“So … he’s not getting any response from me so he sends you to do his dirty work for him?” I know it comes off bitchy, but I can’t help it, he’s at fault here too. He just confessed to using me and I’m supposed to sit here and kumbaya with him? Best friends like Vince, like Layla, go to bat for you, so how is this any different?

“No,” he says quietly, his eyes pleading for me to listen. “He has no clue that I’m even here.”

And why should I believe that? “What was the bet? How’d it come about?” I need to hear it from him so I can use the words as a validation for the anger I’m harboring and to withhold the forgiveness I feel.

He looks down at the floor for a moment and then back up. “It was after the first lecture. You’d given Hawke a run for his money, and I teased him that you might be the first woman he’s ever met that would turn him down. He had a knee-jerk reaction, said bet me. I’d recently lost a really crappy bet so I took the chance to brand him with that ridiculous heart for once, betting him that he couldn’t sleep with you by the last day of the seminar. Due to a bet I lost where there was no proof, he jokingly offered for me to join in if I was so desperate for it … so I agreed.” He looks at me sheepishly.

I take the damn piece of paper I’m holding crumpled in my hand and toss it into the trash can. The decision to not flatten it out, see where I stand, was just made that much easier.

I force a swallow down my suddenly dry throat; I hate hearing the details but need to all the same to reinforce my resolve. How I felt then, how I feel now, and the tears I feared would come if Colton hugged me, all come barreling down on me. Consumed by my thoughts, it takes a moment for me to come to the here and now, to Vince standing before me trying to see how the confession sits with me.

“Quin … I used you and I’m an asshole for it.”

“You can say that again.” Sarcasm thickens my voice.

I expect him to argue but he just nods his head and wins a few points with me. “Here’s the thing though—I saw something in Hawke that I’ve never seen before when he was around you. He’s spent his whole life living by whatever his dad made him say that damn day … always pushed anyone away when they got too close and yet with you he struggles with it. It was like something about you made him question himself, question the fucked-up shit in his head,” he says and a part of me stands up at attention, allows me to know that Hawkin did in fact care about me somehow, some way.

It’s bittersweet. It pisses me off. And it makes me miss him that much more.

And it makes it that much harder to deny that damn piece of paper is out of the trash can, still balled up, but with new significance.

“I screwed this up in so many ways—”

“Look, I get that you’re protecting Hawke, but he’s a big boy, he can make his own amends,” I cut him off, using anger to fuel my bravado, and at the same time realizing that I’m the one shutting Hawke and his attempts down, that he has tried to explain. Talk about an emotional clusterfuck.

“Just …” He sighs. “Quin, you have every right to be pissed but please, just hear me out.” He stares, making sure I’ve heard him. “At first it was funny. Watching Hawke get flustered, be off his game when he talked about you. Then I noticed every time I brought up the bet he would say no way in hell was he letting me near you and at the same time, he wasn’t getting a tattoo. I realized that maybe for once in his life, he thought he just might be worthy of having a real relationship, but every time I questioned him on it, he got defensive … so wrong or right, I pressed him on it.”

And now my fingers are toying with the edges of the paper to see just how flat it can be made again.

He’s frustrated that he’s not explaining this very well when in fact he is. I just think my mind is fearful of accepting what he’s trying to tell me. I want to believe him, yet … I don’t know. “But why continue? Just call off the bet, then. Let it run its course….”

“We should have,” he says and the adamancy in his tone tells me he’s being honest. “But I’ve got to tell you, Quin, it was so fucking great to see Hawke struggle with wanting someone, to feel like he deserved it…. I just wanted him to see it, acknowledge it … and I thought the only way I could do that would be to force his hand. Hell, I knew you guys had slept together, no denying it with the thin-ass walls in our house, but I thought if I could push him into the situation, that he’d push back finally. He’d defend you, realize his feelings for you, and in turn acknowledge so much more about himself as a man.”

It takes a moment to digest his first few sentences. I obsess over the fact that he’s seen a change in Hawke and that I wasn’t making all of these feelings up in my own head. And then his last sentence hits my ears and takes hold. My eyes flash back up to his, heart hoping what I heard was true. “His feelings for me?”

Vince angles his head and his expression is one of incredulity. “You have to ask? He’s head over heels for you.”

That damn paper is uncrumpled, my hands pressing it down, running across its surface over and over, adding pressure, trying to make it as smooth as possible.

“Oh.” It’s all I can manage as a sliver of hope begins to seep into the majority of the fractures in my heart, cementing it back together. Talk about throwing a perfect chord in there when everything has been playing out of tune the past few days. I tell myself to calm down, tell my pulse to stop racing so I can get a handle on everything because regardless of what Vince has said, there is still a whole helluva lot of wrong mixed in with the little bit of right he’s just laid on me.

Imperfectly perfect. I shake my head, trying to clear the thought from my mind, but it doesn’t budge.

“The night of the party, when we were fighting in the kitchen, he told me basically to fuck off and die if I thought he was going to let me in on the action. I laughed, told him to get ready for his pussy-pink heart. He was pissed I was forcing the issue, so that’s why I was so shocked when Rocket told me Hawke was looking for me. And shit, I walked in and you were … how you were. And then Hawke came back and thought you wanted it to happen since you kissed him instead of let him talk you out of it.” He nods with a sallow smile, my thoughts on an emotional merry-go-round. “Yes, he was trying to talk you out of it, but what man is going to resist a woman when she kisses him like you did Hawke?”

My mind flickers back to it all, the same things I have replayed over and over in my desolate misery. The gamut of emotions I felt that night, still feel now. How my stupidity made me react without thinking, clouded my judgment. The desperation I felt trying to right the wrong, and then with Hunter’s words … the crushing sensation of being used, made the fool, played when everyone else was in on the joke. The flashback gives me a firmer grip on my anger, on the pain Hawke’s actions caused me.

“Well shit, I mean so much to him, Vince, that he came running right after me, now, didn’t he?” I raise my hands up in the air to emphasize my point.

“Yeah, that’s because he was too busy landing a punch on me.” There’s a smirk on Vince’s lips but the tone of his voice tells me that he’s dead serious. I just stare at him to make sure I’ve heard him correctly. “Yep. Dead truth. I never saw it coming because the room was so damn dark. And then he stood there for a moment, shocked I think that he actually hit me, and took off after you.”

The memory of thinking I heard my name being called returns—and I think about how I disregarded it, and wonder if he’d found me then, if Hunter had never interfered, would I have ever known about the bet? Would I still be the fool or would I be none the wiser and better off without the knowledge?

“Well, he didn’t find me, Hunter did.” I tell him, hands back on my hips and turmoil in my soul. His eyes shock open a little at Hunter’s name but he nods his head up and down.

“Hawke couldn’t figure out how you knew, but assumed it was his brother.”

“Hunter was in on it, then?” I’m confused as a thought hits me that never crossed my mind before, and just when I was softening some. Hunter’s not part of the band, and yet he knew about the bet. Who in the hell else knew about it then? The groupies by the stairs, the rest of the guests that night? I mean was I the pathetic laughingstock of the party?

Vince can see my anger rising and puts his hands up to calm me down, his head shaking side to side. “No. He eavesdropped on a conversation Hawke and I were having. That’s the day he punched him, the day his mom unleashed everything….” His voice trails off. “When Hawke went looking for you, he ran into Hunter, who’d been texting for money all day. After everything with his mom, with whatever you were able to get him to see, he told Hunter he was done supporting his habit when he ran out of the monthly bullshit payoff he gives him.” He must sense my surprise at the comment because he nods his head. “I was surprised too. So Hunter showed up, was pissed about being denied money, angry we didn’t tell him when the party was, and him and Hawke went toe-to-toe before Gizmo calmed the situation down. He must have gone outside, and then he saw you … and Hunter did what he always does, he tried to fuck over Hawkin.”

Sinking down into the couch, I try to wrap my head around the new information, about being used by twin brothers but in ways I never expected, and worry what this all says about me, worry that I’m perceived to be someone who is gullible.

“Wow.” It’s all I can say.

“I know…. Look,” he says apologetically, “I didn’t mean to lay all of this on you. I know I’m partially at fault … and I know it’s not going to change your decision about Hawke or take away how bad you were hurt, but I thought you should know.”