Fallon’s gaze went a little hazy and white. “What?” His voice sounded strange, like he was shouting into a canyon.
“You’re being ordered to submit to a paternity test for…for Mango.” Gage let out a sharp breath. “He knows. Charlie knows everything.”
Fallon was eerily calm by the time they got to wherever Gage was taking them. He had no idea. It was some sort of office building he didn’t recognize. In his head, he figured he should be freaking out. He should be panicking and crying and throwing up or raging and screaming.
Anything but sitting there with a heavy, numb weight on his chest.
When Gage opened his door, he got out and held his boyfriend’s hand as Gage led him inside. The place smelled like one of those floral-scented oil plug-ins that tried to mimic flowers but never quite achieved it.
It burned his eyes, and he blinked as Gage let him go to talk to a man sitting at a desk.
Fallon was very aware in that moment he wasn’t fully himself. Everything felt like it was in a dream. The echoes of his shoes on the tile were too soft, and his breathing was too loud. Gage’s hand—when he was holding it—had been too loose, then too tight, which was not like him.
So it probably wasn’t him.
It was Fallon.
“Where are we?” he finally asked.
Gage spun around, eyes slightly wide. “We’re at Monty’s office.”
Fallon thought maybe he was supposed to know who that was, but he didn’t.
“He’s my uncle,” Gage went on. “He’s a lawyer. I think he can help.”
If there was any help to be had. That was the entire problem. Fallon hadn’t been able to bring himself to look at the court order when he was in the car, but the truth was—this was Charlie’s baby. And if he knew about this, he had every right to demand to be part of it.
Didn’t he?
After what he did?
Fallon snapped back to reality just as Gage was leading him down the hall, and he came to a stop in front of a wooden door that was propped partly open. Leaning in, Fallon saw Gage smile.
“Hey. You’re not busy still, right?”
“Not even a little. Come in.”
Fallon hadn’t known what to expect with Monty. He hadn’t formed any sort of mental image at all. He was short, though, and thin, with a mop of brown waves and a very soft, very young-looking face, though flecks of grey at his temples betrayed his age.
He was dressed in a way Fallon supposed most lawyers dressed—a white button-up with the sleeves rolled to his elbows and black slacks. When he stood, he walked slowly and carefully, stretching his arms for Gage, who leaned into a hug.
“And this must be Fallon?” That was when Fallon noticed the accent. It was slight, but there. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“I don’t even want to imagine what weekly drinkies are like right now,” Gage said, smiling faintly.
Fallon appreciated that Monty didn’t try to hug him or shake his hand. He just gave him a quick up-and-down look before gesturing to his office chairs.
“Sit. Let me see the order.”
Gage handed it over before pulling one chair back for Fallon, then taking the other for himself. The room fell into another disconcerting quiet before Monty set the papers down and looked at Fallon for a long, tense beat.
“Is it true?”
Fallon blinked at him.
“Is he the other father?”
Fallon licked his lips, then shrugged. “I was with two people in the same night, but I didn’t use protection with Charlie.”
