Chapter 24
Harlan
I come home to find Quinn gone, and her kitchen tidy. I can’t help noticing there’s an entire smashed cake in the trash can that’s been left by the counter, where I last saw her working.
I can’t be sure, but it seems like a lot of her personal things are gone.
Like her pink standing mixer.
The house feels weirdly empty without Quinn here making noise, playing music, her pretty things strewn about. I don’t know when I got used to those things. She’s only here a few times a week, and often I’m not even here when she is.
But when I come home and find her here… There’s nothing better.
I go up to my bedroom.
Every time she stayed the night, she seemed to leave something behind. A lipgloss. A hair brush. A bra.
I was beginning to think it was on purpose.
They’re all gone now.
As I look around the bedroom for any lingering sign of her, finding none, a black shape slinks in the open window, startling me. “ Jesus. ” I pluck the cat off my windowsill, and not for the first time. “You need to stop climbing on the roof. You’ll get hurt.”
As I carry her downstairs, she purrs in my arms.
I wonder if I should have the landscapers trim back some of the trees, so they don’t reach so close to the house.
“Trust me, you don’t want to get attached,” I tell her as I walk her out into the backyard, and set her down. I never should’ve started feeding her in the first place. “What if you come back one day and no one’s here?” I nudge her toward the bushes. “You’re a hunter, go hunt.”
I go back inside and shut the sliding glass door.
The cat just sits there on the lawn.
I send Quinn a text. Do you want to talk tomorrow?
She doesn’t text me back.
I’ve just come home from school.
I’m standing in the foyer of my family’s house. I’m alone. But I can hear sounds in the distance, coming from upstairs—a door closing. Then the muffled voices of my siblings. My mom.
More than I can hear them… I can feel their sorrow.
I’m supposed to be there, with them.
I can hear Mom crying.
As I climb the stairs to the second floor, I hear helicopter blades in the distance.
When I get to the top of the stairs, I see the door to the room where the terrible thing is going to happen, and I know they’re waiting for me.
I hear my dad’s voice, calling to me, and I start to cry.
I hear the whump whump whump of the helicopter blades as I walk toward the door.
When I finally reach it, I start to open it. And I hear my dad say my name, close in my ear. Harlan .
I wake up in a panic, with his voice still in my head.
I didn’t know I could still remember the sound of his voice.
I haven’t heard it in so long.
And for a long time, I just lie here in the dark, trying not to lose it again.
“Megan and I were talking about her wedding cake,” Savannah tells me. “Darla’s name came up. Quinn, I mean.” My sister pauses dramatically, waiting for my reaction to this.
It’s been three weeks since our birthday dinner, and I haven’t seen Savannah since. I’ve barely seen Quinn, either, since she’s not really speaking to me.
At least, that’s how it seems.
And since’s there’s no one other than Quinn who I really want to speak to right now, I’m not inclined to make small talk about my brother’s wedding preparations.
I’ve been having that old dream almost every night, and I’m not sleeping well. And every time I hear my dad say my name, I wake up, soaked in sweat and panicking all over again.
I’m on the verge of calling up one of my old therapists.
But I fucking hate therapy.
Savi is studying me like she’s reading me for signals, so I do my best not to give her any. No twitching. No picking at things with my fingernails. No straightening items on my desk.
I don’t keep much on my desk, so I don’t have to worry about temptation. But my cell phone is sitting there, fucking crooked. I have to resist the almost irresistible urge to straighten it.
I just keep staring at my computer screen. Savannah just walked into my office unannounced, and now she’s hovering, neither of which she ever does.
“Don’t you have work to do at the resort?” I say flatly.
“You make it sound like it’s a vacation.”
“Isn’t it?”
“Very funny. I’m actually thinking I’ll need a vacation after it finally opens. A long one. And you can all just call each other to fix your shit instead of communicating through me.”
“Good luck with that. Graysen wouldn’t last a day.”
She sighs. “Isn’t that the truth.”
“So what have you come to say on his behalf this time?”
“Not his. Jameson’s. His fiancée’s, actually. You know, Megan…”
I frown. Are we back to this?
“Apparently,” she goes on, “one of her bridesmaids is a close friend of Quinn’s. And that cake Quinn made the night we all met her was exceptional. But I told Megan I should run it by you. Since she’s your ex and all. So? What do you think?”
I hear the grouchy sound that comes out of me, but I don’t look up. “That it would be a good idea for my ex-lover to design my brother’s wedding cake? No.”
Savannah helps herself to one of the uncomfortable-on-purpose chairs in my sitting area, which means this conversation isn’t going to end nearly as quickly as I’d like it to.
I press my hand to my thigh under the desk, and my fingertip starts doing its thing as she talks, spelling one word over and over; for some reason, the word my mind decides to fixate on is WEDDING .
“You know, you remind me of Scrooge, hiding behind his piles of gold coins.”
“What the hell are you talking about? I’m not hiding.”
“What are you so afraid of?”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Well, you’ve been even more closed-off, grumpy, secretive, and distrustful than ever lately. Way worse off than you were before you completed your challenge, correct?”
“And your point would be?”
“Was the challenge really that difficult? You had to let us in, just an inch, by introducing us to a woman you had a fling with, a woman you were severing ties with anyway, and that was so distasteful to you that now you’ve locked the door in our faces and tossed away the key?”
I look up at her over my screen. Is that how it seems?
Is that what I did?
“What do you want from me, Savi? An open door policy on my soul?”
She gets to her feet, studies me thoughtfully for a moment, then sighs quietly. “I don’t want anything from you, Harlan. I just want you to be happy. But I guess that’s always been a tall order.”
“I’m fine.”
“Yeah. You seem fine.” She heads for the door, apparently deciding I’m beyond help, or whatever it is she thought her goal was in coming here. “You’re invited to dinner at Graysen’s tonight. I’ll tell him you’ll be there.”
“Don’t.”
She gives me a disapproving look.
I sit back after she leaves, and replay what she just said.
I don’t like that she seems to see things that I don’t tell anyone. How does she know I’m worse off now than before I introduced them to Darla?
She’s right. But it disturbs me that she can tell.
I fucking hate it whenever one of my siblings seems to know me better than I think I know myself. It’s invasive and uncomfortable, like an itch I need to scratch at, but can’t.
I straighten my phone, and the screen lights up with a text from a member of my security team, Lincoln.
I open it, and my heart kicks. I call Quinn immediately. “What’s happening?” I demand when she answers. “Where are you?”
“I’m fine,” she says calmly. “Just calm down.”
“You can’t just skip out on Lincoln like that. I’ve assigned him to you full-time. It’s his job to drive you.”
“Yeah, well, Dani’s dropping us off.”
“Where?”
She sighs. “It’s just a doctor’s appointment. Don’t freak out.”
“What’s wrong?” I’m already up and out the office door.
“Nothing.”
“Is it Lorraine?” I bark at Brant, “Car,” as I head for the elevator.
“Mom’s fine. We’re not fragile, Harlan. We can take care of ourselves.”
I jab the elevator button and demand, “Tell me why you’re going to the doctor.”
I know she thinks I’m overly controlling.
And I know I keep making it worse.
Ever since she smashed that cake in my kitchen and moved her mixer out, she keeps telling me that she needs space. Time. Room to breathe.
The very next day, she informed me that she’d be baking out of her own kitchen while she “decides what to do.” It’s been driving me crazy.
So I insisted on buying her a new oven.
When she started making excuses about being “too busy” to see me, I insisted she let me track her phone, so I’d know where she was in case anything happened.
When her car proved no longer worth repairing, but she wouldn’t let me buy her a new one, I assigned a driver to her. And a bodyguard. Lincoln now drives her everywhere, and reports everything she does to me. So I know she and the baby are safe.
Whether she’s at home, or with a client, or sitting by the waterfront thinking, I know where she is. And who she’s with. I even know, to some extent, how she’s feeling.
Because I have Lincoln take pictures of her, and send me updates. Hourly.
Or every fifteen minutes, if I’m stressing out.
I barely get to see her in person. Her choice, not mine.
But that’s not going to make me stop thinking about her.
Stop wanting her.
And I can’t help worrying obsessively about her whereabouts and her safety.
The truth is, she and the baby are beyond my control. And I just need her to be safe.
Can’t she understand that?
“It’s just an appointment, a checkup about the baby. I’m going with Mom. You don’t have to leave work early.”
I lower my voice. “You told Lorraine?”
“Of course I did. I wasn’t going to keep it from her forever. I need support, Harlan.”
“You have support.
“Emotional support,” she clarifies. “Money is not an acceptable stand-in for time and attention.”
“You have my time and attention.”
You seriously have no idea.
The elevator door opens. “Shit. I’m about to lose reception, but I’ll call you back on my way there?—”
“You don’t have to come. Are you at work?”
“I’ll be there as fast as I can.”
It’s a fucking ultrasound appointment. And she didn’t tell me about it.
I don’t know whether to be more angry or fucking crushed that she didn’t ask me to come to this appointment with her. I also need to decide who I need to fire, because how did I not know about this?
I’m supposed to know everything. Everything.
Where she goes, who she sees, and what she needs.
Always.
I sit by her side, holding her hand, watching on the screen as the technician performs the ultrasound—by inserting a wand thing right up inside her. There’s a sheet over her knees so I can’t see it, but I grit my teeth when she squeezes my hand.
Then we actually see the tiny blob on screen, like a little bean.
I watch, mesmerized, as the technician measures the fetus. I try to listen and absorb every word as she confirms the length of time Quinn has been pregnant, and tells us the likely due date.
She shows us the little flicker on the screen that is the baby’s heartbeat, and Quinn’s eyes glisten.
There’s a burning sensation in my throat and chest that feels like a mixture between heartburn and the kind of love that a man would go to war for.
After the technician tells us that the doctor will be in to speak to us in a moment, and leaves us alone, I tell Quinn , “ I want to take you home to my place tonight. To stay.”
She blinks at me for a moment. I know she’s emotional right now, and all of this is a lot. And I’ve been trying to let her do things her way.
But no matter how I try to give her space, give her time, and not put pressure on her, I can’t get around the simple fact that I want her with me.
I fucking long for her.
“I’ve already told you,” she says, awkwardly sitting up, “I’m staying at my place. I need to be near Mom. And it’s just… simpler this way.”
“But you don’t even own that house,” I try to argue for the dozenth time. She never listens.
She’s right, that I’ve been using money as a stand-in. She wouldn’t accept anything from me unless I made it about the baby, so I keep focusing on that.
But I’m getting desperate, and wondering, again, if I should buy the house she rents for her, and fix it up. But by the time that could happen, the new place above the bakery will be ready. And she shouldn’t be living in a construction site anyway. That can’t be good for the pregnancy?—
“Harlan. I have medical lube up my cooch and I’d really like to get cleaned up and put my pants back on.”
I get up to get out of her way, but try again. “It’s not a stable enough situation. You and the baby should come live with me.”
She doesn’t even look at me when she says, “How will that work, when your family doesn’t even know about me?”
Someone clears their throat. The doctor has stepped into the room. “Perhaps I’ll give you another moment alone?”
“No, thank you,” Quinn says. “I have some questions for you, please. And Harlan was just clearing out, to give us a minute.”
She just kicked me out of the room.
“I’ll be in the waiting room,” I mutter.
I go sit down next to Lorraine, who takes one look at me and shakes her head. She sets her magazine aside and pats my knee.
“Becoming a parent is terrifying,” she says. “I know.”
I meet her eyes, feeling like an asshole.
“We should’ve told you,” I tell her. “Together. Getting your daughter pregnant… that’s something I should’ve spoken to you about. Even if it wasn’t planned.”
She eyes me. “From what she tells me, and I know she told you the same thing, she’s not entirely sure the baby is yours.” She seems to be testing me a bit, which is fair. But she doesn’t even try to hide her disappointment when she adds, “She said it might be Justin’s.”
I knew I liked this woman.
“According to what I just heard in there,” I tell her, “it is mine.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Anyway, I don’t see him here, stepping up and trying to be the father.”
“Maybe he would, if she gave him the chance.”
I bite back my thoughts on that.
Lorraine considers me for a moment. “She didn’t invite you here today, either.”
That’s true. I can’t deny it.
“You would’ve been that baby’s daddy, even if it wasn’t yours?” she asks me.
I don’t answer right away. The truth is, if Quinn wanted me, the answer to that is yes.
But according to the dates we were just given during that ultrasound, I am the father. And I’m still not sure if she wants me.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Lorraine says. “I can see it.” She leans in and adds gently, “You’re a daddy already.”
I don’t feel like one. At least, I feel like I’m failing at being one.
“You know why?” she asks me.
“No. Why?”
“Because you’re here. And you’re scared.”
We sit together in silence. We’re the only ones in this corner of the large waiting area.
“You might not ever feel ready,” she says after a moment. “Even after they’re grown and gone. And people might not say this often, because it’s not pleasant and it’s not what you want to hear, but there are a lot of downsides to parenting. There’s pain and sorrow involved.”
“You don’t sugarcoat, do you, Lorraine?”
She laughs dryly. “Would you want me to?”
I grunt. “No. I’d rather you didn’t.”
“My daughter brings the sugar to this family. You want to know what the upside is?” She leans in a bit more and nudges her shoulder against mine. “That woman in there. She’s been a wonderful daughter.”
Yeah. I figured.
“And I know she wants more than anything to open a bakery, and live out our shared dream,” she says. “But I don’t need a bakery. With all I’ve been through… these days, I just need my baby to be happy, healthy, and safe. Quinn is the best thing I ever did with my life. And I don’t care how many billion-dollar companies you have. That baby she’s carrying will be yours.”
It takes me a long moment to recover from the swell of mixed emotions, and reply to that. “This kid is going to have the best grandma ever, Lorraine.”
Quinn’s mom smiles. But there’s a hint of sadness in it. And I know she’s thinking that terrible thing that plays in the back of Quinn’s mind all the time.
How long will she be around to be a grandma?
When Quinn comes out, I get to my feet, blinking away the damn tears Lorraine put there with her wise mom words. I never had a mom who talked to me like that.
I make a silent promise to myself to do everything I can to be a decent father to her grandchild.
“Are you okay?” I ask Quinn.
“I’m fine.” To her mom, she says, “The baby is doing great. There’s a heartbeat, and everything is on track. You’re going to be a grandma in July.”
Lorraine gives her a big, tight hug that says more than words could. Quinn’s eyes sparkle as she clings to her mom, and when our eyes meet, she buries her face in Lorraine’s neck.
When I see the tears in Quinn’s eyes that she’s trying to hide, it hits me all at once—that this wall between us is my fault. Because this is exactly what I did to Chelsea, right? The only other woman I ever had a serious relationship with—I pushed her away, just like I’m doing to Quinn now, without meaning to.
Chelsea left me, started a family with another man.
But Quinn can’t do that. This baby is mine.
She’s mine.
She has to see that, doesn’t she?
That we’re meant to be together.
When she and Lorraine pull apart, she hands me a piece of paper. “I asked the doctor about paternity testing,” she tells me. “We can do this thing called NIPT, as early as next week. It’s a Non-Invasive Prenatal Test. They just take a blood sample from you and me, and they can tell if the baby is yours. That’s some information about it, for you.”
I look into her eyes. “I know the baby is mine. You heard what the technician said, about the date of conception.”
“I know.” She shifts uncomfortably. “I just want you to know for sure. That I wasn’t with anyone else.”
I consider that, and that she seems so concerned about it. “I trust you, Quinn.”
“I’d like us to do the test, though. So you never have to question. Okay?”
“Okay. If that’s what you want.”
She nods. I try to put my arm around her, but she’s so stiff.
“Come on,” I tell them. “I’ll drive you home.”
Quinn gives me an uncertain look, but seems too tired to argue. “Okay. Thank you.”
“And since we’re all together… I think it would be a good time to show your mom the new place, above the bakery. We can swing by on the way.”
Quinn glances at her mom. Lorraine remains conspicuously silent. “It’s not exactly on the way, Harlan,” Quinn says.
“It won’t take long.”
“Harlan.” Her voice is gently firm in a way that scares me. “I know you may not like this. But I’ve made my decision. And we’re not moving into that place.”