You’re safe here.
No. He wasn’t. He didn’t feel safe anywhere. Emotion clawed at his throat. He’d let a wall down, and now he was furiously trying to put the bricks back together.
Were they going too fast? Had he done that, or had Adam?
The hell with easy.
For a breathless instant, it had been amazing to let go of thought, to let instinct rule his motions. But now he was paying for it, and he couldn’t analyze everything fast enough.
“Look.” Adam drew a hand down his face. “I don’t want you—”
“Forget it.” Nick shoved off the couch. The path to the door seemed a mile long.
“Hey.” Adam came after him. “Hey.”
Nick’s hand closed on the doorknob. Adam grabbed his arm.
He was stronger than Nick was ready for, and he spun him around.
Most girls couldn’t do that, either.
“What?” Nick demanded. The air had dropped ten degrees.
“Well, you’re definitely g*y. A straight guy wouldn’t be such a drama queen.”
Nick set his jaw. “Let me go.”
“Can I finish what I was going to say?”
Nick stared back at him. For all his gentle grace, Adam had a core of strength. Nick had seen it once before, and he was seeing it now.
“Fine,” he said. “You don’t want me . . . ? ”
“I don’t want you to rush into something you’re not ready for.”
Oh.
Adam’s hand loosened on his bicep, but he didn’t let go. “I’ve dated guys before who don’t want to be out. It’s a personal decision, and I get it, but . . .”
Nick swallowed. “But what?”
Adam looked at him, hard. “But if you wake up hating yourself, I don’t want you taking it out on me.”
Nick studied him, allowing some of the earlier moments to click into place. Adam asking if Gabriel would hurt Nick. The tension in his eyes when he said, “You’re strong.”
Even now, he was holding himself at a slight distance.
There was more to Adam’s story, hiding behind this easy self-confidence.
Nick shifted his weight, and Adam almost flinched. Without the air to reinforce his impression, Nick might have missed it altogether.
Slowly, carefully, Nick reached his hands out and put them on Adam’s shoulders. “You’re safe here,” he said softly. “Okay?”
Adam’s eyes widened as Nick fed his words back to him.
Nick smiled, just a little. “You don’t have to watch your words or your thoughts or whatever has you so wound up.”
Now Adam was blushing. “Okay, okay—”
Nick kissed him. Not with the feverish intensity of a few moments ago, but a bare brush of lips.
When he tried to pull away, Adam caught his face and held him there, putting his forehead against his. “You’re going to break my heart. I can feel it.”
“Not if I can help it.” He put a hand over Adam’s, holding it to his cheek. “Slow?”
Adam nodded, turning his head to kiss Nick’s palm.
Then he grinned. “Well,” Adam said. “Slower.”
CHAPTER 5
Quinn pulled the hood of her sweatshirt up and shivered.
She still had her dance shorts on, but there hadn’t been time to change. Her jaw hurt like a bitch, and she knew there’d be a bruise there tomorrow.
Her older brother had welcomed her home by slamming her face into the wall and demanding to know where his money was.
Like she had a clue. Quinn would be so happy when Jake went back to college. Her little brother Jordan had already taken to crashing at friends’ houses every night, rotating through his circle of gamer buddies so no one’s parents got suspicious.
Quinn had been sitting on the curb out in front of the 7-Eleven, but the old Korean woman who worked there had come out shrieking about teenagers loitering, so now Quinn was sitting on a milk crate out back, clinging to the darkness.
She was this close to stealing food from the Dumpster.
When she’d lived within walking distance of Becca’s house, Becca’s mom had always left her a plate of food. She’d known about Quinn’s disagreements with her mom. Quinn still had a key to their house on her key ring.
But now that Becca and Chris were an item, Quinn increas-ingly felt like a third wheel.
Especially now that she knew the truth about Becca and the Merricks.
A truth she’d learned from Nick, not Becca.
Some best friend.
Hunger clawed at Quinn’s insides and she wished she’d gone with Nick and Adam for coffee. But she didn’t have any money and she didn’t want to be a mooch and a third wheel.
But now that she had nowhere to sleep . . . Her fingers traced over the face of her cell phone, and she considered texting Nick.
A metal door slammed, a little distance down the back wall.
Quinn saw a flare of light, then a cigarette glowed red. The light over the door was out, but from the person’s size, it looked like a guy. Dark clothes.
She pulled her hood down, tucking her blond hair more tightly under the covering.
It didn’t help. “Hey!” The sharp male voice made her head snap up. The musty scent of cigarettes burned her nostrils. He was coming toward her. “You can’t be out here.”
Quinn didn’t move. “Says who?”
“Says me.”
“And who are you, the owner of the parking lot?”
“No. The whole strip mall.”
Well, she hadn’t expected that answer. She still didn’t move.
“Prove it.”
“What, you want to see the deed?” He moved like he was going to grab her, and she scrambled off the crate, dusting grit from her clothes.
“Fine, fine. I’m going.”
He followed her, taking a draw from his cigarette, clearly planning to make sure she exited his property. When she reached the sidewalk running beside the 7-Eleven, she whirled, ready to lay into him for being an ass**le.
But here the light found his features. It was Tyler, the guy from Nick’s driveway. She thought of Nick’s revelations and knew she should be afraid of Tyler, but her life was overflowing with cruel people, and she didn’t carry that much adrenaline around with her.
“It’s you,” she spat.
“It’s you.” He put the cigarette to his lips and inhaled again.
“Where’s your boyfriend?”
“He’s picking me up. He’ll be here any minute.” Just because she wasn’t afraid didn’t mean she was stupid.
“He was picking you up behind the 7-Eleven?”
Okay, maybe she was stupid. She gestured at the darkened storefronts lining the rest of the strip mall. “Why don’t you go back where you came from?”
“What are you doing out here, really?”
“None of your business.”
His eyes narrowed. “What happened to your face? Did that Merrick prick knock you around?”
He didn’t sound concerned, but he didn’t sound like an affir-mative answer would surprise him, either. “No. And don’t call him that.”
He huffed, blowing smoke through his nose. “You girls are all the same. You think those idiots are amazing and perfect and special. Well, you know what? They’re not.”
“I’m sorry, Prince Charming. Clearly not everyone is up to your standards.” She stepped up and ripped the cigarette out of his mouth, intending to break it in half.
But it flared and burned to ash in her hand. Quinn shrieked and dropped it.
Tyler smirked. “You don’t know what you’re messing with, baby girl. With me or them.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“I just wanted to talk to them, and you saw how that jerkoff treated me.”
“Yeah, and you were such a gentleman.” She swung a hand to shove him away.
He was too quick and grabbed her wrist. “Trust me, they’ve pushed me way past being a gentleman. Maybe I should get some answers from you.”
God, he was strong. She regretted trying to hit him. Her arm burned like he was pressing the cigarette between his hand and her skin. Quinn was gasping before she could stop it. Part of her wished she’d stayed in the apartment and tried her odds against her brother.
“Go ahead,” Tyler said. “Scream. I’ll tell them I caught you trying to break in.”
“Let me go,” she whimpered. The pain was immobilizing. He was pulling tears out of her, and she wanted to kill him for that.
“Let me go.”
“You think this is bad?” he said. “This is nothing. Just wait until you spend more time with them. Wait until you see what they do to you. They are killers. ”
Sweat bloomed on her forehead. “Okay. I get it. Lemme go.
Please.”
“I want to know what’s going on. You hear me? I want to know what really happened at that carnival, and I want to know what happened to the Guide that came to town to take care of it. You tell them I want answers. Got it?”
“Got it,” she whispered. The grip on her arm was the only thing holding her on her feet. She was going to pee her pants in a second.
“Good.” He let her go. Shoved her, really. She hit the ground, the impact jarring. She was lying where concrete met a bed of large, smooth stones surrounding the streetlamp. She’d probably have sixteen bruises tomorrow, just from this landing.
“Idiot,” he sneered.
She seized a rock and punched him in the side of the knee with it, throwing every ounce of strength into the motion. He swore as his leg gave out. He dropped like—well, like a rock.
Quinn swung her elbow around to jab him in the face.
His hand shot out to grab her, but Quinn was already running. Full out, as fast as her feet would go. Trees stretched along Ritchie Highway up ahead, a gaping pit of darkness full of un-seen dangers. Quinn scrambled through the underbrush, not caring about staying silent. She just ran.
Branches whipped her legs, but she didn’t slow. She stumbled twice. Then a third time, almost falling. Another branch whipped across her face, followed by a cloud of spiderwebs. Quinn screamed and beat at her face.
Then she shut up. Oxygen whistled into her chest, and she told her lungs to knock it off so she could hear.
Silence.
Darkness swelled around her, and she couldn’t see anything.
Quinn yanked her phone out of her pocket and dialed. Third wheel or not, she didn’t know if Tyler would come after her out here.
“Come on,” she muttered, bouncing from one foot to another while it rang.
“Hello?”
“Nick,” she said as quietly as she could muster. “I need you.”
At first Nick saw nothing along the stretch of Ritchie Highway. He peered into the darkness, looking for Quinn, finding only trees. Down the road a bit, the Jiffy Lube sign threw light into space, but here it was pitch-black. He rolled down the window to listen, but the diesel engine made that impossible.
Worry danced with exasperation in his head. It had taken him only ten minutes to get here from Adam’s apartment, but that felt like a long time when you were hiding from Tyler Morgan. He knew from experience.
What had she been doing with Tyler, anyway? He’d just seen her two hours ago! Safe at home!
Just when he was about to turn off the truck to go looking, Quinn burst through the trees into the path of his headlights, lit up like a beacon.
Her legs were scratched to hell, long stripes of red crisscrossing her thighs. But more concerning was the bruise on her jaw, cut through by one long scratch that was still bleeding. Her eyes were red and tear-filled.
Then she was out of the light and climbing into the truck.
Fury stole Nick’s exasperation. “Jesus, Quinn, are you okay?”
“Do I look okay?”
“No! Did Tyler hit you? I’m taking you to the cops—”