With Every Heartbeat(83)

“Fuck, yes. You were a big-ass dude who really rocked it on your first day of practice your freshman year.” Then he waved both of his hands as if fake apologizing. “Excuse me for wanting to impress you.”

“Weird,” Quinn murmured, staring as if he’d just met Ten for the first time. Then he shook his head and glanced at me. “He wanted to impress me.”

“So I heard.” Wanting to hug Ten for making Quinn feel better, I turned to him. “Aren’t you a senior?”

“Yeah. Why?” He glanced at me and narrowed his eyes as if commanding me not to follow my own path of logic. But I did anyway.

“Then shouldn’t you have taken a lot of art classes by now?”

Quinn finally caught on. “Wait. Why are you in a beginning art class with us?”

Ten drew in a deep breath. I could tell he was getting uncomfortable when he glanced away. “Because I knew you still needed to take one, so I badgered my advisor into letting me take it again, to keep you and Gamble company.” His negligent shrug was a little too careless though. He was putting on an act. “Wasn’t my fault I saw the wrong class schedule sitting on Gam’s table and thought it was his instead of his sister’s. The three of us would’ve owned that class.”

Quinn shook his head. “No,” he murmured softly, studying Ten intently. “I don’t think you mistook that schedule at all. I think you knew it was hers all along. I think you just wanted a reason to be close to her and get to know her more.”

Ten sent him a frown and snorted. “Whatever, man. You’re on crack.”

“And you wanted me there, not Noel, to act as a buffer, because you knew you couldn’t cross the line if I was around, but you still wanted to get as close as you could because you were curious what she was like.”

“That’s it,” Ten muttered, reaching for Quinn’s glass. “If you’re not drinking, then I am. This fucking karaoke is killing me.”

But Quinn snatched the cup away from him and quickly tipped it up, starting to gulp.

My mouth fell open as I watched.

Ten’s did too. Then he shook his head. “Bastard,” he muttered.

Quinn grinned as he set the cup down. “Sorry, but I guess you’re going to have to DD after all.” Then he arched an eyebrow and lifted a threatening finger. “And don’t ever lie to me again.”

The two men had a mini stare down that seemed to end in some kind of draw because they both loosened their stances in the same moment and turned to me in unison. I sank lower in my chair, not sure what to expect from them.

Ten snickered. “Aren’t you going to ask Hamilton what his major is?”

I shook my head. Quinn wasn’t my date for the evening. I shouldn’t be talking to him at all. But what I said was, “I already know his major.”

“Really?” Ten lifted his eyebrows and glanced to Quinn before turning back to me. “And how’s that?”

“Uh...he told me.” I shook my head, wondering why that was such a big deal.

But Ten only seemed more intrigued. “That’s funny. You guys seem to talk a lot for people who generally...don’t talk.”

“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.”