Being matched to a past crime is more plausible than Rock being my father.
Rock sits there, staring into space. A complete non-reaction. Like Hope just announced she was going to take a nap instead of blowing up our entire lives.
“Are they sure?” he asks in a dazed tone.
“They tested it a few times…” Her quivering voice is a mix of misery and embarrassment. She shouldn’t be the one delivering this news. Some doctor in a lab coat who has no connection to us should be telling us this. So I could grab him by the throat to choke off this outrageous lie. “Because of the age difference, they tested it a few times.”
“Rock, that’s insane,” I protest. For fuck’s sake, he’s barely twelve years older than me. “That can’t be right.” I wait a beat, searching for some sort of response. Anything at all. But Rock’s useless, lost chasing his own internal demons. I turn toward Hope. “How is that possible?”
She struggles to get out of her chair and rounds the table, approaching me slowly.
“How?” I ask again.
She pulls me into a warm, comforting hug. “I don’t know.” Her soothing voice and the familiar floral scent clinging to her hair calm me for a second. But the awkward angle has to be uncomfortable for her. I pull out the chair next to me to get her off her feet. She glides her soft, warm hand over mine and squeezes.
“Rock.” I add a sharper bite to my tone to get his attention. “Did you know my mother?”
He lifts his gaze and snorts. “Apparently.”
“How—I mean, I didn’t think you ever met her…” I can’t recall a single time Rock and my mother were face-to-face, let alone... Once I found the club, I kept that part of my life a secret. I had something that was mine and didn’t want to share my new family with the mother who’d failed me in so many different ways.
“Has to be Tina,” Rock mutters. “My dad used to pay this girl in the neighborhood a couple bucks to watch me when he was gonna be out overnight.”
My heart stops cold. Tina. “My mother hated her name,” I whisper, shaken down to my soul. This is real. Rock’s my father. “Her middle name was Christina… Sometimes she went by Tina, even though my father refused to ever call her that.”
“I never…knew that.”
Why would he? I didn’t give a lot of thought to my mother’s weird hang-ups around her name. I was too busy trying to make sure Heidi was fed and cared for, and that my mother’s creepy boyfriends stayed the fuck away from my baby sister.
Rock clears his throat and sits forward. “I never met her when you started hanging around the MC. Saw her from a distance once or twice. But that had to be thirteen or fourteen years later. When Wrath and I hired people to search for her after she took off, we used her real name.”
“When…I had the issue with my mom and, you know, her boyfriends sniffing around Heidi, I told Lucky and Grinder. They’re the ones who had a chat with her. I wonder if she would’ve figured it out if I’d told you instead.”
Rock’s solemn gray eyes widen and fill with shock. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was embarrassed.”
“You have nothing to be embarrassed about with me, Marcel.”
The shame that clings to me from my past never ends. “I always suspected Heidi and I didn’t have the same father. Figured that was why my dad took off after she was born…But maybe he realized I wasn’t his. My grandmother always implied I was a bastard. That’s supposedly why she hated me so damn much.” I stop my random word vomit and jam my fingers through my hair. This is fucking unreal. All this time…I’ve known Rock for so long. We’ve done…shit. “I have to get out of here.” I stand, careful not to knock into the wall again.
“Rock,” Hope pleads.
Fuck, what if they tell Heidi? Try to break the news to her gently before I have a chance to wrap my brain around this first? She craves family so much. It would break her heart to find out we’re half-siblings. Not to mention, she thinks of Rock as a father figure. “Please, don’t say anything to anyone. Especially not Heidi.”
“Of course not,” Hope says, hurrying to my side. She throws a scowl at Rock as she passes him. “But where are you going? Please don’t go off when you’re this upset.”
“I just need to go for a walk in the woods, Hope. That’s all.” I’m not sure that’s where I’m headed, but I need to tell her something so she doesn’t worry.
In a daze, I step into the living room.
“Everything all right, welterweight?” Wrath rumbles from his usual spot on the couch.
He’s so solemn, concerned, even. It’s not like Wrath. He loves busting my nuts way too much. Does he know?
“I’m fine.” I hurry outside to get away from him.
Rambunctious voices spill out of the garage. Fuck. I can’t reach the trail to the woods without someone seeing me. Frozen in place, I stare into the wide-open overhead doors. My gaze lands on Murphy in the back corner, talking to Dex.
What am I going to say?
I retreat into the relative safety of the clubhouse. Ignoring Wrath, I return to the war room and knock on the door, then open it. Rock and Hope seem tangled in an uncomfortable conversation. Might as well make it full-throttle awkward. “Hey, can we talk for a second?”
Rock waves me in without answering. Hope pushes herself out of her chair. “I’ll leave you two—”
“You don’t have to go, Hope.” I’m torn between wanting her to stay and act as a buffer and not wanting her to hear any more gory details about my sordid beginnings.
“No, I think you two should talk alone. If you need me, I’ll be right out there.”
Somehow, I find that comforting. On impulse, I grab her as she reaches for the door. She leans into me, curling her arms around my waist and hugging me again. Why couldn’t I have had someone more like her for a mother?
Ooof, if I said that out loud, she’d probably kill me.
“He already loves you so much, Teller. This doesn’t change anything,” she whispers against my ear.
Sweet Hope with a comforting lie. “Thank you, Hope.”
The door closes behind her with a soft click.
“Come here, knucklehead.” Rock opens his arms wide.
I snort at the nickname, then stare at him, unsure I want any physical contact at the moment. My hesitation doesn’t deter Rock. He pulls me in close. It’s awkward as fuck. The urge to shove him away burns through my arms.
“What do we do?” I mumble.
Instead of answering, he pushes me toward one of the chairs, then pulls his closer to me. “What do you want to do?”
What do I want to do? I’m a grown-ass man who just had his entire history rearranged. “Fuck, I don’t know.” I scrub my hands over my face, searching for an answer that will make sense. “Can we take the test again? I want to… I want to be sure before…” The lab fucked up once already. What if this is all a big mistake? There has to be something I can do to regain control of my life.
Rock opens his mouth like he wants to say no, but then nods. “I’ll ask Hope if she can schedule it for us.”