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She understood why he didn’t want forever. She didn’t want it, either, but that didn’t make this shallow.

It was too personal to share with anyone.

After what he’d told her, she didn’t want to fight him. But she did want to fight for him.

“Gideon Payne contacted us,” Fia said. “He wants to rent one of the houses for a few months.”

“Gideon... Rory’s friend’s brother?”

“Yes. He’s coming back to buy his old family homestead. They lost it when his dad died. I want you to look over the agreement I drafted for him.”

“The rentals are kind of Rory’s purview, aren’t they? Plus, she knows him. He used to drive her to school every day. I swear, she was closer to his family than she was to ours.”

Fia shrugged. “I really value your input on things, Quinn.”

Quinn looked at her sister. “What’s sparking this?”

“Well, sometimes I feel like I don’t acknowledge enough the work that you put in to get the education that you did. I understand that it took a lot for you to get there. And believe me, we all understand how little support you had. Mom and Dad certainly didn’t...”

“Fia, you don’t have to be Mom and Dad. It isn’t your responsibility. You’ve done so much.” And it was knowing Levi that really underlined that. Really drove the point home. And suddenly, she wondered... She wondered how much Fia held herself back because of them. Was her sister living a relatively celibate life because she felt like she had to set an example or be responsible? And now Quinn was out having hot sex and her sister wasn’t because...

Well, she knew that there was a possibility that Fia had been with Landry, but her sister never dated. And she didn’t spend nights away.

“You don’t have to give your whole life for us,” said Quinn. “We’re not kids. We don’t need for you to act like you’re some kind of a saint for our benefit. Anyway, Alaina already entered into a life of sin.”

Fia laughed. “Do you think that I...? You think that...”

“I know that you’re not dating anyone, and in my memory you haven’t.”

“Nothing that I do in that arena is self-sacrificial. Believe me.”

“If you’re sure. It’s just I’ve been spending a lot of time over at the Grangers’, and Levi’s sister Camilla was there.” She chose her next words carefully, because she didn’t want it to sound too intimate, but there were many things that she had found out about him prior to the kiss. Prior to them making love.

“And he raised his siblings, and I can see the places that he sacrificed everything. Absolutely everything for them.”

“Don’t worry about me,” she said. “Believe me, if I wanted to bang a guy, I would bring him back here, hang a tie on the door and do it in the living room. I’m not worried about your delicate sensibilities. What I do and don’t do is about me.”

They’d never talked about it. They’d never talked about a lot of things. They loved each other and they bonded over the ranch, but in so many ways it was like they’d gone off to lick their wounds in separate corners. Alaina had Elsie. Rory’d had the Payne family. Fia had been their sister and their caregiver.

Now that she’d spent time talking to Levi...she fully realized how lonely that must have been for Fia.

“Do you ever need to talk about it?” she asked.

And suddenly Fia looked desperately sad. And what Quinn could see right then was that the real cost of being the strong one, the parental figure, was that she couldn’t share. She felt like she had to be strong and stoic and she was alone in whatever her pain was.

“Maybe someday. It’s not something that I know how to talk about. Not with anybody. Anyway, you don’t need me to heap my problems on you. You, Rory and Alaina have been through enough.”

“We love you, though.” And she felt disingenuous because here she was, not sharing her own situation at all. Not telling Fia what she had been up to tonight. Though, she had a feeling Fia could hazard a guess if she really wanted to.

Maybe that was part of how they all got along so well, in truth. Fia just pretended not to see what she didn’t want to. And that kept them all out of each other’s hair.

“But you know what’s really not fair about us?” said Quinn. “It’s that our parents are still alive—they’re just not around. And that means that half the time we have to manage their emotions along with our own.”

Fia nodded. “That’s the truth. And it is indeed the most unfair part.”

“I’m heading upstairs to have a shower.” The word shower made her feel fuzzy and fizzy.

“Okay. If you need something, you will ask me, right, Quinn?”