With Every Heartbeat

“I do, but...” Mason pointed toward the stage, only to frown and scratch his arm. “I promised Asher I’d help him reset the stage for karaoke night. Except...”

“Quinn already helped me.” Asher nodded to me with a grateful smile.

“Yeah,” Mason said slowly, sliding his gaze his way. “What is Quinn doing here, though?” Then he glanced at my roommate. “And Ten too, for that matter. I thought Gamble was filling in for me tonight.”

“Ham broke up with Cora,” Pick announced.

Again, the calm, level way he said it made my jaws clench. Coming from his mouth like that, it sounded like some average, everyday thing had happened, whereas I was barely keeping myself together from all the trauma. I wanted to rage and break things, and curl into a ball and die, and then shrivel up from mortification, all while the things I’d done with Zoey kept whirling through my brain, keeping me perpetually guilty and horny at the same time.

To say I was an utter mess was probably the understatement of the century.

“Oh, shit,” Mason uttered, turning to Pick. “You finally told him how she hit on you, huh?”

I spun toward Pick and gaped at him openmouthed. He backed away slowly and lifted his hands, his eyes wide with culpability.

Oh my God. She had hit on him.

“What the fuck!” I gripped my hair, wanting to pull out every lock by the roots, just...anything to relieve the anger and humiliation inside me.

Mason turned wide-eyed to Ten. “Did Hamilton just say fuck? Or is my fever messing with my ears?”

Ten smacked him in the arm. “Way to go, asshole. You turned him to cursing.”

“Does anyone else here know something about my life that I don’t?” I demanded, glaring down every man in the room. “I thought you guys were my friends.”

They’d always made me feel included and welcome, like one of the crew. To realize they still kept things from me did not sit well. Did they think I was too stupid to keep up, too naive, too—

“You are our friend, Quinn.” Pick’s calming voice didn’t really calm me this time. And when he set his hand back on my shoulder, I shrugged it off and glared. He lifted his palms and took a step back.

“So, what? You think I’m too fragile to handle the truth, then?”

“No.” Pick scowled and shook his head. “Not at all. We think you’ve had to deal with a lot of new experiences in the past few months that you’ve never dealt with before. We know how sheltered you were; you didn’t get a normal teenager’s life. So when it comes to women, sex, and love, you didn’t get to wade in like the rest of us. You’ve had to jump straight off into the deep end. It’s because you are our friend and we’re completely loyal to you that we didn’t interfere or bother you with things we didn’t know for sure. We just wanted you to have fun with your first girl. And Cora didn’t exactly hit on me, as Lowe phrased it. She just put off this vibe like she wanted to, so I shut her down before she could. So she didn’t. I could’ve totally been reading it wrong, and I didn’t want to cause you any undue paranoia, so I never said anything.”

“And I swear, if I’d known she’d already agreed to go out with you again when we fucked, I would’ve told you, straight up,” Ten added. “I’ve been watching her like a hawk, waiting for the first moment I could catch her with someone else, but the bitch is slick, I’ll give her that. She hides her secrets well. I never caught her with anyone else while you two were together, so I couldn’t rat her out to you.”

“The love of my life is alive today because of you,” Pick added. “I would bleed for you, man. If there was ever anything we didn’t tell you, it’s because we care about you.”

I nodded, but I still felt like a fool. I’d been blind to so many things. I didn’t want anyone to think they had to hide anything from me for my own good, to lie to spare my feelings.

From here on out, I wanted to be tough. And aware.

Screw nice; I wanted honesty.

It’s crazy how fast a day can spiral out of control. Aside from the fact it felt as if my contacts had dried and glued themselves to my eyeballs, I woke to the most amazing sensation in the world: Quinn’s warm hard flesh pressed against mine.

For the longest moment ever, I just stayed there, piled on top of him with his heartbeat doubling as my pillow and our legs entwined while I breathed in his incredible smell. Hypnotized by the rise and fall of his chest under my ear, I listened to his breathing, simply astounded to be with him. My fingers that had been resting on his shoulder slipped down his arm, thrilled by how warm and soft his flesh was as it covered steel-hard muscle.