"Good lesson to learn. Some people will never learn it, they're a lost cause." Tanner then woke up with a bit of a start and a whimper. Quentin braced himself for another scream fest, and there were tears welling up in the big blue eyes that were red-rimmed and swollen from just being so damn tired. Tanner lost his pacifier for a few moments, but Quentin caught it before it dropped on the floor. Holding him securely with one hand, Quentin found Tanner's bottle of juice in his diaper bag and offered it to him. Apple juice with water was the best thing to give a kid who was ill, according to Nate. Pedialyle and all that sort of stuff was good too, but Tanner didn't like it. All it lead to was bedding soaked with bright orange puke when they tried him with that, and that was why Nate put them onto this little tip. Which was perfect because Tanner liked apple juice. Sometimes, it was all they could get him to have when he was like this. Quentin murmured soft reassurances to him, and it didn't take long for the little boy to settle down again with Quentin holding the bottle for him while he drank from it, gazing up at Quentin as he did. His eyes were drooping again. He would probably doze off again in no time. "Mark said kids with trauma never really get over it. I think what it's got to boil down to is doing things differently in the best way for them. Hell, I'll probably never recover from the shit I went through either. I know my life if different now, and that means everything I do in living it is different too."

He shook his head and he found himself getting annoyed at her question about Kevin, though it exhibited only as a passing look of annoyance across his face as he actively stayed calm because Tanner was still watching him through heavy sleepy eyes while he had his juice. "Because I don't need to be goddamn bailed out of everything. I can deal with my own shit, and figure my own life out again. Otherwise, to be quite honest, I don't want to stick around and keep living it like that where he's just like, for all intents and purposes, a trumped up sugar daddy. I don't need him to bail me out, and I sure as friggen hell don't want to be in a relationship tipped that so far unbalanced that I constantly feel like a useless piece of shit. I might have nothing, but I'd rather have nothing and keep some dignity and pride than have everything band-aided over with hundred dollar bills left and right for the rest of my life. And I don't want to have to effing keep justifying why I feel like that either."