His cell phone chimed, and he pulled it out of his pocket to glance at the display. He sighed again, heavily. “Damn it. One of the alarms is going off at the strip mall. I need to go check it out.” He hesitated. “Are you going to be okay for half an hour? I’ll bring food back with me.”

No. She wouldn’t be okay.

But Quinn nodded. What else could she do?

“Come on,” he said. “I can’t just leave you collapsed on the floor of the bathroom.”

She wiped the tears off her face and flopped on the couch instead.

He hesitated at the door. “I’m not going to come home and find you gone, am I?”

She shook her head. Where else would she go?

Then he was gone, and it took everything she had not to call him back.

His voice reverberated through her head.

You’re this beautiful, talented girl, but for some reason you act like you need to buy a guy’s favor.

Did she do that?

She thought of all the boys she’d dated, the way she treated them, the way they treated her. Rafe Gutierrez, the boy who’d acted surprised when she told him that no, they didn’t have an open relationship. Or Andy Kauffman, who said she was boring when she didn’t want to get naked in his basement night after night. Or Lev Spartara, the boy she’d strung along with promises of heavy make-out sessions in the backseat of his mom’s Toyota.

Had she been using them the same way they’d been using her?

She remembered sitting in Nick’s front seat, climbing into his lap, practically unbuttoning his pants after he’d told her she couldn’t spend the night at his house.

And then offering to continue being his girlfriend—under the pretense of keeping his secret.

Tyler was right. She and Nick might have been friends, but there was dishonesty on both sides of that relationship.

She fought her phone out of her pocket, scrolling through all the text messages she’d ignored.

With shaking fingers, she dialed. The line was answered almost immediately.

“Quinn? Are you okay?”

What did it say about her life that she got a greeting like that?

“Becca,” she said, and suddenly she almost couldn’t speak through her tears. “Becca, I really need to talk to you.”

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 24

Nick found Gabriel in his bedroom, sitting cross-legged on his bed, surrounded by textbooks. Headphones trailed from his ears, and his pencil tapped in time with whatever he was listening to. He either didn’t notice Nick standing at the door, or he deliberately wasn’t looking up.

Nick wanted to shove him off the bed and kick him in the face.

Not aggressive, my ass.