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“Your sisters won’t be mad at you?”

She grimaced. “Not mad at me. They might have questions. But I’ll answer them tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. Tomorrow would be a fine time to answer questions.

They finished eating in relative silence, and she grabbed her phone, just firing off a quick text to Fia.

I won’t be home tonight.

Why?

I’m staying with Levi.

You’re staying overnight at Levi’s?

Yes.

There were dots. And dots again. They came and went, and came back. It was clear that Fia had no idea how to respond to this. That was fine. Quinn didn’t really know how to respond, either. But it was happening.

We’ll talk tomorrow, Quinn typed in, and hit Send.

Okay.

She helped Levi clear up the firepit area, and they did their minimal dishes. It was strange, to be so domestic with him. And wonderful, too. Her knee-jerk response was to want to pull away from it, but that was what she’d been doing every time they got angry with each other, every time they fought. Every time she got pointy.

Maybe the secret to being sticky, and a little more like honey, was to not turn herself into a blade at every opportunity. But rather to just leave herself open to the moment. Maybe that was it.

So she resisted the urge to get pointy. And she just enjoyed it, being with him. Afterward they went upstairs, and he laid her down on the bed, and he stripped her slowly. And when he made love to her, he teased her, tortured her. Kept it slow, kept it at his pace.

“You can’t just have book learning, Quinn. It’s not enough. You need someone with hands-on experience to teach you.”

By the time they were finished, she was gasping for air. Clinging to him.

And when she was spent, she crawled beneath the covers and waited for him to come to her. She looked around the room, and one of the things that surprised her the most was the bookshelf in the corner.

She got up and padded over to the bookcase naked, looking at the spines.

“My mom and dad’s,” he said. “I moved them all from the small house when we brought them here. My mom liked to read.”

“It’s a good library,” Quinn said.

He shrugged. “Kind of ironic. Got left a bunch of books.”

“It’s not ironic. It’s just perfect. You love books. Audiobooks, you told me.”

“It isn’t the same thing.”

“Yes, it is. It’s absolutely the same thing. You love stories. It doesn’t matter what format you take them in.”

She grabbed a copy of Pride and Prejudice from the shelf and looked it over. It was a hardcover with gold letters. Beautiful.

“Have you read this one?”

“No.”

“I’ll read it to you.”

He got that same funny look on his face, boyish, only this time a little bit skeptical. “You want to read it to me?”