Page 5 of Puck My Stepbrother
He stopped and threw his pen down on the notebook.
“Look,” he said, “if you really want to know, this is a hard adjustment for me. I barely remember my dad being with my mom. Most of what I’ve seen of them together has been in pictures. And then she died. I didn’t really understand what was happening, and I got used to it over time, but it still hurts. I couldn’t picture my dad with another woman, and now I’m forced to do it. And I have to live under the same roof as her. And I’m also?—”
He stopped himself short of saying what he meant.
He would be forced to live with me. I got it. That didn’t have to be a bad thing. In fact, I planned to show him how amazing living under the same roof with me could be.
“Look,” I said, “it’s not that I don’t understand what you’re going through. I’m sort of going through it myself.”
“I know, but?—”
“And I saw that room in the back of the house and thought it would be perfect. So I took it.”
“But I’d already been promised that room.”
“Right, and before you could move into it, I noticed the room and thought it would be perfect for me. So I moved my stuff in.”
“But why won’t you move your stuff out now that you know it was promised to me?”
“Because I always get what I want, Quinn.”
He lifted an eyebrow, like he found my remark peculiar but wasn’t ready to challenge it. It wasn’t quite like the look that usually appeared on his face back in school, but I understood it well enough.
He didn’t like something that’d happened, but he couldn’t do anything about it.
“So you don’t feel guilty about just taking over like that?” he asked.
“Nope. I’m not saying I’m proud of it, but I wouldn’t say I feel guilty. Like I told you, Quinn, I get what I want. Always.”
He didn’t lift an eyebrow this time. I didn’t know what to call the look on his face. It wasn’t excitement, but it wasn’t disdain, either. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find that look sexy as hell. In fact, I doubt Quinn could’ve flashed me a single expression that I wouldn’t have found sexy as hell.
I took a deep breath.
He went back to writing in his notebook. Of course he did. He didn’t want to continue a conversation that clearly wasn’t going his way. That was perfectly fine by me. I’d told him the thing he’d needed to hear most. I think he got the message, too.
I get what I want…and Itakewhat I want, if necessary.
Always.
3
QUINN
Before I go any further, I should tell you the truth: I have a crush on Levi. Or, Ididhave a crush on Levi. Even in elementary school, when I’d begun to have some sense of who I really was, I couldn’t help experiencing powerful feelings for Levi Dunn.
It doesn’t make sense. It didn’t then and sure as hell doesn’t now. Most gay guys my age told me they knew they were gay around the age of thirteen or fourteen. That was the age when they knew they liked guys, I mean. Labels, if they used them, didn’t come until later.
But me? I knew it from the time I was in first grade. The first boy I ever noticed “in that way” had been a classmate with long, dark hair and golden skin. I’m not saying it was a powerful feeling or anything, but something was there. It “was what it was” as some people like to say. I’d had a revelation. From that moment on, I knew that I liked guys and not girls, even if I didn’t understand it.
By the time I noticed Levi in the same way, the feeling had intensified. I thought he was good-looking, but that was about it. Fast forward a few years, whenheseemed to noticeme, butin all the wrong ways. Yeah, I found him attractive then, too, despite how he treated me. By the end of elementary school, Levi had become my most frequent bully, but his looks had never been lost on me. It was the same when we reached high school together.
Once we’d reached an age at which attraction had become an inevitably powerful thing, I’d had the hots for Levi. I couldn’t deny that. I dreamed about him pretty much every night, but I knew I could never pursue those dreams because he would never be with someone like me. Guys like him were always straight, weren’t they?
And besides, why would I even want to pursue someone like him? I mean, he’d treated me like shit for as long as I could remember. Yeah, I know you’re curious about what he did to me that was so bad I’d complain about it years later. Trust me, I’ll fill you in on all of it before this story is through.
I said earlier that his stealing my bedroom was so Levi Dunn because itwas. And his having the nerve to brush it off, saying he always gets what he wants, and not giving a shit who he offended, couldn’t have been more Levi Dunn.
I’d felt tense ever since the moment I’d found out we’d be living under the same roof together. All the old memories had come flooding back, horrifying me, and I didn’t know if I could handle this arrangement in the long term.
