I felt bad that I never said goodbye to Teagan.

Ignoring her calls, shutting off my phone… it wasn’t fair to her. I was staring at my phone, trying to talk myself into turning it on. I wanted to, but I wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But I needed to know she was at least okay.

"If you're going to call her, would you just do it already?"

I glared up at Seamus. "I haven't decided yet."

"Well, do it quickly. You've been glaring at that phone for nearly half an hour now. If she was trying to get in touch with you, it's probably important."

I was torn. Letting her in on everything would just make her feel worse, not to mention paint a target on her back. I wanted her with me, but would it be worth it, before we managed to clean up the mess we were in?

"Look, I'm worried about her, too. She may not be safe, Ronan, you know that. We would both regret it if something happened to her and we couldn’t do anything because we shut her out."

I glared at him a few seconds longer before I dropped my head to my chest and squeezed my eyes shut, knowing he was right.

"Fuck."

I turned on my phone, waiting impatiently for it to come on. Seamus walked away, probably to give me privacy for my phone call. I unlocked the home screen, waiting for the phone to pick up a signal. Before I could even make the call, missed call notifications started coming in, all from the same number and way too many of them. They were over ten, which was alarming. Feeling guilty, with just a bit of dread mixed in, I called her back immediately, holding my breath as I waited for her to pick up.

It felt like my heart would stop in the seconds it took for her to pick up my call, but she eventually did.

"Teagan?"

There was a pause on the other end of the line.

"Ronan?"

I breathed in relief, just the sound of her voice relaxing me when I hadn't realized just how tense I was. "Teagan, sorry. You tried calling me a few times but I wasn’t where I could take the call."

"Where were you?"

I couldn’t exactly tell her I was going to meet a guy to pick up doctored papers so I could leave the country with the man wanted by the police for her mother's murder.

"I was driving and the ringing was getting distracting. I turned off my phone and kinda forgot about it until now." I made my voice sound apologetic, which wasn’t difficult with the guilt riding me.

"And where are you right now? Are you at the apartment?"

"No, that isn’t where I am right now. Whatever you do, Teagan, please don’t go back there. I can't explain over the phone, but I don’t think it's safe."

"Because of… Quinn, right."

Her words made me freeze, my back snapping straight. Why would she call him that, when he'd only ever been 'Dad' for her? And that pause… there was a lot unsaid in that short pause and how she said his name that had me worried.

Exactly what had happened between the time I saw her last and now?

"Teagan, are you okay?"

She was silent until I heard something I thought was a sob. When she spoke, her voice wobbled with tears, and I felt my heart clench in fear and panic, and guilt for not trying to talk to her after involving her in my plans. She hadn't asked for any of it, and it wasn’t fair to her.

"I am seriously not okay, Ronan. I'd been calling you for hours, I barely slept, and you wouldn’t pick up my calls after you promised I could count on you, that you would be there. I just about gave up on you." She sniffled, tightening the vise in my chest even more. "I don’t even know why I picked up your call. I didn’t think you wanted to talk to me anymore."

I hoped her answering my call meant she wasn’t too mad at me for ignoring her.

"Can you tell me what happened?" I asked.

She sniffled, made another sobbing sound, and my chest physically hurt at how distressed she sounded. I should have been there.

"I went home after I met you and… he was there. He was drunk. He seriously scared me, Ronan, I thought he would hurt me. This man that raised me just turned into this monster and I didn’t know what to do. I was alone with him in that house. He threw me out for not being his daughter."

I cursed at Quinn in my head for the pain and fear I could hear in her voice. She could have been in real danger, and I wasn’t there. Seamus was right, anything could happen and we wouldn’t know because I insisted on keeping her out, assuming she wouldn’t be able to take it without giving her a choice in the matter. It was her life, and because of me, she was living for two. If anything happened to either of them, I would be responsible.

I would lose more family.

"Ronan, where have you been this whole time? I've been calling and you never returned my calls. I didn’t know what to do when he chased me out of the house."

I ignored her question.

"Where are you right now? Are you alone?"

"No. I found a friend who put me up the past couple of nights. She said I could stay for as long as I needed to."

Maybe that was the best for her. It was out of the way of the problem, if Quinn decided to leave her alone.

But it had to be her decision. I couldn’t keep making her choices for her, she would hate me for it later. Besides, there was no guarantee that Quinn would leave her alone. He might rethink his actions and follow her to get rid of her; like he killed her mother and like he probably wanted to get rid of Seamus permanently when he left the crew.

Who knew how long it would take before he snapped this time?

"Can you tell me where you are? Give me the address."

There was another silence before she rattled it off. I made her repeat it, and I repeated back to her to be sure I had it right.

"All right, I'm on my way to pick you up. If you have anything of yours with you, have it nearby, we'll have to leave quickly. Teagan, if you don’t want this, tell me, right now."

Again, the seconds before she answered almost killed me.

"How long will you take?"

"Not long, under an hour. Just be ready for me when I get there. And I promise, this time, I will tell you everything. Whatever question you ask, I'll answer it."

"Okay. I'll see you soon."

She hung up before I could say more and it stung, but she deserved it. I looked over at Seamus, and he came closer. I told him what had happened.

"He kicked her out?" By his surprise, he hadn't expected it either.

"I don’t know why, though. He acted normally, he called her to talk, made her meet him at the hospital a few times. When she stayed over at my apartment she had a couple guards follow to watch over her. She did tell me he was drunk, but it came out of nowhere."

"Not really, though," he muttered, expression going grim. "He always was the impulsive type. Likely, he hadn't been thinking of it much, not consciously anyway. And when she got back to find him drunk and tried to talk to him, he snapped. If she'd avoided him she probably would have been fine for a while longer. I mean, when I left, I know he wanted to kill me in the beginning. He probably didn’t because he kept getting distracted and I was good at disappearing."

It was my turn to be surprised. "Wait, he tried to kill you?"

"Well, he wasn’t happy about it when I left. I was injured, but it wasn’t something I couldn’t survive. I got injured plenty of times, what made this time different was I'd gotten too close to dying, closer than ever, and I suddenly wondered what I was doing with my life. He wasn’t happy, but I think he let me go because he thought I would change my mind. There was one time he came close, but then he got distracted. I think it was around the time Teagan met her boyfriend, the biker. And then he ended up dead."

Quinn was likely behind that. But I was more interested in the fact that Seamus seemed to be open about talking. I had questions I wanted to ask, only it never seemed like the right time before.

But then suddenly, his expression went shocked and almost fearful. It surprised me because I was still getting used to this emotional side of him. The Seamus I'd known up to the night of that party might as well have been an emotionless robot with the occasional temper flare. All his expressions were controlled, giving the feeling that they were fake, at least partially.

"What is it?"

"Did he hurt her? Quinn was always least stable when he was drunk. And with everything that's been going on…"

"No." I hesitated. "Although, she didn’t actually tell me that. She was crying, and she told me he scared her, but that was it. She's at a friend's place right now."

He calmed down, his expression almost going back to normal, but I could still feel the tension rolling off him. Our eyes met and we had a mutual understanding. I sighed and rubbed at my forehead.

"We cannot go to Ireland yet. Can you cancel our reservations while I go pick her up?"

He already had his phone out, fingers tapping away at the screen. "I'm on it. Go, right now."

Yeah. We needed to get another passport for Teagan, there was no way we could just leave her now. And we needed to tell her the whole truth.