He kicks a stone off the path and watches it vanish into the brush. “I tried to tell myself it was enough. That I understood the pressure. The fear. But after a while…” He trails off, and I hear myself finish it for him, pulse pounding in my ears.
“It stops being enough.”
Connor nods, then looks at me, and there’s something in his eyes that makes my breath catch. Like he knows exactly what kind of hurt I’ve been carrying around since Rick.
“I kept hoping things would change,” he says. “But after a while, I started realizing they probably never would.”
I want to ask. I want to pin down exactly who Quinn was. But the words stick in my throat. Maybe Quinn was a girl from some rigid, suffocating family who still couldn’t choose Connor. It’s possible, even if it feels like a stretch. But he’s avoiding specifics so carefully I can’t tell whether it’s on purpose or just the way he tells the story. Either way, I don’t have the nerve to ask outright.
“So you left?” I ask instead.
“Yeah,” Connor says. He looks ahead again, following the curve of the trail. “I realized Quinn was always going to choose that life—the one other people expected—over me. So I applied to med schools in the States, got in, packed up, and left.”
“That must’ve been hard,” I say.
He nods. “It was. But it had to happen.” After a beat, he adds, “About a year ago, my sister told me Quinn got married. Has kids now.”
He says it like he’s made peace with it, but I can still hear the pain in his voice.
“Did that hurt?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says. “Not because I still had feelings. More because it confirmed what I already knew. That I was never going to be the person Quinn chose in the light of day.”
I look at him, and my breath catches.
That only makes sense if Quinn was a man. If Quinn married a woman.
Right?
My pulse kicks up again. I search Connor’s face for something that will finally settle it, but he gives me nothing.
“Are you…” I start, then stop, suddenly too aware of how badly I want the answer.
“Mhm?” he says, glancing at me.
I swallow. “Are you seeing anyone now?”
Not what I actually wanted to ask, but close enough.
A small smile touches his mouth. “No,” he says. “I’m not seeing anyone.”
“Oh,” I say, because that still tells me absolutely nothing. Then I remember the woman the guys and I saw with him. “What about that hot dark-haired woman who was at your place last week? We ran into you in the hallway.”
Connor looks confused for a second. Then his face clears.
“You mean Sarah?” He lets out a laugh. “That’s my sister. She was visiting from Ireland.”
“Oh,” I say again, feeling like an idiot. “I just assumed she was your girlfriend or something.”
Connor’s mouth twitches. “Jesus. No.”
My heart does a weird little flip.
Not a girlfriend. Not seeing anyone.
That still doesn’t mean he’s into guys.
“I’ve been avoiding dating for a while,” Connor says as we duck under a low branch. “Too much hassle for zero return.”
