Then she shakes her head, making her ponytail spill around her shoulders. “No, not just any barbarian, one of those big, blue ice-planet barbarians.”
I have no idea what she’s talking about. No clue.
“Like in Avatar ?” I ask.
“No, not like in Avatar ,” she says, right before she slides her hand up over my shoulder, working her fingers through the hair at the back of my neck. Oh fuck. She mumbles something that sounds like “so soft,” but I can’t be sure because the scrape of her fingernails against my sensitive scalp.
My place in hell, still firmly booked.
A zing of heat rushes straight to the tip of my cock. It throbs uncontrollably, and holy hell there are no words to describe how aroused I am right now.
Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit.
“No, I mean like in those books that book reviewers always rave about, but now you mention it, we should totally watch Avatar together,” she babbles on happily, oblivious to what’s going on inside my jeans. “Don’t you think? That’s something friends would do.” She looks up at me for a long moment. “You smell nice, Quinn.”
“I took a shower.”
“Thought you might have gone out on a date.”
“Told you what I was doing tonight. Would it have bothered you if I had gone out on a date, though?” Reaching up slowly, I remove Cassie’s hands from around the back of my neck and hold her hand in mine.
There’s only so much a man can take, and with the way she’s looking at me right now with eyes so blue they can’t possibly be real, all lucid thought leaves my brain and I can’t focus on anything other than how beautiful she is and the way she makes me feel.
“I don’t like the thought of you dating.” She shrugs, unimpressed. “But you didn’t want me at a frat party, either. I know it bothered you.”
“Yeah, it did.”
“So what are we going to do about it?”
I give her hand a gentle squeeze. “Come on, it’s fucking cold out here. Let me drive you home. We can talk on the way.”
I flick on my indicator and pull away from the curb. Driving in the opposite direction from Weinstein Hall, I head for the nearest cross street that leads us back in the direction of SoHo. We drive in silence for several minutes, the low hum of an old Led Zeppelin song playing on the radio.
“Left at the next traffic lights,” Cassie tells me. “My apartment building is the second on the right.”
“No worries.”
“Quinn?” she says softly.
“Yeah?”
I can feel her watching me. Her eyes boring into me. I don’t want to look over at her though because I don’t know what she’s about to say and I don’t trust myself when I’m around her. The thought terrifies me. But also there’s nothing in the world she could say to me that I don’t want to hear, so I glance across at her and find her looking back at me.
“I’m not engaged to Jeremy anymore. I don’t wear his ring anymore because it feels like a lie.”
“Is it a lie?”
“No, it was real. It’s just not the same anymore. We’re not engaged. We were never married. But that’s the thing; I don’t know what to call myself. There’s no name for someone whose fiancé died. I’m not a widow. I’m just…I’m… nothing .”
My breath catches on the burst of sadness that leaches from her body. I’m sure all the blood just drained from my face. My heart is suddenly beating so hard in my chest that I can’t help but wonder if she can hear it.
“You’re not nothing, Cassie.”
“Feels like it sometimes,” she replies softly.
I don’t know what else to say, so I sit silently again as we drive through the streets, the passing streetlights casting us in shadows at intermittent times, but the brightness of oncoming traffic chases the shadows away.
Cassie is so beautifully broken, and the pressure in my gut unexpectedly gains momentum, tightening into a massive knot when a startling thought suddenly floods my mind.
I want to be the one to repair the damage. I want to be the one to fix her.
But that’s the thing about being broken. Not all damage can be repaired. Not all cracks can be fixed. Sometimes the broken parts are just that, broken. The fracture can’t be mended. And that’s okay.
We eventually pull up outside her apartment building and I kill the engine. Resting my hand on the steering wheel, I shift slightly to face her.
“Thanks for the lift home,” she says.
“My pleasure. Any time.”
“I’m glad you didn’t turn out to be a serial killer.”
I just smile, because the way Cassie’s looking at me right now makes my tongue feel tangled in my throat. Part of me wishes she wouldn’t look at me like that. Thing is, another more urgent, more desperate, part of me hopes she never stops looking at me like that.
“I bet every guy at that party had his eyes on you tonight. Did you dance with anyone?”
Her incredible blue eyes pin me to my seat, owning me in ways they shouldn’t. But do. “No, I didn’t dance with anyone. Not that anyone actually asked me to dance.”
“You telling me no one even tried to get some action? What the fuck is wrong with guys these days? ”
“Some action?” She laughs, tilting her head. “Jesus, how old are you again?”
“Thirty-two.”
“Yeah, okay, grandpa.”
“Stop flattering me. I might get the wrong idea about your intentions.”
“And that’d be a bad thing?” Cassie leans in a little closer, her forearm resting on the center console again.
She’s so fucking pretty, and with the way she’s leaning toward me, I can’t stop my eyes from dipping into the front of her sweater. I don’t know if she’s wearing one of those fancy push-up bras or not, but with the way she’s sitting, it’s like her boobs are trying to pop out and say hello to me.
Christ almighty.
Why did I have to notice them? Now I can’t notice anything else. Now I’m staring at her chest, and she just leaned in even closer, and…holy shit, now I’m acutely aware of the heat radiating from her body.
My stomach sinks. I’m in trouble here.
Big, disastrous trouble.
I smother a groan, touching her shoulder to still her. “Cassie…”