Tristan was glancing at me out of the corner of his eye while tapping his fingers almost violently against the steering wheel. Wait...

I narrowed my eyes in the direction of the one hand clearly in my eyesight. The skin on his knuckles was a flaming red, chafed and split against the smooth pale tone of the rest of his skin. I leaned over the console and hovered my fingertips over the raw flesh. "What the hell happened to your hand?" I asked in a shrill voice.

The green eye in my vision went wide at my question. "Well... you see..." he stuttered.

"Did you get into a fight with a brick wall and lose?" I used the tip of my index finger to brush across the healthy skin of his digits. When he didn't say anything I sucked in a breath. "What happened?"

"I didn't hit anyone," he answered vaguely, prying his right hand off the steering wheel to rest palm up on my thigh.

A million thoughts rolled through my head as to what could have happened to him but I didn't want to pry. I knew he would eventually tell me, but whatever it was had to be something embarrassing since he refused to tell me. This was the man who told me with a straight face about the time he sharted in his pants. I shoved the thoughts aside and flipped his hand over to see the marred skin. "Seriously, what happened?"

He coughed and scratched at his face with his short fingernails, apprehension evident on his face. "I punched my wall. Just a regular wall not a brick one, smartass."

I raised an eyebrow, more to myself than to him. "Why?"

"I was pissed off," he said simply.

I wanted to ask him what he was pissed off about but I didn't. Instead, I brought his hand up closer to my face to inspect the slender, perfectly boned appendage. "Does it hurt?"

"A little," he said with a wince when I barely grazed his knuckles.

"It looks terrible," I muttered, acknowledging the bruising that circled the wounds. "I'm going to put something on it when we get to your house."

He scoffed keeping his eyes locked on the road ahead. "Not necessary."

I shrugged a single shoulder before squeezing each one of his fingers with mine. "It's too bad I don't care what you want."

Tristan fisted his hand and closed it around my four longest fingers. He smiled cheekily as his eyes flickered from me to the road. "Did you hear what I said? About quitting?" he asked, in a slightly lower voice than normal.

It didn't seem weird to me at that point that he was bringing up quitting again so quickly. It was easy to forget that this man with a great personality kept to himself so much. "I'm not deaf, Mag. Of course I heard that you're retiring," I managed to spit out, trying to think of exactly how I felt about it. I mean it was pretty fucking awesome, as long as he didn't start whoring it up— unless he was whoring it up with me. The problem was that I wasn't even sure if he felt anything for me besides friendship. "Why are you quitting? I mean, why all of a sudden?"

We were at a red light by that time, and he turned his head to look at me. His smile was gentle as he answered. "I think it's time."

Time for what? I held up my hand for him to high-five me. "Well, I'm happy if you're happy," I tried to say as evenly as possible because a big part of me was scared of change that could possibly take over my friendship with Magellan. He didn't have a girlfriend because of the porn so once he wasn't doing it anymore, what would happen? My poor heart couldn't handle being the type of friends we were now and knowing he was getting dirty with random girls for fun. At least with the porn I knew it was technically a job. A job with a nameless face, no emotion, and no tie.