“I guess that’s something.”
Nick and Charlie came over to the car and got in the other side. Lori immediately looked back to Charlie with a concerned expression. “You’re moving a bit stiff. You should’ve took it easy and let these two inspect their own shacks.”
Charlie smiled easily. “Moving around is good for me. And now we’re done, thanks be to Thor.”
“Thor?”
“I get to pick my gods, and I like the guy with the big… hammer.”
Lori snickered, then rubbed her lips with a fist. “Okaaay. You’re weirder than I thought.”
“Just you wait,” Nick said, pulling out onto the road. “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”
Lori settled back into her seat. “Mom once had us in this place where the owner was a hippie pagan. Every couple of weeks, he got up on the roof of the building in the nude and chanted to the moon. I can handle weird when it pays the rent.”
“Ooh. Something to live up to.” Charlie’s tone wasn’t as animated as his words, though. He shifted restlessly. “Can we head back to the motel first, Nicko? I’m gonna bail on dinner and have a date with four ibuprofen and a flat surface.”
“Sure.”
Lori said, “Works for me. I need a bathroom. I swear this little bastard keeps one foot on my bladder at all times.”
Before he could think, Brian said, “You shouldn’t call him that.”
“What? Little bastard?” Lori patted her round belly. “Relax, Bry. I’m not insulting the kid. After all, it’s the actual truth, right?”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence from all four of them, confusion and distaste together. Brian met Nick’s puzzled eyes in the rearview and realized that Nick was on the confusion side.
He doesn’t remember it’s probably my kid? Oh God, he really doesn’t remember.
He’d thought they just weren’t talking about that day and all the stuff that went down before Nick got kicked in the head. Like, they’d mutually agreed not to go there, not that Nick didn’t actually know. Brian swallowed hard.
Charlie said, “Huh? You were married to Marston legally, weren’t you?”
Lori’s laugh sounded totally natural. “Oh, yeah. I guess I forgot.”
“Forgot?” Nick shook his head. Brian wished he could see Nick’s expression now, but the mirror reflected only his hair. “That baby’s the heir to a dukedom or whatever Marston was. How could you forget?”
“I’ve been playing roles my whole life.” Lori glanced at Charlie and fluffed her hair with a steady hand. “Lorraine Anderson is a single woman with a deadbeat baby daddy she’s not even going to put on the birth certificate. I can hardly name Marston, right? Best I can do is leave the kid a sealed envelope for when he hits eighteen. As of right now, this mini place-kicker is a bastard. Just like me.”
“I guess.” From Charlie’s slow tone, he probably suspected there was more to the story.
“It’s the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth. No one cares.” Lori settled deeper in her seat. “I need a bathroom, like, yesterday. Whoever invented pregnancy was a man.”
“Um.” Brian bit his lip against the things he didn’t want to say. He should leave it to what Lori said. Not add anything. He was crap at lies. He messed them up. “I don’t think pregnancy was invented.”
“No duh.”
They were all quiet for the ten minutes it took to get to the motel. Charlie climbed out of the car stiffly and gave Nick’s window a thump. “See you tomorrow. I’m off to my bed.”
Lori said to Brian, “Can I have your room key?”
“Huh?”
“For the bathroom?”
“Oh. Sure.” He dug in his pocket and handed it forward over the seat. “Here.”
“Be right back.” She hauled her ungainly bulk up out of the car and waddled to the door of their unit. Brian watched her with vague unease. It was odd to see her so weighted down, different from the Lori he’d always known. And yet, he was just as worried about whether she’d make trouble for Charlie as he was worried about her.
When she’d vanished inside the room, Nick said quietly, “There’s something you know that I don’t know.”
He covered his surprise with a shallow cough. “I bet there’s lots of things I know that you don’t.”
“About that baby.”
“Oh. Um.” His mind raced. “What don’t you know?”
Nick twisted around to fix him with a penetrating stare.
Brian shifted uncomfortably. “You were there, same as I was.”
“Where?”
“In the storage building. With, um, Marston and Lori and…”
“And Damon,” Nick continued for him when he ground to a halt. “Yeah, I figured that much out.”
“You really don’t remember?”
“I really don’t. But you do. What is it I’m not remembering? What’s the joke?”
“It’s not a joke.” Heat rushed to his face. He rubbed at the prickling behind his eyes.
Nick must’ve noticed because his voice got quieter. “I didn’t mean it like that. I want to know.”
“Maybe I don’t want to tell you. You ever think of that? Maybe it’s not a good thing.”
“So if it’s something bad, I don’t get to know about it? You just keep me in the dark?”
Brian shook his head. Where do I even start? I can’t do this! Lori came back out the door and he grabbed for the welcome excuse. “Not now. Tonight. I’ll tell you. When it’s just us.”
Nick flicked a look at Lori coming toward them. “All right.”
Brian stayed silent and disconnected through the drive to the farm, as Lori and Nick talked casually about moving— about the stuff stored temporarily in Yasmin’s barn, how to juggle a rental truck between two locations, and what absolutely had to be bought right away. At dinner, Zander sat across the table asking questions, Nick made fun of the places they’d looked at, and Brian managed a smile or two, but the churning in his belly made him push away his plate half full. How do I tell him this?
He went out to take care of some neglected chores, despite the rapidly falling darkness. Maybe between the comforting smells of the barn and the warmth of Luger at his side, he’d figure out how to tell Nick about the baby.
****
It was later than Nick had hoped by the time he ushered Brian and Luger into the motel room and shut out the rest of the world. His forehead throbbed tightly and his neck ached. He hadn’t suffered from a skull-splitting post-concussion migraine for weeks, but he wondered if he was cooking one up now.
As he tugged the thin curtains across the window, he considered letting his questions go. Just get some sleep. Except Brian’s stalling and evasions were starting to really bug him. They’d lingered at the farm for hours. First, Brian had chores to finish, then Luger needed a run after being cooped up, and then Brian wanted to have a shower at Yasmin’s before changing clothes. What had been low-level curiosity and a bit of hurt was now teeth-gritted impatience. Kept in the dark and fed bullshit. By Brian!