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He doesn’t move. “Daniel.”

“Quinn. You’re sitting in wet jeans. Go.” I tilt my chin up toward the bathroom.

“I want to talk about what just happened.”

Jesus. Of course he does. He has to examine it until he can explain it.

I scrub a hand over my face and through my hair and look at the wall over his shoulder because it’s easier than looking into his eyes. “We got carried away. That’s—it’s natural. What we were doing. Bodies do that. I’ll be better next time and keep control.”

The silence that follows is ugly.

“What if I’m okay with it?” he asks.

I look at him then. I know I shouldn’t. His ears are pink, his chest and face still flushed from coming. And I know he means it. He’s okay with coming on top of me and wanting more.

I can’t be.

“I’m not,” I say. It comes out colder than I mean it to, and I immediately soften my tone. “I told you already. I don’t date. This was supposed to stay just tutoring. I let it get out of hand. That’s on me.”

He swallows, hurt filling his eyes. But I can’t look away. God, he’s beautiful. And if I didn’t get totally absorbed in the person I date, maybe there could be a future, but I know me, and right now, I really need to focus on graduating.

“It didn’t feel wrong.”

“I know.” I sigh. Before I slide off the bed and stand up. My sweats sticking to me as I do. I can’t sit there with my cum cooling in my sweats, because I’m going to take it all back and say fuck it. “That’s why I’m putting a stop to it. So, go, shower. I’ll get cleaned up when you’re done. Then we can eat or study some more or you can go to the library. Whatever you want that isn’t…this conversation.”

He stares at the floor between us. His face dejected. And a lump forms in my throat. This is a fucking mess.

“Okay,” he says.

It isn’t okay. I can see it written all over his face. The hurt is obvious, along with the confusion in his brow, and I force myself to walk to my dresser and pull out clean clothes. Acting like this is no big deal.

He slides off the bed carefully, picks up his shirt, holding it in front of himself. Then he gets his own change of clothes. The silence is so loud it makes my ears ring. At the bathroom door, he pauses, and I look over at him when he doesn’t go in and shut the door.

“Next time,” he says, not looking at me. “You said next time. So there’s a next time.”

My throat goes tight.

“The lessons,” I say. “Yeah. If you still want them. No emotions involved, though. You have to promise me. I won’t—we won’t do that again, unless we decide to do it together, before anyone’s shirt comes off.”

He presses his lips together and nods once before he steps into the bathroom and shuts the door.

The shower starts.

I sit on my bed and stare at the spot we were laying and tell myself this is how you don’t break a roommate you actually like. With honesty of what you can give and what you can’t. Quinn would need me to be serious, and I can’t be that person for him right now.

So why does it feel like I just hurt myself by pushing him away?

I shake my head, peel off my sweats, using them to clean up the mess before the shower stops. Then I pull on a new pair. It still feels like I dumped him from my lap. I just used better words this time.

Quinn sticks to the deal. Almost exactly to the deal. He doesn’t initiate anything anymore. He waits for me to tell him to do something, and I’m finding I want him to explore what he likes and wants with foreplay.

We dance around the building attraction, and I shove my feelings deep down where they can’t eat at me every day. It should be a good system.

It isn’t.

Wednesday. His night. We focus on our class first, because that’s the half that doesn’t make me want to put my fist through a wall. He sits in his chair at the desk, and I sit with my back against one of my bed posts, knees up to hold my book. We don’t touch.

When we switch to his half, he stands up and waits. “Where do you want me?” he asks.