Sweet Ache

“He’ll never know. Besides, my life is my own. He was a manwhore his entire bachelorhood. He has no right to tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“Yeah, but we’re talking about Colton here.” She laughs with a raise of her eyebrows, garnering an eye roll from me in response. “So let me get this straight. You need to get laid. You agree to a date with a man who doesn’t light your fire, and I don’t understand why not … So what am I missing here?” I swear I can see the cogs turning in her mind and then click perfectly into place. “Who are you replacing Luke for?”

And bingo! That was in record time.

“Whatever do you mean?” I feign innocence knowing she’s going to freak out when I tell her who I’m trying to forget about.

She scoots forward to the edge of her chair while my cheeks heat. “Quinlan?”

“Well, there’s this guy….”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“He made a move, we kissed some, brought it to his house where we kissed some more and then he up and said he had shit to do. Basically he told me to leave without saying those exact words.” I give her the short version of the story, trying to keep details to a minimum.

“And you’re wasting your time on him why, then? This isn’t like you. I thought we weren’t caring, doing the casual dating thing so we didn’t have to do the high hopes crashing to the floor thing. If a guy loses interest, so do we … so this must be a serious contender to knock all that to the wayside.” She sits forward, elbows on her knees as she studies me. “Who has your panties trapped around your thighs when you’d rather have them around your ankles?”

“It’s stupid,” I deflect, feeling like a teenager crushing on the popular kid in high school. “And that’s exactly why I agreed to go out with Luke. He called at the perfect time when I needed to feel wanted and I said yes.” I shrug as I take a sip, letting the wine slowly take the edge off the events of my day.

“The only man I’d probably give a pass on acting like that just because the Richter scale thing would be”—Layla’s eyes flash up to mine, awareness lighting them afire as she connects the dots—“Hawkin.”

Shit. Shit. Double shit.

It’s not like I wasn’t going to tell her. I was just hoping to downplay the situation first so I don’t feel like such an idiot for wanting someone who is exactly what I swore I didn’t want.

And of course it’s this moment that the advice my mom always gives me decides to resurface in my head. When you stop chasing all the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch you. Did I stop chasing the wrong things and could Hawkin be my chance at right?

“Quinlan?” Lay’s question brings me back from Hawkin-lost-in-thought-land and her eyes widen, her grin falters, and her mouth drops open. I finally meet her eyes but I can see that she knows the answer. “Holy fuck, Q!” She jumps to her feet, exactly the reaction I was hoping to avoid because I know she’s not going to stop now.

There’s never a way to stop her when she’s excited.

“Wow … So Professor Hottie, huh?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call him professor,” I correct. The man may be fine but he does not need someone to give him a bigger ego than he already has.

“Girl he can call me whatever he wants to call me and I’ll play the role,” she kids and then stops herself when she sees my uncomfortable expression. “C’mon, you feel the same way, so what’s the deal? He pushed you away but at least he tracked you down and apologized and asked for a phone number.”

I snort. “It was a rough apology … and both actions were done out of guilt. The man’s a player, plain and simple.”

“Ha. You’ve never complained about rough before.” She quirks her eyebrows and I can’t fight the laugh in response to her very true statement. “No, seriously though. Was it done out of guilt? Possibly, but a player doesn’t apologize, so tell me what’s really making you keep your distance.”

I look down at my finger tracing over the rim of my glass, the alcohol making the truths I don’t want to admit come a little quicker to my lips now. “He’s the one that I think can royally fuck me up.”

“Figuratively and literally,” she says, testing the waters to see if I chuckle or glare at her. I chuckle. And then glare. “But Q, why is that? Why him?”

I stare at her while I try to figure out the answer. “I don’t know. He’s like this big bad rocker with a sarcastic bite to him, but there’s something else, something underneath…. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s almost a sadness of some sort that makes me want to make sure he’s okay.”

“Uh-oh, you’re in momma-syndrome mode now?” she asks, eyebrows raised.

“No. It’s not like that,” I attempt to explain. “There just seems to be so much more beneath the surface than the image we all see … and it’s intriguing to me.”

“Bad boy, good heart. I can see that, but damn, that man is fine. I’m sure that doesn’t hurt either.”

The smile flashes quick on my lips. “No, but there’s more there. It’s like … everything about him pulls at me. The good, bad, all parts of me. I’ve never felt that from someone before. And, ugh …”

“And what? You don’t want to be pulled at because you’d rather be poked by him?” She laughs at herself and her witty comment.