by Amy Brent
“What is it, Stella? Just tell me if you know something.” I leaned forward, taking a deep breath before letting the words out in a rush, “I’m pregnant. Leo is the baby’s father. He deserves to know.”
Stella nodded her head, leaning even closer over the bar, “Well, the night before Leo was sitting right there, getting pretty drunk. Your brother came storming in here mad as a bull with a fly in his ear and gave Leo a pretty good beating. I knew it was about you. There’s nothing else that gets Jonah Moore riled up like someone messing with his little sister.”
My eyes narrowed and rage ignited inside me as she continued to tell her story.
"Leo just took the hits. He didn't even fight back. Just stood there. Then I overheard your brother tell Leo to leave. He refused at first, but the Jonah said something about selling a property or some such and Leo went white as a sheet. He mumbled something about leaving, told me he was quitting, and moving out of the upstairs apartment, and he was gone that very night.
Stella gave me a sad shake of her head as I sat there in stunned silence. Had Jonah threatened to sell the bed and breakfast just to make Leo leave? Even knowing how much I cared about it, knowing how much I cared about him?
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you right away,” Stella said, looking away guiltily, “I thought it was for the best. A clean break and all that. I really don’t know how to reach him, but I figure your brother might.”
My pulse pounded loud and insistent in my ears until all I could hear was the white noise drowning out the cacophony of the bar. I rose to my feet like a zombie, moving on instinct but my mind was a haze of chaos and betrayal and most of all, a red-hot rage that fueled me forward.
I didn’t say another word to Stella, I didn’t stop to say goodbye to Lily or the others, I just kept moving one foot in front of the other until I was outside. I got into my car and started it by rote, my mind still buzzing like a hive of angry bees as I drove out of the parking lot. There was only one thought that I could grab hold of and focus on. I needed to find Jonah. Now.
Chapter 28
Quinn
I slammed on my brakes, coming to a haphazard stop in front of the apartment building, the wheels were crooked but I didn’t care. There was another need spurring me out of the car and onto my feet, practically sprinting towards the front door. The need for answers. I needed to know the truth. And damn it, I was going to get it, one way or the other.
I shoved the door open, not caring as it slammed against the wall behind it causing a cloud of plaster to crumble to the floor. I didn’t notice. My eyes scanned the apartment looking for one thing and one thing only.
“Jonah! Jonah, get your ass out here right now!” I had to fight not to scream the words, opening my mouth to shout again but a moment later Jonah was there, rushing from the bathroom with a confused look shining in his eyes.
“Quinn? Is everything okay? Is it the baby?”
“No, it’s not the baby. And no, everything is not god damned okay.” I spit out the words like bullets and his expression grew even more confused as he took a few slow steps towards me.
“Alright, just calm down and tell me what the hell is going on? And keep your voice down. I don’t want Lola shouting at me again for being too loud. That old lady is mean when she wants to be.”
“You shouldn’t worry about Lola tearing you a new one, Jonah. You should be worried about me.” I stomped forward, slamming the door shut behind me and it closed with a satisfying crash. Jonah flinched.
“Jesus, Quinn. Are you trying to draw the dragon lady’s wrath?” He looked at me then, really looked at me for the first time since I’d walked inside and his eyes widened. “Quinn? Tell me what the hell is going on.”
“No, Jonah. You tell me!” I lunged forward, planting the end of one finger against his chest so hard he flinched again, “For once, just tell me the truth. Did you blackmail Leo into leaving me?”
Jonah’s mouth gaped open and closed like a fish gasping in air as he struggled to find an answer. Well, his silence was answer enough to convince me. Stella had been telling me the truth about what happened that night.
“How could you?” My voice was soft but honed to razor sharpness as I threw the words at him. “How could you do that to me?”
“Not to you, Quinn.” Jonah pleaded, holding out his hands as if say see? I’m innocent here. I didn’t buy it for a second. “I did it for you.”
“For me.” I snorted on a bitter, humorless laugh, “For me?!”
“Everything I do is for you, you have to know that.”
“I thought I did, Jonah.” I shook my head, staring at him like a stranger, “I love him, Jonah. I love him, and you beat the shit out of him and threatened to sell the bed and breakfast if he didn’t leave.”
“Who told you about that?” Jonah demanded, his face flushing mottled and red. “That was between me and Leo.”
“No! Don’t you get it? This has nothing to do with you, Jonah! I’m not a child anymore that you need to watch out for. Mom and dad are dead! You don’t have to protect me anymore!” Tears, hot and angry, welled behind my eyes but I blinked them back furiously. I wasn’t going to break down. Not this time. This time, I was going to stand up for myself, I was going to be strong. Not for anyone else. Just for me. I could be strong enough on my own.
“Leo did nothing to hurt you,” I spit out the words as Jonah just stared at me, “And he sure as hell did nothing to hurt me. He didn’t deserve–.”
“Nothing to hurt you?” Jonah said on a harsh laugh, pointing to the noticeable swell of my middle, “He knocked you up. And then he left without a word to you! You think If I’d told him about the baby he would have come crawling back? You think he would have just settled down and married you and have the white picket fence and all that bullshit? Those are just dreams, Quinn. Childish dreams.”
My mind turned, catching on something that he’d said but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. After a moment, it finally clicked, but I still couldn’t make sense of it.
“What are you talking about, Jonah? I didn’t even know I was pregnant until a week after he left. A week after you forced him to leave.” As I spoke, other things fell into place. The guilty glances, the way Jonah had been avoiding me, the odd things he’d say whenever I’d bring up Leo.
“Wait a minute, have you talked to him again? Since finding out about the baby?” My eyes widened as certainty settled over me. Jonah’s look of shame just confirmed it. “Oh my god. You have! Do you have his new number? His address? I deserve to talk to him, to let him know.”
Jonah was silent for a long moment and I saw the exact moment he surrendered. His shoulders sank and he let out a drawn-out sigh laced with resignation before finally opening his mouth again.
“He came here looking for you, a few weeks ago. A month maybe.”
“A month…” I trailed off, shock filling me but then it was eaten up by anger as I did the math. “You knew. You knew I was pregnant by then. You knew that Leo was the father.” I swallowed hard past the bile that threatened to rise in the back of my throat. “Did you tell him about the baby?”
“No, of course not.” Jonah shook his head as if it were the most natural thing in the world and I just stared at him in wide-eyed disbelief.
“He’s the father of this child, Jonah. He deserves to know about it. He deserves the truth. It would have been the decent thing to do, but you don’t know anything about that, do you?”
“Hey! That’s not fair–.”
“Fair? I’ll tell you what’s not fair!” I punctuated every word with another stab to his chest, “Not fair is having parents that were drug addicts and didn’t give a shit about us. Not fair is failing at everything I have ever done, but still being stupid enough to try again. Not fair is having an over-protective brother who thinks it’s his job to police my love life! Not fair is that brother beating up and blackmailing the only man I’ve ever loved into leaving me and then finding o
ut I’m pregnant with his child! That’s not fair, Jonah!”
“Look, I told you. Everything I did was for you.”
“NO! It was for you.” I shot out the words like venom, glaring up at him as I spoke. I was shaking but the words came out steady and cold as ice, “You have to be in control. You want everything to play out like you think it should, and damn what anybody else thinks, or feels. You don’t care who gets hurt along the way, as long as it goes the way you deem fit.”
“That’s not true.” Jonah tried to defend himself and I could see that same stubborn anger growing behind his green eyes at my words. I just shook my head.
“You are not allowed to meddle in my life anymore!”
“Fine! Then go ahead and do whatever you want to do! But when you fuck up and come crying back to me, I’m not going to be there to help!”
“Help?! You call this helping? You lied to Leo about his baby! You lied to him about selling the bed and breakfast.”
“That wasn’t a lie.” Jonah said nastily and I sucked in a hard breath, “I would do whatever I must to protect you.”
“I’ve put everything into turning that place around and making it a success. And you would have just taken it away, like a petty child who doesn’t want to share?”
“Just admit it, Quinn. The bed and breakfast is just a pipe dream anyway. It’s going to fail, just like everything else. I’m just telling you the truth.”
Fury filled me, sharp and overwhelming, stealing my breath, choking me until I couldn’t force a word out. It was probably a good thing but anything I might say just then wouldn’t be pretty.
Without another word, I turned on my heel, rushing to my cramped bedroom, the bedroom I’d spent my teenage years in, the bedroom where I’d dreamed about boys and my future. I grabbed a backpack from the closet and threw whatever I could grab inside as hastily as I could. I couldn’t spend another minute there, not another second under the same roof as him.
I threw the bag over my shoulder, still silently fuming as I stalked towards the door but Jonah’s voice stopped me.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I threw a scathing look over my shoulder, my hand on the doorknob. “I’m leaving. I’m going to the Mayhew house.”
Jonah scoffed, rolling his eyes as if I was a child throwing some sort of tantrum and he was put out that he had to deal with it. “Come on, Quinn. You’re pregnant.”
"I know that, you asshole."
“The electricity isn’t even hooked up yet!”
“Then I’ll light a candle! It doesn’t matter, Jonah. Anywhere is better than here. I can’t stay here, not with you. Not now.”
His brows lowered angrily. He opened his mouth to say something else but it didn’t matter. I was already walking down the front steps of the home I’d shared with my brother for over ten years, and into the night, alone but for the first time in a long time, unafraid.
Chapter 29
Quinn
I held the bandana even tighter over my mouth as I walked up the last few stairs that led to the attic, kicking up a massive cloud of dust as I stepped onto one of the crossbeams. A pang of sadness hit me. It had been one of the last rooms that Leo had worked in before he’d left.
Before Jonah had beat the shit out of him and threatened him into leaving, you mean. Sadness morphed into a familiar bitter anger for a moment but I was too tired for it to last long. It fled, leaving an emptiness inside me and the taste of ash mixing with the dust in my mouth.
Over the past few days, my emotions had dragged me through an obstacle course. From hurt, betrayal, and a sharp bitterness to red-hot anger and then tearful regret that I hadn't done more to stop Leo from leaving when I had the chance.
I took a deep breath to try and control my overwrought emotions, and I regretted it immediately as I fell into a fit of coughs as I inhaled more dust and dirt than oxygen. My eyes watering and vision blurred I stumbled forward but I only made it a few steps before hitting something hard with the corner of my foot.
"Ow! Damn it, that hurts." I squeezed my eyes shut, breathing past the pain of my stubbed toe but that just set off another chain reaction of coughs that had me doubled over. Cursing under my breath I leaned down to see what I'd hit my toe on and shot a mean-eyed scowl at the wooden chest.
“Asshole.” I said, calling it names for good measure. I knew it was crazy but at least it made me feel a little better. The pain receded and my curiosity grew as I pulled the chest closer to me, careful of my feet, as I sat on a stack of boxes behind me.
Slowly, I popped open the lid. The hinges creaked loudly from years of disuse but it held together as I let the lid fall back and peered inside at its contents. It looked like was full of old shoe boxes but as I pulled one out and opened it up, I gasped at the treasure trove that I found inside.
There were pictures. Hundreds of pictures, taken from an old polaroid mostly, and yellowed and faded with age but being trapped up in the trunk had protected them from the worst of the elements.
I shuffled through them wide-eyed, drinking in photos of my grandparents, who I had never really known. My breath stalled in my chest when I got to photos of my mother as a child, sitting on her father's knee. Looking so young and innocent and happy that it broke my already bruised heart.
That was a woman that I’d never known. My mother had never been young or innocent and as far as I knew, the only time she was happy was when she was deep in the drugs. My fingers traced the child’s smile face as sadness filled me. But it was a distant sort of sadness. A regret for the person she might have been if life had been different, if she’d made different decisions.
I set the photo aside, placing it gently like it was made of the most fragile porcelain before looking through the rest of the box. I stopped when I got to one photo at the bottom and pulled it out with trembling hands.
There was a young Jonah, sitting on an overstuffed brown armchair, and in his arms, he held a little baby wrapped tightly in a pink blanket. Me.
Jonah smiled proudly at the camera as he held me carefully in his lap, protecting me even then. From the very first.
Like a tidal wave, regret and misery rushed through me, threatening to pull me under as my eyes filled with tears and for the first time, I didn’t fight them. I let them go, drop by drop until all I could see was a blurry outline of the photograph.
For the first time, I let myself cry. Grieving for the parents I’d lost, but never really known. For the love that I’d tasted for such a short time. For the life growing inside me and the fear that I would never be enough to love the baby the way it deserved, the fear that I would fail as a mother. And for my big brother. The one I could always lean on. The one who had always been there. And how much it hurt that he’d lied and betrayed me. And damn it, how much I missed him.
I cried for all of those things, but most of all I cried for myself. Finally letting myself feel, no longer terrified of my emotions, letting it all pass through me as I sat alone in the dusty attic and sobbed until I didn’t have any tears left to cry.
***
Jonah
I don’t know how long I sat in the driver’s seat of my truck, just staring at the Mayhew house. I lost track of time as I looked at the brand new patched roof and the windows, no longer gaping holes with broken glass like sharp teeth. Now, lights glowed merrily from within in a house that hadn’t seen any sort of light in over two decades.
The front porch had been torn down and built back up, sturdy and simple but painted a cheerful, inviting shade of blue-green that mimicked the colors of the tree line that led to the Coral Springs themselves.
I could almost hear the babble of the springs if I listened hard enough, a pleasant soundtrack to the miracle of changes Quinn had made on the unrecognizable property. My gaze caught on the newest addition. A big sign to the side of the long, gravel driveway that welcomed guests to the Mayhew Bed and Breakfast.
It was bittersweet, seeing
the Mayhew name emblazoned on that sign. It made sense, the old ranch property had been known as the Mayhew house for as long as I could remember, for as long as my grandfather had lived there which as far as I could tell was just about forever.
But it was also my mother's name, our mother's name. Our parents had never married, content to waste their lives wallowing in a drug-induced haze, oblivious to the rest of the world. To us.
I let out a sharp breath. I had spent so many years protecting Quinn, keeping her away from the worst things life had to offer that it had become more of a habit than anything else. It had taken me a while to realize, and a while to get over the anger after our argument, but she’d been right. I was more than happy to cast myself in the role of rescuing knight, slaying whatever dragons I could find. But Quinn sure as hell was no damsel in distress. She didn’t need a knight. She needed a brother.
That’s what had led me back to this driveway even after I’d sworn up and down to myself that I would just leave Quinn to starve if that’s what she wanted. My conscious wouldn’t let me, though. I had fucked up. Bad. And it was about time that I made it right. As right as I could anyway.
It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, force my fingers to reach for the handle of the door and push it open. Stand to my feet, putting one in front of the other as I walked up to the newly renovated porch.
