“Hi,” a deep voice says above me.
Steeling my shoulders, I glance up.
Quinn is staring down at me. He blinks, and I see those ridiculously long lashes haven’t changed either. It was that detail about him that always made me swoon.
Yes, swoon. I was that girl in high school.
You know what? I’m still that girl. No one on earth can criticize me for it. Put him in front of anyone attracted to men and they’ll say the exact same thing.
“You again,” I say, ice cold. Ironic, given I’m burning on the inside. “You know, I did give you a way out. For you to follow me back to my table just to mess with me and make me a laughingstock for your brothers, again, is just so…high school.”
Quinn furrows his brow. “What are you talking about? I wanted to say hi. You’re right, I don’t remember you, and that’s my loss. Can you really fault a guy for trying to right a wrong?”
I’m not convinced his brothers aren’t putting him up to this. Right a wrong? Really?
“Look, Quinn, it’s been a long week, and I’m only at this grease spoon because I need to eat. Then I’m headed back to my little cabin in the middle of nowhere. You don’t have to right anything.”
He pulls up a chair and sits with its back against his chest, the image of an impish creature. “I’m here because I want to be. What are you up to? What’s happened since high school?”
I have to sigh because that’s not a subject I want to get into, not with him or anyone else. “Long story. I don’t like talking about it.”
Quinn holds his hands up, a show of innocence. “I can respect that. It’s my go-to response when someone asks me what I’m up to or does that pity head-tilt when they talk about me blowing my knee out.”
Here we go, then. Talking about the career that never was. I heard about it, of course. No one around these parts could escape it. The fall of the titan that never was. More precisely, the titan that never got a chance to be.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say sincerely, and go back to scanning the menu, even though I’ve already settled on the salad. Maybe now is a good time to make sure I made the right call.
“You’re right, why talk about that?” Quinn asks, eyes sparkling. “Better to talk about the present. And the future. Are you going to be in town long?”
“I never know what’s going to happen more than a month in advance. Sometimes, not even then. I’m here until I’m not,” I say, setting the menu down and meeting his gaze directly. “Keeps life interesting.”
“And what is it that you do that allows you to be such a maverick about your moves?”
“I write.” I steel myself for the laughter I know will follow. Writing isn’t cool or sexy to jocks, and even if Quinn always did seem a step removed from his Neanderthal brothers, dollars to donuts that he’ll lose interest in this conversation.
His eyebrows shoot up, which could either be surprise or mockery. “Write what?”
“Fiction,” I say, averting my eyes again. I hope he doesn’t ask to see something I’ve written because there’s no chance in hell that I would ever oblige or humor him. My writing is too personal and not-for-jocks.
“I get the feeling this isn’t something you want to talk about either,” Quinn muses. “That’s fine. Look, I want you to forgive my asshole brothers for laughing. It’s not you - it’s me. You have my word on that. I need to ask for your help if you’re willing.”
I study him for a second before answering. “What is it?”
“They’re on my last nerve, and I need a way out. How about I drive you home so that you don’t have to walk back and I have an acceptable excuse for ditching them?”
“How in the world do you know I walked here?”
Grinning, he eyes my shoes. “Your boots. They’re caked in mud, and I don’t think there’s any place in the parking lot that would result in that.”
I look down at my boots, which are indeed filthy. Come to think of it, I’m exhausted from head to toe. A ride home would be nice. If it were anyone else offering, I would accept in a heartbeat. Well, if that someone didn’t have the last name Cooper, that is. But if I leave with Quinn, he’ll get the wrong idea. For all I know, this might well be a line. I never took Quinn for someone who’d want to slum it with someone like me, but maybe it’s been a long while for him.
Whatever it is, I want no part of it.
“I see your wheels are spinning, so I just want to assure you that this is exactly what it sounds like,” he says. “I only want to take you home.”
“That’s just the thing,” I start to say when I see Killian and Tate, the worst of the Coopers, angling their phones at us. Like they’re taking a picture. “What are they doing?”
Quinn glances backward, his face darkening when he catches sight of his brothers. “Two assholes proving my point.”
“I want to say yes, but I’m afraid that-”
“Afraid that I’m in the same category as those assholes I unfortunately have to call my brothers. And that I’ll use this as a pretext to get in your pants?” Quinn raises his right hand like a boy scout. “I promise it’s not.”
I shoot one last look at the menu. I’m really not missing much if I skip this meal - but I’ll need to eat eventually. Maybe there’ll be some other place open on our way to my cabin. My stomach growls again, making Quinn laugh.
“Well, that’s the sound of one more stop on the way to your place,” he says. “So, are you going to be my knight in shining armor or will I need to fulfill that role for myself?”
Oh, what the hell. This is the best tonight is going to get.
“Let’s go, then,” I tell him.
Twirling his keychain around his fingers, Quinn gets up and holds the door open for me. Before he steps outside of the dive bar, he salutes his brothers. They’re all staring at us - Killian even, that dick, with his mouth agape - and it does nothing to settle the mounting fear that this is a terrible, no good, awful idea.
Chapter 3
Quinn
“What’s their problem?” Abigail asks, seemingly irked by the send-off we received when my brothers made a big to-do of demonstrating their disbelief that she agreed to go home with me. Good thing that it had worked. By the disgust Abigail shows whenever she refers to the Cooper clan, it’s safe to say I’ll get as far as her front porch - and no further.
“Do you have all night?” I ask.
She smiles. It’s small and gone a second later, but I saw her lips twitch up.
“Why don’t you give me the abridged version,” she says.
“They’re well-meaning, but misguided,” I say, sticking the key in the ignition. “But I don’t want to talk about them. We have to figure out your food situation.”
“My food situation?”
“You’re starving, aren’t you? The problem about living here is that after a certain hour, it’s pretty slim pickings. I’m drawing a blank about where we should go. Marty’s is the place you can always count to be open, but that’s only good for drinks. Sometimes, not even that.” I tap at the steering wheel, anxiously drumming to try to jog my memory.
“It doesn’t have to be fancy,” Abigail says. “It just has to be food. I haven’t been here in years, so I came to Marty’s because I was on foot. Maybe there’s a convenience store somewhere?”
“There is, actually,” I say, nodding. “Let’s drop by there before we go to your place. Where is your place, by the way?”
“It’s a little cabin I inherited, just off Juniper Cove,” Abigail replies, naming one of the shabbier parts of town.
It’s good for her that the cabins there are pretty sturdy, if nothing else. The way she said ‘inherited’ makes me think there’s a deeper story there. She didn’t want to talk about what she’s up to now, so there’s likely a link.
We ride in silence. Eventually, Abigail fiddles with the radio station, changing to a progressive rock one. The best one we get out here, in fact. I want to tell her I’m impressed she e
ven knows about the legendary show that’s going to come on any second now, but I can’t find a way to express it without sounding like a pompous jackass.
The neon lights announcing the convenience store and gas station appear in the distance. I point to them and say, “That’s it.”
“What happened to Lou’s?”
“He went out of business. That’s one of those chain type of gas stations, you know?” I exhale sharply. “Lots of things changed around here since you left. Many mom and pop shops are gone.”
“Wow, I thought this was the one place on earth that capitalism wouldn’t touch.”
“Nah, we’re going to see the rise of corporate America and the homogenization of commerce countrywide in our lifetime. Mark my words.” She says nothing, so I glance her way and find she’s staring. “What?”
“What’s with the word salad?”
I pull up to one of the pumps, and grunt, wanting to inform her that I’m not the stupid jock she obviously thinks I am. But I clamp my mouth around the words.
“Go, get your fill. Holly here is going to get hers, too,” I say, giving my dashboard a playful smack. “I’ll go inside to pay, so you have that long.”
“Holly?” Abigail unbuckles her seat. “That’s cute.”
I chuckle. “You better go. You’re losing good time.”
Racing to the door, Abigail shoots me one more look and bursts out laughing before going inside. When she’s out of sight, I look at my reflection in the rearview mirror and want to give the dork I see a good whack. Why am I parroting words I read in a magazine while waiting for my doctor a few days ago?
Because the only way to impress a girl like that is with brains, not brawn, asshole.
I can’t believe I don’t remember her from high school. I’ve always gone for the smart ones, even if from the outside people thought I was dating them for their looks. It’s not fair to pit a high school girl against one who’s had two years to mature out of the bullshit we learned while there, but even if you took those two years out of the equation, I would bet anything that Abigail still beat them out of the water.
My reflection catches my eye again. I sigh and get out of the car. It won’t take her long to get a dozen candy bars and chips or whatever else is edible in there. And what am I doing, pondering on my sanity about how I missed the fact she existed while we were in high school?
Abigail couldn’t have made it clearer that she’s not interested.
I pull the nozzle and attach it to my truck, watching the numbers and dials count how much poorer this little trip will make me. While I wait, I look through the windows of the convenience store and see Abigail biting her lip as she studies the food aisle. My cock twitches, struggling inside my jeans. Looking down at myself shows me how fucking obvious my hard-on is.
Shit.
She’s going to get the wrong idea, so I look away and try to think of other things that’ll make my cock end its fight. Tate and Killian were right - I might as well be re-virginizing, given how long it’s been since I was with someone.
That makes me think of Abigail again, and what it would be like if I were taking her home in the biblical sense. Which, of course, makes my cock stiffen and strain inside my jeans even more.
Algebra. That one actress’s face when she’s crying every other scene on the show about the military guy flipping and becoming a terrorist. That one gangrenous-looking mole on Tate’s foot.
One by one, a handful of images go through my mind, making it clear that no randomly picked, definitely unsexy topics would do the trick.
The station screen beeps, alerting me that the tank is full.
“You going to go pay for that?” Abigail says, startling me.
I blink. “Uh, yes.”
She slurps a large blue beverage. The blue sludge climbs fast through the thick straw, leaving me to wonder how she doesn’t have a brain freeze. While she’s working on her monster drink, she rummages through a shopping bag weighed down by what seems like fifty trillion chocolate bars. “I’ll wait for you here then.”
“Okay.” I adjust my balls, thankful that Abigail seems raptured with her purchases to notice I look like I’m attempting an Irish jig.
Inside the store, the cashier pointedly leers at my crotch, curling up her pierced lip in a smile that’s closer to a grimace. “What can I get for you today, Quinn Cooper?”
Unfazed that I’m either fodder for what appears to be a warped sense of humor or a weak attempt at a come-on, I pay and head out again. Abigail let herself in the car. Inside the radio blasts the song that played when the doctor delivered the news that I wouldn’t go on to become a professional athlete. It does the trick - my cock gets the message, anyways.
“Are you okay?” she asks when I turn the key in the ignition.
“Yeah. That song just brings up some bad memories.”
Abigail turns the volume down. “This one? Are you sure? Who plays this kind of song when it’s a bad occasion?”
“Not the least of Dr. Morgan’s office manager’s offenses.” My voice is clipped and a little too tense, and I don’t want to sour the mood.
“Oh, yeah, I’m in full agreement. He gave me the news of my parents’ deaths after I’d been waiting in the godawful pastel-colored waiting room.” Abigail shakes the Slurpee and uses the straw to dislodge the stray bits from the sides of the cup.
I frown and glance over at her. “Your parents died?”
“Yeah, years ago,” she says. “It’s one of those things I don’t like to talk about. But if this were a court of law, you could argue I opened the door to this conversation. So, I’ll give you one question. You can quench your curiosity and we can move on.”
“Real life isn’t a court of law,” I say. “And I wouldn’t want you to talk about anything that’s obviously so painful for you, so I waive my right to that question.”
“Sorry, I’m on a legal thriller kick,” she says. “I think of everything through the lens of what my lawyer protagonist would see if she were living it. It was supposed to help my creativity spark again, but it’s not. I have precisely zero pages written.”
Changing the course of the conversation. That’s a good tactical move, I have to admit.
“Why legal thrillers? Don’t chicks usually jump at the opportunity to write romance?”
“And if this were a page from my manuscript, I’d tag that line of yours as ‘dude-bro tries to come across as slick, misses by a landslide, and shows his true colors as the veritable dude-bro that he is’ or something a little pithier,” she says, laughing. “Seriously, calling me a ‘chick’ and insinuating that romance is what I should stick to? You have no idea how hard it is to write a romance. Especially if you’ve never been in love.”
“You called me out on a word salad before and now you just used ‘pithy’ unironically?”
She chuckles.
“Make a right over there.” She points to a shady intersection. “I’m allowed to use big words. I’m a writer. Or at least an aspiring one, anyway.”
“I’m also allowed to use big words.” I wink at her. “I’ve been known to do it now and again when I shed my dude-bro facade.”
“Facade.” She throws her head back, and says exaggeratedly. “Oh my God, someone please take away this man’s thesaurus.”
I erupt in laughter and almost crash the car into this garbage trolley in the middle of the road, swerving only at the last minute. Abigail hits her head against the window, yelping in pain.
“Are you okay?” I pull the car up in front of a house that looks either abandoned or condemned - maybe both. “I’m sorry. I didn’t keep my eyes on the road. Let me take a look at that.”
Eyes shut, she massages her injury. “No. Don’t worry about me. I didn’t buckle the seatbelt, so this is not your fault in the slightest. My cabin is only a little further down this road, so maybe you should just keep driving, and I’ll take care of it when I get home.”
“I should take a look. Make sure you don’
t have a concussion.”
“You do much mending when you’re being a dude-bro?” She’s trying to be funny, but I see her wince when she touches her head and hits a sore spot.
“Have you seen a football game?” I keep driving. “Shit got brutal. We all had to learn to do basic repairs with a first-aid kit, especially when our medic missed a game. Newsflash, Dr. Morgan as a volunteer isn’t nearly as dependable as he is with his own practice. Which isn’t saying much.”
“Just over there. The blue cabin. God, this hurts,” she says, gently pressing against her head.
“Maybe you should avoid touching it?” I pull up and drive the length of her driveway at less than five miles an hour. “Do you have a first aid kit in the house?”
“No. I just moved back. Haven’t unpacked yet.”
“Wait here while I grab mine from the trunk.” I spring out of the truck to get it.
“That’s really not necessary, Quinn. I’ll be fine.” She’s out of the car and starting towards the front door. “It’ll just leave a bump. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Stop touching it. Wait a goddamn second and stop being a little kid who can’t stop picking the scabs off their scrapes.”
Here’s where I come clean about my general lack of medical knowledge. The tidbit about us having to patch ourselves up here and there when our medic didn’t show up? Bullshit. As if Coach Hannigan would ever run a scrimmage - let alone an actual game - without someone who could step in if there was an emergency. After watching Friday Night Lights, he took it upon himself to beef up our defensive and offensive training to be able to block or at least absorb dirty tackles without putting ourselves in the line of fire.
But Abigail is focusing on her injury, and if I don’t do something to look in her eyes and make an impression, there’s no way she’ll give me her number. The label of dude-bro doesn’t apply for my attitude - I would go as far as to argue that it doesn’t suit me as a whole - but I’m not about to just drop her off and be on my way.
The only thing that can’t happen tonight is sex, thanks to my brothers’ stupid wager. If I do sleep with her, it’ll be cheap.
Owning Swan Page 2