Those were the years Quarry and I hadn’t been speaking. The years when I’d had my head low, pretending I hated him for having locked me in the closet when, really, I’d just hated him for having proved me right—I couldn’t trust anyone.
“Yep. I knew all about Liv James,” Ash assured me. “The little Hispanic angel who used to bury her face in his back. The one he vowed to protect from the silence. The one who he regretted failing more than anyone else in his entire life.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. “He…told you about that?”
“He wouldn’t tell me why you were afraid or why he was so attached to you, but yeah…he told me all of that. Multiple times.”
My eyes flashed between the two of them. We were tight, but I never would have revealed Quarry’s secrets to them. Even if he was telling mine.
“Did he tell you why we stopped speaking for those years?”
“No.” Eliza jumped in before Ash had a chance. “Your dad told us about the closet. Quarry has never once spoken about it, not even when I cornered him after I’d heard what he’d done.”
I glanced at the floor and lied, “It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.”
“It was to him,” Eliza said. “He was a mess. After Vegas, Quarry was never the same. He didn’t come out of his room for weeks. He started skipping school and getting into fights. He eventually got kicked out of school, and then he quit boxing.”
“What?” I gasped. “He quit boxing?”
“Yep. You have no idea how bad things got with him. Back then, we were so focused on Flint, but what we failed to see was that Quarry was equally as injured. His wounds just weren’t on the surface.”
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. Mine weren’t on the surface, either, and I knew firsthand that that was exactly what made them lethal.
“Neither Till nor Slate could get through to him. We tried counseling, but he refused to go, and the harder we pushed, the harder he fought us. The thing was that we all assumed he was torn up over what had happened with Flint and me, but it wasn’t until he talked to your dad one night that things started to turn around.”
“My dad?” I breathed. “What…what did he say to him?”
Eliza shrugged. “No clue. Till just said Quarry came out of Slate’s office almost in tears and Leo looked murderous.”
Well, that wasn’t all that shocking. My dad wasn’t exactly a teddy bear, especially when it came to me. But one thing stuck out to me.
“And things got better after that? I mean…with Quarry?”
“Yep. He started going to the gym again the very next day. No more fights at school. He started laughing again. Hanging out with his brothers. It was like he just reappeared.”
“Wow. I didn’t figure my dad for the inspirational-speech kind of guy.”
“Flint looked for me for three years,” Ash announced randomly. “We had only been together for a month and he ripped up the weeds from his old apartment and planted them at his house just to take a piece of me with him when he moved.”
Eliza picked up with more randomness. “Till climbed through windows for eight years. He was so afraid to step out of his fantasy world because he couldn’t bear the thought of it changing us. But, when he finally walked through my door, things went from zero to married in a year.”
“Okay?” I drawled.
“So you’re fucked,” Ash repeated.
“Totally,” Eliza agreed.
Ash stood and moved beside me on the futon. “Way I see it, Quarry has been sitting on some serious feelings for you since he was a kid, and a few weeks ago, he woke up and realized that those feelings were still there. And, if I had to guess, they’re probably stronger than ever. You think a man like him—a Page man—is just going to walk away from that? And, more so, do you think you could handle it if he did?”
My pulse spiked. “I won’t lose him. We could stay friends.”
“The friend thing doesn’t work when you’re in love, Liv. It will destroy you faster than anything else. Longing and love turns to bitterness and anger.” Eliza smiled. “Trust me. I’ve been there.”
I shook my head adamantly. “No. Quarry and I are…different.” Panic began to build in my chest. As sad as it may sound, Quarry was my life. Without him, it would just be me and the silence. “N-nothing changes. He…told me so.”
“Simmer down.” Ash’s hand gently landed on my back. “You look like you’re about to pass out or puke.”
I was about to do both.
It was all too overwhelming.
The idea of losing him.
The idea of being with him.
The idea of trusting him.
The idea of him leaving me when I couldn’t give him that trust.
The idea of just being friends after the way it’d felt to wake up in his arms.
The idea of never having him inside me again.
The idea of…Mia.
Then the idea of having him inside me again.
Too much. All of it.
“Hey…you want to breathe?” Ash hit me on the back like I was choking.
A rush of breath I hadn’t known I’d been holding flew from my mouth.
“I can’t do this.” I jumped to my feet and began pacing the room. “Help me think of a way to get out of this date with him tonight.”