Page 4 of Puck My Stepbrother

I pulled out the chair across from him, turned it backward, and sat down leaning over the table.

“Homework?” I asked.

He shook his head.

“No?” I asked. “Then what are you working on?”

Again, he didn’t answer. When he saw that I wasn’t going away, he kept his head down and said, “A short story.”

“Really? About what?”

Quinn still hadn’t lifted his head from the notebook. I knew what he was doing. If he thought I was stupid enough to just give up, he was totally wrong. I was game for a challenge. When things like this happen, you’ve got to stay the course and be persistent.

Finally, he lifted his head and faced me. I needed to draw a deep breath when I saw his face. God, Quinn was so fucking hot I could hardly stand it.

“It’s a young adult story,” he said. “A romance, I guess you’d call it.”

“That’s cool. Ever published anything?”

“A few stories.”

“Seriously?”

He didn’t answer that. Again, he was putting on an act I’d seen plenty of times. Like I said, you don’t give up when the other person puts up walls. You stay the course. You crank up the heat if necessary. Now that we’d traded at least a few sentences, I could switch to the topic I really wanted to discuss.

“I didn’t know you wanted that bedroom,” I said.

“You didn’t?”

“No. I honestly thought that bedroom was up for grabs, so I moved my stuff in there right away. Nobody even told me that anyone other than my mom and her new husband would be living here.”

All of that was true, so he couldn’t say I’d bullshitted him.

“Seriously?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.”

“I guess I can believe that. No one told me you’d be living here, either.”

“See? We’re in the same boat.”

He looked up from the notebook for a split second before lowering his head again.

“So,” he said, “does that mean you’re going to clear out and let me have the bedroom I picked?”

“Well, no…”

I should’ve expected him to ask that question, but I didn’t. Usually when I do something to piss someone off, the offended person has no choice but to accept it. Quinn had turned the tables on me in his own way. I don’t usually explain myself to anyone. I don’t have to—I’m Levi Dunn.

“I don’t plan on moving anything out of there,” I said, “but I wanted you to know why I did it.”

“Thank yousomuch, Levi.”

He went back to writing in his notebook to underscore the touch of sarcasm. I’d seen him with that notebook often back in school and figured he’d been writing stories. I remembered him talking about wanting to be a writer in both elementary and high school. And yeah, I could see that he wasn’t interested in conversation. At least, that was what he wanted me to think.

I knew how this game worked.

“The bedroom thing is bothering you,” I said. “I can tell.”