Page 121 of Turning Back

He looks… very nervous.

“Where’s Quin?” he says.

“I thought he’d come with you,” I say.

“He’s not talking to me. But he’s gonna show up, right? He’s the one who wanted this.”

I look at the clock. It’s now quarter after three. He’s a full fifteen minutes late. “He’s not coming,” I say. “He wouldn’t be late if he was coming.”

Bric takes the seat on my right, running both hands through his hair, like the stress is about to kill him. I can’t help but feel the emptiness of the chair on my left.

“Well,” Lucinda says. “What should we do?”

“Just open it,” I say. “I can’t take it anymore. I’m gonna rip it open myself if you don’t do it right now.”

“Yeah,” Bric agrees. He frowns at me, then takes my hand and squeezes. “Just do it.”

“OK,” Lucinda says, picking the envelope up off her desk. I watch her fingers as they unseal the flap, and then she pulls out a thin stack of papers and shuffles through each one.

She looks at me and pauses. I want to reach out and choke her right now. Tell me, tell me, tell me! “I’m sorry,” she says. Then she looks at Bric. “You’re not the father, Elias. Quin is.”

Quin is.

I say it over and over in my head. I squeeze Adley so hard, she starts to fuss loudly. Tears are spilling down my cheeks. “I don’t know why I’m crying,” I say. “I’m sorry.” I wipe at my cheeks, doing my best to calm down.

But when I look over at Bric, his long frown and glassy eyes are enough to make me start all over again.

Chapter Thirty-Two - Bric

“Would you two like a minute alone?” Lucinda asks.

I nod, unable to speak. There’s a hard rock in my throat. So hard, when I try to swallow, I can’t. I’m not even sure what that means, but inside I feel like… dying.

“Take your time,” she says, leaving me alone with Rochelle and Adley.

“Elias,” Rochelle finally says.

But I shake my head. “Don’t, OK? Just give me a second.”

Adley is staring at me. These past few weeks have been so much fun. I want to pick her up. Hold her. I imagined doing that so many times this week. I pictured it in my head. The moment when I got proof that I was her real father.

But now there is nothing to do but sit here and feel… loss. Adley was never mine. She was always theirs. I knew this. Even if the DNA test had come back the other way, and I was her biological father, there is no way we’d ever make it.

I’m not capable of normal. I know this. I have always known this. I am everything Quin said I was. And worse. He has no idea how much worse.

If I was Adley’s biological father it would break us apart. But even worse, it would break them apart. And they are the ones in love, right? I was never in love with her. Was I?

I look at Rochelle. Her eyes are red from crying. “I was never in love with you the way he was, you know that, right?”

She shakes her head at me. “Don’t do that, Bric. You’re not going to do that this time. We had something real. You know we did.”

“No,” I say. Because I feel the need to make a clean break. This is probably how Rochelle felt last year when she left. Rip the Band-Aid off and face the facts. “The cat is out of the box,” I say.

I get up, force myself to walk across the room. I pull the door open. And walk out.

I know she’s sad. I know we had something real. And I want nothing more than to hold her. Hold them both and tell her how I feel. But I can’t. It’s not fair.

She’s not mine. She’s his.