Rain falls harder now, and I blink up at him, feeling his hand still gripping my waist. “I likeyougoing fast.”
Maybe I like speed. I don’t know.
I like roller coasters and roller skates. I like pedaling fast and cruising down a hill on my bike.
And I likehisdriving. Madoc taught him just as well as he taught his sons.
“It’s settled then,” he says. “I’ll just have to drive your lazy butt around all summer.”
I laugh, beaming up at him. His eyes drop to my mouth again, and for a second—maybe less—I swear they drop farther before he quickly looks away and takes his hand off of me.
My blood runs hot.Look at me again.
But his phone rings, and he pulls it out of his pocket, answering it.
I can hear my brother’s growl in Lucas’s ear. “Why the fuck doesn’t she have a seatbelt on?”
Lucas hangs up, wincing at Jax’s scolding. Jax is usually the calm one.
But I was right. He’s in the watchtower, keeping an eye on me.
“Well…” I clear my throat. “At the very least, they won’t put up a fuss if you’re giving me rides. They’re not threatened by you.”
Neither am I. Unfortunately.
If I weren’t Quinn, he would’ve held me tighter.
He props his elbow up on his door, leaning his head on his hand and making no move to raise the top. “Did you ever have a relationship they ruined?” he asks me.
I stay in his lap. “No. No one I was very interested in anyway.”
“Any long-term relationships?”
It feels weird he’s asking me these things. They’re not the kind of conversations we had when I was thirteen.
“I went out a bit,” I tell him. “Just didn’t feel like I thought it would feel.”
“What?”
“Kissing.”
He doesn’t move, and I don’t stop.
“Or their hands,” I add. “I’d be cold, or it felt foreign, or like I was bored or something. I didn’t really understand foreplay.”
I stare at nothing off to the side, remembering Notre Dame. I went to parties with roommates my first year, and I met guys in class and various social clubs, but I knew pretty early on that there was no point in wasting time being that uncomfortable to make a relationship happen that, if successful, would take me away from Shelburne Falls.
I was coming home after I graduated. No exceptions.
“Now that I’m home,” I announce, “maybe I can get to know someone to where it feels close and warm and exciting.”
But he tells me, “I think that comes when you really know someone and know that what you’re about to feel is an escape.”
My pulse thrums in my neck as he gazes down at me.
“Their scent,” he goes on, “their skin, the feel of their mouth on your stomach. It happens in the middle of the night when she rolls into your arms, and it becomes like food, Quinn. Like shelter.”
“Did you ever feel like that?” I inquire, but it comes out as a whisper as I hold my breath.
