“Touché.” Quinn reached across the table and rubbed his finger across my knuckles. The touch sent a river of fire through my arm. “Trey tells me you’re to blame for my current condition.”
Guilt tightened my chest. If Quinn went blind, I’d never forgive myself. I didn’t want anyone to gethurt, not like that. “I’m not. Trey was the one who dumped that powder on your head.”
“Yeah, total dick move on his part.” Quinn kept stroking my knuckles. My hand froze, pen poised mid-stroke. I hated how much I didn’t want him to stop.
“Are you going to be okay?”
“They think so. Trey kept insisting they take me to a hospital, but Dad wasn’t going to have it. Finally, they agreed to bring a specialist just to shut him up. They flushed out my eyes with saline and dropped in this orange dye so they could see any particles that were left.” Quinn rubbed his eye socket and winced. “Everything’s still pretty blurry, and I may have a bit of scarring on my cornea from the fibers, but apparently, I’m going to be fine in a couple of weeks.”
Now it was my turn to wince. “I’m so sorry, Quinn. I never meant for this to happen to you.”
He shrugged. “Yeah well, you don’t know everything that’s going on. If you did, you still probably would have done it – under the circumstances, I’d say your actions were justified.”
I nodded, but the guilt still twisted in my gut.
“It’s not all bad,” Quinn added. “I get out of class for a few days and they’ve got me on these trippy painkillers. Right now I can see three of you. You are literallyHazynow.” He gave a loud laugh that sounded a bit maniacal.
“Have you seen Ayaz?” I asked, for something else to say.
Quinn tapped his chin. “Maybe. What’s it worth to you?”
“Huh?”
“I’ll tell you where he is, for a price. I don’t want much. Just a little kiss.”
“Jesus. Forget it.”
“No, seriously.” Quinn leaned across the table, his eyes lighting up. “I’m injured, and I think your kiss might be just what I need to cure me. Trey told me what happened in the locker room.”
I gulped. “What did he say happened?”
“That you two locked lips, and that it was, to quote his exact words, ‘not unpleasant’.” Quinn’s lopsided grin only made him more adorable. “One kiss from you and Trey’s forgotten all about his shitty dad, so you must be working some kind of ghetto magic on him. I could use a little bit of that. So go on, Hazy, pucker up and I’ll tell you where Ayaz has got to.”
“Why are you bothering me? Don’t you already have a girlfriend?” I jerk my thumb toward the library door, where Courtney had just walked in. She stopped in her tracks when she saw the two of us leaning close. Her face turned stormy, and she whirled on her heel and stormed back out.
Quinn grinned. “Just because Courtney believes she’s my girlfriend doesn’t make it so. I don’t do commitment, Hazy. But I do other things remarkably well.”
With that, Quinn Delacorte grabbed the collar of my shirt, yanked me across the table, and pressed his lips to mine.
My stomach leaped into my chest and fire danced through my veins. This was as hot and sensuous as our kiss in the grotto, only a hundred times more exciting because we could get caught at any moment. Quinn’s tongue slid between my teeth, expertly teasing my mouth open, demanding and inviting at the same time. Against my will, my body folded against his, pulling him closer, ready to taste more, more…
“That’s it,” Quinn murmured. His thumb brushed my blazer, darting over my nipple. A sliver of fire drove straight through my body.
This is crazy.I tore my lips from Quinn’s, gasping for breath. “Why did you do that?”
Quinn tried to raise his eyebrow, but his eye was too swollen, so all he managed was a weird kind of squint. “Blame the drugs?”
“What this about, Quinn? You already kissed me at the party. You fulfilled your part of the plan by humiliating me. Why would you kiss me again?”
He shrugged. “I wanted to. And see, now I owe you one. Ayaz is in classroom 2F, doing a little extracurricular work for the headmistress. He must’ve forgotten to tell you.”
I leaped to my feet and rushed to the door, desperate to get away from Quinn and all the confusing emotions swirling around my head. At least Ayaz wasn’t confusing like the other two – he made no secret of the fact he despised me. There was something to be said for consistency.
2F? Where is 2F? I think that’s in the same wing as history class—
I rounded the corner of the corridor and stopped dead.
Tillie Fairchild had Loretta pinned up against a locker, her arm against Loretta’s throat. Behind her stood Courtney, her head held high, her blonde hair glinting with dappled light as she imagined herself in front of a Hollywood camera. She read dramatically from a small notebook while Loretta stared at a spot on the ceiling. Her eyes were completely blank, as if she weren’t really there.
