Free Holding On by Meg Jolie Page A

concentrate on anything else. “That first time, I mean. Why?”
    He grinned at her . “Because you’re gorgeous and completely irresistible.”
    Quinn didn’t smile back.
    He groaned. “You’ve been talking to Luke.” It wasn’t a question.
    “Actually, it started with Tabitha talking to me. I ran into her at lunch and it was…an interesting conversation,” Quinn said carefully.
    “I’ll bet,” Jake muttered.
    “She said some things,” Quinn went on. “So when I saw Luke tonight…we talked. So is it true? Did you only ask me out to get at your brother?”
    He wa s quiet for a while, studying her face. Trying to gauge just how upset she was, she thought.
    Finally he sighed before he trudged ahead with the conversation. “I gave him crap about it, yeah. I told him if he didn’t get his ass moving and ask you out, that I would. But no, it wasn’t like what you’re obviously thinking. I had a thing for you, too. I wanted to ask you out. I just felt like he had dibs—”
    “Dibs?” Quinn asked with raised eyebrows.
    He gave her a meek shrug. “Okay. I don’t know what you’d call it. But you were his friend. You were close to him. He knew you a whole lot better than I did. It would’ve only made sense for him to ask you out. Especially considering he’d wanted to for years. But he didn’t. So I did. Don’t be mad.”
    She was feeling sad and confused. But she wasn’t mad, exactly. It just sounded like such a guy way of thinking. She rolled her eyes and he kept talking.
    “Remember the weekend when we went to my grandparents’ cabin?”
    Quinn nodded. It was the summer after she and Luke graduated. Luke had invited her to spend the weekend, just to relax and have some fun. Their grandparents’ cabin was gorgeous and overlooked a river. They used it for weekend getaways and holidays. But there was a weekend that they had other plans so they’d offered it to Luke and Jake. Quinn was sure that his grandparents did not plan on the guys bringing girls with them. She was also sure that the guys never enlightened them after the fact.
    “I remember, yeah. You were there with some girl. Um…” She tried to think but couldn’t come up with the name.
    “Tara,” he filled in for her. “What do you remember about her?”
    Quinn laughed and crinkled up her nose. “You’re asking me what I remember about one of your old girlfriends? I don’t know. I don’t think I liked her very much.”
    Jake snorted a laugh. “Yeah, that’s the weekend I decided I didn’t like her much , either. I broke up with her when I dropped her off.”
    She looked at him in surprise. “ Now that I think about it, I actually didn’t think she was very nice. And she complained about everything. When you and Luke invited me to go fishing she was furious that I went. Even though you’d asked her and she declined.”
    “Exactly,” Jake said. “I think it was that weekend …no…I know it was that weekend that I started seeing you differently. I mean, yeah, I’d always thought you were cute. And then when you got older I thought you were a knockout. But it was that weekend when I realized how different you were from the girls I’d been dating. You were gorgeous but you weren’t prissy. You weren’t afraid to literally get your hands dirty. You were game for anything and you never got snippy or whiny. It was just…your personality, I really liked it. I realized then just how fun you were to be around.”
    “What you didn’t know that before?” she asked, feigning annoyance.
    “No,” he said with a small laugh. “I really didn’t. To be honest, I thought that was the weekend Luke would finally do it. I thought it was the weekend he’d come clean. I mean, I was there with my girlfriend and he was there with you and I just thought…” He shrugged.
    Quinn didn’t admit it but she had hoped desperately at the time that something would happen that weekend. Obviously it hadn’t. She refrained from telling Jake