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Michael made a face. “If I cut my hair, that means I have to keep cutting it.”
Typical Michael. Not making a statement with his looks. Just not taking five minutes to care what he looked like. “You’re the one who wants to make a good impression. Just saying.”
Michael gestured. “I can’t do what you guys do.”
“So cut it short.”
“It won’t look stupid?”
“Right now you look like you’re trying to bring back the grunge era, so you tell me.”
Michael rolled his eyes and started up the stairs. “All right, all right.”
Nick watched him go. The camaraderie felt good. He’d missed this. So much that he wanted to call Michael back down, to take him up on that option to talk.
Then again, his older brother hadn’t really meant it. That had been BS conversation until he could get around to asking a favor.
And really, if he’d said a word about Adam, that camaraderie probably would have vanished into thin air.
Quinn woke to the sounds of a guitar strumming.
She lay in bed and listened, trying to orient herself. Darkness cloaked the room, barely letting any light through the blinds. A light was on somewhere down the hallway.
Right, Tyler’s apartment.
The guitar was muffled, probably a neighbor or something.
She was alone in bed, which wasn’t a surprise. She was in the room with the double beds, curled up under the quilt.
The whole night had been bizarre, from her fight with Nick, to the kiss from Tyler, to the drug addicts in her bedroom.
It hadn’t gotten any better.
Tyler had asked if she wanted to take a shower to clean up a bit, which she’d assumed was an implication that it was time for her to earn a place to sleep for the night. Kind of like when boys took you out to dinner and a movie and then expected a little somethin’-somethin’ in the car before they took you home, but on a whole new level.
But no, she’d climbed in the steaming hot shower alone and stayed that way. She took her time, too, not knowing when she’d get another chance to spend more than five minutes in a shower before someone started screaming at her.
And later, when she’d emerged with pinned up damp hair and yoga sweats, Tyler had been killing the lights in the apartment.
“Stay up and watch TV if you want,” he’d said. “I’m going to bed. I’ve got an eight a.m. class.” Then he’d taken a quick look in the second bedroom and said, “Do you want an extra blanket?”
Pretty clear where he’d expected her to sleep.
Thinking about it now, she wondered if she’d messed something up.
You going to judge me for something Seth did?
She had no idea how to read him. He’d said terrible things to her in Nick’s driveway—though he’d talked his way out of those. But then that night behind the 7-Eleven, when he’d burned her . . . was that a cruel side of Tyler, the way boys would yank the wings off flies, or was that a panicked side trying to figure out what dangers were affecting the Elementals in town, using the only leverage he could find?
And here she was, sleeping in his spare room. After he’d helped her get her things and protected her from an addict and a dealer. That had to count for something.
No, a lot. That had to count for a lot.
The guitar music kept up, and she listened, thinking of Nick, of the night he’d told her his family secret, the way the air had carried her.
She thought of how much he hated Tyler, and wished she knew how to reconcile all these facets of the same guy.
The guitar music changed, becoming something more lively.
