Page 61 of Seven Lost Summers (Broken Oasis #3)

Theo

T

wo

weeks

vanish

in

a blur of sweat, shitty coffee, and Xander riding our asses like it’s a sport he’s training for.

Ace is one bad take away from going full WWE on the sound board, while Nate and I spend half our time pretending it’s all good and the other half planning each other’s funerals, anything to break the monotony.

And Quinn—she fucking fits.

One day she’s a stranger with a camera, the next she’s wedged into the middle of our chaos, like she’s always been here.

Even Xander talks to her, which is saying something, because the guy barely says a word unless there’s a riff involved.

And Ace, he gets that forehead vein going, the one that screams somebody’s about to die, and she lifts her camera, snaps a shot, then tilts the screen his way.

Whatever she shows him, it hits. The vein eases, his shoulders drop, and the murder drains out of his eyes.

Quinn’s got this freaky sixth sense for reading people.

She knows when to push, when to back off, and exactly when to pull out the camera.

I’ve caught both Ace and Xander leaning in when she tilts the screen toward them, staring at whatever shot she’s captured.

Then comes that quiet, almost smug look on both of their faces, the kind that says “ oh yeah, this is the dream we swore we’d bleed for

.”

And Nate and me?

We’re both just stuck in her gravity, and I’m not entirely sure I want to crawl out of it.

A couple of days ago, we were at Xander’s for one of his pool barbecue things. Those were his exact words, because apparently “party” is too mainstream for him. I was halfway through a beer when I realized I had lost sight of Quinn.

I found her and Poppy tucked away on the far side of the deck, clinging to each other and laughing their asses off.

This wasn’t a chuckle. This was full-on, can’t-breathe, tears-running, completely-fucking-gone laughter.

Poppy hit that high-pitched snort she does, the one that sounds like a dying kettle, and it set Quinn off even harder.

That, in turn, set the rest of us off, even though we had no fucking clue what was so funny.

That is the thing about Quinn.

She slides into our chaotic lives so effortlessly that one day you look around and realise she belongs here.

I’m not sure when the days started speeding up, but it’s hitting me now that time is running out.

Soon the nights will be gone of her curled up on the couch with her laptop, making those soft humming noises she probably doesn’t even realize slip out when she’s editing photos.

No more midnight arguments about whether pineapple belongs on pizza.

No more watching her grin at Nate like he’s said the funniest shit in the world, even though we both know he hasn’t.

She is part of the rhythm here now, woven into the noise and the quiet in a way that makes it hard to picture our lives without her. And I am not ready for it to change.

The days are loud. Guitars. Drums. Xander’s voice tearing across the booth.

But the nights?

We fuck.

The two of us get lost in her.

She’s pulling Nate and me closer too, tying us together in ways I never saw coming.

Nate always goes first. To him, the whole thing is a game. He gets off on being the one to break her open. Fingers, tongue, cock. He wrecks her, and he knows exactly what he is doing. And I love watching him do it.

After he’s done, it’s my turn. My mouth on her tits while he’s buried deep inside her, her head thrown back, nails clawing for something to hold.

Sometimes she’s on her knees, swallowing my cock while Nate fucks her from behind, both of us watching her fall apart.

I love dragging my mouth over her nipples, sucking until she’s squirming, my fingers finding that spot between her legs where Nate’s cock splits her wide open.

Other nights, she rides us both, one after the other. Soaked. Screaming. Wild-eyed. Her nails leaving marks on our skin, as if she’s afraid letting go would mean losing this entirely.

She has changed us.

Changed everything.

Before Quinn, fucking a woman together was simple. We knew the rhythm. In. Out. Swap. Done. No eye contact. No lingering touch beyond the quick graze of a hand. We got off, pulled out, zipped up, and walked away. It was sex stripped of anything that could matter.

Now Nate’s hand finds me mid-thrust.

When she’s on her knees, my cock in her mouth, he comes up behind me, mouth hot on mine, his palms sliding over my chest before he moves around to bury himself in her from behind.

When she’s bouncing on my cock, he grips her hips and fucks her ass while his eyes stay locked on me. His mouth claims hers, shifts to mine, and returns to hers again.

Every touch drags us closer into something I don’t know how to name.

After we have Quinn flat on the bed, hair damp against her face, skin flushed, cunt still leaking both of us, I’ll be lying with Nate close beside me, sometimes with me caught between them.

His fingers slide up my spine, heat blooming under every slow stroke.

The sensation burns into me before his mouth follows, pressing soft kisses into my back.

Afterward he shifts, moving over me to give Quinn the same.

No longer is it only about fucking her. This is about the way she’s pulled the three of us into a closed orbit where nothing exists outside this bed, this heat, this tangle of skin and breath.

That night I fucked her without Nate, something in me cracked wide open.

It wasn’t the way I usually fuck. No mindless pounding until she broke apart.

I took my time, watching every twist of her face when a moan slipped free.

My hands covered every inch of her, committing it to memory, tracing her curves as if I could etch her into my skin.

Every sound she made slammed into my chest, sinking deep like it was meant to stay.

I’ve never had that shit hit me before. Not even with Bianca.

I’ll always love her—she was my first, my girl, the one who taught me to love and left me bleeding.

I thought that was the end, that what we had was the peak, the only kind of love I’d ever know.

But nothing compares to this. Bianca made me feel alive. Quinn makes me feel owned.

I’m certain this is love. That truth scares the fuck out of me. I haven’t let myself love another woman since Bianca. Haven’t even let the thought in. But that night with Quinn stripped me bare, and now the door won’t close on what I feel.

Nate loves her too. I see it in the way his eyes lock on her, in the clench of his jaw, in the stillness that takes over when she laughs.

That sound pulls a smile out of him, cuts straight through whatever noise is in his chest. He’s every bit as fucked as I am, just as scared to let the words out.

He still carries the weight of never telling Bianca he loved her before she was gone, and now he’s fighting the same war I am—wanting her, loving her, and knowing exactly how much it costs to live with love you can’t bring yourself to speak.

And tomorrow?

Quinn is leaving.

I can already feel that shift in the air.

Poppy threw a lunch today to say goodbye.

Xander’s place smelled of garlic bread and that vanilla candle Poppy burns until the wick’s nothing but ash.

The table was buried under bright flowers, crooked paper crowns, and enough food to feed half the street.

Poppy kept topping up Quinn’s glass, telling her she had to drink enough for both of them now she couldn’t.

Her hand lingered on her belly when she spoke, eyes warm in that way Poppy makes everyone instantly at home.

When Quinn laughed, Poppy laughed louder, and snorted of course, and Scarlet joined in until the whole table cracked up.

A moment later Quinn’s voice snagged on something she couldn’t swallow. Poppy didn’t hesitate, she grabbed her hand and held on, thumb running over her knuckles until her smile steadied.

And fuck, Quinn looked beautiful.

Cheeks flushed, eyes wet but steady, holding herself together enough to make the rest of us believe she wasn’t breaking. All I wanted was to pull her into my chest, tell her she didn’t have to be fine.

But I didn’t. I sat at the table, chewing garlic bread and pretending I wasn’t falling apart watching her.

Later, Nate and I dragged her to this dusty little photography store she’d sniffed out online.

The place smelled of old film, the air heavy with decades of people trying to trap their memories before they bled away. She disappeared inside, already lit up in that way she gets when the world makes sense to her.

Nate and I ended up in the department store next door, hunting for a suitcase that didn’t need a hoodie to keep it together. We stood in the middle of the aisle, two idiots surrounded by luggage.

Nate was adamant on black. “Timeless,” he said, like she was about to walk down the aisle at a funeral.

I went for the obnoxious neon pink, the kind that screamed emotionally unstable but great at parties. He said the color looked as though Barbie had puked. I told him that was exactly why she would love it.

But through all the bickering and bad color commentary, I kept wanting to ask him if he feels the same.

That ache.

That hollow pull in the chest that never loosens, as though something’s clawing at the ribs from the inside out. The thought of Quinn not being here after tomorrow guts me.

No more laughter spilling down the hall at two in the morning, loud enough to wake the dead because she’s never learned how to whisper. I wish I could freeze it, trap it in a bottle, keep her here.

She’s messy, wild, impossible. A beautiful kind of chaos that somehow made our broken pieces seem like they were finally close to fitting.

And now she’s leaving. The world is already quieter without her. Too fucking quiet.

It’s our last night.