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The room settled into a quiet that didn’t feel uncomfortable.

“You’re very calm about it,” I said.

“About what?”

“Grant.”

Quinn smiled. “I already did the dramatic part. Anger, confusion, all the crisis stuff. That was last year.”

“And now?”

“Now I know what I’m not willing to accept.” Quinn looked down at his hands for a moment. “I don’t want to disappear inside someone’s rules again.”

Something tightened unexpectedly in my chest, and the thought surfaced before I could stop it.

You won’t.

He was mine.

The word landed in my mind with surprising clarity.

Mine.

I didn’t want to own him—I just wanted to be responsible for him. To be with him.

“You and I have a few things in common,” I said after a moment of silence.

“Only a few?” His eyes twinkled.

“One important one in particular. We both spent part of our childhoods without a dad.”

Quinn

I stilled.

“My dad left when I was sixteen,” Max said. “Not dramatically. He just… failed quietly for a long time first.”

I waited, my hands wrapped around my mug.

Max looked me in the eye. “He drank. Thankfully he wasn’t one of those violent alcoholics you read about. He was just unreliable. He made promises he couldn’t keep. Conversations had to be repeated because he wouldn’t remember them the next day.” He exhaled slowly. “When he left, it was just my mum and me.”

I stared at him. “Wow. You really do get me, don’t you? You’ve been there too.”

He nodded. “Life got quieter after he left. Which, in hindsight, was the problem. I learned very early how to manage space. How to make myself responsible for stability.” He paused, then added, dryly, “I was intolerable.”

I chuckled. “Now why do I find that easy to believe?”

Max huffed and gave my leg a light smack. “I went to the Royal Northern College of Music because it was structured,” he went on. “I liked it. There were clear expectations. Discipline. You either practiced or you failed. No ambiguity.”

“And that’s where you met Theo.”

He nodded. After a moment’s hesitation, he added, “My mum doesn’t really understand my lifestyle either. She worries. She asks careful questions she pretends aren’t questions. And she doesn’t want details—she wants reassurance that I’m safe.” He studied me for a moment. “You said earlier you started exploring this when you were nineteen.”

I nodded.

“Me too.”

There was things I didn’t know about Max, questions I wanted answered.