Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
“See you soon,” he coos, leaning into her. “We’re going to have so much fun.”
Excuse me?
He leaves, heading for the lawn and the bounce houses as he chows down on my pizza.
Quinn lifts her eyes to mine, and I open my mouth to say more shit I shouldn’t. There’s no reason she needs to be enlisting any male’s help, except mine or her family’s. Why would she trust Farrow Kelly, of all people?
But someone interrupts us. “Quinn, come on!” Dylan calls.
Quinn hesitates a moment, our eyes locked and my moment to act presenting itself, but I don’t take it. She removes her apron and circles the counter.
“I’ll see you before you leave,” she tells me.
I think I see her chin tremble, but with the fire in my chest and the fog in my brain as I try to decipher what all just happened, I can’t think.
I’m paralyzed as I watch her go off with Dylan and some brunette, heading for the bounce houses where Farrow Kelly just disappeared.
Noah Van der Berg jogs after the girls, their little group trailing off like I’m already gone. She just left as if she wasn’t always looking for me when she was a kid.
She never walked away from me.
Every muscle is tight, and my jaw hurts from clenching.
I’m in the wrong. I know I am. She’s happy. She has people her age close to her. That’s good. That’s great. Everything’s as it should be.
I place my hand on my chest, rubbing the pain over my heart.
Quinn
I put my hand on my stomach hoping that will curb the queasiness. Just keep walking, I tell myself, feeling his eyes on my back. If I hang on his every word until he leaves, I’m scared I’ll cry. It’s better this way.
“I have thirteen minutes.” I stroll across the lawn, Dylan and Aro at my sides. “Pizza’s in the oven.”
Plenty of time for him to get back to the party and start making the rounds of goodbyes.
“Plenty of time to make him nervous,” Dylan teases instead.
Noah hauls himself up over the side of the first bounce house and disappears inside. We start climbing a ladder of plastic stairs. “Make who nervous?” I ask, still keeping up the charade that every decision I’ve made since I was thirteen hasn’t been with Lucas Morrow in mind.
Dylan looks down at me from above. “Quinn.”
“Dylan,” I mimic but more curt.
I want to be left alone, and my family is about as skilled at reading body language as they are at reading ancient Greek. The steel in my eyes better be clear. Are they really so dense that they can’t imagine how I’m feeling right now? That I’m dreading every passing minute, and I’ll wake up tomorrow without the hope he’ll ever come home again? What would she be feeling if it were Hunter?
Not to mention, I’m still pissed about them keeping a secret hideout right under my nose, too. Other than locking it up, I’m still deciding whether to confront them just yet.
I won’t take anymore meddling where my life is concerned, and that includes Lucas.
“It was a crush,” I state, downplaying it as we all climb up to the top of the slide. “When I was thirteen.”
“And when you were twelve and eleven and ten…”
“Just stop,” I tell her, looking behind me to Aro too. “And I don’t appreciate you two thinking it’s fair to use Noah or Farrow to make him jealous, either.”
Sending them to Astrophysics, putting them in my path, and not telling them why?
But Aro retorts behind me, “I promise you they are only interested in being used by you.”
“Fu…” I toss my head back, letting the swear word die on my tongue.
I find it hard to say “fuck” in front of others.
Dylan chuckles, and I can feel Aro’s smile at my back.
We reach the top and jump down, into the obstacle course. “Everything is better in hindsight,” I explain.
I don’t need to be twenty years older than them to know that.
“Lucas has changed.” I shrug. “He’s not very friendly anymore. Almost snobby, actually.”
I don’t admit to them that some things are so much better than I remember. His eyes on me and how they linger. His body and how much stronger he looks. The electric current that races through my blood when he’s close.
Other things have turned sour. He never acted like he was raising me, and it’s too late to start now. He treated me more like an adult when I was a kid.
I go on. “It’s like any connection I manufactured as a teenager never happened. It was all in my head.” I realize my brow is pinched and relax it. “He’s a stranger now,” I tell them, hoping I sound convincing. “And old.”
“And hot as hell,” Dylan blurts out. “Men get better with age. Did you smell him?”