“Why?”
He falls silent, refusing to tell me what his game is. I don’t want him living here. I would never have sold it to him. His name would be on the paperwork, but my mother owns the house. She saw the paperwork,not me.
“You thought bringing your Green Street shit to Shelburne Falls was a good idea?” I charge.
He just shrugs. “You did.”
Yeah, very funny.
“Where is Quinn?” I ask.
Again, he just grins. “I kind of want to tell you that.” Mischief hits his eyes. “You’ll either handle it badly. Or you’ll handle it in a way that brings her closer to you. I mean, that’s what you want, right?” he taunts. “Her close to you? Just like you’re one of her brothers?”
I feel Quinn on the bed next to us, moaning and swaying as she makes herself come. I watched her. I didn’t stop her, and if her brothers knew they’d kill me.
“I remember you,” I tell him. He was one of the kids who hung around sometimes. “You were, what, eleven? Twelve? Who’s your father?”
Most of those kids were from broken homes. Who’s his dad, who lets him run with drug dealers and pimps, but can afford to buy him a house with cash?
He lowers his voice, just loud enough for me to hear. “I remember you too. You installed the motion sensor lights and cameras in the warehouse district. It’s how we track movement and create a buffer at Green Street.” His smile spreads. “Genius. Whatever happened to that guy?”
Fuck you.
But despite my irritation, pride creeps in. Those sensors were a good idea. You can see from miles away who’s moving in the dark and where.
I swallow through the lump in my throat. “What do you want here?”
I left so Madoc, Fallon, Quinn…would all be safe. Being so close now—with his connections to Green Street—is he going to ruin that? Even if I leave?
But to my surprise, he simply says, “I need your help.”
Myhelp?
“And you need mine,” he adds. “If you want her trust back.”
Quinn
I chew on my pencil eraser.Crushed blackberries…
Lying on my stomach in the field off one of Fallstown’s tracks, I jot down the ingredient in my notebook and add chocolate sauce.
But then I scratch it out and write chocolate chips instead.Milk chocolate chips.Sauce will only overpower the brown sugar and butter, and I want pockets of sweet.
“Oh, he looks like fun,” Mace coos.
Pockets. Of. Sweet.I write in my notebook.I like how that sounds.
Dylan, Aro, and their friends sit around me with their Bluetooth speaker and coolers, Codi hugging her knees and Mace leaning back on her hands with a couple of other girls whose names I don’t remember.
“Who is he?” Mace asks.
What else, what else…An extra egg yolk, for sure.
“Quinn?”
Cornstarch, sugar, salt, vanilla, baking powder…
“Quinn,” Mace says sternly.
