“Why am I any different?” I ask, partially to challenge the belief that she’d lose Inez and partially because I want to hear it.
She shrugs and starts tracing the pattern of the quilt between us. “I don’t know. You just are. You’re my person.”
I reach out to capture her hand, twining our fingers together, fighting off the urge to pull her closer and wrap my arms around her.
“Do you know why I kept in touch with you all those years? Why I planned dinners and travel and dates around our call schedule?” I ask, and she shakes her head, her beautiful brown eyes wide. “Because you’re more than my best friend. You’re light and joy, mixed up with just enough sarcasm to keep it interesting. You believe in your people and fight for them, and you love with everything you are. Inez knows this just as much as I do, and if shedoesleave Boston, she’ll fight for your friendship just like I did. Once someone’s been on the receiving end of your love, it’s impossible to walk away.”
“More people I’ve loved have left than stayed,” she whispers. She’s crying softly, and I reached out to wipe a tear away.
I hate her family. Hate that they made her question the people who do love her. “I think we can both agree that Inez has more quality in her pinky finger then the whole Riley clan combined.”
Quinn laughs through the tears, and I move close enough to press a hard kiss to her forehead before settling back on my own pillow.
She turns her face slightly into the pillow. “I love you.”
Quinn has told me she loves me hundreds of times over our friendship. It doesn’t matter that it isn’t new, my heart still shoots around my chest. “I love you, too.”
“I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute,” she says, her body relaxing into the mattress.
I chuckle. “Sure, Chaos.”
When I open my eyes in the morning, she’s still there, my hand clutched in hers like she couldn’t bring herself to let go even in sleep.
13
COLTON
FOURTEEN YEARS AGO
“You’re failing.”
I blink up at my academic advisor, an accounting professor I’ve only met once when I started at Chadoin a few months ago. He’s set up behind his massive wood desk in his massive leather chair, while I’m in a chair barely big enough to fit me. Did he consciously set up his office to be an overbearing prick, or was it a subconscious decision to compensate for something?
“I’m sorry, what?” I ask.
“I don’t know how much clearer I can be. You’re failing. I received your midterm grades, and you’re failing every class except your general education class.” He flicks his eyes to a paper on his desk with a sigh. The guy doesn’t even know what I’m taking. “Roman history.”
Dr. Christensen’s eyes burn into me from across the desk, challenging and judgmental. They sayyou’re not worth the time it takes to explain this,and the part of me that has always believed people’s comments about not being good enough to get out of my small town shrinks in on itself. My eyes drop closed, but mymom’s face floats behind my lids. Her belief in me and my duty to succeed.
“Okay. What do I do?” I ask, letting that determination to provide for her swallow up every self conscious fear.
He has no idea what that question costs me. My whole life, I’ve been the one who doesn’t need help. My grades were the best. I read—and enjoyed—the assigned books. My teachers held up my work as examples of what to do.
I knew I wasn’t doing as well this semester as I did in high school. My classes are boring and I can’t seem to keep up with the constant stream of assignments shouted at me like stock floor traders. But saying those words out loud, admitting I need some guidance, feels like giving up my identity. The only thing that makes me special.
“Don’t fail,” Dr. Christensen says blandly.
“You don’t say. The thought never occurred to me.”
He doesn’t take kindly to my sarcasm, face going all pinched. It doesn’t make me less worried, but I feel a certain satisfaction at his anger. He’s sitting there acting like he hung the moon, and I’m nothing but shit on his boot.
Then I remember this man controls my future, and I need to check myself before I get kicked out of school.
“Forgive me, sir. What happens now?”
“With grades like these, I don’t see you bringing them up, so your scholarship will be forfeited. You can stay another semester to see if you can get off academic probation on your own dime, but we won’t be wasting ours. Not everybody is cut out for college, and I’d suggest you think about that long and hard before you make your decision about next semester.”
His words wash over me like a bucket of cold water. He isn’t telling me what to do to improve. I’m a lost cause. Maybe there’s a reason no other Miller has made it out of Grand Creek in five generations.
