Are You Ten Years Ago? [3/14]
Title: Are You Ten Years Ago?
Major Characters/Pairings: Quinn Fabray-Puckerman, Beth Puckerman, Noah Puckerman, Jr., Jasper Puckerman, Rachel Berry, Finn Hudson/OC, Mentions past: Quinn/Puck, Rachel/Puck, Rachel/Quinn
Minor Characters/Pairings: Mike/OC, Matt/OC, Artie/Tina, Rachel's dads Mentions: Brittany/Santana, Mercedes/OC, Kurt/OC
Rating: PG-13
Length: 45,200+
Summary: AU beginning after 'Funk'. Rachel got the hell out of Lima, Ohio immediately after graduation, breaking Quinn's heart in the process, and never looked back. Now, ten years later, she's back and Quinn is the one to show her the aftermath and the pieces of what she left behind - all the while trying desperately not to fall back in love with her ex-girlfriend.
Warnings: Pre-story character death discussed in detail.
-Chapter 3-
Silence. Quinn stood staring at the brunette who stood staring right back at her. Quinn’s fingers stayed on the gold band on her left ring finger. Rachel’s arms stayed at her sides. The coffee maker percolated but Quinn’s gaze never left Rachel. She saw the brunette swallow and attempt to form words in her head but nothing came. Nothing but the percolations and the ticking of the wall clock in the kitchen.
“He…died…” Quinn finally breathed out with the breath she had no idea she was holding. “He didn’t leave me…he didn’t end up in prison like everyone thought he would…he died.”
Quinn started trembling as Rachel’s mouth moved to form the words that Quinn had heard several thousand times already. She heard it as people filed through the funeral home and she was absolutely numb as she said thank you. To whom she said it, she had no idea. They were all faceless people that had come to look at the twenty-six year old widow with three children who had to be dragged away from her youngest son’s hospital bed to go to the funeral of her husband.
“I’m so sorry,” Rachel choked. “Quinn, I had no idea…”
“No,” the blonde hissed. “You didn’t. You didn’t bother to ask. You didn’t bother to call. You didn’t bother to care. You were too wrapped up in you to care.”
Rachel stumbled backward into a kitchen chair and dropped down on it. “I can’t believe no one told me…my dads never said anything.”
“How often did you call them to find anything out the last couple of years?”
Rachel’s gaze fell to the floor. “I didn’t,” she mumbled. “I always had my assistants send notes or flowers.”
The coffee maker beeped and Quinn pulled two cups out of the cabinet and poured a cup for each of them. She walked to the kitchen table and shakily put Rachel’s in front of her and then sat down across from the brunette.
“It was two years ago,” Quinn sighed. “Almost two years ago. It was in the summer. Mike owns some property out on the north side of town and he’s got four-wheelers out there. He had a brand new one that they were running and so Puck and I took the kids out there so they could run off some energy. I…I begged him not to take Jasper out because he was too little but Jasper cried when Puck took him off. He promised he’d be fine…he promised me.” Quinn’s gaze dropped from Rachel and into her coffee mug. She ran her finger along the rim and sniffled and blinked back the tears. “Half an hour later we couldn’t find them…Mike went out where Puck was going and found them…there was a defect in the axle and…and it flipped. Even if he had on a helmet it wouldn’t have mattered and Jasper’s only alive because Puck protected him.”
Quinn looked over from her coffee mug to where Rachel had moved her chair around the table. Rachel put a hand on Quinn’s wrist and the blonde recoiled a little at the familiar touch.
“He was dead by the time the helicopter landed. Jasper was in the hospital for three months. He…he was a perfectly normal two-year-old before it happened. He ran and he played and he talked to me…it all went away.”
“Quinn…Quinn I am so, so sorry…I don’t know what else to say.”
Quinn looked up from her coffee mug into the sympathetic and sincere eyes of her ex-lover. Rachel reached out and swept away the tears that had fallen and Quinn instinctively closed her eyes and leaned into the touch.
“I really did love him, Rachel,” she whispered. “Everyone thought we got married because I got pregnant again but that wasn’t it. I loved him…I still love him.” Quinn opened her eyes again when Rachel pulled away. “He was good to me, he never cheated on me, he never hurt me and he was good with the kids. Noah’s exactly like him, it’s almost scary sometimes,” Quinn laughed a little. “It’s been really, really hard for him. Finn’s a good uncle but Noah was so, so close to Puck. He worked really hard, Rach. You would’ve been impressed. He got a really good job working for the utilities company. He was laying power lines. We had this plan that as soon as Jasper was in school that I would start taking classes at OSU so I could get a better job than Pick-n-Save.”
Rachel was still stunned into almost silence, Quinn could see.
“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” Quinn whispered. Rachel nodded.
“Quinn I honestly don’t know what to say…I wasn’t expecting this. I mean…as you noticed I was under the assumption that he left and of course now I feel horrible for thinking that. Quinn, if there’s anything I can do…”
Quinn held up her hand to stop the brunette. She’d taken a lot of things from a lot of people and she was damn determined that Rachel Berry would never be one of them. Even though the little piece of Quinn that still held a grudge kept screaming, “Take it! You deserve it!” Quinn wasn’t going to give Rachel the satisfaction of pulling her out of any holes.
“I’ve made it this far, Rachel. I don’t want your charity. Dinner was fine and I thank you for that…but I can’t take anything from you.”
“Let me take Beth shopping for clothes or something…”
“No!” Quinn stood up and growled. “I can take care of my kids, Rachel!”
She knew Rachel didn’t mean it like that. She knew Rachel just wanted to help. But Quinn was kind of sick of taking help. She already owed more people more than she could pay back in her entire life and that killed her. Yes, she swallowed her pride and she took what she was offered most of the time, but Rachel was a different story.
“Quinn, I didn’t mean…”
Quinn started pacing. She couldn’t look at Rachel, she couldn’t sit still. She just needed to move and not look at the star in her kitchen. Hell, Rachel’s kitchen was probably as big as the entire house she was in.
“I’m not going to be in debt to you, okay? I can buy clothes for my kids, I can put food on the table, I’ve got a roof over their heads. Okay, so we don’t live in the nicest part of town but we’re not in boxes. Yes, if Puck were still alive then things would be better…we lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood and none of my kids needed therapy…Listen,” Quinn stopped pacing, “I get that you want to help. Everyone wants to help. But I can’t take it from you. I’m sorry.”
“I feel like I owe…”
Quinn shook her head. “You don’t owe me anything.”
Rachel stood. Quinn backed away. If there was one thing she didn’t need it was Rachel trying to hug her.
“Quinn I left you…in a very brutal way. I hardly said goodbye, I…”
“I know how you left me, Rachel. I was there. Puck was there. You weren’t.”
“Do you think if I had stayed-“
Quinn wasn’t sure where the line was with Rachel until she leaped over it. That was one thing Quinn vowed to never think about, especially after Puck’s death. She would never think about the what-ifs if Rachel had stayed. She had her babies and she loved all three of them and any thought without them in her life was completely unnecessary.
“No!” Quinn hissed. “No, no, no. I am not playing the ‘what if’ game with you, Rachel. I have three kids and I will never, ever regret having them. I won’t ever think about life without them, do you understand? Never ask me that question again.”
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said as she recoiled. “You’re absolutely right. I completely crossed a line. It’s getting late. I should go; you probably have to work tomorrow and I’m keeping you awake.”
Quinn could only nod. Yes, Rachel needed to go…No, Rachel needed to stay. But she needed to leave. She needed to leave and let Quinn sit and try not to think about her dead husband and figuring out how to buy Beth new jeans and refilling Noah’s medicine that keeps him from having meltdowns and making sure Jasper gets his stretches done every morning, afternoon, and night.
“Quinn? Quinn, are you okay?”
Quinn wasn’t sure what the look on her face was but whatever it was, it concerned Rachel enough that the brunette was standing in front of her and looking up at her with those dark brown eyes.
“I’m fine,” the blonde lied. A lie she told to everyone and everyone believed it.
“No, you’re not. You’re…exhausted. And frustrated, with me, I presume. You’re not fine.”
“I’m fine.”
Quinn pulled away. Of course she wasn’t fine. She was living off of government assistance, in government housing, probably in desperate need of therapy herself, barely making enough to cover the bills by working at a dead-end job. She was twenty-eight and a widow for two years who never got to grieve the loss of her husband because she had to focus on her son. She hadn’t even gone on a date since high school and now Rachel Berry was standing in her kitchen with her big brown eyes and all five feet two inches of her was the Rachel Berry that Quinn knew from blissful year and a half they spent holding hands and wrapped up in each other’s arms. The blood left her head and she gripped onto the back of a kitchen chair. Again, Rachel stepped close and this time put a hand on Quinn’s shoulder and shook her head…and Quinn tried to pretend that the touch didn’t make her feel.
“You’re not fine.”
“I’m fine,” Quinn whispered. She ran her fingers over her wedding ring. “I’m sorry but you need to leave.”
Quinn pulled away from Rachel’s touch to go to the front door with Rachel following just moments later. Rachel wasn’t allowed to do this to her because she knew that Rachel would leave again. Rachel wasn’t allowed to make her feel like that again. Quinn had her three kids to think about and Rachel wasn’t going to walk into their lives and then walk back out again as if nothing happened when something better came along. They couldn’t deal with that loss.
Rachel nodded. “I fully understand. Walking back into your life like this…I can’t imagine. Listen, I’ll be here for a while.” The brunette dug around in her purse she brought in with her from the kitchen and pulled out a business card and a pen. She scribbled something on it and handed it to Quinn. “If you need anything…please, anything, a babysitter, someone to talk to…anything. Just call me.”
Quinn shakily held onto the business card with the digits written on the back of it. She watched Rachel stare at the front door.
“Quinn, the door needs to open if I’m to leave.”
Quinn looked down at her hand which was still on the doorknob and she looked up at Rachel. Rachel needed to leave. Quinn had to open the door. She clutched onto the doorknob and turned it and barely pulled. Rachel really, really needed to leave. She needed to leave because Quinn couldn’t do this again. She couldn’t do it. She looked at the brunette and tugged a little harder on the door. Her trance was broken by a cry from Jasper that echoed through the baby monitor. Rachel was forgotten.
Quinn hurried to the boys’ room and by complete instinct of knowing where everything was she quickly picked Jasper up out of his bed and held him.
“Wha’s wrong?” Noah mumbled.
“Nothing sweetie, go back to sleep.”
“Mkay.”
Quinn carried Jasper into the living room; Rachel was still standing by the door which was now closed. The blonde ignored her and settled Jasper on the couch and felt around his legs and found the cramp. She quieted him down and stretched out his right leg. He whimpered at first as she flexed his foot up and down to try and stretch out the muscles.
“Is he okay?”
“He gets muscle cramps in his legs sometimes because he can’t work them as often as he needs to. I just have to work them out.” Quinn kept stretching and she pressed her fingertips into the knot and massaged until the twitching stopped and the muscle relaxed. She massaged the other leg to prevent it from cramping just the same. “Can you watch him for a second? Make sure he doesn’t roll off the couch?”
Rachel nodded. Quinn went to her bedroom and pulled out the heating pad. When she returned to the living room Rachel was sitting on the couch softly singing and Jasper had his eyes focused on the brunette and was staring at her intensely. Quinn stared at the scene for a few seconds before she shook her head and walked across the floor to plug in the heating pad. She pulled Jasper into her lap and wrapped the warm pad around his leg.
“Is he…will he ever…”
“Will he ever be normal?” Quinn could’ve finished the question before Rachel said it. “We’re working on it. He can pull up and stand on his own for a few seconds so I’m hoping that by the end of the summer he’s walking. There was brain damage and spinal cord damage and the doctors told me he’d never get as far as he has but he’s here so we just take it one day at a time. Kelsey takes him to therapists almost every day.”
Rachel nodded and looked down at her lap. Quinn looked down at her sleeping son and sighed. He was a reminder that she couldn’t be selfish about this. There couldn’t be a this. The Rachel she was in love with was seventeen and eighteen and not the Rachel sitting next to her. A small piece of her wanted to get to know this Rachel. But Rachel’s intentions were questionable and that meant risk and risk wasn’t ever good when it came to the three kids.
“Rachel I don’t know what you want from me,” Quinn whispered. “I don’t know why you’re here or why you want to be here…but I can’t do it. Whatever it is, I can’t.”
“I don’t want anything from you. Except maybe to let me help you but if you’re not going to give me that then a chance at being friends would be nice.”
“You scare me. You scare me because we started out as friends the first time. If it was just me I would be fine with it but I’ve got kids to consider here. Kids who lost their father. You’re going to leave, Rachel. You want to help now but you get to go to Los Angeles and live your life and I get to deal with the aftermath. I can’t do that to them.”
“It won’t be like that…”
“How will it be then, Rachel? Tell me, just exactly how will it be when you go to LA?”
“I’ll call…I’ll come back here more often. Quinn…I want to be here for you. I want to make up for the last ten years. I want you to have someone to talk to.”
“I have people to talk to…”
“Please, Quinn…I’m begging you…please let me be here.”
Quinn tensed up when Rachel’s hand gripped onto her shoulder. The brunette moved closer to her and Quinn could hear her heartbeat in her ears with the blood rushing. Turning to meet Rachel’s gaze would be dangerous, Quinn knew this. But she couldn’t help herself. She turned her head slowly, Rachel’s eyes were red rimmed and matched her own. It was sixteen year old Rachel when their relationship went from enemies to the start of something spectacular just before sectionals their sophomore year. It was sincere, honest, selfless Rachel. It was Rachel telling her it would be worth the risk.
“I swear to God, Rachel,” Quinn whispered, “if you hurt my kids…I will hunt you down and they will never find the body.”
Rachel nodded. “Make sure you at least bury my Grammy with me.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a woodchipper.”
“I’d prefer it if the award stayed intact. Maybe auction it off and donate the proceeds to a socially conscious charity?”
Quinn smiled. “Okay.” She glanced up at the wall clock and sighed. “It’s ten-thirty. I need to get him back to bed and clean up a little and then try to get some sleep.”
“Of course…I’m sorry if I overstayed my welcome.”
“It’s fine, Rachel.”
Quinn turned off the heating pad and unwrapped it from Jasper’s leg. She stood and hoisted the boy on her hip, Rachel followed suit. Quinn walked her to the door and this time when she opened it, she really opened it. Rachel smiled appreciatively and looked out the door both ways before she walked out and to her car.
“Call me, I mean it,” she said before she got in.
Quinn nodded.
Chapter 4
Major Characters/Pairings: Quinn Fabray-Puckerman, Beth Puckerman, Noah Puckerman, Jr., Jasper Puckerman, Rachel Berry, Finn Hudson/OC, Mentions past: Quinn/Puck, Rachel/Puck, Rachel/Quinn
Minor Characters/Pairings: Mike/OC, Matt/OC, Artie/Tina, Rachel's dads Mentions: Brittany/Santana, Mercedes/OC, Kurt/OC
Rating: PG-13
Length: 45,200+
Summary: AU beginning after 'Funk'. Rachel got the hell out of Lima, Ohio immediately after graduation, breaking Quinn's heart in the process, and never looked back. Now, ten years later, she's back and Quinn is the one to show her the aftermath and the pieces of what she left behind - all the while trying desperately not to fall back in love with her ex-girlfriend.
Warnings: Pre-story character death discussed in detail.
-Chapter 3-
Silence. Quinn stood staring at the brunette who stood staring right back at her. Quinn’s fingers stayed on the gold band on her left ring finger. Rachel’s arms stayed at her sides. The coffee maker percolated but Quinn’s gaze never left Rachel. She saw the brunette swallow and attempt to form words in her head but nothing came. Nothing but the percolations and the ticking of the wall clock in the kitchen.
“He…died…” Quinn finally breathed out with the breath she had no idea she was holding. “He didn’t leave me…he didn’t end up in prison like everyone thought he would…he died.”
Quinn started trembling as Rachel’s mouth moved to form the words that Quinn had heard several thousand times already. She heard it as people filed through the funeral home and she was absolutely numb as she said thank you. To whom she said it, she had no idea. They were all faceless people that had come to look at the twenty-six year old widow with three children who had to be dragged away from her youngest son’s hospital bed to go to the funeral of her husband.
“I’m so sorry,” Rachel choked. “Quinn, I had no idea…”
“No,” the blonde hissed. “You didn’t. You didn’t bother to ask. You didn’t bother to call. You didn’t bother to care. You were too wrapped up in you to care.”
Rachel stumbled backward into a kitchen chair and dropped down on it. “I can’t believe no one told me…my dads never said anything.”
“How often did you call them to find anything out the last couple of years?”
Rachel’s gaze fell to the floor. “I didn’t,” she mumbled. “I always had my assistants send notes or flowers.”
The coffee maker beeped and Quinn pulled two cups out of the cabinet and poured a cup for each of them. She walked to the kitchen table and shakily put Rachel’s in front of her and then sat down across from the brunette.
“It was two years ago,” Quinn sighed. “Almost two years ago. It was in the summer. Mike owns some property out on the north side of town and he’s got four-wheelers out there. He had a brand new one that they were running and so Puck and I took the kids out there so they could run off some energy. I…I begged him not to take Jasper out because he was too little but Jasper cried when Puck took him off. He promised he’d be fine…he promised me.” Quinn’s gaze dropped from Rachel and into her coffee mug. She ran her finger along the rim and sniffled and blinked back the tears. “Half an hour later we couldn’t find them…Mike went out where Puck was going and found them…there was a defect in the axle and…and it flipped. Even if he had on a helmet it wouldn’t have mattered and Jasper’s only alive because Puck protected him.”
Quinn looked over from her coffee mug to where Rachel had moved her chair around the table. Rachel put a hand on Quinn’s wrist and the blonde recoiled a little at the familiar touch.
“He was dead by the time the helicopter landed. Jasper was in the hospital for three months. He…he was a perfectly normal two-year-old before it happened. He ran and he played and he talked to me…it all went away.”
“Quinn…Quinn I am so, so sorry…I don’t know what else to say.”
Quinn looked up from her coffee mug into the sympathetic and sincere eyes of her ex-lover. Rachel reached out and swept away the tears that had fallen and Quinn instinctively closed her eyes and leaned into the touch.
“I really did love him, Rachel,” she whispered. “Everyone thought we got married because I got pregnant again but that wasn’t it. I loved him…I still love him.” Quinn opened her eyes again when Rachel pulled away. “He was good to me, he never cheated on me, he never hurt me and he was good with the kids. Noah’s exactly like him, it’s almost scary sometimes,” Quinn laughed a little. “It’s been really, really hard for him. Finn’s a good uncle but Noah was so, so close to Puck. He worked really hard, Rach. You would’ve been impressed. He got a really good job working for the utilities company. He was laying power lines. We had this plan that as soon as Jasper was in school that I would start taking classes at OSU so I could get a better job than Pick-n-Save.”
Rachel was still stunned into almost silence, Quinn could see.
“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” Quinn whispered. Rachel nodded.
“Quinn I honestly don’t know what to say…I wasn’t expecting this. I mean…as you noticed I was under the assumption that he left and of course now I feel horrible for thinking that. Quinn, if there’s anything I can do…”
Quinn held up her hand to stop the brunette. She’d taken a lot of things from a lot of people and she was damn determined that Rachel Berry would never be one of them. Even though the little piece of Quinn that still held a grudge kept screaming, “Take it! You deserve it!” Quinn wasn’t going to give Rachel the satisfaction of pulling her out of any holes.
“I’ve made it this far, Rachel. I don’t want your charity. Dinner was fine and I thank you for that…but I can’t take anything from you.”
“Let me take Beth shopping for clothes or something…”
“No!” Quinn stood up and growled. “I can take care of my kids, Rachel!”
She knew Rachel didn’t mean it like that. She knew Rachel just wanted to help. But Quinn was kind of sick of taking help. She already owed more people more than she could pay back in her entire life and that killed her. Yes, she swallowed her pride and she took what she was offered most of the time, but Rachel was a different story.
“Quinn, I didn’t mean…”
Quinn started pacing. She couldn’t look at Rachel, she couldn’t sit still. She just needed to move and not look at the star in her kitchen. Hell, Rachel’s kitchen was probably as big as the entire house she was in.
“I’m not going to be in debt to you, okay? I can buy clothes for my kids, I can put food on the table, I’ve got a roof over their heads. Okay, so we don’t live in the nicest part of town but we’re not in boxes. Yes, if Puck were still alive then things would be better…we lived in a nice house in a nice neighborhood and none of my kids needed therapy…Listen,” Quinn stopped pacing, “I get that you want to help. Everyone wants to help. But I can’t take it from you. I’m sorry.”
“I feel like I owe…”
Quinn shook her head. “You don’t owe me anything.”
Rachel stood. Quinn backed away. If there was one thing she didn’t need it was Rachel trying to hug her.
“Quinn I left you…in a very brutal way. I hardly said goodbye, I…”
“I know how you left me, Rachel. I was there. Puck was there. You weren’t.”
“Do you think if I had stayed-“
Quinn wasn’t sure where the line was with Rachel until she leaped over it. That was one thing Quinn vowed to never think about, especially after Puck’s death. She would never think about the what-ifs if Rachel had stayed. She had her babies and she loved all three of them and any thought without them in her life was completely unnecessary.
“No!” Quinn hissed. “No, no, no. I am not playing the ‘what if’ game with you, Rachel. I have three kids and I will never, ever regret having them. I won’t ever think about life without them, do you understand? Never ask me that question again.”
“I’m sorry,” Rachel said as she recoiled. “You’re absolutely right. I completely crossed a line. It’s getting late. I should go; you probably have to work tomorrow and I’m keeping you awake.”
Quinn could only nod. Yes, Rachel needed to go…No, Rachel needed to stay. But she needed to leave. She needed to leave and let Quinn sit and try not to think about her dead husband and figuring out how to buy Beth new jeans and refilling Noah’s medicine that keeps him from having meltdowns and making sure Jasper gets his stretches done every morning, afternoon, and night.
“Quinn? Quinn, are you okay?”
Quinn wasn’t sure what the look on her face was but whatever it was, it concerned Rachel enough that the brunette was standing in front of her and looking up at her with those dark brown eyes.
“I’m fine,” the blonde lied. A lie she told to everyone and everyone believed it.
“No, you’re not. You’re…exhausted. And frustrated, with me, I presume. You’re not fine.”
“I’m fine.”
Quinn pulled away. Of course she wasn’t fine. She was living off of government assistance, in government housing, probably in desperate need of therapy herself, barely making enough to cover the bills by working at a dead-end job. She was twenty-eight and a widow for two years who never got to grieve the loss of her husband because she had to focus on her son. She hadn’t even gone on a date since high school and now Rachel Berry was standing in her kitchen with her big brown eyes and all five feet two inches of her was the Rachel Berry that Quinn knew from blissful year and a half they spent holding hands and wrapped up in each other’s arms. The blood left her head and she gripped onto the back of a kitchen chair. Again, Rachel stepped close and this time put a hand on Quinn’s shoulder and shook her head…and Quinn tried to pretend that the touch didn’t make her feel.
“You’re not fine.”
“I’m fine,” Quinn whispered. She ran her fingers over her wedding ring. “I’m sorry but you need to leave.”
Quinn pulled away from Rachel’s touch to go to the front door with Rachel following just moments later. Rachel wasn’t allowed to do this to her because she knew that Rachel would leave again. Rachel wasn’t allowed to make her feel like that again. Quinn had her three kids to think about and Rachel wasn’t going to walk into their lives and then walk back out again as if nothing happened when something better came along. They couldn’t deal with that loss.
Rachel nodded. “I fully understand. Walking back into your life like this…I can’t imagine. Listen, I’ll be here for a while.” The brunette dug around in her purse she brought in with her from the kitchen and pulled out a business card and a pen. She scribbled something on it and handed it to Quinn. “If you need anything…please, anything, a babysitter, someone to talk to…anything. Just call me.”
Quinn shakily held onto the business card with the digits written on the back of it. She watched Rachel stare at the front door.
“Quinn, the door needs to open if I’m to leave.”
Quinn looked down at her hand which was still on the doorknob and she looked up at Rachel. Rachel needed to leave. Quinn had to open the door. She clutched onto the doorknob and turned it and barely pulled. Rachel really, really needed to leave. She needed to leave because Quinn couldn’t do this again. She couldn’t do it. She looked at the brunette and tugged a little harder on the door. Her trance was broken by a cry from Jasper that echoed through the baby monitor. Rachel was forgotten.
Quinn hurried to the boys’ room and by complete instinct of knowing where everything was she quickly picked Jasper up out of his bed and held him.
“Wha’s wrong?” Noah mumbled.
“Nothing sweetie, go back to sleep.”
“Mkay.”
Quinn carried Jasper into the living room; Rachel was still standing by the door which was now closed. The blonde ignored her and settled Jasper on the couch and felt around his legs and found the cramp. She quieted him down and stretched out his right leg. He whimpered at first as she flexed his foot up and down to try and stretch out the muscles.
“Is he okay?”
“He gets muscle cramps in his legs sometimes because he can’t work them as often as he needs to. I just have to work them out.” Quinn kept stretching and she pressed her fingertips into the knot and massaged until the twitching stopped and the muscle relaxed. She massaged the other leg to prevent it from cramping just the same. “Can you watch him for a second? Make sure he doesn’t roll off the couch?”
Rachel nodded. Quinn went to her bedroom and pulled out the heating pad. When she returned to the living room Rachel was sitting on the couch softly singing and Jasper had his eyes focused on the brunette and was staring at her intensely. Quinn stared at the scene for a few seconds before she shook her head and walked across the floor to plug in the heating pad. She pulled Jasper into her lap and wrapped the warm pad around his leg.
“Is he…will he ever…”
“Will he ever be normal?” Quinn could’ve finished the question before Rachel said it. “We’re working on it. He can pull up and stand on his own for a few seconds so I’m hoping that by the end of the summer he’s walking. There was brain damage and spinal cord damage and the doctors told me he’d never get as far as he has but he’s here so we just take it one day at a time. Kelsey takes him to therapists almost every day.”
Rachel nodded and looked down at her lap. Quinn looked down at her sleeping son and sighed. He was a reminder that she couldn’t be selfish about this. There couldn’t be a this. The Rachel she was in love with was seventeen and eighteen and not the Rachel sitting next to her. A small piece of her wanted to get to know this Rachel. But Rachel’s intentions were questionable and that meant risk and risk wasn’t ever good when it came to the three kids.
“Rachel I don’t know what you want from me,” Quinn whispered. “I don’t know why you’re here or why you want to be here…but I can’t do it. Whatever it is, I can’t.”
“I don’t want anything from you. Except maybe to let me help you but if you’re not going to give me that then a chance at being friends would be nice.”
“You scare me. You scare me because we started out as friends the first time. If it was just me I would be fine with it but I’ve got kids to consider here. Kids who lost their father. You’re going to leave, Rachel. You want to help now but you get to go to Los Angeles and live your life and I get to deal with the aftermath. I can’t do that to them.”
“It won’t be like that…”
“How will it be then, Rachel? Tell me, just exactly how will it be when you go to LA?”
“I’ll call…I’ll come back here more often. Quinn…I want to be here for you. I want to make up for the last ten years. I want you to have someone to talk to.”
“I have people to talk to…”
“Please, Quinn…I’m begging you…please let me be here.”
Quinn tensed up when Rachel’s hand gripped onto her shoulder. The brunette moved closer to her and Quinn could hear her heartbeat in her ears with the blood rushing. Turning to meet Rachel’s gaze would be dangerous, Quinn knew this. But she couldn’t help herself. She turned her head slowly, Rachel’s eyes were red rimmed and matched her own. It was sixteen year old Rachel when their relationship went from enemies to the start of something spectacular just before sectionals their sophomore year. It was sincere, honest, selfless Rachel. It was Rachel telling her it would be worth the risk.
“I swear to God, Rachel,” Quinn whispered, “if you hurt my kids…I will hunt you down and they will never find the body.”
Rachel nodded. “Make sure you at least bury my Grammy with me.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of a woodchipper.”
“I’d prefer it if the award stayed intact. Maybe auction it off and donate the proceeds to a socially conscious charity?”
Quinn smiled. “Okay.” She glanced up at the wall clock and sighed. “It’s ten-thirty. I need to get him back to bed and clean up a little and then try to get some sleep.”
“Of course…I’m sorry if I overstayed my welcome.”
“It’s fine, Rachel.”
Quinn turned off the heating pad and unwrapped it from Jasper’s leg. She stood and hoisted the boy on her hip, Rachel followed suit. Quinn walked her to the door and this time when she opened it, she really opened it. Rachel smiled appreciatively and looked out the door both ways before she walked out and to her car.
“Call me, I mean it,” she said before she got in.
Quinn nodded.
Chapter 4