Page 77 of Top Shelf
I flopped my head back against the headrest. “Do we have to talk about this?”
“You are the love of my life, and I will indulge you in literally anything you want, but you need to give me a heads-up about her visit,” he said.
I sighed. It was only fair. “My dad’s coming too. And Logan.”
“Which one is he?”
“The eldest,” I said. He was a pain in the ass, but he was a good brother. “He’s getting divorced, and he’s sad, so I told him he could come ogle hockey butts.”
“Oh. Is he…”
I shrugged. “He’s made some comments recently.” Logan and I didn’t talk much, but the other day, he’d mentioned flirting with a shop owner at the bakery near my parents’ place, and I knew the owner. He was very much a man. “I think maybe when he realized my parents weren’t going to throw me out and disown me for liking men, he started to feel safer being himself.”
Quinn smiled softly. “I think you probably made him feel safe too.”
That was…I didn’t really know how to feel about it. I never thought I could be a person who made anyone feel safe. But thinking back, maybe I was wrong. Colton and Cosmo both came to me when things were shitty during the semester. Sometimes Eli and I would sit quietly, and I would crochet and he would fold water bottle labels, and we’d just exist together.
He’d always smile at me after, like he was happy I was there, even if neither of us said a word.
When I met Myles, he’d been stressed as hell, but he never avoided me. When he and Colton started to become a thing, he would always make time to pop by my room or hang with me on the porch.
It wasn’t everyone. Half the frat avoided me like I had a plague. Some of the others clearly preferred to pretend like I didn’t exist. I had no friends besides Cosmo on the hockey team.Just people appreciated my skills at keeping the puck out of the net.
But I had people who cared.
And Quinn was one of the most important ones.
“Do I make you feel safe?”
He laughed softly and tugged my hand to his lips. Nothing felt better than those soft knuckle kisses he was always giving me. “I have never felt safer in my life.”
I believed him.
And that made me smile.
My parents arrived alone justbefore dinner. Quinn had worried himself almost sick about cooking, and in the end, I put an end to the madness and ordered Chinese from the dim sum place down the street. The delivery driver dropped it all off ten minutes before their car pulled up, and he was setting it out on the table when they rang the bell.
His spine stiffened, and he went a little pale.
“I’ll get it.” I stole a quick kiss before walking to the door. My own anxiety was intense, but I was doing my best to keep it tucked away toward the pit in my stomach.
My dad was first inside. I hadn’t seen him in a while, so it was nice to see his face in person instead of on my tiny phone screen whenever he’d FaceTime me. He looked…older, really. A bit more grey, which made the percentage of his black hair almost nonexistent. He had more wrinkles too, and I thought he’d lost a bit of weight, though he was still broader and looked like he should be teaching gym instead of religious history at the university.
But his eyes were the same, bright and happy to see me, glinting behind his wire-rimmed glasses. He was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, which I was pretty sure my brother had picked out, and his arms were still strong when he offered them out for a hug.
It felt good to rest against him. I felt a bit like a kid again, though only for a moment.
“You’ve grown six feet,” he said, letting me go slowly.
“That would make me a medically impossible person,” I said.
“Unless you were a Nephilim,” he countered.
Rolling my eyes, I turned to my mom and turned my cheek so she could kiss it. “You look better, beta. Rested.” She gave me a slow up and down, making me turn from side to side. “Your ankle?”
“Sturdy. I’m using an orthotic on the ice right now, and for camp, I’m going to be put on no contact, but I should get some time in the net.”
My dad clapped my shoulder and squeezed. It was one of the few social languages we shared, hockey lingo. He got really into it after moving to Canada, and I thought he was still probably disappointed by the fact that I was drafted to Boston, but I knew he was glad we could share this.
