And of course the realization comes now that she’s not around, so I shove it back down and read it as desperation on my part, unable to accept the truth of our situation just yet.

“Doesn’t take much these days,” he muses.

“You got a fucking point, Vinny?” I ask, slamming down my pen on the pad of paper, causing the crumpled candy wrappers to fall to the ground, and then he chuckles and that makes me even more pissed off. “What is it with all of this, huh? Why are you riding me so goddamn hard? You won your fucking bet, now back the fuck off me,” I shout at him, my pulse racing, my anger mounting when he just smiles that goddamn smirk that taunts and irritates me all at once.

“That all this was, a bet?”

“Yep.” It’s all I’ll give him because one, I don’t want to talk about it, and two, he doesn’t deserve shit for an explanation about what this is or isn’t. It’s my damn business, not his.

“In all the years I’ve known you, man … like forever … I never took you for a pussy. Guess there’s always room for one to change though, isn’t there?”

As much as I want to shove my chair back and unleash my hurt on him right now, to get out all of my pent-up frustration and anger and misery on him, I just clench my fists, grit my teeth, and glare. Instead I take a deep breath and stand up, eyes locked on his, and head for the door, suddenly needing to leave the room I’ve used as my sanctuary for the past few days.

“You don’t get the girl, Play, if you don’t fight for her.” His voice is low and even as it hits my ears, stopping me in my tracks, hand on the door.

So many thoughts whirl through my head and to fuck it up further, I’m just not sure which one I want to hold on to when all I want to be holding on to is Quinlan.

“Dude, I’ve been fighting my whole life, maybe I don’t have any fight left.” It’s the biggest bunch of bullshit, deep down I know that, but right now I need to find the life left in me before I can find the fight there.

Vince belts out a laugh but it falls flat, telling me that as much shit as he’s giving me, he’s concerned about me and what deep end I’m going to jump off now. I keep my back to him, one foot out the door, because I can’t let him see how lost I am right now. If he does, he’s gonna say shit to me, force me to see stuff that I’m just not ready to acknowledge aloud just yet.

“Sometimes you have to fight in order to be free,” he says into the uncomfortable silence, and all I can do is nod my head because there’s nothing I can say. “I’ll leave you be, Hawke,” he says finally after a deep sigh, “but I hate seeing you like this and love seeing you like this all at the same time.”

When I look over my shoulder at my oldest friend and my most honest sounding board, I realize that right now I love him and hate him all at once. I want to question what he means but know he can only be referring to the one difference in my life over the past few months, Quinlan.

“You’ve lived long enough by your old man’s principles; maybe it’s time you start living by your own.” We stare at each other a beat longer before I nod my head and turn around to walk out.

I used to think that holding on to my dad and the promises he extracted from me were the one thing that made me stronger, but now I suddenly realize that sometimes letting go is when you can truly show your strength. Vince’s words just reaffirmed that. The problem is, I think I’m holding on to the wrong person while letting go of the right one.



Chapter 31


QUINLAN

Open your goddamn door.

It’s an echo of several texts I’ve gotten over the past few days but this time it’s from a different person. I groan at the sight of Colton’s text about ten seconds before the pounding begins on the front door.

I pull the pillow over my head and try to shut the noise out, try to shut out the things that I really don’t want to talk to my brother about. And then after I get him out of my house I’m going to lay into Layla for getting ahold of him and sending him over here.

Can’t a girl just wallow in self-pity for a day or so …? Well, more like the five days I’ve called in sick to Professor Stevens, but who’s counting?

“Go away,” I shout to the walls of my room as if he can hear me and just keep the pillow there, my mind immediately drifting to Hawkin and his endless phone calls and texts. The first ones worried about where I was and asked me to let him explain what had happened. That he didn’t want to share me with anyone because he wanted to be the only one to bring me pleasure and no one else. That the surprise was another instrument to add to our pleasure play, not a threesome. Vince had misinterpreted something he had told him, and it led to a clusterfuck of a misunderstanding. That he wasn’t mad at me for stopping the situation and that he did chase after me but he couldn’t find me so he sat in the studio to wait for me to come back. But I didn’t.

Misunderstanding, my ass.

How can he say all of that when in the end I was a mere casualty of band fun time? But that’s where things get murky for me. If I was just a pawn in their fucked-up game, why take me to see his mom? Why protect me from Hunter, who in the end, ironically, was the one who protected me from Hawkin? All of it doesn’t sit real well with me, but I need to wait for the dust to clear from this disaster because right now I’m looking at the situation through my emotional goggles.

I laugh into the pillow at how damn stoic I sound when I’m still upset and … I miss him. I stayed strong though and ignored the texts as long as I could until my anger got the best of me. I succumbed to my emotions with a single word response: Liar.

Then of course he responded with a flurry of responses, each one getting more and more adamant, followed by unanswered phone calls, to which I responded, A bet? That’s all I was to you? Fuck You. That message set off another round of calls that then turned into two random appearances at the house in which he pounded on my doors. At least this time I was smart enough to have my laundry room door locked.

I refuse to give him the time of day.

The only part I get a small amount of pleasure in is that I know the stake of the band’s bets. I know that Hawke didn’t prove shit to Vince. So that means the asshole has to ink a pink heart on his wrist for losing, and every time he looks at it, at least I’ll know he’ll remember me. That makes me happy.

And that makes me sad.

Fuck. I don’t want it to make me feel anything and yet it makes me feel everything. I can close my eyes all I want, pretend all of this never happened, but there’s no way I can close my heart off to the ache that’s nestled deep within me.

The pounding continues and I know my brother—he’s not going to stop until I open the door. Go away, I text.

The repair bill for a broken door is going to be expensive then. You’ve got 5 minutes. Starting now.

A frustrated groan falls from my mouth as I chuck my pillow across the room and push myself off the bed. I glance in the mirror and start laughing because I am heartbreak personified: curls wild, a pillow crease in my cheek, and a smudge of the chocolate bar I ate last night on my tank top. I look like hell.

So I shuffle into the bathroom and brush my teeth, because even I have limitations to my slumming, plus I throw my hair up in a clip so that I look less miserable for appearance’s sake.

Three minutes left.

With a roll of my eyes, I pull open the front door and let it swing back on its own before turning to walk back down the hallway without even looking at my pain-in-the-ass brother.

“You look like shit.”

“Yeah thanks. So do you.” I raise my middle finger in greeting over my head and smile at how dysfunctional this routine of ours is and yet I love it.

I walk to the couch and plop down, grab a blanket and wrap it around my shoulders. Colton takes a seat across from me, dark hair hidden underneath his beloved lucky ball cap and green eyes assessing me. I wait for the smart-ass comment I can see lighting up his eyes but it never comes. “That bad, huh?”

“How’s Ry doing?” I change the subject to tell him I don’t want to discuss it.

“Taking lessons from me on avoidance, now?”

“Had to learn something from you, right?”

“Did you wake up on the wrong side of the fucking bed or what? Oh wait, my bad, it doesn’t look like you’ve left your bed in forever.”

I know he’s giving me the tough love shit but don’t want that right now. And at the same time I know if he were to sit beside me and pull me into a hug, I’d start bawling the tears I’ve withheld for five long days. The floodgates would open and that’s just too much like rain and rain makes me think of how it’s like love and … I don’t want to go there.

My traitorous bottom lip trembles and his face softens. “The musician?”

I nod my head morosely.

“Did he cheat on you?”

“No.”

“Dump you?”

“No.”

“Be an asshole?”

“Well, he is a guy,” I say, cracking a slight smile.

“I take offense to that comment,” he says with mock irritation. Or at least I think it’s mock.

“Well, considering you used to be the king of assholes when it came to women, you shouldn’t be.” I shrug, suddenly thankful for his intrusion into my misery. He grunts at my answer and accepts it without further argument. “It’s hard to explain,” I confess but for some reason I don’t want him to know the whole extent of it. I’ve got to get my head on straight. Why in the hell am I protecting Hawkin when he played me like a fiddle?