Page 174 of Darling Obsession

Quinn rolls her eyes. “Stop kissing up. She already adores you.”

I grin.

Then I study the photo of the happy baby Quinn, smiling at something off camera.

“What?” she says.

“Lorraine is going to be the best grandma. Better than both of mine were, for sure.”

Quinn tears up, but tries to hide it as she sips her cider. “She’s looking so forward to it.”

“I know that’s a hard topic for you…”

She lowers her voice. “The hardest thing is imagining my child not getting to meet their amazing grandma.”

“That’s not going to happen.”

“I’ve just never felt like I can trust that. So I just take each day, one at a time. And do my best to appreciate it, no matter how good or bad it is.”

“I feel a little sad, too,” I admit, “when I think about the baby not getting to meet my dad. Though he wasn’t always so amazing.”

Quinn wipes away her unshed tears. She looks keenly interested. “You’ve never really told me anything about your parents.”

“Maybe I should.”

“Yes, please.”

“What, right now?”

“Yes?” She blinks at me hopefully.

Shit. Honesty, right?

I prepared myself for this.

I didn’t know I’d have to face it so soon. But Savannah was right. The clock is ticking, and I really should’ve stepped up with this. Like, yesterday. Or any of the days before, ever since I met Quinn and had chance after chance to let her really know me.

“Okay… if you want to hear it. I guess there’s a lot to say, actually.”

Quinn sips her cider and waits patiently. “I’m listening.”

I set my cider aside. “Well, probably the most important things I can tell you about my parents and my relationship with them all relate back to the fact that I’m dyslexic.”

She takes that in.

“Oh. Okay,” she says gently. I can tell she’s surprised. Maybe she had no idea.

I hope she’s not hurt that I never mentioned it before.

“I should add a caveat to that, that my dyslexia is undiagnosed. It’s just something I figured out about myself over time. Savannah helped me figure it out, actually. She’s the only one who knows.”

“I see. Go on.”

I take a deep breath and consider where to go from there.

“We grew up here, in Vancouver, in the house that Graysen still owns. As the only girl, Savannah was sort of favored by my mom. And I think I always felt like the misfit in the family. I got frustrated in school a lot, and acted out. My teachers would say things like, ‘he’s so capable, he’s just not applying himself’ or ‘he isn’t trying hard enough.’ It took me a long time to understand that I was able to memorize things, like how words looked, instead of actually learning how to spell.”

I pause, to let myself go back to that time, and try to remember things I really tried to forget over the years. So I can explain something, to her, that I’ve never really had to explain before.

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