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Adam shifted across the concrete to sit beside him again.
“Look, I’m not going to defend your brother. I know he hurt you.” His voice softened. “I know he hurt you a lot. But when he came after me, I don’t think it had anything to do with me being g*y, and everything to do with protecting you. On the phone just now, he wasn’t an ass**le, either. And he could have been.”
“Do you think I should call him back?”
“Do you want to?”
Nick thought about it. He imagined his twin brother standing in the kitchen, deliberating whether to call a third time. Nick wished he could put everything back the way it had been.
Then he glanced at Adam and realized that wasn’t true.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t want to talk to him. Not yet.”
“Okay.” Adam took another sip of coffee. He laced the fingers of his free hand through Nick’s again, and they sat there for the longest time, watching the mist thin and swirl.
Nick hadn’t realized how easy this could be, sitting with someone who wasn’t judging him. Who wasn’t piling expectations on him.
Adam’s phone chimed again, and Nick’s pulse jumped. He should have known it wouldn’t last for long.
But Adam smiled. “Well, look at that,” he said. “Quinn wants to know if we’re still on for dance this afternoon.”
Nick hadn’t realized how worried he’d been about Quinn until that very moment. She was okay. She had to be okay if she was sending a text about dance.
Adam was texting back, talking while his fingers slid across the face of the phone. “Studio classes end at one, so I can meet her after lunch. Want to join me?”
Nick looked away. “She probably doesn’t want to see me.”
Adam poked him. “What do you want?”
“I want . . .” Nick paused, feeling weight in the words. His brothers were probably cursing him this morning, because Saturdays meant large landscaping jobs, and Nick knew Michael had blown one off last night. Quinn definitely didn’t want to see him at practice.
But his words were hanging out there. I want.
Such a stupid, simple phrase, but it felt so foreign.
“You want . . . ?” prompted Adam.
“I want to go with you,” he said, the words a jumbled rush that came out too quiet, completely uncertain.
Adam poked him again, harder. He was smiling. “What was that?”
Nick leaned into him and said, “I want to go with you.”
Another poke. “I can’t hear y—”
Nick trapped those words with a kiss. “I want to go with you.” Another kiss. “And if you’d shut up a second, maybe I could tell you what else I want.”
CHAPTER 28
Quinn leaned against the window of Tyler’s truck and closed her eyes, content.
She’d slept all night.
She’d taken a shower unimpeded.
No social workers or cops had shown up to break down the door or whatever they did in real life.
Her younger brother had responded to texts that yes, he was fine.
