He sat up, tucking one leg under him and folding his arms. His gaze could only be described as greedy. “Oh hell yes, I’m curious. It might help me solve this Liam puzzle.”
I knew what he was trying to get at, but he was barking up the wrong tree. “I fantasize. Okay? Now, excuse me, but I have to get some work done. You’ve distracted me all evening.”
“Idistracted you? I was quiet as a button, man.”
“It had nothing to do with you being quiet.”
“Then, pray tell,” he said with an arch of his brow, “how did I distract you?”
“I’ll have to think about it.” I leaned forward to grab my laptop, but I never made it because a cushion hit the side of my face.
“Christ.” Quinn chuckled. “What do I have to do to get details out of you?”
I twisted toward him. His white T-shirt really wasn’t thick enough. I could make out his muscles beneath it. “Is this the sort of stuff friends—I meanroommates—usually talk about? Because it seems like a strange discussion to me.” I fiddled with the corners of the cushion.
“Yeah,” Quinn said softly. “Friend thing. At least, that’d be... all right.”
His sudden shyness had me rubbing my arms. I could—would—do this friend thing.
“Seeing Hunter really makes you want to cry?” I asked.
He looked guiltily at his knees and picked at a loose thread. “Yeah.”
“That’s it?” I arched my brow. “What do I have to do to get details out ofyou?”
A soft laugh. “It’s just,” he said, “I remember him before the chair, and”—he gestured toward his chest—“stuff gets stuck inside when I think of all the things he said he wanted to do that he can’t anymore. And... and sometimes I’m relieved that I got lucky. That it never happened to me, and then I feel like crap.”
Speechless, I just nodded. The silence held, but this tentative... openness we were having was drawing thinner and thinner. Afraid it would snap, afraid I would fail, I groped for something to share, something that might show him that thisfriendthing would be all right by me too.
I scratched the back of my head. “So lately, when I’m in the shower, I fantasize about winning the BCA competition for best article of the year.”
Quinn blinked and looked at me, his gaze running over my lips as if expecting me to say something else. “The what now?”
I shrugged. “It’s a competition I submitted three of my articles to. The results come out next month.”
“Are you saying,” Quinn rested his head on the back of the couch and stared toward the ceiling, the side of his mouth curling, “that youliterallyget off on work?”
I hadn’t thought about it like that before. But, I guess—“Yes. Seems I do.”
I stood, because I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself. I needed to focus on something constructive so Iwouldn’t feel so—exposed.
Quinn didn’t pull me back, but he touched the side of my knee. “You’re something else, Liam,” he said quietly. “And I’m going to figure out exactly what that something is.”
Chapter Nine
My lashes fluttered away from my comic to meet the view of hummingbirds, and then Hunter in his wheelchair, arms crossed.
“I invite you here for coffee, and you just sit there and read?”
I glanced around the almost empty Crazy Mocha Coffee as I carefully set the comic on the table next to the tea I’d barely touched. “The only reason you invited me here was so you didn’t have to wait for Mitch on your own. You are not alone, are you?”
He wheeled forward enough to snag the comic. “Booster Gold? You’d rather have his company than mine?”
“Booster will still be there when Mitch finally arrives and you give me my cue to leave.” I sipped my tea,and my mind skipped from Booster to our campus vigilante. Where was he right now? Who was his daytime persona? Was it someone I’d recognize?
Hunter laid the comic on the table and wheeled closer to my side. He gripped my shoulder. “Dude, don’t leave right away when he comes, okay? I invited you here because you’re always so busy. If I didn’t have a reason to meet, you’d have had something else to do. That’s why I said I wanted you to wait until Mitch came.”
“Oh.” He wanted to spend time with me? “In that case”—I slipped Booster Gold into my messenger bag—“enough of him then. What about The Raven, the campus vigilante. Have you ever heard of him?”
