Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
What am I doing? Why did I call him?
But I know why. I needed to see what he looks like when he’s alone and thinking of me.
I can’t come out until he leaves. I don’t think I want Madoc, Jared, or Jax to know about this hideout yet, and he would tell them.
“Yeah,” I reply, keeping my voice low in case he can hear me through the mirror. “I’m okay.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m safe.”
He digs in his brow, his jaw flexing. “Where are you?”
His tone is harder, suspicious.
Does he think I’m with someone I’m not supposed to be?
I smile to myself. “I don’t want to tell you.”
“You don’t want to tell me?”
His chin rises, his shoulders squaring. “Tell me where you are,” he orders. “I’m coming to pick you up.”
I know what will happen if he picks me up. He’ll take me home. I’ll sleep. Then, I’ll get up in the morning for another day, and he’ll leave town.
I’m not ready to go home yet.
“No need,” I say in a light voice. “I’m having fun.”
He paces, turning around, and I see the ridges of his back muscles through his soaked shirt. The picture of the girl in the journal sits in my head. She looked like the remains of a love that was too passionate. Too consuming.
It doesn’t sound at all healthy, and I want it.
“Games were cute when you were a kid,” Lucas chides.
But I simply say, “I don’t play the same games I did as a kid.”
He stops in his tracks, inhaling and exhaling for a moment. He’s turned to the side, so I can’t see his face until he pulls out one of my chairs and drops down. “I’m not enjoying this.”
He sounds tired. Breathless.
“Quinn?” he presses when I don’t say anything.
I study him. I don’t want to talk about my family or Dubai or learning to drive or keeping away from the wrong boys. He’s been talking to me like I’m still a child.
“What do you enjoy?” I ask.
He lowers his eyes, his chest rising and falling. I’m not a kid anymore, and I don’t want him shielding me from his life or sugar-coating anything. I want to talk.
“Do you remember Ava, your college girlfriend?” I ask him, but I don’t wait for an answer. He had a lot of girlfriends, and I don’t care if he remembers her, because I do. “Madoc and his family were out of town, and you were supposed to come over to water the plants and feed the fish, but you brought her one night and got her naked in my brother’s pool.”
I lean into the mirror, taking my eyes off him only long enough to blink.
“I had seen your car pass and made you some pizza,” I explain. “I rode my bike over with it so you could take it back to your dorm.”
His gaze stays down on the table, his body barely moving. He never knew I saw them. No one did. It’s not like sex was a secret to me, even at that age. I’d walked in on Jax and Juliet in Madoc’s liquor storage. Jared constantly had his hands on Tate, and Madoc didn’t hide anything, boasting that practice was the best part of baby-making.
However, as soon as I saw what was happening, I hightailed it out of there, only happy when they broke up.
Until the next one came along, that is.
“Boys get to have all the fun, don’t they?” I challenge.
A small smile finally curls his lips as he picks a little flower out of the vase on the table. “I think Ava had fun.”
Prick.
“And how old was she?” I argue. “About the same age as I am now?”
Maybe even a year or two younger?
I narrow my eyes. “What did you do to her that night?”
“I get where you’re going with this,” he bites out. “I know you’re ready to feel things. And it’s normal.”
“How do you know I haven’t already?”
He cocks a brow. “Have you?”
Amusement pulls at my mouth. “I’m twenty-one.”
He curls his fist, crushing the flower.
I laugh to myself.
Oh, I like watching people. They don’t always tell you who they are, but they show you.
Why would he assume I’m a virgin? I went to a Catholic university with a hell of a lot of people who grew up in Catholic schools before that. When sex is such a taboo subject, the allure and mystery surrounding it only make everyone sex-obsessed when they get away from home.
I mean, I am a virgin, but it’s a leap for him to assume I didn’t have one night of poor judgment away at school.
“I’m going fall in love with someone here,” I tell him.
“It won’t be one of them.”
“Like you had plans to marry Ava when you had sex with her,” I try to reason. “Why can’t I—”
“Because you matter more than she did!”