Page 3 of Seven Lost Summers (Broken Oasis #3)

Theo

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Quinn

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to her place, Nate behind the wheel, trailing her little blue shitbox of a car. The one that rattles like it might fall apart with every turn. I don’t know how the fuck it still runs, but Quinn drives it like it’s a Ferrari.

What surprises me most is that Nate wanted this, wanted to go to Quinn's place, knowing Bianca would be the only thing we’d talk about. Normally, after we visit her grave, he shuts down, locks everyone out.

I turn my head and watch him—the frustration in his jaw, the way his hands strangle the wheel like he’s two seconds from snapping it in half. And yeah, for a moment, I wonder if this is going to be too much for him.

But fuck that.

I love him, no question.

Still, if this is too much, he can stay in the car, because this isn’t about him.

This is about her.

She was the girl who taught me not to hide. The one who saw me when no one else even looked. She made me believe I could be more than the mess everyone else decided I was.

We turn left into the industrial district.

The streets are cracked, buildings half-dead, rust bleeding across metal, windows smeared with grime or shattered through.

It all looks abandoned, even when it’s not.

Groups linger on corners, eyes dull, movements sluggish, as if they’ve got nowhere else to go and nothing left to want.

A pair of boots dangles from the power lines, swaying lazily in the breeze like some fucked-up omen—a warning not to get too comfortable.

Every wall, dumpster, and sidewalk is drowned in graffiti.

Layers on layers, names and phrases painted over each other until the walls are nothing but noise.

Nobody’s tried to scrub it clean. This place gave up on being saved a long time ago.

As we crawl through in our shiny, too-clean car, heads turn.

Not curious. Not welcoming.

Just watching, measuring us, waiting to see if we’re here to start something or if we’ll keep driving, chased off by the weight of their stares.

I lift my hand, offering a small wave to a kid slumped on the curb, legs sprawled, hoodie shadowing half his face. He doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink. Just stares through me, like he’s already seen it all and knows exactly how this story ends.

And I wonder if he’s been passed around the way I was. If his fists ache from fighting ghosts that won’t stay dead. If he’s holding out for someone to drag him from the wreckage the way Wes and Rose did for me. Or maybe he already knows the truth. That most of us don’t get out.

Quinn pulls up in front of a run-down apartment block and kills the engine.

Nate rolls in beside her, slowing to the curb, his eyes fixed on the building.

The place is a fucking mess.

Cracks split the concrete like old scars. Blankets hang over windows in place of curtains, shutting out more than just the sun. This isn’t just a shitty building… it’s a graveyard. The kind of place that eats people alive and doesn’t bother spitting out the bones.

Quinn steps out and makes her way over.

I hit the button, rolling the window down.

“You can pull in behind me,” she says, calm, like this place doesn’t rattle her. “It’s safe. No one’s gonna touch it.”

I glance at Nate.

He doesn’t speak, but the muscle ticking in his jaw says enough.

Safe? That’s a word people use when they’ve never had everything ripped out from under them.

Nate pulls into the lot and cuts the engine behind Quinn’s car. We climb out without a word.

The silence between us stretches tight, heavy with everything we’re not saying.

Quinn leads us up two flights of concrete stairs.

Our footsteps echo through the stairwell, sharp and hollow. The railing is rusted, paint peeling in strips. The air reeks of stagnation. The dead weight left behind by too many lives passing through without ever really mattering.

We step into a long, narrow hallway swallowed by shadows. A single bulb flickers overhead, buzzing like it’s dying a slow, miserable death.

Each door we pass leaks noise—a woman screaming, a baby wailing, a TV blaring some crap loud enough to shake the walls. This is the kind of place where no one looks up, no one makes eye contact. Where silence isn’t peace, it’s survival. Where people already know too much to bother asking.

Quinn stops at a door with a dent so deep it looks like someone once tried to kick the whole thing in. She mutters under her breath, digging through her bag until she finds the key, then shoves it into the lock and twists.

Nothing happens.

The door stays shut.

She sighs, like it’s just one more bullshit inconvenience stacked on top of a hundred others.

“It gets stuck sometimes,” she mutters, shoving her shoulder into the frame.

The door bursts open, slamming against the wall.

Darkness waits on the other side, staring back at us.

Even though it’s mid-morning, not a trace of daylight gets in. The blinds are clamped shut, sealing the place like a tomb.

Quinn steps inside without a flicker of hesitation, like none of this rattles her. Just another room full of ghosts.

Nate and I hang back, letting our eyes adjust, instincts flaring like alarms that won’t shut off.

Suddenly, Quinn yanks the heavy curtains open.

Harsh light floods the room, driving the shadows into the corners. She turns back to us, her figure framed in the glare.

“Come in,” she says, tossing her bag onto something half-buried under clutter. It could be a pile of forgotten crap, hard to tell.

Nate and I stay in the doorway, stuck there like two useless fucks hovering in the silence.

I step across the threshold, and Nate follows.

The moment we’re inside, Quinn slams the door shut behind us.

My eyes sweep the room, my pulse finally easing off the edge.

Black-and-white photos cover the walls—stark shots of twisted metal, crumbling buildings, bridges disappearing into fog. Every frame feels deliberate, as if Quinn caught the last flicker of something fading and trapped it before it disappeared for good.

That’s when I see it… and everything stops.

One photo.

Larger than the rest.

Framed in black.

The four of us, caught mid-laugh, faces lit with something close to joy.

I remember that day.

Quinn shoved the camera into Scarlet’s hands, muttering that if anyone was going to take the damn photo, it sure as hell wasn’t going to be her.

Scarlet rolled her eyes so hard it was a miracle they didn’t get stuck, then spent ten minutes fumbling with the buttons like the thing was some alien device sent to ruin her life.

It took three tries. Scarlet had the skills of a blindfolded drunk with a personal vendetta against focus.

Each time, Quinn got up to check, muttering curses under her breath before barking at us to move left, tilt our heads, stop blinking. We groaned, swore at her, called her a psycho, but we still did it anyway.

Back then, it was nothing more than another moment, just another dumb photo to roll our eyes at.

Now… I’d stand there a thousand more times. Say the same shit, laugh the same laugh, suffer through every retake, if it meant holding onto that one second a little longer.

The burn hits before I can brace myself.

There she is… our girl.

Hair tumbling around her face, that smile that always seemed to know too much, as if she could read every twisted piece of us and still want in. And those fucking eyes. I could’ve drowned in them. I still do.

I blink hard, tearing my gaze from the photo just long enough to find Nate.

He stands frozen, staring at the photo like it’s reached off the wall and ripped his chest wide open. His hands shaking. And that look on his face… fuck, I know it too well. It’s the same one that surfaces every time the memory of her cuts through him.

The silence is brutal. Full of everything we should’ve said, everything we never fucking got the chance to.

“Do you guys want something to drink?” Quinn asks, her voice softer than usual, as if she knows we’re already drowning.

“Yeah, what do you have?” I ask.

“Water, juice, beer.”

“I’ll take a beer,” I answer without hesitation.

Quinn turns to Nate. “And you?”

He doesn’t answer. Just stands there, eyes locked on the photo like it’s choking him, pulling him under. His breathing is wrong. The twitch in his jaw says everything. He’s back there. With her.

I step closer, voice low. “You want a beer or something?”

This isn’t about the drink. It’s about giving him something to hold on to before the fucking grief swallows him whole.

He finally looks at Quinn and gives a small nod.

“Yeah. Thanks.”

His voice is steady, but his body’s still taut, wired tight with everything he’s not saying.

Quinn nods and turns for the kitchen. She doesn’t speak or look back, just moves with that calm, collected air she’s always had, like she’s seen this kind of broken a thousand times and knows better than to try to fix it.

She yanks open the fridge—a battered old thing humming loud enough to smother a thought. The door groans, worn out, like even it’s tired of this place. She leans in, grabs three beers, the bottles clinking in her grip.

Quinn turns, sets the bottles on the counter, and pops the caps. The metal tops clatter against the surface, one spinning off and disappearing somewhere behind the microwave.

She walks back over, no rush, no fuss. Just Quinn, steady as ever.

“Here,” she says, handing me a bottle before passing the other to Nate.

I take the bottle. The chill steadies me for a moment, enough to keep me from falling apart.

Nate doesn’t drink, doesn’t speak. He just stares, eyes locked on the label like there’s some secret carved into the glass, answers hidden beneath the condensation. As if staring hard enough might tell him how to fix the shit none of us knows how to survive.

Quinn nods toward the couch.

“Go on, take a seat.”

Nate and I trade a look before sinking onto the worn cushions, the springs groaning under our weight.

Quinn doesn’t sit. She lifts her beer, takes a slow pull, then sets it down on the coffee table beside her.