“Yes.”
My mother eyed me oddly. “Doesn’t change anything. Your read dad didn’t know any more than Grayson did.”
I stared at her as my father’s voice came back to me. She likely doesn’t even know herself. “But you know.”
My mother smirked. “Of course I know. Even fancied myself in love for a little while there.”
“But you were married to Daddy.” She arched a mocking brow, and I cursed under my breath as I caught my mistake. “You were married to Grayson.”
“Mmm, but Grayson was a bastard. Maybe even more so back then. All about work and money and ambition and the next hit show. Your real father… he was a class act. He was married too, you know, but at least he had the decency to feel guilty for sneaking out on his wife. He even offered to leave her for me.”
“Who was he?”
My mother leaned back and eyed me. She was having fun with this.
The witch.
“He doesn’t know about me?” I asked. This felt like the most crucial part of all. If there was a man out there who knew he was my father and never cared enough to claim me…
But then again, if he never knew, maybe I could find him. Maybe he’d be happy to meet me.
She looked away. “I thought about telling him, but he beat me to it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He came to me one day and said he had to end it. His wife was pregnant. So…” She waved a hand. “I let him go.”
Rage filled me so fast I had to clench my fists to keep from striking out. She let him go. For both of us. As if that was her right. She’d stuck me with a monster and let me believe that he was my real father, and all so she could get an extra payday.
“Who is he?” I asked again.
Her gaze shot up to mine, and she laughed. “Oh, honey, haven’t you guessed?” She reached for her wine glass, still cackling. “You really are your mother’s daughter.”
Fourteen
Brandon
I couldn’t take much more of this. Lila hadn’t been in there for long, but the wait was excruciating, especially because Jack was blowing up my phone the entire time asking if I’d seen Lila and where I’d gone off to.
Eventually, I’d caved. I had no idea what had gone down back at Casa Devereaux, but I knew those bruises weren’t Jack’s doing, and I had no doubt he was going out of his mind with worry.
Heck, I was going out of my mind with worry and she wasn’t the love of my life.
But she was one of my best friends. One of my only friends.
“Lila, you need to talk to me,” I said as I pulled up in front of my house. More than an hour we’d been in the car together, and she hadn’t said a word.
I could respect that. I understood the need to process, the need for some silence. But someone had manhandled her. Someone had made her cry.
And while I knew Lila wasn’t as cold and tough as she pretended to be… she wasn’t the type to cry either. Not over just anything, and not enough to look like this. Like her world had been ripped apart.
I leaned over to undo her seatbelt when she didn’t move. The gesture seemed to wake her from her daze. “What did you say?”
Her voice was like sandpaper.
I reached out and tucked a strand of pale blonde hair out of her face. “Talk to me. Please.”
She looked at me for a long while, but it took a few moments before she actually saw me. When she did, she blinked once and then nodded. “Yeah. Okay. Let’s go inside.”
I’d be the first to admit it. My place was a bachelor pad. A fact neither me nor Jack typically had a problem with… until right this minute. “Um, do you need some… water or… water?”
She stared up at me from her spot on my couch. The place had been sparsely furnished when they’d handed it over to me, and I hadn’t bothered to add anything new, so it was just the couch in this room.
Well, the couch and a big-screen TV. I wasn’t a total heathen.
“Water would be nice,” she said.
I nodded and went off to get it. When I returned, I gave her a full report of her other options. “We have some leftover pizza, a half a bag of chips, or a—”
“I’m good,” she interrupted.
The fact that she didn’t mock or tease me right now was more alarming than anything I’d seen or heard all night.
“Lila,” I said, sinking into the sofa beside her. “You gotta tell me what’s up.”
She blinked up at me, and my lungs hitched at the sight of the tears in her eyes.
She nodded. “I just don’t know where to start.”
“Try from the beginning,” I said.
She sniffed, and then she started in on a sordid tale about her terrible father and how she and her sister were trying to get dirt on him, and then how he’d hit her tonight, and how she’d overheard him tell Jack and Tess that she wasn’t his biological daughter.
“So that’s why you went to your mom’s?” I asked. “To find out who your real father is?”
She bit her lip and nodded, and the mix of emotions in her eyes was overwhelming to see.
“And?” I prompted.
She let out a long breath. “I have no idea how to say this, so I’m just going to say it.”
I nodded.
“She told me that your dad, Frank MacMillan… that he was my dad too.”
I stared at her as the world shifted around me. As the earth seemed to flip in one direction and then another, all while her gaze held me fixed in place, like her eyes were my very own axis.
They were my father’s eyes. I’d looked into her eyes a million times before, but I’d never seen it before.
But now…
Now, I couldn’t unsee it.
She had his eyes.
“Do you… did she…” I swallowed. Crap. I had no idea what to make of this.
She patted my shoulder. “It’s okay. Take your time.”
And so, we sat there. Collapsed there, more like. I fell back against the sofa beside her as I tried to process this.
“So, my dad cheated on my mom with yours,” I said after a while.
“That’s what she claimed.” Her wary tone had me turning toward her.
“I think it’s true,” I said.
Her brows hitched up, no doubt at the certainty in my tone. “You do?”
I just nodded. I didn’t really care to explain that looking into her eyes made it feel undeniable. Like… how had I not seen it before? But too many thoughts were jostling to get out, to be reasoned and rationalized.
“And the man who raised you as your father had an affair with my mom,” I said.
She gave a little sigh like she was exhausted just thinking about the mess our parents had made.
A whole new thought occurred to me, and I turned to her in horror. “Does your dad know? I mean your Devereaux dad?”
She shook her head. “No.”
“Good, because…” My mind raced with the way she’d hit on me back in Pinedale. I mean, nothing had happened because that wasn’t my thing, but I knew he’d sent her with that purpose and… “If he had, that’s just—”