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“Are you going to stand there and tell me about my own brain? You must think I am really stupid, Quinn Sullivan, if you think that I need you to sort out what I have known about myself for most of my life. How do you think I’ve gotten this far?”
“Levi, I am not insulting you. It’s just that there are some things in the office that could be fine-tuned.”
“Yeah. Well, great. Well identified. I’m dyslexic. I can’t read. Not very well. How does that make you feel? That make you feel smart? Does it make you feel like you have something to teach me? Is this like some movie where you come in and transform the lives of people who are dumber than yourself?”
“You are not dumb, and I don’t think that you are. I never said that you were. I already told you it’s...it’s my own insecurity that makes me cling to the degree. It’s...it’s not about you.”
“But you value that degree, don’t you? I don’t know a whole hell of a lot of anything about book learning, do I? I know you can see that I don’t. I never will. I’m never going to read a book for fun, Quinn. I’m never going to read a book. It’s too fucking hard. I can’t do it. You shoving that shit in my face the other day on your phone... I couldn’t read it. I couldn’t read it. Not that I don’t want to. I can’t.”
He was angry.
She’d known he would be, but she’d lied to herself so well. She’d told herself she could handle it.
Now she felt bad. Like when he’d shown her his parents’ graves. She was digging into things that she knew he had put a fence around. But she was being understanding, and she really couldn’t understand why it was setting him off like this. Surely the dyslexia wasn’t anything to be ashamed of. It explained things. It made her understand.
She didn’t understand why he should be so mad that she knew.
Because he’s proud. And you’re stepping all over it. This is why he didn’t want help to begin with. This is why...
“This hurts you, doesn’t it? Knowing this about me. Because I’ll never be anything you value, and you still want me.”
That shook her. Jolted her out of her thoughts. “Excuse me?”
“You want me, even knowing that I am an illiterate idiot. You were looking at me that day down by the pond. You couldn’t stop yourself—that was why you had to so determinedly stare at anything else. Because even knowing that I am basically a caveman, you burn for me. Not those asshole college boys that you went to school with. Me. Because you know that I might not know how to read, but I could show you a damned good time. I don’t have to be smart to know how to find exactly where you want me to touch you.”
She started to shake, that familiar adrenaline from sparring with him rising up inside her, but more. It was always more. With him, always.
That shameful desire that she felt burning for him in her gut, but she wasn’t ashamed for the reason that he thought.
You’re not ashamed. You’re afraid.
Yeah. She was terrified. Terrified of this man, all six-foot-two muscled cowboy, furious and filled with the kind of sexual promise that she had never wanted to desire quite this badly. But she did. Hell, she really did.
And they could never be anything. Because she didn’t want anything, and neither did he. Not because she was smart and he was dumb, or whatever narrative he thought lived inside her.
But it was just impossible. They didn’t like each other, let alone...
But he was calling it out. Identifying it. Saying exactly what it was, and she wished to hell that he wouldn’t.
She really wished that he wouldn’t.
Because it made her feel... It made her feel...
“Levi, that is not what I think, and it is not... It’s not what I think.”
“I think on some level it is. Because it excites you, doesn’t it? The idea of slumming it with me. And, you know, maybe you’re not totally wrong. I’ll be way better than any of those guys ever were. Because I don’t need to think. I have instincts. We have chemistry.”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
“Yeah, I know, because I should be a big turnoff for you, shouldn’t I?”
“Stop it,” she said. “Stop trying to make it seem like I’m a snob, or like I disdain you. I don’t. You know I don’t. I’m not my father and you know that, but you want me to keep my distance right now and I’m not sure why. But don’t make it about me when it’s actually about you. When I saw all that up there, I realized how hard you work to do as well as you do and...”
“You are a condescending, mousy little carrot,” he said. “And why the hell I want to kiss you, I don’t know. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of you, and I’m sick of this. Walk away right now.”
“No,” she said, standing there, knowing that she was tempting him. Knowing that she was pushing it, and not caring. “I’m not walking away.”
Fourteen-year-old Quinn, whose crush had been abandoned so long ago in an act of self-protection, cheered.
