Page 23

23

QUINN

I shouldn’t be this nervous.

It’s ridiculous, really. The way my pulse keeps stuttering, the way my fingers keep tugging at the sleeves of my sweater. It’s like I’m eighteen again, back at the club, trying too hard to act like I had everything figured out.

Because that’s how it started, didn’t it? Me pretending I didn’t care. Pretending I was too sharp, too sarcastic, too sure of myself to bother getting attached to anyone. Especially not some swimmer with a smart mouth and a grin that made my chest feel too tight.

I exhale hard, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. The field looks different now. More overgrown than I remember, the grass taller, wildflowers blooming in thick clusters where bare patches of earth used to be. The old log we used to sit on is still there, half-hidden beneath tangled vines.

It’s a little run-down, a little forgotten, but still beautiful. Still ours.

I don’t know what I’m doing here. Not really. Last night was impulsive. One painfully honest text sent in a moment of weakness, of hope, of wondering what if.

What if we had just talked things out instead of trading jabs and dodging real conversations?

What if I’d let him kiss me after the banquet instead of pulling away?

What if I’d stopped being scared and just tried? Tried to be loved? Tried to be seen?

I swallow hard, eyes flicking toward the path that cuts through the trees. He’s late.

I don’t know what I was expecting. Some grand arrival, maybe. Or for him to already be here, leaning against the log and looking at me like he always does—like I matter.

But Warren’s not here. And maybe that’s my answer.

I pull my phone from my pocket, thumb hovering over his contact. Still no reply to my last desperate text: you’re still coming, right? Maybe I should try one more time. One last reach across the space between us.

Before I can type anything, footsteps crunch through the gravel path.

I glance up, and there he is. Late. Disheveled. Tense.

He’s wearing a gray T-shirt, damp in spots like he’d been sweating, his hair still rumpled from whatever morning he’s had. There’s a tightness in his jaw, a restless coil in his shoulders. Something about the way he walks feels off. Like he’s been fighting a storm just to get here.

“You’re late,” I say, trying to keep it light. “Figured you might’ve bailed.”

“Didn’t bail,” he mutters, dragging a hand down his face. “Just got held up.”

Something’s wrong. I can feel it.

I hesitate, swallowing back the question that wants to come out— What happened? Are you okay? —because I already know he won’t answer it. Not right now. Not with the kind of weight he’s carrying in his shoulders.

Instead, I stuff my hands deeper into my pockets, rocking back on my heels.

“Well,” I say, aiming for casual. “I guess I should thank you for showing up.”

Warren huffs out a breath, part laugh, part exhale, and shakes his head.

“Yeah,” he says dryly. “Would’ve been easier to just ignore you.”

The words are sharp. A little too close to mean.

I flinch before I can stop myself. “Look, if you didn’t want to come—”

“That’s not—” He cuts himself off with a sharp breath, like he’s trying to reel something back in. “I didn’t say that.”

I frown. “Then what are you saying?”

He stands there, arms stiff at his sides, gaze flicking toward the horizon like he’s searching for a way out.

“You text me out of nowhere,” he says finally. “Tell me you want to talk. Like this is easy. Like there’s still something between us that isn’t already shattered.”

I blink, caught off guard by the sudden bite in his voice.

“I’m trying, Warren.”

“Yeah?” His mouth twists. “Feels more like you’re playing games again.”

“I’m not.”

“Sure,” he mutters, and the bitterness in that word cuts straight through me.

My stomach turns. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. I didn’t expect him to be smiling, but I thought maybe we’d find some middle ground. Some thread to pull.

“I just . . .” I shake my head. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t know what I’m doing here or why I even texted you last night. I just—”

“You just what?” Warren’s voice rises, strained and raw. “Changed your mind? Thought you’d see if I’d still jump when you snapped your fingers?”

I suck in a breath, stepping back like he’s shoved me.

“That’s not fair.”

“Yeah? Neither is this.”

I bite the inside of my cheek, trying to keep my voice steady. “If you didn’t want to come—”

“I did want to come. Jesus, Quinny. Of course I wanted to come.” His voice breaks at the end, the sound cracked and uneven like he’s hanging on by a thread.

I hate that sound.

“I’m sorry,” I say finally, softer now. “I didn’t mean to—”

“You never mean to,” he cuts in. “But you do. Every damn time.”

The wind shifts, rustling through the tall grass. The wildflowers brush my ankles, soft and fragile, like they’re trying to taunt me. I look down at them instead of him.

“This place,” I murmur. “I thought maybe . . . I don’t know. I thought maybe we could talk here because it’s where we had our firsts.”

I remember that night the way I remember my own name. The way he kept pausing, breath held like he didn’t want to mess anything up. The way his fingers trembled when he reached for me, like he was scared I’d laugh. Like he thought I’d roll my eyes and say seriously?

But I didn’t. Because I loved him. And I loved that he was nervous. I loved that for all his bravado and easy charm, Warren Mercer had never done this before.

And I never told him it was my first time, either.

He assumed it wasn’t. And I let him believe that because he seemed so certain. Because I thought it would make things easier. Because I didn’t know how to say it without feeling like I was risking too much.

For the first time since he showed up, I wonder if his hesitation isn’t just about me or us. If maybe whatever’s been following him since this morning, whatever has wound him up so tight, is something else entirely.

“I’m not playing games,” I say softly. “I just . . . I don’t know how to do this.”

His gaze flickers back to mine, guarded but searching.

“Me neither,” he admits.

We sit there, the air thick between us, words unsaid piling up like stones.

“I’m tired,” Warren says eventually. “I really don’t know if I can do this today.”

“Then don’t.”

I start to push myself up, thinking maybe this was a mistake. Maybe it was too little, too late. And as usual, my indecisiveness has chipped away at whatever chance we had left until there is nothing solid to stand on.

“No, wait, stay,” he says. “Just . . . stay a little longer.”

I sit, and neither of us speaks. For a minute, it’s just the wind shifting through the grass and the faint rustle of leaves overhead.

We were good once. Better than good.

When summer ended, we worried it wouldn’t last. We were afraid that without the blazing afternoons and stolen hours between shifts, we’d start slipping apart. That things would get harder once school started with classes, schedules, and friends pulling us in opposite directions.

But we didn’t slip. We flourished.

We walked to class together, grabbing coffee from that spot near the quad where he always ordered the same thing—black, no sugar, no fuss. I’d sit on the floor of his dorm room, flipping through his kinesiology notes while he stretched before morning practice.

We spent weekends tangled up in bed, half-dressed and lazy, my fingers tracing the dip of his collarbone, his mouth finding my pulse like he was trying to memorize the beat.

We were happy.

And then over winter break, it all unraveled.

I did something fucked-up, something desperate, and he reacted. Of course he did. But before that, before I ruined it, it was real. It was everything.

“We were so good together,” I say finally. “Before the split . . . we were good.”

“Sure.” His voice is quieter now. “Until we weren’t.”

“You didn’t ask me to stay,” I whisper. “Back then, you didn’t ask.”

“You fucked me over, and then you pushed me away. You told me to leave. You didn’t try to fix it after that.”

“I knew you wouldn’t forgive me. You never even gave me a real chance to explain myself.”

“Explain what?” His head snaps toward me, voice sharp. “That you stole from my family and then lied to me about it?”

“I know what I did,” I say. “I’m not excusing it.”

He exhales hard, dragging a hand down his face. “I texted you. Once. I wanted to know why, Quinn. I needed to know why. And when you didn’t answer, I just . . .”

“You just gave up.”

His gaze hardens. “I didn’t give up. I got the message. You weren’t gonna say a damn thing. What was I supposed to do? Chase you down? Beg you to make it make sense?”

“Maybe!” My voice breaks. “Maybe you were supposed to give me more than one text. Maybe you were supposed to try.”

“I did try,” Warren snaps. “I spent weeks trying to make sense of it. Trying to believe it wasn’t what it looked like. I thought maybe you took it for Wesley—maybe you were desperate, or scared, or something. But no.” He lets out a cold laugh. “It wasn’t for your brother. It was just you being selfish.”

“That’s not fair.”

“Isn’t it?” He stares at me, like he’s daring me to argue. “Because I trusted you. I let you in. I let myself believe that you were—” He breaks off, dragging a hand through his hair. “I thought you were different.”

“I never meant to hurt you.”

“Then why?” His voice cracks, raw and open in a way that makes my chest ache.

I take a breath. It shakes on the way in. “There was this submission fee,” I say. “For a writing contest. A big one. The kind that could’ve actually led to something.”

His face goes blank, like the words don’t make sense to him. “A writing contest.”

“I know how it sounds,” I say quickly. “I know it was silly and selfish and—and ridiculous. But I’d been eyeing it for months. I didn’t have the money, and I knew I couldn’t ask my parents.”

It wasn’t some astronomical amount, just out of reach. And I knew—really knew—that if I asked my parents, they would look at me like I was being impractical. Not because they were cruel but because they wouldn’t see it as important. Not compared to Wesley’s medical appointments, his therapy, his tutoring.

Dad might’ve tried to make it work, but they wouldn’t have understood. It would have just been another thing for them to worry about, another dollar they didn’t have to spare.

And I got that. I really did.

“So, you stole from me.”

“From Daniel ,” I correct quietly. “I didn’t plan it. It just . . . it just happened. You made some joke—something careless about how he wouldn’t even notice the money missing, and I thought—”

“And you thought what?” His voice sharpens, rising with disbelief. “That it wouldn’t matter? That when I covered for you like you knew I would, he’d still look at me the same? Because guess what, Quinn—he didn’t.”

I flinch. “I know.”

“No, you don’t,” he says, and this time, it’s a low burn. “You don’t know what it took for me to convince my mom I wasn’t just like my dad. You don’t know what it felt like to have my stepfather look at me like I was some lying, thieving screwup, too.”

I stare down at my lap, my fingers knotting in the fabric of my jeans. “I didn’t know,” I whisper. “I didn’t know it would fall on you like that.”

“You didn’t think,” he says flatly. “You didn’t think about me at all.”

“That’s not true,” I say, too fast, too sharp. “I thought about you constantly. About how you probably hated me. How you’d never want to see me again. How I’d ruined the one good thing I had, and there was no way to fix it.”

“You could have tried. You could have explained, or apologized, or—something. But instead, you just disappeared. You didn’t even give me the chance to understand.”

“I thought you wouldn’t forgive me, anyway,” I say. “I thought—”

“You thought it’d be easier if I really did hate you.”

I press my fingers hard against my temples, trying to push back the burn rising behind my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to lose you. But I didn’t know how to keep you, either.”

He exhales, sharp and unsteady. “I needed you to fight for me. I needed you to want to fix it.”

“I did,” I say, my throat tight. “I still do.”

For a second, I think maybe this is it—maybe this is the part where he softens, where we start piecing things back together. But then he shakes his head.

“I can’t go back,” he says. “I don’t know how to trust you again.”

I feel it like a slap, sharp and sudden, stealing the breath from my lungs.

“You don’t have to trust me. Just . . . don’t give up on me yet.”

He looks at me for a long time, blue-gray eyes steady, jaw tight.

“I can’t keep chasing something that’s already gone. I can’t keep wanting this more than you do. It might actually kill me this time.”

I swallow hard, the ache in my chest blooming sharp and jagged. “You’re wrong about one thing. I never stopped wanting this, never stopped wanting you.”

“Yeah? Then prove it.”