Page 57 of Bitten & Burned
I hesitated. Would he slam it in my face, too? The thought hit harder than it should have, a flash of cold beneath my ribs.
No. That wasn’t fair. Rowena hadn’t slammed anything. She’d just… closed it. Quietly. Deliberately. The way someone might shut away a letter they weren’t ready to read.
She didn’t want to talk to me. And that was her right.
I knocked on the frame.
“It’s open,” came Quil’s voice.
I stepped inside, slower than I needed to. He was rummaging through a crate near the fireplace, half-bent, his back to me. The firelight caught on the pale lines of old scars along his forearms, a map I’d never been invited to read.
When he turned, he raised his eyebrows slightly. For him, that was basically expressing shock.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” he said.
“Me either,” I replied.
“To what do I owe the pleasure,professor?”
I sighed. The nickname grated. He knew that. That’s why he used it.
“I… wanted to talk.”
“If this is about yesterday, don’t fucking bother. I don’t need a lecture, thanks.”
“It’s not… well. It is and it isn’t. It’s not about whatyoudid. It’s about whatIdid.”
He stood straighter, folding his arms. “What about it?”
“I don’t know how to start.”
“Well, if you figure it out, let me know. I’ve got things to do.” He turned back to the crate, digging through it again—but not pulling anything out. Just moving things around. The muted thuds and scrapes filled the space between us, each one a quiet refusal to meet my gaze. Like the act of rummaging gave him an excuse not to look at me.
“I went to see Rowena just now,” I said finally. “I knocked. Like I just did with you. And she came over… and closed the door in my face. Didn’t say a word.”
He made a dry sound. Almost a laugh, though I didn’t appreciate the sentiment.
“I bet that hurt.”
The words landed with more accuracy than I wanted to admit.
“You’re not wrong.”
“Kind of like how you hurt her yesterday, huh?”
I exhaled sharply. Hewasn’twrong. Of course, he wasn’t. Quil never could leave well enough alone. He had to draw the line back to my mistakes. As if I hadn’t already done it a hundred times myself.
“Yeah. Kind of like that.”
He pressed his lips into a thin line. Exhaled. The sound was slow, deliberate—like he was letting go of a thought he’d decided not to voice. “Okay. What about it?”
“I just…” I hesitated. The question felt clumsy in my mouth, like it didn’t belong to me. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Constantly fuck up and come back from it. How do you live with yourself after you hurt people like that?”
He straightened up again and turned to look at me. His dark eyes searched mine like he was trying to find a meaning I couldn’t name. It made my skin itch, that steady, unblinking measure of me.
