Chapter 12
February, Eighteen and a Half Years Ago
For the past few months, I’d felt like I was living someone else’s life.
Just going through the motions each day.
When I’d suggested Quinn and I take some time, I hadn’t known how I’d feel without him.
That’s what I’d hoped the breakup would help me figure out.
For so long, he had been my rock. I had Mum, of course, but it was different with Quinn.
I’d envisioned our entire lives together since we started dating.
School, house, marriage, babies, grandbabies, retirement.
I’d had it all mapped out with Quinn by my side.
I had yet to exist without Quinn, and part of me wondered if that was hindering me from fully experiencing life.
But being away from him and experiencing new situations and new people from different walks of life had made me feel disconnected from him. And it scared me how much I hated that disconnect. It made me want to give up all my dreams and run back to the island to be with him.
Yet that scared the shit out of me too.
Christmas without him was miserable. I hated being home on Glenvulin and having to avoid him. In fact, I avoided everyone. I didn’t leave the house until it was time to head back to Glasgow.
January had crept past at a snail’s pace.
The only exciting thing to happen was that Julian made another pass at me, and it pissed me off that Quinn was right.
I felt guilty too. I shouldn’t have spent time alone with a boy who fancied me.
And compared to Quinn, Julian was a boy.
Did Julian seriously think I could fall for anyone else when I had someone like Quinn?
That nonsense Quinn spewed about my friends, though …
I didn’t think that was fair. My friends thought Quinn was amazing until that night at the pub.
At least the girls did. They thought he was this rugged, brooding islander.
“You’re so lucky, Taran. He’s such a man for a nineteen-year-old. ”
When pushed to divulge, I’d bragged about how good the sex was.
I missed sex with Quinn.
I missed everything with Quinn.
It suddenly seemed ridiculously clear that it wasn’t an either/or situation. I could pursue my dreams and still be with Quinn. Why was I so stupid in thinking we couldn’t make this work? We were Quinn and Taran! We were meant to be.
That’s why I was now departing the ferry and stepping onto Leth Sholas Harbor instead of writing my English essay.
I was here to end the break.
To melt the freeze.
Of course, I could have texted Quinn at any point during our breakup, but he deserved me to make the effort of doing this face-to-face. After all, he was the one who never wavered from wanting a future together. I was the one who stupidly got stuck in my head about it.
“Taran Macbeth?”
As I strolled onto Main Street, I was unsurprised to hear my name. Small island town and all that. I peeked from beneath the wool band of my winter hat to see Aodhan Macduff. He stood with the harbor master and Ruth, his Great Dane, at his side.
“Hi, Mr. Macduff. Mr. Ore.” I waved.
“Home for the weekend?”
I nodded.
“Let us know when you realize Glasgow is a cesspit,” Aodhan said with a good-natured wink.
I rolled my eyes and waved off his comment before carrying on toward Quinn’s.
He’d moved out of his mum’s house at eighteen, into a flat above the fish-and-chip shop last year.
Mum hadn’t allowed me to stay with him in his flat until I turned eighteen.
As if somehow that would stop us from having sex.
She was very, very wrong because we’d been having sex since I was sixteen and we’d started doing everything but sex for a year before that.
But it made Mum feel better, so I’d abided by that rule for a year.
The sight of the flat above the yellow building made my heart beat wildly. My stomach churned with nerves. The last time I’d felt this nervous around Quinn was when we were still friends and I realized I had a crush on him.
“Looking for Quinn?”
I glanced back over my shoulder at Aodhan’s question. “Aye.”
“He’s in the Lantern.”
At eleven o’clock on a Saturday morning?
Frowning, I nodded and headed in the opposite direction down the street. It was so unlike Quinn to be in the pub at this time on his day off. Aye, he and the lads visited the pub once or twice a month, but Quinn wasn’t a big drinker.
My eyes took a minute to adjust to the Lantern’s dim light.
Winter on Glenvulin meant fewer tourists and at this time in the morning, there were only a few people in the pub.
I spotted Quinn, staring stonily down into an untouched pint while his best friend Forde studied him.
It was the look on Forde’s face that set my alarm bells ringing.
Forde Dallas was a pretty boy who attempted to cover his pretty-boy looks with scruff and tattoos. He used humor and charm as a guard and even after all these years, I didn’t feel like I really knew him. The one thing I did know was that Quinn was his family, and he’d do anything for him.
Right now, Forde Dallas looked absolutely gutted as he looked on at his friend.
What the hell had happened?
I was hurrying across the pub before I could think. “Quinn,” I said his name breathlessly as I approached the table.
My boyfriend’s head snapped up, his eyes flaring for a few seconds before his jaw clenched. “What are you doing here?”
The chill in his tone knotted my stomach with dread. “We need to talk. Please.”
That hardness in his blue eyes melted. But not with relief. Instead, they seemed to glisten with emotion. “Taran, what are you doing here?” he repeated, like he was terrified of the answer.
“Please, Quinn.”
Forde reached over and tapped Quinn’s knee. “Go talk to her, mate.” Why was his tone and expression so grim?
I was missing something.
Quinn nodded dazedly and pushed up to his feet, taking a second as if to steady himself. Without looking at me, he gestured toward the exit. “We should talk at my place.”
As I hurried to keep up with his long strides, the icy silence between us as we walked down Main Street reminded me of our last night in Glasgow. I told myself not to panic, that all the tension coming off Quinn was because I hadn’t apologized yet or asked for an end to the breakup.
But as this awful feeling emanated from him, I realized I’d made a selfish error in not communicating at all with him over the last few months.
What if he didn’t want to end the break?
I was out of breath from fear by the time we made it upstairs and into his small flat.
Quinn threw his keys on the coffee table in his living room and then slumped down onto an armchair, putting his head in his hands.
Not the repose of a man relieved to see me.
“Quinn …” His name was almost a whisper as I tentatively took a seat on the couch near him.
I reached over to touch his knee. “I’m so sorry.
I should have called over the last few months.
I just … I’m sorry for putting you through this.
My head was all over the place, and I just needed the break to figure things out.
” I squeezed his knee, but he didn’t move.
Didn’t look at me. “Quinn, I love you so much. That’s what the breakup made me see.
I love you and we can figure this out. I …
I don’t want to take a break anymore. I’ve missed you unbearably. ”
Silence echoed around the room upon my declaration, but it was quickly filled by the whooshing of blood in my ears as my unease grew at Quinn’s brooding demeanor.
Finally … “Mo luaidh …” The Gaelic endearment he’d started using when we were sixteen sounded like it had been scraped from the depths of his soul.
Then he dropped his hands from his head and looked at me.
And I knew … I didn’t know what … but I knew something was terribly wrong.
“Quinn, what’s happened? Is it your Mum? Cammie?”
He searched my face, tears brightening his eyes. I had never seen Quinn cry. “I … Oh fuck, Taran, I don’t know how to tell you this.”
I pulled my hand back, starting to shiver as if my body knew before I did. “Tell me what?”
His breathing turned ragged. “Kiera … Kiera Donnelly is two months pregnant.”
Instantly, my heart plummeted.
“I’m … I’m the father.”
No.
No, no, no!
I stood abruptly, the panic and pain so tight around my chest I couldn’t inhale enough oxygen. My verbal declarations of denial were caught between short, sharp breaths.
“Taran.” Quinn was suddenly in front of me, holding me by the biceps. “I didn’t cheat. Okay. I didn’t cheat. It was after we broke up. I got shit-faced. I don’t even remember it. I just remember waking up next to her—”
“No!” I shrieked, pushing him away as the sobs burst out of me.
Through my tears I saw Quinn was crying.
He wiped helplessly at his cheeks.
How could this be Quinn? The person I trusted most outside of Mum. This … person … he looked like him, but he couldn’t be him. Quinn would never hurt me like this. Feeling my nausea rise and my breathing strain even further, I took a few calming breaths. Otherwise, I was going to be physically ill.
Quinn waited.
Finally, I bit out, “You were drunk?”
He nodded, his features strained. “Taran, I was devastated when I came back from Glasgow. Forde said I needed to drown my sorrows, so we went to the Lantern and then he invited a few of us back to his place. Kiera was apparently there. I don’t remember any of it.
But I woke up the next day in Forde’s guest bed … with her.”
Even as rage thrummed through me, I tried to piece together the entire picture. “Have you … have you been dating her? While we were broken up … did you date her?”
“No!” He stepped toward me. “I have avoided her ever since.”
The panic crept back in. “And now she’s pregnant?”
Quinn nodded, looking destroyed. “She’s pregnant. I went with her yesterday for the ultrasound.”
My nausea rose at the image his words conjured. “And you believe her … that it’s yours?”
“Why lie when she’ll be found out when the baby arrives? It’s mine. I believe her.” He lowered his gaze. “And I thought you and I were over … so …”
“So … what?”
Reluctantly, Quinn met my gaze again. “So … I promised her yesterday that we’d try to make it work. Together.”
I barely heard his next words.
“I can’t be like my dad, Taran. I can’t let my kid be raised alone by its mum.”
“But you don’t have to be with her to raise your kid together,” I whispered, even as I felt my heart breaking.
I could feel it in the sharp split down my sternum.
“I can … I can try to get past it. If it was really a drunken mistake, I can get past it. We can try to do this together. You don’t need to be with her to be a good dad. ”
Quinn’s expression turned agonized. “My father is a piece of shit. I promised myself I would be the best dad ever … even if that means sacrificing what I want.” He swiped at an escaping tear as the muscle in his jaw clenched.
“I can’t be with you, Taran. I made a promise to Kiera.
We’re getting married before the baby gets here. ”
My own tears fell freely and quickly.
Then it hit me.
This was it.
He was telling me it was over between us. Forever.
Quinn McQuarrie, love of my life, was marrying someone else.
Feeling the nausea rise, I rushed for the small bathroom off the living room, falling to my knees before the toilet just in time.
I vomited my guts out, convulsing into the bowl as all my fear and panic ejected itself from my body.
Sobbing in heartbreak and mortification as my stomach finally calmed, I realized Quinn was holding my hair.
I reached for the toilet roll to wipe my mouth and shoved him as I stumbled to my feet.
He tried to reach for me again.
“Don’t touch me!” I hit his hands away.
“Mo luaidh—”
“Don’t call me that either. I am not your darling.”
“Taran, please—”
“I hate you, Quinn,” I announced with utter honesty.
He flinched, having the audacity to look wounded.
“Know that every piece of love I ever had for you is now just hate. I hate you.”
He looked away, that damn muscle in his jaw clenching.
As I fled his flat, part of me wanted to jump on the next ferry and get off the island so I never had to see him or Kiera again. But I was afraid of what I’d do. So, I ran to the only person I could trust. The only person who understood what it was like to suddenly lose the love of your life.
The only person who made me feel safe.
As soon as I walked into my mum’s house, I fell into her arms and cried a lifetime of tears on her shoulder.