“Yeah,” he said. “But not like that. I want Quinn to be happy. But Tyler is not a good guy.”

“You think he’ll hurt her?”

He’d hurt her once already—but Nick couldn’t explain that without explaining everything. “I hope not. I don’t know.”

Adam fetched milk from the refrigerator and poured some into one mug, leaving the other coffee black. Nick watched this, bemused that Adam had remembered how he took his coffee.

Adam interrupted his thoughts. “How do you know him?”

Nick wondered how to answer that without spilling every secret he had. For the first time, he was tempted to tell Adam all of it. His shoulders felt tight with tension—from the fight with Quinn, from school, from his family, from living up to everyone’s expectations.

“He used to go to school with my older brother. His family and my family—we don’t get along.”

Adam turned from the counter with mugs in hand. “Why?”

Because Tyler thinks we should be put to death for something we can’t control.

Nick rubbed at his eyes. “It’s a long story.”

He heard the mugs slide onto the table, but jumped when Adam’s hands landed on his shoulders.

“Relax,” Adam said softly. “Relax.” Then he pressed his thumbs into the muscle there.

The trapezius muscle, Nick’s brain supplied helpfully.

God, he was such a nerd.

Adam’s hands felt amazing. Warm and strong with just enough pressure behind his fingers. But instead of being relaxing, his touch had Nick ready to leap out of his chair. Was this a prelude to something? Obviously, right? But what if it—

“Relax.” Adam shook him gently. “Are you really this wound up over Quinn?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. I feel like I should go get her.”

“Yeah, and how would that go?”

Tyler would want to fight. He’d win—Nick could hold his own if he had to, but he didn’t fight dirty. He had Gabriel for that. Tyler would get the upper hand and beat the shit out of him, if Nick didn’t suffocate him first.

Neither option sounded all that appealing.

“It would suck,” he said grudgingly.

“So your families hate each other. Are you guys the Mon-tagues or the Capulets?”

Nick snorted. “Romeo and Juliet? I don’t think so.”

But his brain flashed on that day when he was twelve, when Tyler’s sister had died. When Michael had come home soaking wet and terrified. When their parents had told them all to lock themselves in the master bedroom and not come out for anything. It was the first time he could remember seeing his mother frightened.

It wasn’t the last.

Adam’s hands brought him back to the present. “Do you ever think that maybe this Tyler guy thinks you are bad for Quinn?

That maybe his intentions aren’t evil at all?”

The thought brought Nick up short.

“I remember reading something once,” Adam continued,

“about divorce. It said that just because someone is a bad husband doesn’t mean they’re a bad father. I think about that a lot, how people have different capacities for failure. And even if you fail in one area doesn’t mean you fail in all of them.”

Nick ran that through his head a few times. What had Quinn said?

He still thinks your brother killed his sister. He seemed kinda upset about it.

Tyler had talked about his dead sister with Quinn? That didn’t seem like something he’d do to get under Nick’s skin.

Adam’s hands moved lower, along his shoulder blades, his thumbs pressing into the area alongside Nick’s spine.

“You have great hands,” Nick said without thinking, then blushed.

Especially when Adam leaned in and breathed along his neck.

“You have no idea.”

Nick shivered.

Adam brushed a kiss against his neck. His hands eased lower, finding Nick’s rib cage. “Still obsessing about Quinn?”

Obsessing. Was that what Adam was hearing? Nick had to clear his throat. “Quinn who?”

“That’s better.” Another slow breath against his skin. “What else has you so uptight?”

Your hands. My imagination.

“School,” he murmured. “I’m fourth in my class, and my physics teacher wants to nominate me for some program that will let me take college classes next semester.”

“You don’t sound happy about it.”

“I help my older brother run the landscaping business.

Gabriel is taking a special course to be a firefighter in the spring, so if I stop helping, too . . .” He let that thought trail off.

“You told me you were applying to some schools anyway, right? Have you heard back from any?”

Nick hesitated.

Adam’s hands went still. “What?”

“I’ve heard back from all of them.”

“And?”

Nick wished they could get back to the sexy talk. That was loaded with pressure, too, but he didn’t want to think about college.

“And . . . I haven’t opened any of the envelopes. Or the e-mails.”

Adam smacked him on the side of the head.

“Ow.” Nick sat up straight and looked over his shoulder.

“What was that for?”

“That was for you being an idiot.” Adam grabbed Nick’s shoulders and pulled him straighter. “And for your posture, while I’m at it. I’ve been wanting to do that for three days.”