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She shook her head. Where else would she go?
Then he was gone, and it took everything she had not to call him back.
His voice reverberated through her head.
You’re this beautiful, talented girl, but for some reason you act like you need to buy a guy’s favor.
Did she do that?
She thought of all the boys she’d dated, the way she treated them, the way they treated her. Rafe Gutierrez, the boy who’d acted surprised when she told him that no, they didn’t have an open relationship. Or Andy Kauffman, who said she was boring when she didn’t want to get na**d in his basement night after night. Or Lev Spartara, the boy she’d strung along with promises of heavy make-out sessions in the backseat of his mom’s Toyota.
Had she been using them the same way they’d been using her?
She remembered sitting in Nick’s front seat, climbing into his lap, practically unbuttoning his pants after he’d told her she couldn’t spend the night at his house.
And then offering to continue being his girlfriend—under the pretense of keeping his secret.
Tyler was right. She and Nick might have been friends, but there was dishonesty on both sides of that relationship.
She fought her phone out of her pocket, scrolling through all the text messages she’d ignored.
With shaking fingers, she dialed. The line was answered almost immediately.
“Quinn? Are you okay?”
o;What about Adam? Will she talk to him?”
Nick looked down at the table. “Maybe, but she hasn’t been showing up to dance.”
“Could you ask him to reach out to her?”
Nick picked at the edge of his place mat and didn’t say anything.
“Come on,” said Michael. “Don’t leave out part of the story.”
So Nick told him about the previous night. About Adam.
And Hunter. His cheeks were on fire, and he didn’t go to any great detail, but he talked.
“Wow,” said Michael, dragging the word into three syllables.
“No wonder you’re so keyed up.”
Nick shrugged. His mood darkened as his brain replayed shoving Adam again. “Guess I’m aggressive sometimes, huh?”
Michael hesitated. “I didn’t mean that as an insult, Nick.”
He didn’t need to. Nick got it. He couldn’t help Quinn, he couldn’t fix things with Adam, and hell, he couldn’t even stand up to frigging Tyler.
“I’m going to talk to Becca’s mom,” Michael said finally.
“She knows Quinn’s family.”
“You don’t need to get involved,” Nick said.
“Wrong. I think I should have gotten involved a long time ago.” He paused and drained the last of his coffee. “I also have a few thoughts about Tyler.”
Nick looked at him in surprise. “You’re going to confront him?”
