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Emotion was back, swelling inside Sadie’s chest. She fought it down, not wanting Quin to see how vulnerable she felt. ‘Thank you...for saying that. After losing my own parents and spending so much time in foster care, the last thing I would want is to put Sol through losing me again.’
Quin turned and faced her fully. ‘You said you were adopted after your parents died?’
Sadie nodded. ‘Until I was five. But then the marriage broke down, and neither one could afford to keep me, so they sent me back into care. I was in foster homes until I left school.’
‘How was that?’
Sadie looked at Quin and then quickly looked away again. She felt exposed. ‘It wasn’t ideal... No matter how nice the families were, it was always very apparent that I didn’t belong to them. They were mostly kind, though. I was one of the lucky ones. Some foster kids have much worse experiences than me.’
‘“Mostlykind”?’
Sadie repressed a shiver. ‘There was one home...where the son was a few years older than me. He came into my room one night but his mother caught him. I was moved within a week.’
‘Sadie...’
She looked up and saw that Quin was pale.
‘You were almost—’
‘Nothing happened,’ she said quickly, trying to forget about that moment when the teenager had been looming over her in her bed. She could still remember the terror robbing her of her voice. She took another sip of her drink to try and calm herself.
Quin asked, ‘After everything you’d experienced, weren’t you tempted to take Sol with you when you left?’
Sadie put down the glass and stood up too. The traumatic memory of those days after giving birth was never too far away. She’d been so exhausted, and full of raging hormones and instincts—chief of which were to clamp her baby to her chest and never let him go.
‘OfcourseI wanted to take him—it went against everything in my body to leave him behind. But then I remembered watching that man execute someone right in front of me. As if it was nothing. The easiest thing in the world. The man was begging for his life and my boss just...shot him. I knew that if he ever found me a baby would be nothing to him. No deterrent. That’s what stopped me from taking him. And knowing that he would be with you. I trusted you, Quin. I knew you’d be a good father.’
And I loved you. I still love you.
She didn’t say those words, even though they were high in her chest, begging to spill out. She would always love this man—even like this, when things had changed so irrevocably between them. But she knew he wouldn’t appreciate hearing it now. Maybe never.
‘I knew you’d be a good father.’
The way Sadie had just said that with such conviction, as if there had never been any doubt in her mind... It robbed Quin of breath for a moment. She’d already told him she thought he was a good father, but this was different. She’d not hesitated to leave their days-old baby with him, and he was only fully appreciating the significance of that now.
Up until he’d held tiny Sol in his arms he’d not really understood how on earth he could be a father, not having experienced that bond with his own. He hadn’t shared his fears with Sadie, too ashamed to admit that he might not be able to do it.
But as soon as the soft, vulnerable weight of his son had been handed to him his knees had almost buckled with the weight of love and awe slamming into him. He’d made a vow to love and protect his child with every atom of his being.
The fact that she must have felt that too, and yet she’d walked away from her baby, made Quin say now, ‘I haven’t acknowledged how hard it must have been for you.’
She looked at him from across the room, and even now, in the midst of this conversation, he was supremely aware of how strong her pull was. She’d changed for dinner into a silk shirt dress, and all evening he’d been aware of the way the belt encircled her narrow waist. Of the buttons, open to the point where he could just make out the shadow of her cleavage. He’d imagined her breasts encased in silk and lace...felt his body responding against his will.
He could still feel the weight of her body on his when they’d collided earlier. The press of her breasts against him. Her breath on his mouth. He’dachedfor her. For four years...
She was shaking her head now, and saying with tell-tale huskiness, ‘It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.’
Quin resisted the effect her voice had on him. ‘It’s a lot to take in. To undo four years of suspecting you’d just walked out on a selfish whim.’
Sadie let out a surprised sound, halfway between a laugh and a sob. She put a hand to her mouth and then took it down again. Shaking her head, she said, ‘It couldn’t have been further from “a selfish whim”. There were so many moments when I almost turned around and came back, telling myself that one more day wouldn’t hurt. All I wanted to do was confide in you, have you tell me it would be okay...but I knew that was selfish and potentially fatal.’
Quin had a sensation that he was free-falling into a massive void with nothing to hold on to. There was no escaping it now, he could no longer cling to the anger and the rage that had felt so justifiable for so long. In the absence of any explanation. Now heknew. But, if anything, it didn’t seem to make things feel clearer or easier—things felt more complicated.
You loved her and she hurt you in the worst way possible. She walked out on you just like your mother did.
Hehadloved her. Much as he might have tried to deny it since her return. He’d loved her more than he’d believed it possible to love another human being. But that love was gone. And even though she might have had very compelling reasons for leaving him and Sol, he knew he would never be able to trust her enough to revive those feelings. Falling for her had shown him how vulnerable he still was, and he’d vowed never to allow himself to be vulnerable like that again.
The attraction that had driven him to her the other night...the attraction he still felt...was borne out of frustration and anger. But surely that volatile mix would lose its potency now that he had all the facts?