Liam Davis & The Raven (12 page)

Mitch followed after me. “S
o . . . what’s up with all the stickers?”

“I’m going to get right to the point,” I said, taking a seat outside with an excellent view of the spot where I’d banged into Hunter the first time. Mitch sat beside me and handed over half the sandwich we’d bought from the cafeteria to share. A light breeze rustled the leaves.

The sun peeking through the clouds highlighted t
he copper in Mitch’s hair, which shone perfectly in the early shades of fall. He nibbled on his bread crust, staring toward a pair of squirrels scampering at the base of an oak. “I have Improv Theater soon, so to the point is good.”

I bit into the sandwich, and a blob of mayonnaise splattered onto the thigh of my tan slacks. Wiping it off, I said,
“Are you interested in dating Hunter?”

Mitch
spluttered, and crumbs flew everywhere. The squirrels stopped and took notice. Mitch studied me, biting his bottom lip. “I want to,” he finally said. “But . . . I mean, he’s . . . wow, he’s a charmer.”

“So what bothers you?”

His cheeks bloomed the color of the leaves. “It wouldn’t be right. I shouldn’t.”

Wouldn’t be right? I could honestly say I didn’t know what that meant, let alone how to respond.
“Can you explain?”

“
I mean, I . . . I have no idea how to date a guy, let alone one in a wheelchair!”

“Yes. That’s a
pickle.” Hunter had made a bad decision employing
me
as his mole. How was I supposed to help when I barely knew how to date a girl, let alone a guy, let alone one in a wheelchair?

“It’s just, you know,
” he said, “I question myself over everything. What if I say the wrong thing, like ‘let’s go for a walk’ or something stupid and I offend him?”

“Okay, stop right there,” I said, swiveling more in his direction. At least I could help on this point. “Granted I’ve only known Hunter a short while, but one thing I’m pretty sure about is that he’s not easily offended. Besides, ‘going for a walk’ is an expre
ssion. He’ll get that.”

“I’m scared
. I’ll do something wrong.”

“And what if you do something right?”

That had him thinking, and a smallish smile bracketed his mouth. “I do want to see him again. It’s just—”

“Good. I’ll tell him you said so.”

“Along with everything else?” he asked, finally taking a proper bite of his sandwich.

“Yes.” I
leaned back and stared at the lightly-clouded sky. Just maybe Hunter was right; I had to make my own luck.

And I would.

I’d make real friends.

I’d wow
chief with the best feature article.

And
I’d write the best party page column
Scribe
had ever seen.

Chapter 8

I had a third tea.
The chamomile and honey running down my throat soothed me, and it sparked just the right energy in me to concentrate on the essay I had to write on the most influential villains in literature.

I slurped up the last of the tea, catching the gooey honey on my tongue, and got up from the table.

Quinn, lying on the couch with his knees up, peered over his book,
Muscular System
. “Sneaking off to your room now?”

“That was the plan,” I said, setting my cup in the dishwasher. “Like every other evening.”

He lowered the book to his chest. “Exactly. Like every evening. Don’t you want to spend one evening in the living room with me?”

“Why? You’d just be a distraction.”

He grinned, and I was reminded of Bram Stoker’s
Dracula
. “Oh would I?”

I wiped my hands
on my jeans before picking up the laptop at the end of the table. “Yes, Quinn, you would. And I’d just distract you too.”

His gaze skipped down the length of
my dark flannel pajamas. “Somehow I think I can handle it. C’mon.” He sat up and patted the spot in front of his feet. “Work here for a bit. Hard as it might be, I promise I’ll do my best not to distract you.”

I allowed a small smile at the waggle of his brows. Well now,
I wanted real friends, didn’t I? This was the perfect opportunity to work on that.

I stepped around the table toward the
Quinn-dominated couch. The air was thick with warmth and I had the tingly heat in my cheeks to prove it.

Darting
to the air-conditioning unit for the first time since the end of August, I turned it on. Cooler. That was better.

When I
returned to the couch, Quinn raised his brow gently, as if to ask about the sudden detour. I ignored it and planted myself at the end of the couch, far too close to his navy-socked feet to be entirely comfortable. But it was a small price to pay in the name of friendship.

Quinn waited until I
started my laptop before he resumed his reading. True to his word, he did his best not to distract me. His toes sometimes wiggled and slid against my thigh, but other than that, there was just the sound of my fingers clacking over the keyboard, his
chi-lip
sound as he turned a page, and our quiet breathing.

For half an hour, Quinn said nothing, and I barely made a dent in my essay.

Ten minutes later, I gave up, closing my laptop and laying it on the glass coffee table in front of the couch. Elbows on my knees, I scrubbed my face as I thought of something to say. We were roommates after all, yet I didn’t know much about him.

I sneaked a peek at him
from the corner of my eye and jumped when I found him looking at me.

“Gah!”

He shoved a bookmark into his book, shut it, and laid it next to my laptop. “What’s up, Liam?” he asked, tucking his arms behind his head.

Obviously I hadn’t
adjusted the temperature low enough. The air in the room was positively smothering. Or maybe trying to make friends did that to someone.

M
y glasses were slipping with the sweat beading out of me. I pushed them up. It was a simple question, so it shouldn’t have been a bother. And yet, somehow this time was much harder than any other time. “Do you want to play cards?”

I carefully
watched every nuance of Quinn’s reaction, the bobbling of his Adam’s apple, the quiver of his lips, the slight angling of his head in my direction, the jiggle of his foot at my side.

Without realizing it, I’d held my breath, which
was now very noticeable as I expelled it and gasped for more.

Quinn unlocked his hands from behind his head and pushed h
imself into a sitting position, pulling his feet nearer to him. “No,” he said slowly. “I’d rather not lose again.”

“Oh. Okay
.” Suddenly my bedroom seemed to be calling me. It promised that the air was cooler and I wouldn’t have any problems concentrating on work. And work was better than cards, anyway.

I spr
ang off the couch.

But I didn’t make it a step before Quinn grabbed my hips
and tackled me onto the couch. To be more accurate, he landed on the couch, and I landed in his lap. His arms tightened around my waist. “Why on earth are you running away?” he growled into my ear.

“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.”

H
is 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.

I scratched the back of my head.
“So lately, when I’m in the shower, I fantasize about winning the BCA competition for best article of the year.”

Quinn blinked and looked at me, his gaze running over my lips as if expecting me to say something else. “The what now?”

I shrugged. “It’s a competition I submitted three of my articles to. The results come out next month.”

“Are you saying
,” Quinn rested his head on the back of the couch and stared toward the ceiling, the side of his mouth curling, “that you
literally
get off on work?”

I hadn’t thought about it like that before. But, I guess
—“Yes. Seems I do.”

I
stood, because I couldn’t figure out what to do with myself. I needed to focus on something constructive so I wouldn’t feel so—exposed.

Quinn didn’t pull me back, but he touched the
side of my knee. “You’re something else, Liam,” he said quietly. “And I’m going to figure out exactly what that something is.”