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Nick didn’t look away from the road. Quinn was a heavy weight against him, buckled into the middle bench seat. He had a pretty good sense that she was drooling on his shoulder.
“How do you know?”
“I disabled their bikes. Maybe.”
Nick looked over. “How did you do that?”
Adam shrugged, and it looked like he was trying to hide a smile. “Yanked some wires. I don’t know.”
Nick smiled. “Smart.”
Adam snorted, and his voice turned a bit self-deprecating. “Yeah, not too bad for a ‘couple of fags,’ huh?” Before Nick could say anything to that, Adam looked over again. “Sorry to drag you into that. The guy sounded okay on the phone.”
“I’m just glad Quinn wasn’t hurt.” Though she smelled like a frigging distillery.
“Are you okay?”
Nick shrugged. He could already feel swelling starting on his jaw, and blood was a bitter taste on the side of his tongue. “It’s not the first time I’ve been hit, and it probably won’t be the last. I’ll be all right.” Gabriel would probably shit a brick when he got home, though.
“He was going to hit me,” said Adam, and there was something like wonder in his voice.
“I’m happy to hit you if you feel like you’re missing out on the full experience.”
“No, just—” Adam hesitated. “Thanks.”
Nick shrugged again, uncomfortable. He wasn’t used to being the rescuer. “I wasn’t trying to fight him. I thought I could talk him down.”
“Still. No one’s ever done that for me.”
Nick didn’t know what to say to that. Then Adam’s cell phone chimed, and that was enough to distract him from the conversation.
“Wow,” said Adam. “It’s from that guy on the beach. He said he’s sorry his friend got out of control.”
“I’m surprised he’s not begging us not to press charges.”
Adam looked at him. Nick could feel the weight of his eyes in the darkness. “Do you want to?”
Nick shook his head. The last thing he needed to do was draw attention to his family. To say nothing of dragging Quinn into it. She had enough problems.
Adam’s cell phone chimed again, and he read off the screen. “He says he has a little sister, and he took care of her, so he wanted to look after Quinn. He says neither of them hurt her.” A pause, another chime, and Adam guffawed. “He asked if we’d give her his number.”
Nick snorted. “I’m surprised he can text coherently, as hammered as they were.”
“I think there’s a fair bit of autocorrect going on. Every time he tries to say her name, it says Quinine.”
Nick laughed outright at that.
But then he sobered when he glanced over and found Adam staring at him.
Nick knew that look. It was how girls sometimes looked at him, with cartoon hearts practically exploding from their eyes.
It was unnerving.
With girls, he could smile back. Flirt. A glance here, a touch there, a teasing word. It cost him nothing, and it was what everyone expected.
Right now, it left him breathless and uncertain. Because what everyone expected was in direct contradiction with what he wanted.
He locked his hands on the steering wheel and his eyes on the road. “You’ll have to tell me where you live again.”
