The following week, I was lying on my bed, surrounded by textbooks, notes, and highlighters when the door opened, and Pippa hollered, “Up! You’re coming with me, grumpy.”
I lifted my head from my bed, brushing a sticky note from my cheek. “I’m not grumpy.”
“She says while grumbling,” Pippa mocked from the wardrobe.
Sitting up, I pushed all my stuff farther up the bed and stretched my arms over my head. “God, I think my neck has a crick in it.”
“Serves you right for lying on your stomach to study for hours at a time,” she said. Closing the door, she turned to me, a small pile of clothes balancing on her hand. “Come on then.”
“What?”
“You’re coming to the townhouse. The time for ignoring the world is up.”
Twisting my lips, I pinched the air with my fingers. “Can’t I have just a wee bit longer? And I don’t want to go there.”
She huffed, dumping the clothes into her small overnight bag. “Why not?”
I made a face at her back. “Uh, because you know who lives there.”
Snorting, she said, “He’s not Voldemort.”
“Thank God for that.” I picked up my phone, glancing at the time. Holy hot damn. I’d been studying, or trying to, for hours. It was almost six thirty. “I’m hungry.”
“We’re ordering pizza. Get dressed.”
I glanced down. “I am dressed.”
“Suit yourself, but you know who will be there.” Her brow arched.
Indecision had my eyes rolling over the room, then back down at my outfit. I was wearing an AC/DC t-shirt and a pair of sweats. I shrugged. “He’s seen me in worse. Let me find where I tossed my bra, then I’ll be good.”
She clapped her hands, her head dropping back dramatically. “Praise the Lord!”
“Shut it, snot-burger.”
After putting on my bra, I fixed my hair as much as I could, then swiped on some lip balm and grabbed my water bottle and keys. “Just so you know, I’m only going for the pizza,” I said, walking past her and into the hallway.
Pippa locked the door, pulling it closed. “Whatever you say.”
Her smug tone grated. “Let’s roll before I change my mind.”
We trudged over the grass, cutting through the gardens to the other side of campus where residential streets lined the outskirts. The townhouse sat on the first street with two cars parked in the driveway.
“Did Quinn put you up to this?” It didn’t make sense that she and Toby would want a third, no fourth wheel.
“Nope,” she said, a tad too unconvincingly.
Quinn was lying on the couch, one leg hanging off the side and the other extended out over the arm. He was wearing a navy blue t-shirt and sweats, which made me smile. I hid it behind my water bottle, unscrewing the cap to take a sip.
He looked up at me from where he was lying, his eyes lighting up in a way that made the water almost go down the wrong pipe. He sat up a bit, lifting his legs out of the way. Looking at the other end of the sectional where Pippa was getting comfortable, I swallowed my pride and sat down near Quinn’s feet.
“How’s the studying going?” he asked. He’d walked me home some days over the past week, a new sketchpad waiting for me every time. I now had four. Not that they made up for what happened to my old ones, which weren’t empty but full of my heart, but they still made me smile. It wasn’t his fault, yet he was trying to make up for it anyway.
“Horribly bad.” I pretended to shiver, capping my water bottle and putting it on the side table.
“Coaster,” Toby said, walking into the room. “What’s up, Daisy duke?”
Sucking my lips together, I leaned over the arm of the couch and put the bottle on a coaster. Pippa caught my eye, a twinkle of affection in them at Toby’s curious ways. “Not much, Toby one Kenobi.”
He guffawed. “Haven’t heard that one before.”
“Really?” Quinn asked, looking perplexed. “You watch Star Trek.”
Toby looked affronted. “Used to, as in, when I was a kid. And dude. Star Trek and Star Wars are not the same thing. Like not even remotely.”
Quinn looked even more confused, his brows almost joining together. “I know that. I just thought—”
“Quinn never watched much TV growing up,” I cut in. “Unless it was sports.” Gesturing to the game on the TV right now, I ducked my head, feeling kind of lame for coming to his rescue.
“It’s okay,” Toby said. “Every man needs a nerdy fantasy phase, though. We’ll get you there, buddy.”
Quinn tossed a throw pillow at Toby, who scowled and carefully set it down beside him on the couch, making the rest of us laugh.
The pizza the guys had ordered showed up five minutes later, and with the ice well and truly broken, we all went to the dining room and dug straight in.
“Going home for Thanksgiving?” Toby asked Pippa. She was sucking pizza sauce from her finger, and Toby’s eyes zeroed in on the movement. She wiped her hand on some paper towel, not even realizing he was watching her every move with rapt attention. “I don’t know, maybe.”
She’d been waiting to see what he was doing and used the opening. “Are you?”
Shrugging, he took a bite of pizza and swallowed before saying, “Maybe.”
He grinned as she rolled her eyes, and Quinn bumped my foot under the table with his. “Come upstairs with me?” I was finished eating, but hesitated. “I promise not to pull any funny business.”
“Go with the boy scout. Pippa and I have shit to discuss.”
She giggled as he pulled her into his lap, licking some pizza sauce from her lip.
I followed Quinn upstairs, trying not to look at his ass, but well, I gave in. The top of his briefs showed, the white band of elastic calling out to females everywhere. Pull me, tug me, slip your hand underneath me.
I glowered at it and walked behind him into a bedroom near the top of the stairs. “Toby got the master, being his place and all,” he said, dropping down onto his bed and tucking his hands behind his head.
His biceps flexed tauntingly as he got comfortable, watching me slowly walk inside and look around. He had some trophies sitting on the corner of his desk, papers littering the surface with a few pens and highlighters. The rest of the room was kind of bare, besides a dresser with a small flat-screen on it and a team jersey hanging on the wall.
“You still aren’t one for decorating much,” I observed.
“I’ve never had to. That’s always been you.” My hands clenched at his words, fingernails digging into my palms. “Come here, I won’t bite. I just want to talk to you, and you’re making me feel uneasy with how nervous you are.”
“I’m not nervous.”
“You’re not comfortable either,” he said.
Turning around, I went to sit on the other side of his large bed. “I’m not uncomfortable. It’s …”
“You don’t know what to do.”
“I guess.” Crossing my legs, I played with my fingers in my lap.
He sat up. “Is it because you don’t trust me? After what I did with Alexis? You’ve gotta know, I didn’t think I’d see you again. Not here or anywhere.”
“No,” I whispered.
“Then is it because of what we did?” Pausing, he said, “Jesus, you don’t think I’d do the same thing to you, do you? You know me, it’s just … it was you.”
Looking up at him, I reached out to run my finger down the straight bridge of his nose. Some of the tension left his face. “I trust you. I’m not sure what it is or isn’t. A lot’s happened, that’s all.”
Taking my hand, he kissed my fingertips then held it with his on his thigh. His very thick, hard thigh. I swallowed, trying to keep my gaze on his and not look away as my blood seemed to bubble inside my veins. “What I said,” he started, then stopped, searching for the words. “Or rather, didn’t say … when you said that I’d told you I loved her.”
My eyes dropped then, and he gently tipped my chin up, making me look at him. “I didn’t hesitate; I just didn’t know how to explain it.”
Blinking away tears, I moved away, not sure if I wanted to hear this. He grabbed my hand before I could. “Stop. Please.” I stopped but still wouldn’t look at him. “I couldn’t find the right words, nothing that would make you understand. Then, instead of looking at you, the door was facing me. So this is me, knocking. Would you please open the door? Just a crack? Enough to let me explain it to you now?”
With nothing else to do, and hearing the desperation floating in his voice, I nodded. “Okay.”
Letting out a quick breath, he said, “What I told you all those weeks ago was true. I did love Alexis. But what I kept to myself was that I loved her in a way you love someone after you’ve already given your heart away.” I lifted my head, locking eyes with his as he continued, “Never with the full depths of your soul. Never with the feeling of something clicking into place whenever you were with them. Yeah, I loved her, sure. But I wasn’t capable of loving someone the way I love you, Daisy. So it was incomplete and probably not fair to her at all.”
“Quinn,” I rasped.
He held up a hand, stopping me. “Yet I found myself fortunate enough to have found even that amount of room in my heart again. So I’m sorry, but I meant what I said, to some extent. It all changed, though, and my heart was put to a test it would fail with flying colors as soon as you appeared in front of my eyes once again. I knew that, yet I was upset, angry, but I was also stuck. I couldn’t get out of the bed I’d made for myself in your absence.”
It made sense—everything he said made perfect sense—and had my heart rocking from side to side, humming like a love-drunk fool in my chest. “Why didn’t you wait for me?” I asked, tears falling onto my lips. He rubbed them away with a thumb then licked them off as I watched through blurred eyes.
“I didn’t know,” he said, taking my glasses off and cleaning them with the hem of his shirt. “I thought you were done with me.”
“My mom told me you started partying more after I left.” He didn’t respond. “Quinn?”
Cursing quietly, he said, “I was so pissed at you. At everything. You lived hours away, and when I thought about it, it seemed stupid to think we’d hold on when we were so young.”
“But I did. I held on.”
“I know that now, but I didn’t then.” He gently wiped my eyes then put my glasses back on. “And we’re still young; we probably don’t know shit. But this? Us?” His smile was luminous and had my breath stalling as he said, “It’s pretty clear what we feel will never go away.”
I climbed into his lap, unable to stop myself. My arms looped around him, and my nose burrowed into his neck, breathing in his clean scent.
It took a few pounding heartbeats, but his arms wrapped around me, holding me so tight as his head dropped to my shoulder.
Time passed, but I held on until I noticed he was hard beneath me, and my belly ignited with fluttering heat. I got up, and he reached out, catching my hand as I climbed off the bed. “Wait, stay.”
Squeezing his hand once, I pulled mine free. “Not tonight.”
I needed to let his words sink in and figure out what to do with my lingering guilt.
Sniffing, I swiped underneath my nose, stopping in the doorway. “But FYI, you’re still a bit of a goober. Albeit, a sweet one.”
His laughter followed me downstairs, where Toby was waiting and offered to run me home.