Loving Quinn Novel by North Rose

Epilogue

(Quinn)

Three months have passed since we got married, and we have settled into our lives as husband

and wife smoothly. There have been many changes in our lives as we have adjusted to our growing family. Not all are good, but that is just how life is.

Annora is five months into her pregnancy and is starting to show it. I love resting my hand on her little baby bump. When I heard the baby’s heartbeat for the first time at her first appointment, I

was shocked.

It took everything I had not to scoop her up in my arms right then and there. I cried later that

night as we were lying in bed. We are having a baby and making our family bigger. At her next

appointment, we may get to find out the gender.

She wants a boy, while I want another beautiful little girl. There is currently a betting pool going

with our friends and family on what we will have. Part of me kind of wants to just be surprised

and wait until the birth of our baby to know the gender.

We renovated the empty room across the hall from our bedroom and turned it into a nursery. I

always intended to make that room into another guest room, but I didn’t much like the idea of

sharing my personal space with anyone else.

That is what the third floor was to me at one point. Now it is our space for now. We will be in our

new house before we know it.

I hope so. The penthouse is not really suited to a family. It is very much a bachelor pad.

Since the designs for our dream house have been approved, we are scheduled to start construction

on it next month. Our baby will be here well before our house is built. If luck and the weather are

on our side, then it may be done within a year.

I hired the contractor that Andrea recommended to build our house. It is a major firm and has a

massive fleet of workers. I have complete faith that our house will be done and we can move in within a year and a half, maybe less. (3

The outreach center will be done before our house is. That construction started the week after we

got back from our honeymoon. Max’s crew arrived from New York while we were gone. Aaron got them all set up in their apartments, handed them their signing bonuses, and then hung out with some of them to get to know them.

From what he told me when I got home, they are all good people. Hard workers. That will be good

for us. He also told me that most of them would be staying in California after the project was done. They are all loyal to Max and willing to relocate for him.

That is great for Max and his company.

As for the outreach center itself, we have already hired all our staff except someone to run the place. We have a few ideas about who we think would make a good fit there, but we are having trouble choosing between two candidates. They are both very qualified.

We will also have a monthly medical van to do checkups at the homeless camps in the area. This

is for those who don’t want to come in for help or can’t for some reason. This was Annora’s idea. I

liked it, and so did Aaron, so we will make it happen.

Annora’s private practice is almost open. She has hired two new doctors to bump the total to four pediatricians, including herself. She had three additional pediatric nurses decide to join her, which

brings her to eight nurses. Shawna is one of them.

There is some red tape with the insurance companies. I remember having to set all that up when

Aaron and I started G&C Enterprises. Medical insurance for our employees, liability insurance in

case we ever get sued, and insurance on our building. It is tedious and expensive, but it is needed

to run a business.

Annora took me up on my offer to set her up with our corporate attorney so he could help her. So,

between him and her lawyer, most of the tedious work was handled through them. It took a lot of the pressure and stress off her shoulders.

She doesn’t need any more stress than she already has. Kyle’s trial date for attempted murder happened last month. He was convicted of first-degree attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison. Had her neighbor and the police not gotten there in time, he would have killed her. It is only fair that he spends the rest of his life rotting in prison.

Lana had a m**l breakdown when she was told he would never be able to hurt her again.

Annora told her in person through the plexigla**at the women’s prison, where Lana is awaiting

trial for hiring someone to kill her.

She hired a good lawyer who advocates for domestic violence victims. I was against it, but I

understood her need to help Lana. She was a victim of Kyle’s abuse too. With Kyle no longer a

threat to her life, Annora feels that it is up to her to step up and help.

I told her that hiring Lana, a defense attorney, was doing just that. She insists on testifying at her trial, and nothing I have said so far has changed her mind. I will be there with her when she does.

Now if only things with Max would settle down, her stress levels would even out,

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Epilogue

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Her oldest brother has her worried enough, even though I tell her that he is a grown man and can

handle his own life. Max has fully relocated to San Francisco. From what Annora has told me,

Letia is contesting the divorce. She claims that they can work things out and that she still loves

him.

That made me angry for all my brother-in-law is going through in his personal life. I can’t imagine the pain he is feeling, and I don’t ever want to experience that kind of betrayal. With everything I know about his wife, she doesn’t come off as the greedy type. I can only hope she is fighting him on this because she really loves him.

I doubt it is that, but I don’t know her. It just feels like her decision to contest the divorce is funny timing. Max just landed a huge contracting job with my company. One that will open many

doors for him here in California.

I can practically see the dollar signs in Letia’s eyes. Annora says she isn’t like that at all, but she also didn’t think Letia was the cheating type. If she was wrong about that, she could be wrong

about the money-grubbing ways.

Either way, I feel bad for Max.

One thing that Annie had been keeping an eye on was Max and Shawna’s interactions with each other. I was surprised when she told me about their little make-out session. I told her to stay out

of it and let them be.

That went well for a few months until Shawna took a leave of absence from the hospital last month out of the blue and hadn’t been in contact with Annie at all. Now she is trying to get to the bottom of the drama between her best friend and her brother.

Max has been acting strangely too. He is avoiding his sister like he did something bad. I have a feeling I know what it is, but I don’t want to get into his personal business any more than I already am just by being his brother-in-law.

It seems like just as I get my personal life in a good place, all my friends’ lives blow up.

Aaron got into a huge fight with Rylan after the wedding and would only tell me that it was for the best. Neither of them would talk to me about it at all. Not that I am surprised. They both tend to keep their feelings bottled up.

Rylan has thrown herself into her work, from what I can see. The veterans program is back in tip- top shape. She hired three new physical therapists and had the entire rehab facility redone. I approved of everything she asked for.

The hospital board has been very impressed by her go-get-em attitude. We had to hire three receptionists for the intake office to compensate for all the new patients. The program is thriving thanks to Rylan and her leadership.

1 knew she would be perfect for the job. Well, to be honest, I knew she would be perfect for the

job, and getting her to California to be close to my best friend was a side benefit. Rylan is the yin

to Aaron’s yang.

Now for him to figure that out. Well, it is more like it is time for him to accept that and let her in rather than chase her away. Rylan ‘could help him if he would just let her.

The more I pushed to find out what happened between them, the more he shut me out, so I stopped asking. Now I wish I had not pushed him so hard. Aaron has been MIA for the last two

weeks.

For the first few days, I wasn’t really worried. I started to panic after a full week passed without him calling me. I searched everywhere I could think of but came up with nothing. It is very unlike him to just disappear for more than a few days and not tell me where he is going.

I had Mac trace his phone, but that led us to his penthouse. He wasn’t there, and it looked like he hadn’t been in a while. The only vehicle missing from his garage was that d**n motorcycle he insisted on buying. At this point, he could be anywhere.

Annora suggested calling his parents, but I don’t want to worry them until I have exhausted all my options for finding him. I have a feeling that even if I called them, they wouldn’t have any idea where he is. He told me shortly before he disappeared that he was in a bad way but assured me

that Dr. West was helping him sort things out.

Now I think he was lying to me.

I once did the same thing that he is doing now. It was right after the sh**rm with Dionne hit the fan. Her aborting our child pushed me over the edge. I took off without telling him and spent two weeks in a seedy area of Tokyo.

Dionne’s actions drove me to do some f**d-up s**t.

It makes me deliriously happy to know that karma has caught up with that b**h. The California Board of Psychology has contacted the District Attorney and handed over all their findings after Annora reported Dionne’s scandalous actions.

He called me and asked if I wanted to press charges against her for crossing doctor-patient

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boundaries. While the idea did appeal to me, I willingly crossed those lines with her back then, so pressing charges seems a bit silly.

From what I was told, five men and one woman decided to testify against her. They claim she manipulated them into a sexual relationship, one that they all say they wouldn’t have agreed to if they had been thinking clearly.

Her license was permanently taken away, and she was barred from practicing psychiatry ever again.

Her lover, Michaels, sang like a canary to his lawyer and judge about everything she convinced him to do. It didn’t lessen his sentence for the kidnapping of my daughter or my hatred of the man, but it did open new avenues of investigation.

Dionne Master has been a very bad woman for a long time.

The story in the newspaper mentioned the bribery of a judge, and several elected officials in both California and New York, along with numerous other petty crimes. Add in all the stalking charges I filed, and things are not looking too bright for Dionne.

Ethan McAllister is one of the men who came forward to testify against her. From what I was told, Dionne was pi***ed at that and tried to get her lawyer to get Ethan’s statement thrown out since they are still legally married.

The judge in her case denied the request because they were not married when he was her patient.

Evan called me a few days ago and told me that Ethan sold their home and was taking Logan back to New York permanently. He also told me that Ethan had filed a petition to have her parental rights severed.

Given the fact that she led him to believe that Logan was another man’s child and it was proven in court that she knew otherwise the entire time, I hope his petition is granted.

From what I have been told by Evan, Ethan has completely changed how he treats Logan. He is a loving father and treats the boy like he always should have. That I am happy with.

Logan is still just a baby, so he likely won’t remember the way Ethan just ignored his existence. It is a good thing for them both that the truth came out while the boy was still so young. I would hate for Logan to resent his father like I did mine.

The penthouse is now full of the pictures that Tori gave me. I went through the photo albums and picked out ones that I felt needed to be seen by everyone. Annora had the rest scanned and digitized so we could keep them in storage but still have easy access to them.

On the wall in the kitchen is a picture of me and my mother covered in flour. Her laughing face is the first thing I see when I enter the kitchen. I think she would have loved that.

Along the wall in the entryway are a variety of family pictures. Some of my family is with my parents, and some of my family is with Aaron. Annora added some of her family and the three of us.

The penthouse never felt like home to me in the past. It does now. Annora and Grace make it feel like home. Soon we will have another addition to our family, and it will feel a little fuller than before.

I once dreamed of the future, but that future began to fade as my life took a different turn. Now it has come full circle, and that future I once dreamed of is now my world. A world I will do everything in my power to protect.

That includes my best friend. I will find you, Aaron, and I will do all I can to help you crawl out of the darkness. To find that future with the woman we both know you love. Rylan is here, but she may not be waiting for too much longer.