“Q?”

“In here!” I call out, settling into the couch and putting my feet on the table.

“Hey, lady!” She rounds the corner followed by an approving sound when she sees the glass in my hand. “That rough, huh?”

“It got better,” I say and point to the kitchen counter for her to grab a glass herself. She’s been here enough times that she knows where everything is so I let her help herself. Having a friend that’s known you since middle school has its merits, like you’re so comfortable around each other that they help themselves without thought in your house. It also has a downside too: that you know each other so well they can read your thoughts when you don’t want them to.

And right now, I don’t want Layla to just yet.

Wine in hand and feet curled underneath her in the chair opposite me, Layla looks over the rim of her glass. “So what’s up? How’s Professor Hottie Hawkin?” Her lips curl in a smile and she gets a dreamy-girly look in her eyes akin to cartoons where irises turn into hearts. Luckily she keeps going before I can respond with an answer I’m not exactly sure of yet. “Man, it’s been two more lectures with him. Has he stopped being an ass and talked to you yet?”

“A little,” I reply, figuring I can deal with the guilt of withholding information momentarily because I know I’ll spill it eventually. And it’s not so much withholding, it’s more being unable to put into words the way he makes me feel.

“Man,” she moans, “the things I’d love to do to that man. I’d bang him like a screen door in a hurricane, hard and repeatedly. Shit, why wait for Mother Nature when there are so many fun places in that auditorium I could explore with him instead. Naked. For hours. Damn!” She grins devilishly with a raise of her eyebrows while my mind drifts to the little soundboard alcove and the taste of Hawkin’s lips on mine. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to fantasize out loud—the man just makes the tingle in my lady parts turn full-blown earthquake.”

Mine too.

“It’s not hard to make your lady parts tingle,” I tease with affection since I’m more of a serial dater than she is.

“True. Very true. I’d like them to be tingling later tonight if possible.”

“Deal,” I say, raising my glass in a mock toast to her, “because I sure as hell need something to get me out of this funk I’m in.” Hawke’s offer for a date on Saturday flickers through my mind as the potential answer but I push it out. I’m going out with Luke. He’s safer.

But do I really want safe?

“Talk to me lady. Bad day? You need to get laid? What?” Her question pulls me from my internal tug-of-war as she squints her eyes to try to figure out herself what my problem is. “Definitely need to get laid more than anything.”

“I’m working on it.” Although I neglect to explain I’m working on it with one man while thinking about another.

Her eyes run up and down my body, taking in my ponytail piled high on my head, my capri-length sweat pants, and camisole tank top. “Looks like it.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Men always are, Q…. But what’s the deal? You usually have them eating out of the V of your thighs without so much as a bat of your lashes, so what gives?”

I fixate on my finger as it draws lines on the arm of my couch. “Well, I agreed to go out with Luke.”

Her mouth falls lax but she remains silent as she tries to figure out what’s caused my about-face. “Okay.” She draws the word out, and I’m curious how long it’s going to take her to figure out what I’m doing. “Your enthusiasm to go on a date with him is overwhelming. Really, please try to contain it.” She snickers and then adds as an afterthought, “You know your brother is going to flip his lid when he hears about this.”

“He’ll never know. Besides, my life is my own. He was a manwhore his entire bachelorhood. He has no right to tell me what I can and can’t do.”

“Yeah, but we’re talking about Colton here.” She laughs with a raise of her eyebrows, garnering an eye roll from me in response. “So let me get this straight. You need to get laid. You agree to a date with a man who doesn’t light your fire, and I don’t understand why not … So what am I missing here?” I swear I can see the cogs turning in her mind and then click perfectly into place. “Who are you replacing Luke for?”

And bingo! That was in record time.

“Whatever do you mean?” I feign innocence knowing she’s going to freak out when I tell her who I’m trying to forget about.

She scoots forward to the edge of her chair while my cheeks heat. “Quinlan?”

“Well, there’s this guy….”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

“He made a move, we kissed some, brought it to his house where we kissed some more and then he up and said he had shit to do. Basically he told me to leave without saying those exact words.” I give her the short version of the story, trying to keep details to a minimum.

“And you’re wasting your time on him why, then? This isn’t like you. I thought we weren’t caring, doing the casual dating thing so we didn’t have to do the high hopes crashing to the floor thing. If a guy loses interest, so do we … so this must be a serious contender to knock all that to the wayside.” She sits forward, elbows on her knees as she studies me. “Who has your panties trapped around your thighs when you’d rather have them around your ankles?”

“It’s stupid,” I deflect, feeling like a teenager crushing on the popular kid in high school. “And that’s exactly why I agreed to go out with Luke. He called at the perfect time when I needed to feel wanted and I said yes.” I shrug as I take a sip, letting the wine slowly take the edge off the events of my day.

“The only man I’d probably give a pass on acting like that just because the Richter scale thing would be”—Layla’s eyes flash up to mine, awareness lighting them afire as she connects the dots—“Hawkin.”

Shit. Shit. Double shit.

It’s not like I wasn’t going to tell her. I was just hoping to downplay the situation first so I don’t feel like such an idiot for wanting someone who is exactly what I swore I didn’t want.

And of course it’s this moment that the advice my mom always gives me decides to resurface in my head. When you stop chasing all the wrong things, you give the right things a chance to catch you. Did I stop chasing the wrong things and could Hawkin be my chance at right?

“Quinlan?” Lay’s question brings me back from Hawkin-lost-in-thought-land and her eyes widen, her grin falters, and her mouth drops open. I finally meet her eyes but I can see that she knows the answer. “Holy fuck, Q!” She jumps to her feet, exactly the reaction I was hoping to avoid because I know she’s not going to stop now.

There’s never a way to stop her when she’s excited.

“Wow … So Professor Hottie, huh?”

“I wouldn’t exactly call him professor,” I correct. The man may be fine but he does not need someone to give him a bigger ego than he already has.

“Girl he can call me whatever he wants to call me and I’ll play the role,” she kids and then stops herself when she sees my uncomfortable expression. “C’mon, you feel the same way, so what’s the deal? He pushed you away but at least he tracked you down and apologized and asked for a phone number.”

I snort. “It was a rough apology … and both actions were done out of guilt. The man’s a player, plain and simple.”

“Ha. You’ve never complained about rough before.” She quirks her eyebrows and I can’t fight the laugh in response to her very true statement. “No, seriously though. Was it done out of guilt? Possibly, but a player doesn’t apologize, so tell me what’s really making you keep your distance.”

I look down at my finger tracing over the rim of my glass, the alcohol making the truths I don’t want to admit come a little quicker to my lips now. “He’s the one that I think can royally fuck me up.”

“Figuratively and literally,” she says, testing the waters to see if I chuckle or glare at her. I chuckle. And then glare. “But Q, why is that? Why him?”

I stare at her while I try to figure out the answer. “I don’t know. He’s like this big bad rocker with a sarcastic bite to him, but there’s something else, something underneath…. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s almost a sadness of some sort that makes me want to make sure he’s okay.”

“Uh-oh, you’re in momma-syndrome mode now?” she asks, eyebrows raised.

“No. It’s not like that,” I attempt to explain. “There just seems to be so much more beneath the surface than the image we all see … and it’s intriguing to me.”

“Bad boy, good heart. I can see that, but damn, that man is fine. I’m sure that doesn’t hurt either.”

The smile flashes quick on my lips. “No, but there’s more there. It’s like … everything about him pulls at me. The good, bad, all parts of me. I’ve never felt that from someone before. And, ugh …”

“And what? You don’t want to be pulled at because you’d rather be poked by him?” She laughs at herself and her witty comment.

“Well, that’s a given,” I admit, “but I don’t want to feel this way. I need casual desperately right now, because if I get burned one more time, Lay … I don’t know…. I just think it’s best to walk away. Damage control. Besides, my heart’s been bruised and battered enough, I don’t need to walk into another situation where I hand him the weapons to hurt me with.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, sister, because his actions are confusing. But I say give him another chance. The whole thing with his brother and then the fight with Vince obviously doused his flame.”

“This coming from the woman who moments ago told me to move on.”

“Um, Hawkin Play? No more words need to be said.” I have to laugh at her logic because lame as it may be, it’s starting to pull me toward her reasoning. “Did you really think dating Chasin’ Mason was going to sate that ache Hawkin created?” She shakes her head and the look on her face says I’ve lost my sanity. “Did Luke bust a nut when you accepted?”

I shrug in response. It’s all I can do because I said yes, but I know in the end, I’ll still tell Luke no.

“At least Luke is easy on the eyes as well as funny. Not a bad way to spend an evening,” she says.

“Yeah …”

“But he’s no rock god.” She purses her lips, hearing the hesitancy in my response. “I get it.”

I can’t really explain it, so I just shake my head. If this is the response he normally receives, no wonder Hawkin has an ego the size of Texas. “He is not a rock god.”

“If he’s not now, he’s well on his way to becoming one and fuck I’ll consider his dick my rock god as long as it’s rolling into me.”

There’s absolutely no response I can give to that comment except to take a long drink of my wine.

“You know you’re thinking it,” she chides me. “Hey, there’s no shame in trying to use Luke to make you forget about Hawkin, but let’s be serious here, there is no chance in hell you’re going to forget about him.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence, Lay.”

My phone rings on the end table beside me, and I glance over at the unknown number and mute the call. When it starts ringing again before I can recall my train of thought, my distracted mind immediately thinks that something’s wrong with my family.

“Hello?”

“So is what you said the other day true?” And just like that, the voice that sounds like sex fills my ears and softens my resistance.

And I don’t want soft. No. When it comes to Hawkin Play, I want hard.

“Not sure what you mean, but why don’t we start with how did you get my phone number?” Irritation masks the rush of desire I feel just beneath the surface. I don’t know what it is about this man that makes me feel like a damn virgin anticipating what her first time will be like.

Because I am far from virginal. And thank God for that because it means I know just what I need. I try not to acknowledge the voice in the back of my head that says and what I need is him.

“You’re my TA, remember? Carla was more than willing to get it for me when I told her I needed to discuss some things with you,” he says with victorious amusement.

“And then what? I don’t answer so you were going to keep calling me back until I did? Stalk much?”

His laugh sounds low and rich. “I’ve learned from the best, just don’t expect me to be throwing any bras at your feet.”

I stifle the laugh as my eyes meet Layla’s and she points to my phone and mouths Hawkin’s name. I nod my head, which earns an arms up in the air in a touchdown motion.

“It takes a lot more than clothing at my feet to make me like you.” Although the image of him naked is a mighty fine way to fill my thoughts.