She can trust me to want what’s best for her.
“Don’t you think they’ll find out anyway?” I ask, curious now.
“Sure,” she whispers. “They’ll find out after they can’t stop me.”
I square my shoulders. So she’s buying my house? Is that the secret? I should tell her not to, simply because it’s an expense she doesn’t need at her age, but I don’t. Not tonight. She’ll probably change her mind anyway.
I watch her lift a beer to her mouth, and for a moment, I freeze, entranced as her lips take the bottle.
She’s drinking. Alcohol.
Because of course she is. She’s twenty-one. A woman.
“Excited to go home?” she suddenly asks me.
I wet my lips, replying in a clipped voice. “Yeah.”
“Packed?”
I clear my throat. “I’ll leave for the airport around eight-thirty.”
I check my watch. My bags are in the car.
My heart pounds, a brick settling in my stomach.
She stares at me, and I force myself to hold her gaze.
“Do…do you have someone there?” she broaches quietly. “Someone who makes you happy?”
I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but she looks like she’s holding her breath.
“Sometimes.” The pain in my chest grows. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
I check my watch again, the seconds barely passing. The next two hours will be hard, but they’re going to be harder around her. I need to move. Talk to someone else.
“That smells fucking amazing,” a deep voice blurts out, coming downhill from the front of the house.
I turn my head, seeing Farrow Kelly in jeans and no shirt, carrying a motorcycle helmet.
Without missing a beat, he invades Quinn’s space behind the counter and wraps an arm around her waist, diving in and taking a bite off the slice she holds in her hand.
“Farrow Kelly,” she scolds as if they fucking grew up together.
“Stop,” he mumbles over the food in his mouth. “You know what ‘teacher voice’ does to me.”
I narrow my eyes, glaring, and I don’t care how it looks. What the fuck is going on?
Releasing her, he picks up the rest of the pizza—my pizza—and folds the whole damn thing in half, eating it like a taco.
She throws him a look, but he just shrugs. “You owe me,” he states, throwing me a sideways glance. “I had a bunch of shit to do today, and what did I end up doing? House hunting with—”
“Take the pizza,” she barks.
House hunting…
With Quinn? He went withher to my house?
Or…my parents’ house. Whatever. Why would she bring him?
