Quinn glanced through the windshield of her father’s car, absorbed the awe-inspiring view of the Shoshone River before her. Watching the gentle ease of the water’s flow calmed her, uncluttered her mind. She loved this spot. Her spot. The place she’d been coming to since she was old enough to drive. The lush scenery allowed her to collect her thoughts. Process. On this mountaintop, she could think, make decisions, make sense of things—when she was alone.
Unfortunately today she wasn’t.
Quinn exited her car and walked to the truck idling to her right, tapping on the pane of glass on the driver’s-side door with the tip of a finger.
The window lowered.
“How long are you going to stare at me through the window?” Quinn asked.
“Until you’re ready to have a real conversation,” Bo replied.
“Are you going to keep following me around until I do?”
“Will you ever talk to me if I don’t?”
Good question.
Yesterday the answer would have been a firm no. Now it was a pliable maybe. Over time, she’d become an expert at keeping people at arm’s length, pushing so many people away, sometimes it felt as though she had no fight left in her.
With Evie dead and her marriage over, she didn’t have the will or the desire to do it anymore. It wasn’t who she wanted to be.
“We’re talking right now,” she said.
“You know what I mean, Quinn.”
“Why is it so important to you? We haven’t seen each other in years.”
“If you wouldn’t have avoided me for so long, we could have done this a long time ago.”
“If I wanted to talk to you, I would have.”
Bo lifted a blanket out of the back seat of his truck, opened the door, stepped outside. “Let’s sit for a few minutes. What do you say?”
“I don’t know. I should be getting back.”
“Jacob’s in good hands. If he wakes up from his nap, your parents will call. You know they will.” He spread the blanket over a weedy patch of hillside. “You coming?”
Arms crossed in front of her, she pondered the offer. “How will talking now make things any different?”
“Guess we won’t know until we try. It’s long overdue, Quinn. I know it. So do you.”
She walked over, sat on the far edge of the blanket, a few feet away from him. He looked away, trying to disguise the obvious fact that he was laughing.
“What?” she asked. “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” he said, hands raised. “Sit as far from me as you can if you like. I’ll take whatever I can get.”
Several moments passed.
“Are we talking, or what?” she asked.
He scooted over, ran his fingers along the lower half of her arm. She flinched.
“Can you just ... not touch me please?”
He nodded, withdrew his hand. “Remember when we used to come here?”
Of course she remembered. Touching her the way he used to, sitting here the way they used to—it all triggered the past. A past she’d worked hard to forget. “I remember.”
“When I think about the best memories of my life, every single one of them was spent with you.”
“You know I’m married, right?” she asked.
“Are you though? Are you really?”
Was there anyone her parents hadn’t told?
“On paper I am. For now.”
“We talked about getting married too. You and me. Remember? Then you took off on spring break, and the next thing I knew, you were strutting around town with some other guy’s ring on your finger. I tried so many times to talk to you, but you shut me out, chose to marry a guy you barely knew, and move away. You said you’d never leave here. Never leave your home. But you did.”
It made sense now why he wanted to reconnect, why he was pushing so hard, allowing a bunch of “what ifs” to cloud his mind. It was like she could hear his thoughts: What if she gets a divorce? What if there’s still a chance she’ll come back to me?
Or maybe he just wanted to clear his conscience.
A closed window had cracked open, and Bo wanted to make sure it didn’t close again. Though, she didn’t know why.
Quinn assumed by now Bo would have married, fathered a few children. He never had. Why? After all this time, she couldn’t have been the reason. Could she? Living in a different state had protected her from seeing anyone else’s perspective but her own, her anger crippling her until she was blinded. Looking at him now, seeing the sincerity in his eyes, she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d made a rash decision. Was there a chance she’d been wrong?
“Bo, I’m not sure what you want me to say,” she said.
“Why did you do it? Why did you marry him?”
“You know why. I saw you that night. With her. With my sister.”
Even now, she still choked on the words as she released them.
“I’ll tell you now what I told you then—you have it all wrong.”
“I know what I saw, Bo.”
“And just what do you think you saw?”
She looked away. “I don’t want to talk about this. Have you ever wondered why I stayed away? Why I don’t like coming back here? I don’t want to think about it. It’s in the past. Let it stay there. Please.”
“Once, just once, have this conversation with me, and I swear I’ll never bring it up again.”
“I saw you kissing her. Your hand on Astrid’s breast! Do I really need to keep going?”
Quinn plunged her shaking hands into the pockets of her sweater.
“You saw your sister kiss me, Quinn. Not the other way around. Where was her hand when mine was over her chest? Do you even remember?”
As vivid as if it was happening in front of her now.
“Over yours. What difference does it make?”
“I didn’t kiss her. She kissed me. She took my hand and shoved it down her top when she saw you coming.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Hell if I know. You came in, saw what you thought was me making a move on her, and that was it. She blamed me for everything, and you believed her. Even after I tried to explain myself, you took her side. Ran to the arms of someone else. You have no idea what that did to me.”
“Did you really think I married another man because you groped her boob?”
“Didn’t you?” he asked.
“You slept with her, Bo. There was no need for a conversation. We were done.”
His head shook so fast it looked like it was about to spin off. “What are you talking about? I have never been with your sister. What you saw that night was it. Nothing else happened. Ever.”
He was lying. He had to be.
“Astrid explained everything. She might be a lot of things, but I can’t believe she’d lie to me about the one thing she knew could hurt me more than anything.”
“This is Astrid we’re talking about.”
“It was more than words though,” she said. “Astrid had proof.”
“What proof?”
“She showed me the notes you wrote her, the ones saying you wanted to be with her and not me.”
He pulled at the back of his hair so hard, it looked like he was going to yank the strands from their roots. “Quinn, I’ve never written Astrid a note in my life.”
“You did, Bo. I saw them with my own eyes. They were in your handwriting. There’s no reason to deny it now.”
“I’m telling you, it’s not true,” he said. “None of it. Not the notes, not the groping, or the supposed sex she says we had. I wouldn’t ever do that to you, or any woman. I don’t have it in me. I thought you knew me better.”
He seemed sincere.
And part of her was inclined to believe him.
Was it possible her sister had played a nefarious game?
And if she had, why?
“I don’t know why your sister wanted to tear us apart,” he continued, “but whatever her reasons were, she succeeded.”
“This is a lot more than a simple prank. Messing with the lives of two people. I can’t believe she could be so vicious. I just can’t.”
“Ask yourself this—if I wanted to be with her so bad, why wasn’t I with her after you and me broke up? What was stopping us?”
“She said she saw you a few times, and then she started seeing someone else.”
“Look at me, Quinn. Just once. Look at me. Not past me, not through me, at me.”
She refused.
He tried again.
“Quinn, if you ever loved me—”
Her head rotated like a wind-up toy set on the lowest speed. His eyes glistened when they met hers, the same eyes she’d fallen in love with as a teen. The same eyes she’d never forgotten. He was on the brink of losing it, allowing her to see something she hadn’t seen in another man in a long time: raw, honest emotion.
“When you found out I was marrying Marcus, why did you let me marry him?” she asked. “Why didn’t you fight for me? For us?”
“The way I saw it, if you loved me, you would have never married him in the first place.”
Looking at him now, one thing was painfully clear. There was a good chance she’d been wrong about him the whole time.