It was snowing two days before Christmas. Quinn grumbled to herself about impolite weather patterns and people who stared blatantly at pregnant teenagers, and struggled with the handful of grocery bags in her arms as she tried to unlock the door to the Berry's house.
She had been staying with Rachel and her parents since Finn kicked her out. An unexpectedly comfortable routine had formed in the house, a compromise reached in which Quinn stopped insisting on finding a place of her own as soon as possible and instead tried to earn her keep through cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping. One of Rachel's dads, Eric, liked to joke that the house had never been so clean or organized (save for Rachel's room) the entire time they'd owned it and that it would revert to black hole status if Quinn left. David would roll his eyes at his husband and wink at Quinn; Rachel would scoff and tell Quinn that she really didn't need to strain herself with housework.
Quinn liked to feel like she was doing something for them. It made her feel like a little bit less of a failure.
"Crap," she mumbled as one of the bags slipped, the plastic dangerously close to ripping. Biting her lip, praying that it wouldn't burst before she got inside, she juggled the bags around to free up one hand to unlock the door. Just as she stuck the key into the lock, the door opened and Finn stood on the other side, coat in hand.
Quinn froze, her hand still extended to unlock the door, eyes wide. The strain in her muscles from the grocery bags was forgotten as she stared at Finn stupidly.
"Quinn," he mumbled. He blinked once, then twice, and then shook his head like a dog. "Here," he said, reaching out and taking a handful of the bags out of her hands. Silently, he carried them into the kitchen.
It took Quinn a full five seconds to uproot her feet from the front porch and follow him into the kitchen. She set the remaining bags on the counter and leaned back against it, arms wrapped as protectively as they could be around er stomach.
"Hey," she said after a long hesitation.
"Hey," he said.
"Been a while," she added.
"Yeah." He shifted his weight awkwardly. "I… well, I don't know. I feel kind of like I want to apologize, but I don't know if I did anything that I need to apologize for."
"You didn't," Quinn said softly. "I did. You didn't."
"I think I loved you," he burst out. His cheeks flushed red. "I don't know if it was love or not. But I think it was."
Quinn swallowed, biting her lip in a desperate attempt not to cry. "I know that I loved you," she whispered. "I know that much."
"But you chose him."
"No," Quinn said vehemently. "I made one drunken mistake with Puck. I chose you." She wished desperately for some way to make him believe her, for support or backup or just one single person on her side who would make him listen.
"I don't know, Quinn," he said after a long pause. "I really don't know what to say to you." He shook his head. "Half the time I can barely look at you without wanting to hit something."
Quinn's resolve slipped, tears breaking free from her eyes and sliding down towards her chin.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered, sniffling. "I wish I could make it better." Unconsciously, she fingered the cross around her neck. "I don't know if I'll ever be able to forgive myself, but God, please, I hope you can forgive me someday."
He shook his head again, a pained look in his eyes. "I don't know if I can. I just don't know."
"Hey," Rachel snapped, appearing behind Quinn and making both Finn and Quinn jump in surprise. "That's crap and you know it," Rachel continued on, oblivious to their shock. "She made a mistake, Finn, and tried to keep it from spiraling too far out of control. She didn't make the best decisions, but she was trying to do the right thing for her child. She chose you to be the father because she thought you would be a better parent than Noah. She lied, but she did it with what you could really call the noblest intentions possible. If you can't forgive the mistakes she made trying to do that, then, well," she crossed her arms over her chest. "You're nothing of the man I thought you were."
Quinn and Finn stared dumbly at the little brunette. Finn's mouth hung open, his eyes gaping; Quinn's fingers still clutched at her cross, lower lip caught between her teeth as Rachel's word detailing her mistakes in perhaps the nicest way possible echoing in her head. Long seconds ticked by, in which Rachel glared at Finn, Finn stared at Rachel, and Quinn looked nervously back and forth between the two of them and wanted nothing more than to hide behind Rachel's diminutive form.
"You can go now," Rachel said suddenly to Finn. She jerked her chin towards the front door. "We'll see you when school starts back."
"I…okay," Finn muttered. Not meeting Quinn's eyes, he shuffled out of the house, jacket in hand.
Quinn stood still in her shock in the kitchen, staring at Rachel. The brunette finally looked at her, and Quinn felt an all-too-familiar twinge of guilt at the exhausted look in Rachel's eyes.
"Thank you," she said softly, finally unwrapping her fingers from her cross.
"He's my friend," Rachel said slowly. "And he's a good guy. But he's a little too accustomed to being the victim in this, I think." She sighed, pushing her hair behind her ears. She nodded at Quinn shortly, a tight smile on her lips, and disappeared down the stairs.
Quinn watched her go, feeling inexplicably like she had just missed something very important. After a long pause, she forced herself to turn away from the empty stairwell. Exhaling slowly through her nose, she set to shelving the boxes of cereal she'd bought.