She steps closer. “After a while, I started to understand that you didn’t just leave all those years ago.” She stares at me point-blank. “You ran away.”
I breathe in and out through my nose slowly, hardening my stance.
“I remembered little things that seemed like nothing at the time,” she tells me. “How you got quieter in the months before. How you would stand in the corners of rooms with your hands in your pockets as if you couldn’t wait to get away from us.”
A headache spreads up the right side of my skull, and I twist my neck, cracking it.
“How there were phone calls that seemed to agitate you, and how you lost weight.”
“Quinn, stop…”
But she continues. “When I got older, I remembered all of this, but I didn’t really worry because it had been years by that point, and I’d heard you were doing well in Dubai. Very successful, they said.”
Yeah. I am successful. I flex my jaw. The opportunities that arose from living in a major city far exceeded any I’d find here, so…
She lowers her voice, tears in her eyes. “Madoc just told you how much he loves you.” Pain is etched across her face. “How much you’re a part of him, and you couldn’t come up with more when you’re never going to see him again?”
I blink, faltering. Madoc doesn’t need to be told. He knows I love him.
But she just shakes her head. “I thought I would love seeing you come home, but even now…”
I almost take a step closer. I want to hold her.
“Even now,” she goes on, “it’s as if we mean nothing to you when you meant so much to us.”
“Quinn…”
But she stops me. “There has been aholein every room you weren’t in for the past eight years, and I am done,” she growls through her tears. “You’re not family anymore.”
A motorcycle engine fires to life nearby, and pain hits my eyes. She hates me.
I start for her. “Quinn—”
But she holds out her hand. “My compass,” she demands.
I open my mouth, then close it, feeling it rest against my thigh in my pants’ pocket. “I left it in Dubai.”
“Do you remember where you left it in Dubai?” she bites out as if it’s not precious to me and I don’t know where it is at all times. “Maybe discarded in the bottom of a drawer somewhere?”
I square my shoulders. “Somewhere.”
She inhales a big breath and backs away, dropping her hand. “Farrow?” she calls out.
I turn my head, seeing him straddle his bike on the other side of the driveway as she walks over to him.
I don’t know what she says to him, but she hops on the back of his bike and he hands her his helmet. They speed out of the driveway, her arms tight around him, her shirt flapping behind her.
I bow my head.
Fuck, I need alcohol.
I hear my phone ring as if it’s coming from another room. Absently, I pat my pocket, digging it out. I answer, “Hello?”
“Hi!” the realtor, Devney, replies. “Sorry for calling so late, but I wanted to catch you before you got on the plane.”
My plane. What time is it?
“We have an offer.” His cheerful voice hurts my ear. “It’s not a great one, unfortunately, but it’s all cash.”
