Page 32 of No Turning Back
I scoff, yanking the zipper closed. “Only you can, huh?”
“I apologized for that. Why can’t you just let things go?” Markus snaps.
I narrow my eyes. “Is that really the approach you want to take right now?”
He deflates a little. “No. Look-” He reaches for me, hand closing around my forearm, gentle but firm, prying my fingers from the suitcase handle. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry for lying. I’m sorry for everything. I never meant to hurt you.”
I yank my arm back like he burned me. My voice is low and cold. “Too late.”
His mouth opens like he’s about to launch into the usual web of regret, but I cut him off. “What did you think would happen? That I’d come home and co-parent with you and Gabrielle?”
“You haven’t even given it a thought.”
“You mean I haven’t given raising my husband’s love child a thought?”
He follows me into the hallway. “You could be a mom, Quinn. Isn’t that what you wanted?”
I stop and turn on him. “Are you really trying to sell me on your bare-back whoreness as some kind of a gift?”
That lands. He says nothing, so I keep walking, gripping the stair rail with one hand, dragging the suitcase with the other.
“And maybe,” I throw over my shoulder, “you should be more worried about where you’re going to live.”
Markus scoffs. “I’m not leaving.”
I laugh without humour, yanking the suitcase down a step. “Yeah? We’ll see.”
He shrugs, like none of this touches him. “It’s not like you need it. Your dad left you more than enough. If anyone needs a home, it’s me.”
I turn to him, disgust curling my lip. “Still the victim, huh?”
“My wife is leaving me over one fucking mistake,” Markus says, voice rising. “God, with the way you go on about the adoption, you’d think you’d at least give this a chance.”
I pause, my voice cutting clean and sharp. “You’re a fucking piece of shit, Markus.”
With the kind of strength only anger gives you, I drag the suitcase down the stairs, one loud thump after another. I don’t pause. I don’t look at the walls I painted or the couch we bought or the dent in the drywall we never fixed.
I open the front door.
And from behind me comes his last grasp at control:
“If you walk out that door, don’t bother coming back.”
I glance over my shoulder, the cold smile on my lips foreign even to me. “Good.”
And I step over the threshold without looking back.
Fuck him.
Aiden rushes over the second he sees me dragging the suitcase. “Is that everything?” he asks.
I nod and head for the front seat of his SUV. The back and trunk are already crammed with my stuff, but Aiden still manages to wedge the suitcase in.
I’d planned to come alone, but when Kate found out, she said it was either her or Aiden. I figured Aiden had the lesser chance of socking Markus in the junk… though judging by the glare he gives Markus as we pull out, I might’ve been wrong.
It took a whole speech to convince him to let me go inside on my own. At first, I felt bad for putting him in the middle, Aiden used to be to Markus what Kate is to me.
Their friendship had already been limping along since Markus came back from a traumatic deployment last year. And Markus trying to justify what he did by comparing it to the drunken mistake Aiden made at his own bachelor party? That nailed the coffin shut on their friendship.
