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“You didn’t want to play cards!” I replied, twisting for freedom to no avail.
“No, I don’t. One, because you’d just win again. And two, I just want an opportunity to chat. Shoot the shit. Share a little.” He released his grip just enough to smooth his hands over my T-shirt and shift me to the couch cushion next to him. Quinn rubbed his forehead with the knuckle of his thumb. “You’re not easy, Liam. You’re always so serious. Blunt. Busy. Unaffected—except, strangely not just now. Now you actually felt something, didn’t you?”
I swallowed a thick lump in my throat and kept my gaze on my arms, prickling with goosebumps. Jill was spot-on. I couldn’t make a friend if my life depended on it. “I . . . yes. I felt something, okay? It was disappointment.”
“Good,” Quinn said, and the couch dipped as he swiveled more in my direction. “I like when you show your feelings. Otherwise, you’re too much of a puzzle for me. We’re . . . roommates. I want to understand what makes you tick.”
He shrugged. “And, maybe you want to know a little more about me too?” He gestured to his textbook. “Like the fact I’m studying to be a physiotherapist. That I scrape by as a C student. That I absolutely hate onions.” He squished up his nose and ran his hands over the edge of the couch. “That I think you have the most comfortable couch ever. That I can be quite a sarcastic son-of-a-bitch. That I still jerk off to the thought of my ex even though he cheated on me. That I love Shannon, but never in the way I know she really wishes I would. That I hate seeing Hunter, because every time I do, I want to fucking cry.”
That was more information than roommates usually shared, wasn’t it? I tried to formulate an appropriate answer.
As a reporter, I’d learned to tamper down my feelings so I could focus on delivering facts. And I was good at it, because emotion didn’t come easily to me.
I lowered my gaze from his, concentrating on his chin and firm lips instead. “I already knew you could be a sarcastic son-of-a-bitch.”
Quinn leaned against the back of the couch, and when he turned his head toward me, his breath tickled against my temple. “And what about you? Do you ever relax? Jerk off? Because I just can’t in my life imagine you doing that.”
I pushed up my glasses again. “Of course I do. I schedule that in at shower time.”
Quinn paused for a moment, his green eyes clouding in confusion. He bit his lip to smother a smile. His voice lowered. “Schedule?” He hummed. “That sounds far too practical to be any fun.”
“It works for me.”
“And do you have a girlfriend that you think about—”
“You know by now I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Fine. Favorite model? Actress?”
“You are extremely curious about this.”
He sat up, tucking one leg under him and folding his arms. His gaze could only be described as greedy. “Oh hell yes, I’m curious. It might help me solve this Liam puzzle.”
I knew what he was trying to get at, but he was barking up the wrong tree. “I fantasize. Okay? Now, excuse me, but I have to get some work done. You’ve distracted me all evening.”
“I distracted you? I was quiet as a button, man.”
“It had nothing to do with you being quiet.”
“Then, pray tell,” he said with an arch of his brow, “how did I distract you?”
“I’ll have to think about it.” I leaned forward to grab my laptop, but I never made it because a cushion hit the side of my face.
“Christ.” Quinn chuckled. “What do I have to do to get details out of you?”
I twisted toward him. His white T-shirt really wasn’t thick enough. I could make out his muscles beneath it. “Is this the sort of stuff friends—I mean roommates—usually talk about? Because it seems like a strange discussion to me.” I fiddled with the corners of the cushion.
“Yeah,” Quinn said softly. “Friend thing. At least, that’d be . . . all right.”
His sudden shyness had me rubbing my arms. I could—would—do this friend thing.
“Seeing Hunter really makes you want to cry?” I asked.
He looked guiltily at his knees and picked at a loose thread. “Yeah.”
“That’s it?” I arched my brow. “What do I have to do to get details out of you?”
A soft laugh. “It’s just,” he said, “I remember him before the chair, and”—he gestured toward his chest—“stuff gets stuck inside when I think of all the things he said he wanted to do that he can’t anymore. And . . . and sometimes I’m relieved that I got lucky. That it never happened to me, and then I feel like crap.”
Speechless, I just nodded. The silence held, but this tentative . . . openness we were having was drawing thinner and thinner. Afraid it would snap, afraid I would fail, I groped for something to share, something that might show him that this friend thing would be all right by me too.
