With Every Heartbeat (Forbidden Men, #4)(73)

“Stop,” Quinn warned him icily, letting me know there was some inside thing between the two of them going on that I knew nothing about.

Instead of backing down, though, Ten seemed more challenged. He turned to me abruptly.

I shied away.

He opened his mouth, but must’ve rethought whatever he was going to say because he immediately turned back to Quinn to ask, “Where’d your date go, anyway?”

Quinn glanced around the bar before spotting Cora at a new table, drinking a pink drink, and chatting with a new group. “She’ll be over soon, I’m sure.”

Ten sighed and ordered us all a new round of Long Island Iced Teas.

Feeling miserable for Quinn, I opened my mouth and blurted out the first thing to come to my head. “If you could be powerful or honest, which would you choose?”

“Why can’t you be both?” Ten asked.

Quinn, however, mulled the question over before admitting, “Honest. It seems like you have to be meaner when you’re powerful. I don’t want to be mean.”

I nodded. “So, then...if you had to choose between nice or honest...?”

“I’d choose nice.”

A smile bloomed across my face. “You believe in lying in order to keep from hurting someone, then?”

He shrugged, but didn’t seem to question why I was asking him this stuff. Heck, I wasn’t even sure why I was. I just wanted to talk. To him.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just can’t handle hurting anyone.”

“Yeah,” I murmured thoughtfully. “Me neither.”





And that’s about the point where I totally lost track of the conversation. The two Long-Island-Iced-Tea drunkards at the table with me started talking about all kinds of shit I didn’t follow, and yet they knew exactly what they were raving about.

“Did you know the corneas are the only cells in the human body that don’t receive blood from the heart?” Hamilton told Blondie.

She puckered her lips thoughtfully. “Does that mean the heart can’t see?”

I groaned and realized their happy juice had definitely kicked in, especially when Blondie giggled and then swayed as she clutched her forehead. “Whoa. I’m getting woozy.”

Hamilton grabbed her arm to steady her. “I know,” he slurred and glanced my way. “This shit is potent. I feel...” He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”

I lifted my eyebrows, wondering if he was drunk or high.

Blondie giggled again and pointed at him. “I’ve never heard you cuss before.”

“I don’t,” Hamilton said blankly before Blondie charged, “But you just said shit.”

He laughed and pointed back at her. “So did you.”

As they giggled together, I rolled my eyes to the ceiling. Oh, dear God. Someone shoot me now.

“I don’t know why I was always so scared to drink,” Quinn announced. “My mom used to get so mad when she drank. That’s when she’d beat me the hardest. So I always thought I’d lose my temper too if I ever drank. But I don’t feel mad at all. I’m just...happy.”

My gut twisted as I listened to him so nonchalantly announce something like that. I’d seen his back before, so I knew he had to have been beaten once upon a time. I just figured school bullies though, or someone else he hadn’t been related to. To learn it had been his own mother, the one woman who was supposed to protect him from all kinds of bad shit, made me want to look that bitch up and beat her. It also made me want to call my own mom and tell her how f*cking awesome she was.

But it’d been too long since I’d voluntarily called her, so...yeah, didn’t want to give the old broad a heart attack or anything.

I was just starting to feel shitty about how I treated my parents while they might possibly be the best parents in the world when Blondie had to go and say, “My dad didn’t need alcohol to hit me. So, I don’t know why I was always so scared to drink. I guess I’m just an overall coward.”

My eyes grew wide with that little piece of information.

Well, shit. Both of them had been abused? No wonder they’d turned out so much alike.

Fuck, I really was an ungrateful * to my mom and dad.

“You’re not a coward,” Quinn insisted, taking Blondie’s hand. “You’re...you’re...resilient.”

I squinted, wondering how the f*ck “resilient” was such a complimentary word to use on a chick, but hey...to each their own, I guess, because the freaking word seemed to work on Blondie.

She murmured, “Thank you,” and stared at him with a pair of longing green eyes that made me want to reach across the table and thump Hamilton on the back of the head. Hard.

Prime opportunity to kiss her, I wanted to tell him.

Kiss her already.

Why wasn’t he kissing her?

God, what a pansy.

Instead of kissing, they just kept staring until Ham blinked and then grinned. “Staring contest?” he offered.

Dear f*ck. Really?

I groaned and covered my face. I was going to have to work on my boy, big time. Who the hell offered a staring contest instead of kissing a girl? I might actually have to defriend him after tonight.

Blondie laughed and glanced away, blinking rapidly. “God, no.” She rubbed her eyes. “I’ve never been able to play very long in a staring game before.”