"I knew you lived here. I just didn't know how you'd feel about me looking you up." Quinn said as she handed Finn his phone back taking a seat in the hospital cafeteria.

"How long have you been in Cincinnati?" Finn asked as he grabbed a bottle of water then sat across from her. Small talk had always been a lost art form on him but in this instance he decided to give it a try.

"Not long. Nick, my husband, he's had an internship and residency lined up here for a while but we just moved a couple of weeks ago. We're gonna be here for a while so we wanted to buy but with the baby coming and an intern's salary, well price ranges haven't worked out in our favor." She took a sip of her water before she reached down and ran her hand over her visibly pregnant stomach and shrugged. "Oh well, just a bump in the road. You have to take life as it comes at you. What about you? I missed seeing you at the reunion."

"Yeah," he swallowed and gave her a half-apologetic forced smile. "Puck and Kurt both tried to talk me into coming but somehow I didn't think I'd have anything of substance to add."

Quinn raised an eyebrow at him, "Really? You weren't just avoiding Rachel? That's what everyone seemed to think. Everyone was there except you and I have to admit those of us that didn't know were shocked when you two didn't walk in together. I think we all expected you two to ride off into the sunset after graduation and show up at the reunion with gorgeous singing and badly dancing babies. Then Kurt told me about your ex-wife, how you lost a baby. "

Finn huffed out a breath through his nose and took a long sip from his coffee cup and stared off at the wall behind her."Of course he did."

"He only told me because I asked. He also told me that you had a successful sporting goods business and bought a house and you were doing pretty well for yourself." Her words came to an awkward pause, "Why don't I believe that right now?"

"Because it's not true." He replied curtly and then with a bitter smile on his face he shifted his eyes back to hers. "But I'm sure you don't want to hear about it."

"Try me." She challenged as if the tone of her voice spoke was almost daring him to speak.

The compassionate look in her eyes gave him the encouragement to speak, as if there was nothing he was going to tell her that would surprise her. "The facts are true. I do have a business. I did buy a house. But I wasn't hiding from Rachel, at least not then," the last off his words drifted into a mumble. "I was hiding from everyone. My life's a mess. I didn't really realize it was until recently, but I know it now. It has been for a while. I don't know, there was you and the baby years ago and then Rachel left and then Alison lost our baby and I don't know somewhere along the way it just got easier to stop caring. So I did. I just gave up on everyone around me and stopped caring. It was easier than feeling. It was easier just to exist."

"What happened to your hand?" She asked as if she knew there was more to the story and gestured towards his bandaged hand.

"I started feeling again. And I didn't like it."

"Rachel?" His eyebrow lifted at her in a quizzical manner before she answered his unspoken question. "You can't take a nominee to the Tonys and not expect pictures to show up on the internet. I hope you weren't just trying to make something right." Her eyebrows rose at him.

"I wasn't." He nodded back at Quinn and let out a sigh. "I honestly felt something. Feel something." His eyes closed and his face squished expressing a pain that wasn't physical. "She opened a floodgate of everything I never wanted to feel again and I didn't like it."

Quinn closed her eyes and sighed as she softly shook her head at him. "All through high school I had this need to be popular and at the top, but all I really wanted was for someone to love me. I was desperate for someone to really love me and not just the façade. I think it was part of the reason I kept trying to cling on to you so hard because everyone around you loved you and I wanted to be a part of that so badly." The pressed smile on her face was bittersweet. "And I held on to that feeling for so long. I went to college and I joined a sorority chasing after that need that I never really understood. Then one day I realized that clinging to someone wasn't going to change anything, the only thing I could change was myself. I needed to love myself and have faith in myself before anyone else ever would. You know when I finally did that I realized all the love I'd always had around me." A laugh escaped through her nose and a sweet smile crossed her lips. "Six months after I realized that and I finally started to love myself and be myself and make people take me for who I was and not who I was trying to be. It was when I started accepting the love around me I met Nick. And I've never had to be anything else since. I know I don't know who you are now, but the Finn I used to know would have never given up on anything. And it doesn't sound me to like you just gave up on everyone around you Finn. It sounds to me like you like you gave up on yourself first. And that's the worst thing you can do because you're the only one who can change anything in your life. If you don't like the way you feel. If you don't like feeling, well, you're the only one who can change that. You can only mask it for so long."

Finn let out a breath he'd been holding in and gave her a sad half smile, and shrugged as he opened his mouth to say something only to have his words interrupted before they came out.

"There you are." A slightly familiar voice spoke from behind them.

"Nick!" Quinn's face lit up as she stood to greet the man in scrubs walking towards their table. "Finn, this is my husband Nick," she gestured out between the two men. "Nick this is an old friend of mine, Finn."

"We've met. I'm the one who bandaged up that hand. Didn't know you knew my wife Tyson," he joked and reached his hand out to shake Finn's good hand before he turned back to Quinn and kissed her cheek.

"We go back way back," Finn watched as the couple kissed, the young doctor he'd met shortly before looking at Quinn with adoring eyes as his hand slid down to her stomach before he moved in to kiss her again. "I was just keeping her company until you were free. I'll let you two have your time." He stood from the table and waved before he turned and started to walk away.

"Finn!" Quinn called out before he got to the cafeteria door. "I hope you figure it all out."

He turned and raised an eyebrow at her statement, "Figure what out?"

"When you do, you'll know." Quinn gave him a smile as if she knew a secret he didn't and it was the last thing Finn saw before he walked out of the room.
00000

As he drove home, he tried to clear his mind, but as hard as he tried he couldn't stop Quinn's words from echoing in his head

"When you do, you'll know."

They were planted in his brain like a firework waiting to go off, if only he could find the fuse. He took the familiar steps to his front door and looked around at the mess. His eyes landed on the half full bottle of Jack Daniels that taunted him from the coffee table. His stomach turned, and for the first time in almost two weeks the sight of the alcohol disgusted him. His face squished and he choked back bile at the thought. The smell of stale alcohol his nose and he almost threw up, being sober was not treating him kindly. He had to make the smell go away and fast. So he started to clean and as the first round of empty bottles hit the bottom of the trash can in the kitchen he wondered how he'd ever managed to clean up after a binge before.

His eyes raised from the trash can and looked to the refrigerator covered in papers and pictures. There was no fight in him as a half smile crossed his face when it landed on a drawing of a house Jace had given him. With a thick swallow his eyes moved up to take in the center picture.

"That was the Greek Wars, sophomore year…The three of us; we were all best friends… It was never like anyone was a third wheel…It still isn't."

"I never had to," his voice echoed through the kitchen to bounce of the walls and resonate in his ears. He pulled the picture from it place and brought it up closer to him. His mouth fell open as he drug his hands down his face. "You dumb bastard." He said out loud as the tears began to well in his eyes. "You've never had to clean up your own mess." He slammed his eyes shut and forced the forming tears out. His jaw shook and he made a mad dash for the staircase, every mess around him but one forgotten. His breath was labored as he reached the top and dropped to his knees. He brushed the broken glass away and picked up the picture.

"Break a leg."

"I love you."

It felt like his throat was collapsing on him as he tried to breath. The tears fell and he didn't try to fight them. He didn't want to fight them as he felt the hot liquid roll down his face and his eyes began to burn. "You never tried." He spoke with a labored breath as he looked between the two pictures. "You never tried." He told himself and the tears fell faster bringing forth all the emotions he had buried for so long; with everything that had happened he'd never cried over any of it. And God he never expected it to feel this way. His unexpected sobs came out loud. The tears were of his own making. There was no one to blame but himself. This time he'd opened the floodgate himself and the way it was washing over him felt like release. He reached up and tugged his hands through his hair, giving it a hard pull as he let out a scream. The neighbors probably thought he was crazy but Finn no longer cared as he screamed again.

Crying felt good, screaming felt good. His tears stopped and he scoffed at himself as it all hit him. Frantically he dug in his pocket for his phone and stared at the voice mail icon on the screen. He dialed his voice mail and began to scroll through the messages. He had to erase seven from Kurt that ranged from worried to infuriated before he heard her voice.

"I don't if you'll listen to this but I have to say it. Ten years ago I did what I thought was best. And maybe that was a mistake and maybe I've lost the last chance I'll get with you because of it. But I meant what I said. I loved you, and I love you now."

He could hear the tears in her voice as he spoke. But her voice, her words, they made him smile. His eyes dropped back down to the two pictures he still held tightly in his hand.

"When you do, you'll know."

Then it was as if the fuse he was searching for finally lit and the firework went off. He pulled up the contact list on his phone and stared at the name on the screen for several moments. His heart raced as he hit the call button and waited for an answer.

"Hey, this is going to sound insane..."