Glee in January was a frustrating mix of comfort—a newfound balance and friendship binding Quinn to Rachel and Tina and Mercedes and Artie, and a renewed loyalty to and from Santana and Brittany—and awkwardness—with every shared glance Quinn hurriedly looked away from with Puck, and every heart-wrenching moment when Finn would let his eyes skate right over her to the next person. The first two weeks of the semester brought a foot of powdery snow and Dave Karofsky renewing his efforts in demolishing the self-esteem of anyone associated with the glee club.
Quinn found herself being sheltered unquestionably by her friends in glee, rarely walking the halls alone between classes; she suspected that Rachel had something to do with the escorts she was silently granted between every class. The brunette had, as their tentative friendship had grown, become unwaveringly protective of Quinn. Their friendship had taken half of their peers by surprise when school had come back into session; Mr. Scheuster had watched with raised eyebrows as they sat comfortably next to one another and conversed with Brittany and Santana, and Finn had taken to glaring at Quinn with a look that teetered between anger and hurt, and Puck had done a double take the first time he saw them walking into glee together and laughing. Afterwards, as they fell into a comfortable rhythm that found them almost inseparable from Santana and Brittany, he had taken to good-natured smirks and comments about lesbian foursomes. Kurt had been quietly ecstatic, as if the fact that Rachel and Quinn were now friends meant that he now had a shot with an almost-heartbroken Finn.
As January slid into February, Quinn finally started to move past the morning sickness, and into the maternity clothes that she had bought on her shopping trip before the semester started. Though she had never been one to color-code her clothes (her notes, perhaps, but only because those were far more important, though she would never admit such thinking aloud), she still found herself returning her laundry to the closet and drawers in the same order that Rachel had put them in initially.
A week before Valentine's Day, Puck cornered her after glee. After that one painful afternoon when Finn punched Puck and Quinn asked him to let her manage alone, he had done well at respecting her wishes, hovering on the periphery of the pregnancy in a somewhat annoying but wonderfully comforting manner. The seeds of what might be a friendship—as tentative as hers and Rachel's had been only a few months earlier—were there, and Quinn quietly reveled in the calming knowledge that at least a few things were starting to fall into place for them.
"I gotta know," he said immediately, as soon as they were alone in the hallway. "Are you still going to give this kid to Mr. Scheu's wife?"
Quinn stared at him, momentarily dumbfounded. Not a second after she had found out how truly unbalanced Terri Scheuster was, Quinn had made up her mind that she could never give her child to such a person. The last glee practice of the last semester, after which Mr. Scheu had pulled Quinn aside and explained in that maddeningly calm way of his that his wife was a loony toon, had been the first time Quinn had allowed to herself to imagine a little girl with blonde curls and green eyes.
"What?" she said. "No way."
"Really?" His shoulders slumped in relief, and he let out a long breath, a relieved grin on his lip. "Thank God. I hear she's nuts."
"A little bit," Quinn said. "No, I'm not giving her to… that woman."
"Her?" he said softly. His eyes widened a little under his Mohawk, and Quinn wondered suddenly if she had ever told him that it was a girl. She had always assumed that Finn had told him, but suddenly she doubted that assumption. "It's a girl?"
The soft look in his eyes clenched Quinn's heart, her stomach cramping painfully. Now more than ever—more than when he had babysat with her, more than when they had thrown brownie batter cheerfully at one another, more than when he had sworn to her that he wouldn't be like his own father—she remembered why she had let herself fall into his arms that one night. It hadn't been that she was so drunk she thought he was Finn, or so drunk that simply didn't care; no, it had been a bad cheerleading practice and Rachel Berry edging in on her boyfriend and a single disastrous weigh-in, and Puck watching out for her at a party when no one else cared, and Puck offering to drive her home, and Puck looking at her with a sad and soft look in his eyes before he kissed her cheek and told her that she was beautiful and then blushed and started off to find his keys.
"Yes," Quinn whispered. For the first time, she honestly felt like maybe she could do this with him at her side, in her life. Momentarily, she let herself slip into the now-familiar daydream of holding the hand of a little girl with her blonde curls; this time, the girl had Puck's eyes and he appeared in the daydream, grabbing their daughter around the waist and swooping her up onto his shoulders, one hand holding her in place and the other wrapping around Quinn's lower back as he kissed her cheek.
The daydream shattered when the door to the practice room opened behind Puck and Finn walked out, coming to a sharp halt when he saw the two of them standing across the hall. His eyes narrowed momentarily, but then he shrugged and shuffled off silently, and Quinn felt her chest clench painfully. She remembered why she was living with the Berrys now instead of Puck, why she had kept herself from running back to his arms in the first place. Finn might be upset by her being friends with Rachel now, but Quinn was certain that it would be far worse in his eyes if she let herself find any sense of comfort and family in his former best friend.
"It's a girl," Quinn said, forcing an edge to her voice that hurt her throat. "Not some little boy that you can give a Mohawk and play football with and teach to turn a pool-cleaning business into a way to get laid." The pain in her chest doubled, and she swore to herself that neither of them deserved happiness yet—for Finn's sake, because he really was a wonderful guy and they both really had screwed up—and that alienating Puck was possibly the only chance that either of them had at fixing theirs betrayals regarding Finn.
"Hey," he said defensively. "That's bull. That's not what I meant."
"I'm sure," Quinn snapped. She looked anywhere but his face, knowing that if she took in the wounded look in his eyes one more time she would crumble; she spun on the heel of her shoe and took off down the hallway, hands resting on her stomach protectively and tears burning at her eyes.
"Hey!" he said again. He chased after her, long strides eating up the distance between them impossibly quickly. His hand wrapped around her elbow in a surprisingly gentle grip, pulling her around to face him. "Quinn," he said.
Her resolve faltered at the sound of her name; he so rarely referred to anyone by name that it sounded almost foreign in his voice. She looked up at him, tears slipping down her cheeks.
"Don't," she whispered. Her voice was thick with the tears she was trying valiantly to restrain. "Please. It has to be this way."
"Why?" he said urgently.
"Because I screwed up," she said. "I hurt so many people. I hurt him so badly, and the worst thing I could do would be to be happy with you, because that makes the betrayal complete. I can't do that to him."
"That's bullshit," he said. "You don't get to be happy? That's bullshit."
Her fingers drifted up to the cross hanging around her neck. "It has to be this way," she said again. "I'm sorry. I'm not giving her to Terri Scheuster, but this is how it has to be."
"That's not fair," he said. The wounded look in his eyes vanished, replaced by anger. "What about me? Your jacked up sense of repentance is screwing me over, too." He let go of her arm, throwing up his arms angrily and starting to pace. She watched him silently, still gripping her necklace, and wished desperately for Rachel or Santana or Brittany to walk around the corner and break up the tension.
He paused in his pacing, facing her with tense shoulders. "You always choose him," he said, his voice tight. "What's a guy got to do to compete with the one who can't forgive anyone for when they screw up?"
Shaking his head angrily, he slammed his fist into a locker, the sound echoing up and down the empty hallway, and strode off. Quinn slumped back against the wall, fingers shaking. She took a deep breath, trying to steady her hands, and then took a second, and a third, and then a fourth. Finally feeling stable enough on her feet to walk, trying her hardest to ignore the ache in her chest, she started down the hallway towards the parking lot where she had parked her car that morning. She and Rachel had taken to splitting the drives to school by week, and she had to struggle for a moment to remember which car she was looking for.
Rachel was waiting for her by the car, arms crossed tightly across her chest against the cold. "Finally," she said, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "It's freezing out here."
Quinn nodded silently, not trusting herself to speak. She fumbled for her keys, digging them out of her backpack. Rachel watched her quietly, brow furrowed.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
Quinn nodded again. She finally found her keys, yanking them free from where they were caught on one of her notebooks. Rachel reached out and wrapped one hand around hers, stilling her from finding the proper key. "Quinn," she said. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing," Quinn muttered. Her voice lacked any semblance of conviction, not even convincing to her own ears.
"Yeah, like I'm going to believe that," Rachel said. She squeezed Quinn's hand gently, not letting go. "What's wrong?"
Quinn shook her head, tilting her head back to look at the cloudy sky above her. "Puck," she said finally.
"What about him?"
"He wanted to know if I was still going to give the baby to Terri Scheuster." She dropped her head back forward. She let her eyes close, trying and failing to hold back the tears that had yet to really stop from forming since her conversation with Puck. "And then… he got mad when I told him I still couldn't be with him."
"Why can't you?" Even with her eyes closed, Quinn knew that Rachel's brow was furrowed once more.
"Because," Quinn said slowly. "Because me and Puck together is like the icing on the cake of how much I hurt Finn. And I can't do that to him."
"What?" The disbelief was evident in Rachel's voice. Quinn smiled a little sadly, looking up finally to meet her eyes. "Quinn, that's ridiculous."
"No, it isn't," she said softly. Her eyes drifted down to where Rachel still gripped her hand.
"You don't have to keep punishing yourself," Rachel said exasperatedly. "It's pointless and unnecessary."
"I can't be with Puck without feeling guilty because it'll hurt Finn," Quinn said. "Every time I look at Puck, I think about how we got into this mess in the first place, and I think about how I was okay with doing things with him that I never did with Finn, and I feel like the worst person in the world. Because Finn's a good guy, and we hurt him, and I can't keep hurting him."
Rachel's hand finally slipped from Quinn's, and she pushed her dark hair back absently, staring at Quinn curiously. "You have to stop punishing yourself," she said again. "No one deserves this much punishment."
"You don't have to understand it," Quinn whispered. "I don't know how to explain it any better. But just… please, Rachel. I have to do it this way."
"You have to break your heart and his?" Rachel said, disbelief ringing in Quinn's ears. "Why does Finn get to move on and neither you nor Puck are allowed to? Why don't you get to be happy?"
"I don't know how to explain it," Quinn repeated. Her head ached, and she wished desperately to be able to lie down and sleep. "It's like… I cheated on Finn. I lied to Finn. I hurt Finn. It all started with me sleeping with Puck and then lying to Finn about it. Me being with Puck is like saying that everything I did was okay. And it's not."
Rachel stared at her. Her eyes were wide, her mouth opening and closing a few times as she seemed to search desperately for words. "I don't get it," she said finally, her voice soft. "You're right. I guess I don't have to. It's your decision. But I think that if you want to be with Puck, you shouldn't let Finn stand in the way. You hurt him, yes, but he also hurt you, and while neither cancels out the other, you both can and should move on." She moved to stand square in front of Quinn, holding her eyes steadfastly. "You're a good person, you know. You deserve happiness as much as he does."
Quinn remained silent, pulling her eyes away from Rachel's intense stare and locking her gaze one the ground. Her hands were shaking again, tears still sliding down her cheeks; her face hurt from the cold wind. She didn't protest when Rachel eased the keys out of her hands and instructed her to get in the passenger seat. The whole drive back to the Berry's house, she continued to cry silently as she stared at her knees. She didn't notice the looks Rachel sent her way, frustration and sympathy and longing and concern all wrapped together and undisguised in her brown eyes.