Page 126 of Seven Lost Summers
She sits up too fast. Her eyes snap to mine, wide and wet. Glossy, blurred, a shimmer of tears pooling.
“Hey…” I start, reaching out, but she shakes her head once.
Before I can say anything else, she’s sliding off the bed. Moving quick, movements jerky.
“Quinn,” I say, chest tight, concern biting hard under my ribs.
Something’s wrong.
I can see it in the way her shoulders stiffen, in the way she won’t look back at me.
I don’t know what the fuck shifted. All I know is it’s there, hanging in the air, heavy and cold where a second ago it was nothing but heat.
Chapter 22
Quinn
Thesteamcurlsoffthe rim of my mug as I take another slow sip, the bitter taste settling on my tongue, grounding me in the half-light of the morning. The sky is still black, edges of gray bleeding into the horizon, a faint promise of dawn that hasn’t broken yet. Around me, the world rests in that rare quiet that only exists at five a.m., when no one else is awake and the air still feels untouched.
The back patio is cool as I pull my legs underneath me, laptop balanced on my thighs. The faint click of the trackpad breaks the quiet as I scroll through yesterday’s work, each frame flickering across the screen.
Xander appears first.
His face fills the shot in a way that demands attention, every sharp line of his jaw cutting clean through the frame. Always photogenic. He doesn’t have to work for it. His smile isn’t soft; it’s carved, a weapon he’s mastered. Even in the unguarded moments, with his head thrown back mid-laugh, lips part mid-lyric, there’s something magnetic. His presence bleeds through the lens.
The next photo is Ace.
He’s caught in motion, arms curved around his guitar, fingers pressing down like the strings are an extension of him. His head is tilted slightly, jaw tight, eyes shadowed under the fall of his hair. There’s a challenge in his expression, that quiet, fuck off confidence that says he doesn’t care what you see. There’s this rawness under all that restraint. A hint of something untamed.
Then I get to them.
Theo.
My stomach twists before the image even appears. His bass hangs low at his hips, his head bent enough that the light catches in his hair. That face, quiet, soft in a way most people never notice. Most see only Nate, all fire and chaos. But I see him. I always have. There’s a gentleness in his eyes when he’s lost in the music, something so fucking pure it hurts to stare at for too long. As if the camera has caught something it shouldn’t have.
And now Nate.
Sweat slicks his temples, strands of hair clinging to his forehead. His mouth is open mid-curse or mid-laugh, impossible to tell because with him it’s always both at once. He’s wild in the frame, pure kinetic energy captured in a single shot. His hands blur over the drums, muscles in his forearms tight, veins standing out under the skin. There’s fire in him, caught mid-motion, and he looks alive. He looks… free.
Free in a way I haven’t known for years.
I swallow hard and swipe to the next photo.
Another one follows, and my chest tightens with every frame, a sharp ache blooming under my ribs until it’s hard to drag in air. Because staring at them now isn’t only looking at photos. It’s falling back into that moment—Theo’s hands on my body, the way his touch burned through my skin. Nate’s breath at my neck, every exhale branding me.
Every shot on the screen drags me deeper into it.
The weight of them against me. The filthy words that slipped past their lips, curling into my bones. They tore me apart without hesitation, stripping me down until I wasn’t Quinn anymore. Until I was nothing but sound and sensation. Until I was theirs.
And those wings.
I close my eyes, but it doesn’t save me.
The memory hits anyway, pulling me under. My hand on Theo’s chest, fingers brushing over the ink, tracing the sharp curve of feathers etched into his skin. The way his breath hitched under my touch, that tiny shudder breaking through the wall he always carries. For a second, he wasn’t Theo the smartass; he was himself. Raw. Open. After that, the weight of it crushed me.
Those wings. They aren’t only ink. They are everything he can’t bring himself to say out loud. Every piece of his heart carved into his skin for a girl he will love for the rest of his life. A love that runs so deep it bleeds through every line of that tattoo, every feather etched over his chest. It’s devotion turned permanent, a promise he can never break, not even if he wanted to.
When my fingers lingered there, when he leaned into that touch for a single heartbeat, the guilt burned so deep it closed my throat and stole the air from my lungs. I knew every stroke of my fingers was trespassing on something sacred.
