10
Dean
April 2018
T here was always a queue for market food on a Friday. It took him exactly fifteen minutes every Friday to get from the office to the high street where he would go into the coffee shop to get the same cheddar ploughman’s baguette for his father and then queue up for another ten minutes to get the gyros. After he’d done the same thing for around a month, the man who made the glorious food knew to have it prepared for Dean, so all he had to do was pay and be on his way back to his office.
Fridays always meant the same thing, and for Dean, a routine was something that made him happy. He hated surprises; ever since his parents brought him back from university on that fated Friday evening to tell him he was engaged to Ella and that his parents were criminals, he vowed he would never enjoy a surprise again.
“Dean, is that – is that you?”
The icy cold shivers that ran up his spine made him wish he’d worn his suit jacket, despite the unusually warm April day. He knew that voice; he vowed to have it ingrained in his mind until his last breath. It was impossible that she was there, and it was impossible that she’d come back to him; not after how they had left things.
But when he turned around, he laid eyes on Quinn and suddenly, surprises seemed to mean something good again.
“No way! Quinn!” He didn’t know whether to embrace her, shake her hand or kiss her. He opted to open his hands for a hug, and she immediately accepted.
“It’s been… too long.” She laughed awkwardly. “Are you queuing?”
“Yeah, queue with me, I got it.” Dean nodded, and they settled beside each other to wait as if it hadn’t been five years since they last saw each other. “What have you been doing?”
“Well, obviously, I graduated. I live in Portsmouth now, working in a school there. I just came here to see my sister,” she told him. He stole a glance at her as they moved forward in the queue. There were two people in front of them now; that meant they didn’t have long together. “I assume you work for your dad’s company?”
“Yeah. Was it that obvious that was going to happen?”
She laughed. “How is the marriage working out?”
“Oh, that. Yeah, that’s not till later this year. Ella went to uni, so it’s been postponed. She graduates in two months, so a date will be set then, I think,” Dean told her. Quinn nodded as they moved to the front of the queue. She placed her order and Dean took his food and paid for both as if it was the most natural thing in the world. He knew it should be that easy.
The recollections ran through his mind at once: their first kiss, their first time sleeping together, the way his universe lit up when he saw her, the way her hand fit in his like a perfectly fitting jigsaw piece.
He understood exactly why Ella was desperate to get out of the marriage with him: he understood because the way he knew Ella felt about Matthew was the way he felt about Quinn. Had done, once upon a time. He glanced at her once more and realised it was just lust. He wasn’t getting feelings from Ella, so maybe what he felt was more the desire to be wanted by someone.
“Thank you.” Quinn smiled at him as they started wandering. “Are you on your way back to the office?”
“Yeah, I have a meeting this afternoon or I’d spend time with you,” he admitted and instantly winced at his words. “Sorry, that sounded forward.”
“No, not at all. Here, I’ll give you my number. Maybe we could meet tomorrow?” she asked. He immediately handed her his phone and watched as her perfect fingers tapped on his phone. Her flowery perfume invaded his nose and was instantly transported back to all those nights they’d spent together when he would smell her perfume on her pillows, the times he had gone into the shops after their split and sprayed it on his coat just so he could feel close to her again.
But it also didn’t feel right to him. He wanted those moments with Ella. Quinn was his past, but he could sense the attraction still alight after five years. All he wanted was someone to love him like he loved Ella.
“I’ll leave you to your meeting! Message me, Dean!” She smiled at him, leaned forward, and kissed his cheek before walking in the opposite direction.
∞∞∞
Dean remembered the moment he told Quinn about the truth: he told her that his mother was a criminal, that Adrian Webb was the man to reveal the truth. Quinn had snorted, told him it was stupid – his mother deserved to be in prison. Dean agreed with her. He then told her how Adrian had threatened to do just that unless Anthony and Amelia gave him a position at the company and money for life. Quinn snorted: ‘Both parents deserve prison for that, Dean.’
Dean had agreed, of course. To a point.
It was when he told her that Anthony agreed to keep everything quiet and give Adrian what he wanted if their firstborn son and daughter got married. Extortion at its finest.
It seemed they all had a mutual agreement: no one went to prison, everyone had their money, and the company was safe. Dean and Ella would just take the fall for their crimes.
Dean thought it was sick. But that was their life, it seemed, and they both had to get over their respective love interests and get on with their reality.
“Son, are you with me?” Anthony waved his hand in front of his son’s face.
Dean instantly shook his head and took a sip of his coffee. “Sorry, Dad, what were you saying?”
“I was just saying, the big day is going to have to be discussed soon, with Ella’s graduation in July,” Anthony said. Dean watched his father as he strode over to the window that overlooked the docks. He wondered what would happen if he revealed the truth to his father about Ella and her love interest. He knew his father would probably kill Matthew; anything Ella did to muck up this marriage contract, Dean knew his father would eradicate anything to protect the secrets of the past.
Sometimes, though, the temptation to reveal the truth to both their fathers about Ella and Matthew was so high, he had to bite his tongue. Especially when Ella was being distant with him, or when she was purposefully trying to push him out. It was no secret between the two of them that Dean loved her. He knew she didn’t feel the same – it was all perfectly clear the moment she started pushing him away when they were told about the contract, but now she had someone on the side. Well, Dean knew he stood no chance.
If she fucked up this marriage, then he would lose everything. To an extent, Dean didn’t care about his parents or hers. Quinn had been right: both Amelia and Adrian deserved prison for their crimes, and so did his father for covering it up.
But all Dean cared about was his company, and by proxy, his money. As much as he wanted justice, he could live without it by making sure Ella didn’t fuck this up for him and if the truth came out, she would find out and it would all be gone.
Sometimes, he wondered whether he should pull the trigger on Matthew himself. Eradicating the problem literally might mean Ella would hate him forever, but it would mean she would put up with the marriage. He could essentially buy her out by making sure she had more money than she ever had done.
He knew meeting Quinn the next day would lead to something more between them, and that was a problem.
∞∞∞
Dean wasn’t proud of himself, and yet he also didn’t care. He felt guilty because he loved Ella, and he wanted to make the damn marriage work. Yet at the same time, he never stopped feeling something for Quinn, either, and he had needs. He figured he would either break it off the day before his wedding or carry on seeing her. He knew Ella wouldn’t care if she knew. She loved Matthew, and would never love him.
“I never stopped loving you, Dean,” Quinn whispered, her hand snaking around his neck. He kissed her. She tasted like cigarettes, the floral perfume she wore, and shame, and he loved it.
“I never stopped loving you,” he whispered against her lips. He didn’t know if he was lying, though. He loved Ella, but she didn’t reciprocate. Was he after lust or a faint hope of happiness after realizing Ella would never love him back?
“Just because you have to marry her doesn’t mean we can stop seeing each other, you know,” Quinn told him.
“I know, but it’s not quite as simple—”
“Because you like her,” she finished the sentence for him, and he laid back. “It’s obvious. It may not have been back then, but now – now it’s obvious, Dean. If you didn’t like her, you wouldn’t be so bothered to have not contacted me for five years. The minute you found out she was seeing someone else, you would’ve called me or sent me a message. I didn’t come here to see my sister; you were the reason. I’d assumed you were already married, but when you hadn’t updated your status on social media and after doing some digging, I found out you weren’t married. I figured it was all off.”
Dean scoffed. “Trust me, my father wouldn’t call it off for anything.”
“Well, no, not after what she did.”
“I don’t – I don’t—”
“You don’t want to have feelings for Ella, I know. But I suppose it’s natural when you’ve been told you have to marry someone. It gives you two options: to live a life of misery or to learn to love them,” Quinn told him.
Dean looked at her with raised eyebrows. He’d never told Quinn he’d loved Ella. But he had told her every sordid detail of the past three years: their small meetings since she left for university, the moments she would be so cold toward him, yet he could do nothing but smile at her, and the way he had immediately given her the tickets for the cruise—
Well, he had done that specifically to try and catch her out with this Matthew boy, but he had nice intentions for her to enjoy herself too.
“Dean, from what you’ve told me, it’s clear she doesn’t have those feelings back,” Quinn muttered. “So why waste your time on her, when we could enjoy our time together?”
He looked at her, and he knew she had only told him that to manipulate him into not feeling bad for sleeping with her behind Ella’s back. And it worked. But he knew the truth – Ella hated him, and she always would. He would worry about the marriage and their feelings when it became… well, real.