Just Say Yes (4 page)

Quinn's posture seemed to soften slightly, but she still looked unsure.

“Stop thinking so much, Quinn.” Tim put his arms on the table and leaned toward her. “Just say yes.”

“Okay,” she said quietly. “I say yes.”

“Good.” He took a slow sip of his coffee, eyeing Quinn mischievously. “So . . . that means it's cool if I take that art class, right?”

Quinn shook her head, a laugh escaping her, though it was clear she'd been trying to hold it in.

Tim couldn't help thinking how much he loved her smile. And he was happy that he'd been the one to put it there.

Rough Draft

Quinn swung back and forth in the ergonomic chair her parents had bought for her when she'd landed the job at
Estelle.
She was supposed to be sifting through e-mails to see what the magazine had done to incur the public's wrath last month, but her brain was too preoccupied to concentrate on the trivial complaints in front of her.
Who cares if the cheeseburger one of our models was photographed with has more than eight hundred calories? She was only
pretending
to eat it anyway.

No, Quinn's mind was resting solidly on the tattooed, reformed bad-boy brother of her best friend's boyfriend. She remembered back to their meeting the day before: how one of his tattoos had peeked out from beneath his V-neck T-shirt, making her want to pull his collar aside so she could see the intricacy of the design more fully. How willing he was to help her with her article/new-life plan. How he never gave the slightest intimation that he thought her idea was stupid or juvenile. How, after admiring him from afar for months, she now had the excuse to spend time with him.

Not that anything will come of it.
Quinn could only imagine the types of girls Tim attracted. With his intense green eyes, strong, lean build that was riddled with tattoos, and his square jaw with a permanent hint of stubble across it—yeah, there was no way he'd ever go for someone like her. And she wasn't entirely sure she wanted him to. Because as hot as he was, there was something dangerous about him. Something that made her question if she could even survive a day in his world. And while the tiny rebel within that she was trying to unleash was up for giving it a go, the rational side of her—
the traditional, safe side
—was satisfied with just getting to know him better.
Besides, he's probably only helping me because he thinks I'm some defenseless little girl who'll get in trouble without someone looking out for me.
Shockingly, Quinn was fine with that, as long as it meant she got to stare at Tim more often.

“Is there a Quinn Sawyer here?” a voice asked, breaking Quinn from her thoughts.

“Uh, yeah, I—I'm Quinn.” She slowly raised her hand so the stranger knew where her voice had come from.

“This is for you.” The man handed her an envelope and then abruptly turned and left.

Quinn stared at the envelope like it had anthrax in it.

“You gonna open it or what?”

Tyler's voice caused Quinn to nearly jump out of her chair. “Jesus Christ! You scared the hell out of me.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever. Open the envelope.”

“Can I have a little privacy please?” Quinn said with a feigned tone of self-importance.

“No.”

“Fine,” Quinn muttered as she opened the envelope, though she did turn her chair so that Tyler couldn't see its contents over her shoulder. Inside was a small sheet of lined paper.

Carpe diem, Quinn. Today is the first day of the rest of your life (is that how that corny saying goes?). Anyway, I decided that we needed to up the stakes for your first foray into Good Girl Gone Bad–dom. Make up an excuse to leave. IT MUST BE A LIE. Then get your ass downstairs and wait for further instructions.

The letter wasn't signed, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to know who it was from. Quinn felt a smile drift across her lips as her body surged with anticipation. She'd had no idea Tim would want to start their little adventure together so soon, but she was glad for it. Quinn had been waiting to do something like this for her entire life, and suddenly waiting even a single day longer felt like it would cause her irrevocable harm. She glanced up, and her eyes met Tyler's.
Crap, I forgot he was here.

“Well?” he prompted.

“It's nothing. Just a reader who wanted their complaint delivered with a little extra pizzazz.” She watched Tyler deflate.

“Damn. I thought something interesting was finally happening around here.”

“Sorry to disappoint.” Quinn dropped the letter on her desk like it wasn't one of the most exciting things she'd ever received and turned back to her computer, hoping Tyler quickly took the hint. Which he did.

Quinn waited until he returned to his cubicle and set to work before grabbing her purse and heading toward Rita's office.
Let the games begin.

Quinn felt her confidence slip with each step. She reached the closed door and proceeded to stare at it for a moment. “Come on, Quinn,” she whispered to herself. “Just get it over with.” Finally she straightened her spine, lifted her head, brought her hand up to the door, and knocked firmly.

An audible groan sounded through the door. “What is it?”

Quinn took a deep breath and pushed open the door.

Rita was hunkered over her desk, her designer glasses dangling from one hand as she sorted through the mounds of papers on her desk.

“Uh, I'm sorry to disturb you, Rita, but I—”

“If you were really sorry, you wouldn't be disturbing me in the first place.”

“Oh, yeah, I'm really sorry.”
Shit.
“I just wanted to ask . . .” Quinn let out an incredibly bad attempt at a cough.
God, I really can't lie for shit.
“I'm not feeling so well. I need to use half of a sick day.”

Rita finally looked up at Quinn, eyebrows raised, but she didn't say anything.

“I just wanted to let you know. I'll take some work home with me.”

Rita continued to stare.

“And I can log on from home and answer some e-mails.”

“Quinn?”

“Yes?”

“Can this conversation be over?”

Quinn audibly exhaled. “Yes. Thank you, Rita. I'll see you tomorrow.”

Rita waved her glasses toward Quinn, a gesture more of dismissal than farewell. Quinn gently closed the door as she left, thinking that hadn't been so bad.

•   •   •

Tim was oddly nervous. He was usually incredibly calm, completely unflappable. But he couldn't deny the slight flutter in his stomach as he waited for Quinn on the street directly outside her office building. He wasn't sure going all “007” with the letter was the right way to play their first excursion together, but the idea was too fun not to see through once he'd thought of it. He wanted to make this as fulfilling an experience for Quinn as he could.

Finally, almost fifteen minutes after he'd seen the messenger exit the building, he saw Quinn walk out and scan the crowd in front of her. When her eyes fell on him, she immediately flashed him a bright smile. He couldn't help but return it.

She walked briskly toward him. “I was expecting a car waiting to sweep me away to a secret rendezvous point.”

Tim laughed. “Damn. I knew I forgot something.”

“Eh, it's okay.” Then she winked at him, and he felt his pulse hammer at every vital point in his body. “So what are we doing?”

“Just follow me, young grasshopper. I will show you the way.” Tim wrapped his arm around her shoulder. It was a friendly gesture—something he would do to a buddy without hesitation. But the
reason
he did it couldn't have been more different. He wanted to touch Quinn, to know what she felt like in his arms, even if it didn't mean what he wished it did. “So what'd you tell them to get out of there?”

“That I contracted that chikungunya virus like Lindsay Lohan and I'm highly contagious.”

“Chicken
what
?” Tim couldn't help looking at her like she was crazy, because in that moment, he kind of thought she might be.

“Or more simply, I said I didn't feel well and was taking half a sick day.” They both laughed and continued to their destination.

He led her to a small convenience store three blocks from her office. He'd arrived early, since the restaurant was closed Mondays and because he wanted to scope out the perfect location for checking off the first task on Quinn's list. It was a mom-and-pop store that mostly sold newspapers and coffee to the businesspeople who passed by on their way to work. There were no surveillance cameras inside, no detectors at the entrance.

Tim had to admit, actively noticing those things made him catch a glimmer of a dark place. A place he tried to avoid at all costs. It was a place he used to know well—during a time when a criminal mind-set was his
only
mind-set. It felt odd, looking into darkness on behalf of someone who radiated so much light it was damn near blinding. It made him wonder if going through with their plan was a good idea. Made him wonder if going down this road could make Quinn actually lose more of herself than it helped her find. Then he reminded himself that they were talking jaywalking and karaoke, not armed robbery and manslaughter, and he was able to shake the feelings off.

When they arrived at the store, Tim dropped his arm from her shoulder, trying not to focus on how he'd left it there for three blocks, and turned to face her. “Here's the plan. We're going to go inside and look around, just a quick sweep. You're going to slip something small into your pocket. Pack of gum or something. Then we'll act like we didn't find what we were looking for and walk out. Easy.”

He watched Quinn draw in a shaky breath and close her eyes briefly. When she opened them, she looked determined. It was cute.

“Okay. Let's do it.”

Tim nodded as he put his hand on the small of her back and guided Quinn into the store. Once inside, he went left when she moved to the right. Her head whipped toward him, eyes widening as if saying, “What the hell?” But he ignored her and kept his trajectory. If she was going to have this experience, then it needed to be hers. Especially for the first time. He wanted Quinn to make all the choices, to take ownership of whatever transformation that occurred.

Tim pretended to scan the aisles, sneaking subtle glances at the shop owners every twenty seconds or so. He knew Quinn wouldn't get caught. Of the two of them, it was him who would draw attention. Not the fresh-faced, blue-eyed beauty at the other end of the store. Well, at least not
negative
attention.

Not three minutes after they'd entered, Quinn manifested by his side. “They don't have it,” she said simply.

Tim nodded and followed her out of the store. They walked half a block before Quinn stopped suddenly. Withdrawing a pack of gum from her pocket, she showed it to him. “I did it,” she said, beaming.

“I see that,” Tim replied, giving her a genuine smile that he hoped reflected his pride.
Wait. Should I really feel proud of teaching her to shoplift?

“I know. I'm a total badass.” Quinn popped a piece of gum into her mouth, chewing slowly.

The way Quinn's tongue slipped across her bottom lip made Tim think about what it would be like to bite it. “Okay, Miss Badass, now we can check stealing and playing hooky off your list.” Tim started walking again, but Quinn didn't follow.

“I, um, I actually did need something from that store. I'm going to run back in real quick since I'm already here and all.” She started walking quickly back toward the shop.

“You're going to go pay for it, aren't you?”

Quinn threw him one of her bright smiles over her shoulder, never slowing her pace.

Tim shook his head but couldn't stop his own smile from overtaking his face as he thought about how they would make a terrible Bonnie and Clyde.

Churning

Quinn plopped herself down on the couch Wednesday evening, settling in to catch up on some television, but her mind wouldn't relax. She was still reeling from the high of breaking her first major law.
Kind of.
Even though Tim razzed her about it, she
had
left the store initially without paying for the gum, so in her mind, it counted. The entire experience had caused an excess of adrenaline to pump through her body, and the effect still hadn't gone away. She'd never been so productive, answering e-mails and writing her retractions with the flurry usually reserved for people on excessive amounts of caffeine.

When her cell phone rang beside her, she didn't even look at the screen before answering. “Hello?”

“Hi, honey.”

Mom.
Quinn took a silent breath and braced herself for the conversation that would follow. It wasn't that Quinn didn't love her parents. She did. But being the single focus of their pure, unadulterated love was a little suffocating. Peter and Julia Sawyer had been involved in
every
aspect of their daughter's life from the moment she came into the world. She'd gotten a brief reprieve from their incessant interference when she'd left for college, but even that was mostly just an
image
of autonomy. They'd all but forced her to attend Marymount University, a Catholic institution about fifteen minutes from her house. And while Quinn had enjoyed her time there, she'd wished she could have spread her wings a little farther from the nest.

Finally severing the proverbial cord—or maybe stretching it was a more adequate description—Quinn had managed to distance herself since she'd moved out on her own. But her recent introspection had caused her to reconsider how much she'd actually escaped their prison of adoration and love. They may not have a say in how Quinn lived her life, but they had raised her to look at things a certain way. Their morals and expectations permeated Quinn's entire life, making her into the person she was now desperate to change. She wasn't looking to rewrite the foundations they'd built—Quinn was a successful, responsible adult. But goddamn, everybody needs to be a little wild
sometimes
.

“Hi, Mom,” Quinn responded as she sank back into her chair. “How are you?”

“Oh, we're good. I just wanted to call and check in. How have you been?”

Quinn couldn't help but feel guilty for how agitated her parents made her. They loved her. There was no crime in that.
Crime.
That thought made Quinn smile. Her mind naturally drifted to Tim, causing her smile to grow wider. She'd loved hanging out with him, talking to him in the casual way only friends could. “I'm good, Mom. Just relaxing. Nothing's really new.” There was no way in hell Quinn was going to tell her parents about her article. At least not until it was published in the magazine. She briefly wondered if she should add telling them to her list but quickly banished the idea. She didn't want coming clean to them set in stone.

Her mom asked her a few other simple questions: how the girls were, if she'd been to the new restaurant downtown, how things at the magazine were going. They chatted for about five minutes before her mom asked the question Quinn knew was coming. “No new men in your life?” her mom needled.

There it is.
Quinn's love life—or lack thereof—was a prime topic of conversation in the Sawyer household. If Julia had her way, Quinn would have been happily married to a successful man by now. “Nope,” Quinn responded casually.

“Okay, then.” Her mom sounded almost relieved.

“Okay?”

“Yes, okay.”

“What did you do?” Quinn asked evenly.

“What makes you think I did something?” Julia asked innocently.
Too
innocently.

“Mom.”

Julia released a frustrated breath. “Fine. I invited Carolyn and Spencer Clark's son to dinner on Sunday, and I was hoping you'd come.”

“Yeah, I'm not going to be able to make that,” Quinn said simply.

Her mom gasped. “Why on earth not? I told him you'd be there.”

“Maybe you should have asked me
before
you told him that.”

“Well, I didn't. It'll be rude of you not to come.”

“So is trying to set me up with a guy who's in the seminary.”

“His mother said that wasn't working out so well. She doubts he'll actually make it to being ordained.”

Quinn silently counted to ten before replying. “Mom, I know you're just trying to do what's best for me, but please trust me when I tell you: this isn't it. Now, please call and tell him dinner's been canceled or whatever you need to do to make sure he's not expecting me to be there on Sunday.” Quinn tried to keep her voice light. She'd never been very good at sticking up for herself, especially to her parents. It wasn't because she was weak-willed or a pushover. She simply liked to make people happy. And this applied to her parents most of all, because they had given her so much. The thought of disappointing them made her feel sick to her stomach.

“All right.” Julia's voice was quiet, clearly displeased but still accepting.

“Thanks, Mom. I'll talk to you soon. Love you.”

“Love you too, sweetheart.”

Quinn disconnected the call, wondering if they'd love the new Quinn just as much.

•   •   •

“Been here long?” Tim asked Roger as he slid into the booth across from him.

“Nah. Just ten minutes or so.”

“Sorry. I got hung up trying to sort out some scheduling issues,” Tim explained as he picked up his menu.

“No worries. How's the restaurant doing?” Roger asked.

“Awesome. Getting some good traffic. We've gotten great reviews from the local papers.”

“All wonderful news. And the new apartment? You settling in?”

Tim had moved into a new apartment a few months back when he'd gotten the job at The Black Lantern, a trendy eatery that specialized in classic American staples with fresh ingredients and new age twists. He had wanted to be closer to work but still within a reasonable distance from his brother. Tim was increasingly happy for that decision, as he and Scott had been spending more time together over the recent months.

Tim set his menu down and folded his hands on the table, smiling indulgently at the man in front of him. Roger was a forty-seven-year-old whose years of drinking and heavy drug use made him look fifteen years older. Tim literally owed his life to the nosy bastard in front of him. Roger had agreed to sponsor Tim when Tim was nothing more than a pissed-off, wild, twenty-eight-year-old criminal living in a halfway house upon completion of his most recent stint in rehab. But Roger hadn't been deterred by Tim's bad attitude. He'd barreled into Tim's life and insinuated himself into every aspect of it. It was
exactly
what Tim had needed. And now, seven and a half years later, Roger was still there for him. His involvement went way beyond what the twelve-step program called for. Tim was damn lucky to have him.

Tim's mind flashed back to how dark that time in his life had been. After driving high as a fucking kite to hang out with Scott on Thanksgiving eve, Tim had gotten into a car accident. Killing himself, frankly, wouldn't have been a bad thing as far as Tim was concerned. He'd been on a path with that inevitable end since he was fifteen. But the fact that Scott had been in the car—the fact that he could have killed his younger brother—was enough to make him want to get his shit together. But even with that as motivation, Tim never would have been able to make it without Roger.

Tim's parents had disowned him after his third relapse. Their complete dismissal of him from their family erased whatever rock bottom Tim may have had. If the people who were genetically programmed to love him unconditionally didn't see him as worth fighting for, why should he fight for himself?

But Roger had fought for him. He'd become a surrogate father to Tim, despite being only twelve years older than him. Roger had given Tim hope that a better life was out there for him. Showed him that he was worth giving a shit about. Because Roger had made it clear from day one: he didn't go out of his way for fuck-ups. And if he didn't think Tim was a fuck-up, then shit, maybe he wasn't. “Yeah, you'll have to come check it out sometime,” Tim answered.

Roger stowed his questions long enough for them to order their meals. During dinner, they talked about innocuous things: Roger's daughter, sports, Tim's eighty-year-old neighbor who flirted with him constantly.

Finally, after they had both pushed their plates away and settled back into the booths, Roger started up again. “So job's good, health's good, what about your social life? How's that?”

Tim reached for his water.

“That good, huh?” Roger raised an eyebrow.

“Nothing serious. You know me. I'm all about the good time.” Tim smirked, hoping that would help Roger believe his words.

“Yeah, I bet being lonely as fuck is a real good time.”

Well . . . shit.
“Blunt as always,” Tim murmured as he took another sip.

Roger crossed his arms and rested them on the table. That was always a sign that shit was about to get serious. “When are you going to stop punishing yourself?”

“What do you mean?” Tim asked, genuinely confused. He wasn't sure what he thought Roger was going to say, but that wasn't it.

“Tim, I know that you have a mountainful of guilt, regret, and bad self-image. And as great as it is that you don't repress those things by taking whatever drug is available, you still make yourself suffer for them. How long are you going to make yourself pay for things you don't owe?”

Tim hated when Roger started in on him like that. Tim had hurt everyone who had ever mattered, and even some people who hadn't. He might not use anymore, but in his mind, he was still a junkie. And junkies only brought good people down. They were a weight to bear, a constant reminder of the darker side of human nature. It was what had kept Tim distant from even his brother over the past seven years. Granted, that was a wall Tim was allowing to crumble, but Scott was his blood, and Tim simply loved him too much to maintain emotional distance. It was the one allowance he made for himself. But he wouldn't allow any more.

It was why he silently pined for Quinn instead of trying to make his feelings known. She was innocent . . . pure . . . good. Even the article she was writing, the things she was going to do for it, were all basically harmless. There was no way he would let his life taint hers. They could be friends. He could maintain the necessary distance to ensure that she wasn't affected by the plague he carried. Plain and simple, Quinn was a good person who was attempting to do a few bad things. But Tim had been a bad person for much of his life, and no amount of good deeds would wipe that slate clean. Roger could talk until his last breath—he'd never convince Tim of anything different. “I get what you're saying, Rog. I do. But it's all a moot point. The things I owe? They can never be repaid.
That's
the reality I live with. So while I appreciate the concern, my life ultimately comes down to the decisions I make. And I can only do my best, which is what I'm doing. So drop it, okay?”

Roger pursed his lips as if he were trying to force himself to keep the words inside. “Fine,” he said, finally letting one loose, though Tim would have bet anything it wasn't one of the ones he
wanted
to say.

They both declined dessert, and after arguing over the bill for ten minutes, decided to split it between them. Walking out of the restaurant, Tim turned toward Roger and drew him into one of those manly half hugs. “Thanks.”

“What for? I haven't done anything.”

It was a standard Roger response, and Tim let it slide without correcting him. Because, ultimately, Roger had done
everything
for Tim. And Tim hoped he knew it, even if he refused credit. “I'll see you soon?”

“You know it. Take it easy. Call me if you need me.”

Then the two men turned away from each other and went their separate ways. Roger's last words echoed in Tim's mind as he walked toward his truck. Tim wanted to call someone, but it wasn't Roger. So, while convincing himself that he simply wanted to talk to a friend, Tim dialed Quinn's number.