Page 136 of Seven Lost Summers
I watch her for a second longer. The way her lashes shadow her skin. The shape of her mouth. All those soft features I’ve always known but never let myself really look at.
“Quinn,” I say, voice low.
I reach out, fingers brushing her chin, and tilt her face toward me. Her skin’s warm under my touch. Soft. Familiar.
My gaze drags over hers, catching the subtle flicker in her eyes as they trace mine. She’s reading me, same way she always has.
Without warning, she shifts. Rolls toward me. Her thigh brushes my leg, and her hair falls across the pillow in a way that makes the air hard to fucking breathe.
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about Theo,” she says.
I roll to face her, propping my head up on my hand.
“What about Theo?” I ask, but my focus is still caught on her mouth.
She hesitates, only for a second. After a beat, her voice drops, quiet. “He’s different now.”
My brows twitch. “Different good, or different bad?”
She lets out a shaky breath. “Neither. Just… different.”
I wait, letting her find the right words.
“I remember when he used to hide behind those awful hoodies,” she says. “Used to pull the strings so tight you could barely see his face. Always had his head down, always quiet unless we were alone.”
I nod. “Yeah. He was all shadows back then.”
“But now he’s loud, playful, and charming as hell. And he knows it. A confidence lives in him that never existed before.”
I smile faintly. “That confidence is mostly bullshit.”
Quinn lets out a soft laugh, but a trace of sadness lingers in the sound.
“I guess I didn’t expect him to be the one who changed the most,” she says. “Not in that way.”
I shift a little, lying flat on the bed, staring at the ceiling for a second.
“He rose.” I keep going even though I feel her eyes on me. “He doubled down after Bianca died. Made her this unspoken promise to never dim. Never apologize for who he is. He started showing the world every fucking loud, brilliant, messy piece of him. All of it.”
She doesn’t interrupt.
“And I… I caved inward,” I admit. “He exploded out, and I folded in. We flipped.”
A beat of silence stretches between us.
“I think about that a lot,” she says. “How grief hits everyone differently.”
“Theo wears joy like armor,” I murmur. “Every joke, every flirt, every dumbass comment that comes out of his mouth, all of it’s covering the same shit. He’s still bleeding too. I see the truth, even when he thinks I don’t.”
Quinn’s hand finds mine.
“You still seem the same Nate to me,” she says. “Although you don’t throw around those cocky pick up lines anymore.”
With one brow raised, I glance over at her.
A smirk forms on her mouth. “But I guess you don’t need to. Being a rockstar God and all. Must be nice that the name does the work for you now, huh?”
I bark out a laugh. “You think I’ve gone soft?”
