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I follow her and drop onto the couch, expecting her to sit beside me. Instead, she takes the chair across from me.
“Quinn. Tell me what’s wrong.”
I lean forward, forearms resting on my thighs. “Talk to me. You’ve obviously been worrying about what happened with your dad.”
Her gaze drops to her hands and she sighs. “You’re right. I was worried about what happened with dad. And I’m sorry you had to go through that. And it’s not fair to you.”
“Don’t worry about me. I told you: I’m fine.”
She smiles weakly at me.
I think she just needs some more reassure. “I’m 100 % in this and I want to be with you. No matter what happens.”
Now her smile turns sad. “But what If I don’t want that?”
For a second, I’m sure I heard her wrong.
“What?”
“What if I don’t want you risking all of this?”
“What does that mean?”
“It means this is getting completely out of proportion. Your career, your relationship with my dad, everything with the team. People are already questioning whether you earned your minutes. Dad’s angry at you. The organization is involved now.”
“Yeah, I was there for most of that.”
“And you don’t see how insane this is?”
“I see that it’s messy. But none of it changes how I feel about you.” My frustration starts creeping into my voice now. “If Brennan cuts my minutes, I deal with it. If LA decides to trade me, I deal with that too. I’m not going to dump you because something bad might happen.”
Her face tightens and she doesn’t say anything.
“I love you, Quinn,” I say. If only I can make her understand how goddamn serious I am, she will understand.
Instead, she flinches like I threw something at her.
Now her behavior is starting to really fucking bother me and I get angry.
“Stop acting like I’m just some guy you went on three fucking dates with.”
Her shoulders go rigid.
Something cold moves through my chest. “Quinn?”
She lifts her gaze slowly and meets my eyes. I can tell it’s the last thing she wants to do right now. “Maybe that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
I stare at her. “What?”
“I think we kind of got carried away.”
I laugh once, but there’s nothing funny about it. “I didn’t get carried away,” I contradict her.
“Well, maybe I did,” she amends.
That leaves me speechless.
She swallows hard. “You know I’ve never done any of this before.”