Quinn

What the hell was that?” Liam asks when I get in the passenger seat of his red Mustang.

“Nothing.” I buckle my seatbelt, ignoring the look he gives me. The same look Abbott gives me every time Zee’s name is mentioned.

“He’s going to break your heart, you know that. It’s what he does.”

“So everyone keeps telling me.”

Liam shakes his head at me. “He’s going to leave again.”

“I know.” I’m not naive to think he’ll stay. Not for me. He already told me the rules. Loud and clear.

“Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He speeds out of the parking lot and mutters, “Your brothers are going to kill him when they find out.”

“There’s nothing to find out.”

“So you haven’t slept with him?”

I wince.

“Shit, Quinn.” He drags a hand through his hair and gives a frustrated breath.

“I love him,” I say quietly. “I can’t help that. I know he’ll leave. Know it’ll wreck me when he does. And maybe it makes me weak, wanting him when I know he has nothing to give but heartbreak. But I’ll take whatever I can. For as long as I have.”

He just sighs and we drive the rest of the way in silence.

The morning goes by in a blur. I catch Liam frowning at me multiple times, but he doesn’t bring Zee up again. And I’m glad. I don’t need him or my brothers warning me about Zee. I know who he is. And I take it all.

Because no matter who the man is now, he’ll always be the boy who gave me my first guitar and taught me how to play it. The guy who’d defend me whenever one of my brothers teased me mercilessly. The child who sat at our table every Sunday night, bruises covering his body as he held my hand and said grace.

Maybe he’s done a lot of shitty things in his life, but I have to believe the good outweighs the bad.

“You remember when you and Damon let my hamster loose in the backyard?” I say to Liam when we’re driving home.

“Christ,” he says, laughing. “How do you still remember that? You were like six.”

“I was eight. And it was traumatizing.” I give his arm a light punch.

“To set the record straight, it was Damon’s idea.”

“I doubt that.” I grin at him, then glance down at my lap, and begin to fidget with a loose thread on my shorts. “Did you know Zee brought me a new hamster the next day?”

Liam frowns at me, then turns back to the road. “There aren’t any pet stores in town.”

“I know.” A smile tugs at my lips. “Kade told me he hitchhiked to Harristown to buy it.”

Liam sighs. “I know your point. And I love my brother. I know he’d give his last dime to a stranger if they asked for it. But it doesn’t change the fact that he isn’t capable of giving you what you deserve.”

“People change.”

“You’re right. And he isn’t the same kid who gave you the hamster.”

“Maybe,” I mutter, as we pull into the back parking lot of Savages and Saints. “But then why is he back? He says it’s just for business. But I think it’s more. Maybe part of him wants to come home, and he just needs us to tell him he can.”

Liam pinches the bridge of his nose, and he mutters, “I honestly hope you’re right.”

The way he says it, I know he doesn’t believe there’s even a fraction of truth to what I said. I also know that it’s dangerous for me to believe it.

It’s past four as I walk up the stairs to my apartment. I smile when I hear music coming from inside. Outside, I listen for a few seconds as his deft fingers pick out the Wild Irish song I’d sung at karaoke.

“I wouldn’t have taken you for a Wild Irish fan,” I say, when I come in, shutting the door behind me.

He stops playing, and I feel his tension even before I see him sitting on the couch, strangling the neck of the guitar.

“Never heard the song until you sang it.”

“You just learned it now?” It took me months to even learn half the chords.

He places the guitar beside the couch, then stands, rubbing his neck.

I know something is wrong. Or more wrong than normal.

“You and Liam...” The muscles in his jaw bunch as he stares down at me, some unnamed emotion darkening his features.

I frown up at him, hoping to hell he isn’t asking me what I think he is.

“What?” I ask cautiously.

“Have you...” He looks away, then back at me. “I need to know.”

Anger burns a path up my throat. “Need to know what?”

His palm flattens on the wall beside my head and he leans down, his lips curling over his teeth. “Have you fucked him?”

Is he freaking serious?

After everything I’ve told him. After sleeping with him. He really thought that little of me?

My teeth clench and I hiss out, “And there he is ladies and gentlemen, the world class asshole.”

“I asked you a question.”

“And I’m not going to justify it.” I cross my arms over my chest.

He roughs his hands over his face, then though his hair, and when he looks back at me, I can tell he’s trying to restrain his emotions. I just can’t figure out what they are. Jealousy? Anger? Frustration? It’s like trying to read a closed book whose pages have been superglued shut.

“I’m not angry.”

“Well, I am.”

“I just want to know, so I don’t...” His fingers ball into fists and he looks like he’s ready to punch a wall again.

“Don’t what?” I ask, wanting to know how he’s going to justify his interrogation.

He leans his head back and stares up at the ceiling “So I don’t fuck anything else up in your lives.”

Oh.

“I saw the way he looked at you. The way he...touched you.”

“I don’t know what you think you saw, but Liam and I are just friends. That’s all we’ve ever been, or ever will be.”

“Then why did I get a text message from him telling me to keep my fucking hands off you?”

I toss my hands in frustration. “Why do you think?”

“I don’t know what to think. You spend every Friday with him—”

“At a nursing home. Doing community service work. And do you know why we go there every Friday?” My voice is raised, frustration edging my words. “Because he has to. It’s court ordered.”

Zee’s face falls. “For what?”

I breathe in a calming breath, but it doesn’t do much good. “You need to ask Liam.”

“Tell me.”

I let a beat pass, knowing it isn’t my story to tell. But maybe it’ll kick him in the ass a little to know how things have unraveled since he’s been gone.

“Some douchebag that had too much to drink was harassing Jenny. Liam was drunk too and he went after him. Beat him up good. Probably would have killed the guy if not for Damon pulling him off.”

“Shit.”

“He was lucky he got off with just a slap on the wrist.” And lucky the guy hadn’t died. “I go with him because whatever you think you know about your brother, he’s not as strong as he acts. He’s hurting. And broken. Just as much as you are.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I’m not. He needed you and you left.” I know it’s harsh. But it’s the truth.

Zee’s eye twitches and he drags a hand through his hair and starts to pace. I watch him, trying to understand the hurricane that seems to roar through him. His thoughts and actions don’t seem to have any reasoning behind them.

Maybe the trouble is, we’ve walked on pins and needles around him for so long. I can’t do that. Won’t do it. I’ve never had much of a filter, and no matter how hard I try, I can’t hold back my feelings.

“You really don’t know me, or Liam, if you think there’d ever be anything between us. The only thing we have in common is loving the same stubborn, asshole of a man, who's too caught up in his own crippling self-loathing that he can’t see how many people care about him.”

“Quinn,” he says roughly, when I start to my room.

“What?”

“Don’t walk away from me.”

A broken laugh chokes me. “That’s priceless coming from the man whose number one talent is walking away.