Quinn put a hand on his lower back, anchoring him in the moment. “Listen. Just listen to me for a second, okay?”
Aaron turned to face him, and Quinn’s hand slid to his hip.
“I never got a chance to tell you this,” Quinn said. “I never even told Charlie about it.”
Aaron swallowed around the lump in his throat.
“A few days before everything happened, your dad busted me smoking weed at the school, at like midnight on a Wednesday or something, because I was making all the smart decisions back then.” Quinn smiled slightly. “Anyway, instead of dragging my ass down to the station, he threw me in the back of his cruiser instead, and said he was taking me home. Instead, he took me out of town.”
“What? What do you mean?”
“He gave me the shovel talk, Aaron,” Quinn said. “I was stuck in that cruiser for a good thirty minutes while your dad drove us around and went on about how I needed to straighten up and fly right and all that stuff. And at first I figured it was because of Charlie, since her dad was never going to step up for her and give a boyfriend that talk, but then he said, ‘If you’re seeing my son, you need to get your head out of your ass.’”
Aaron felt as though he’d been thrown into cold water. “What?”
“He knew,” Quinn said. “I don’t know how, but he knew. And he didn’t care that I was a guy, or even that I was a MacGregor. Jesus, Aaron, nobody had ever told me before that I could do better. That I couldbebetter than my family. And he said that he’d help me, in whatever way I needed.”
Aaron sucked in a shaking breath. He could hardly hear over the roar of blood in his skull. “Dad knew about us?”
“Yeah.” Quinn lifted his free hand and brushed his knuckles gently down Aaron’s stubbled cheek. “So when…so when he was killed and Mom moved me to Chicago, suddenly I didn’t have to be a MacGregor anymore. Like your dad said, I could be anything I wanted. I could be a good person. When I graduated from the academy and got my badge, it wasn’t my dad I was thinking of, Aaron, it was yours. He was a good man, and I wanted to make him proud.”
Aaron’s eyes stung. “Shit.”
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said, his voice rasping. “I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth from the start. And I’m so fucking sorry that my asshole father murdered your dad. I’m so sorry it wasn’t my dad who died instead.”
Aaron scrubbed at his tears with the heels of his hands.
“This is why you can’t stay,” Quinn said. “Because I’d never forgive myself if anything happened to you. You know what your dad said to me that night, about us?”
Aaron shook his head.
“He said, ‘Be kind to each other.’ And that was never us, but God, I wanted it to be. And it was going to be. I was going to be kind and good and never say hurtful things to you again, and we were going to get out of Spruce Creek together, and I was going to figure out how to behappy, Aaron.” His voice cracked and tears slid down his cheeks. “And all because your dad told me that I could, and I believed him. Thirty minutes alone with the guy, and he made me want to be better. He made me want to be someone he could be proud of.”
Aaron reached out and took Quinn’s hand and laced their fingers together. His head was spinning. “Stay,” he said. “Stay with me for a while. Just to sleep, please.”
Quinn’s dark gaze held his, and then he nodded. “Yes.”
They went into the bedroom.
There, in the quiet and the golden light of the afternoon, they both stripped off down to their underwear and then slid into the bed. Quinn rested his head on Aaron’s chest, and Aaron put his arms around him. He wasn’t sure which one of them was comforting the other, and it didn’t matter.
He carded his fingers through Quinn’s hair until Quinn’s breathing evened out and he fell asleep. Aaron stayed awake for much longer, staring into the darkness, his chest aching, missing his dad. He wished there was some way to tell him that a thirty-minute talk with a messed-up teenage boy had somehow changed the trajectory of that boy’s entire life. He wished he could tell Dad that Quinn had listened and believed him, and had turned his life around.
And then he wondered if it even mattered. After all, Quinn was still a MacGregor, and that was a dangerous thing to be in Spruce Creek.
Chapter 13
This time, Quinn stayed the whole night. After all the confessions, he felt wiped out and was smart enough to know that being too tired—emotionally or physically—to function wasn’t constructive in any way when it came to his job.
He was sure Sheriff Henderson would see his car on the other side of the road from Aaron’s house anyway, so who was he trying to kid? Then again, eventually, he would have to tell Henderson what was going on. He just couldn’t do it yet. He refused to put another small-town sheriff Aaron loved into that kind of danger. Quinn knew enough of how territorial cops worked to know that there was a fifty-fifty chance Henderson would stick his nose into something he wasn’t ready or equipped for.
Aaron woke up slowly next to Quinn. Before he even opened his eyes, he reached his hand out, his mouth a line that curved upwards as soon as he touched Quinn’s chest. Then he opened his eyes and looked at Quinn with a weird sort of marvel in his gaze.
“Hi,” Aaron whispered.
“Morning.”
They smiled at each other for a moment, then cuddled up under the covers in the too-cold bedroom, and just soaked in the moment.
