Adam fetched milk from the refrigerator and poured some into one mug, leaving the other coffee black. Nick watched this, bemused that Adam had remembered how he took his coffee.

Adam interrupted his thoughts. “How do you know him?”

Nick wondered how to answer that without spilling every secret he had. For the first time, he was tempted to tell Adam all of it. His shoulders felt tight with tension—from the fight with Quinn, from school, from his family, from living up to everyone’s expectations.

“He used to go to school with my older brother. His family and my family—we don’t get along.”

Adam turned from the counter with mugs in hand. “Why?”

Because Tyler thinks we should be put to death for something we can’t control.

Nick rubbed at his eyes. “It’s a long story.”

He heard the mugs slide onto the table, but jumped when Adam’s hands landed on his shoulders.

“Relax,” Adam said softly. “Relax.” Then he pressed his thumbs into the muscle there.

The trapezius muscle, Nick’s brain supplied helpfully.

God, he was such a nerd.

Adam’s hands felt amazing. Warm and strong with just enough pressure behind his fingers. But instead of being relaxing, his touch had Nick ready to leap out of his chair. Was this a prelude to something? Obviously, right? But what if it—

“Relax.” Adam shook him gently. “Are you really this wound up over Quinn?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I feel like I should go get her.”

“Yeah, and how would that go?”

Tyler would want to fight. He’d win—Nick could hold his own if he had to, but he didn’t fight dirty. He had Gabriel for that. Tyler would get the upper hand and beat the shit out of him, if Nick didn’t suffocate him first.

Neither option sounded all that appealing.

“It would suck,” he said grudgingly.

“So your families hate each other. Are you guys the Montagues or the Capulets?”

Nick snorted. “Romeo and Juliet? I don’t think so.”

But his brain flashed on that day when he was twelve, when Tyler’s sister had died. When Michael had come home soaking wet and terrified. When their parents had told them all to lock themselves in the master bedroom and not come out for anything. It was the first time he could remember seeing his mother frightened.

It wasn’t the last.

Adam’s hands brought him back to the present. “Do you ever think that maybe this Tyler guy thinks you are bad for Quinn? That maybe his intentions aren’t evil at all?”

The thought brought Nick up short.