Because I already know the answer. Of course I do. Joe would have walked in here and told us right off the bat if there was nothing for us to worry about, and the fact that he hasn’t tells me that he knows damn well what’s going on here. He asked her, and she told him the answer, which is…
“She said that it’s us,” he finishes up at last, his voice dropping so low I can hardly hear it. “We’re the parents. One of us, anyway.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Carlisle mutters, flopping down onto the couch like his legs won’t hold him up any longer.
Callum doesn’t move an inch, staring off into space like he can barely believe what he heard. I feel like my entire body is frozen, my feet rooted to the ground right where I stand. Joe, as the bearer of the news, stares off into the distance, like his entireworld has crumbled around him and he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with the pieces that are left.
“You’re sure?” Carlisle interrogates him. “It couldn’t have been anyone else?—”
“She’s sure,” he replies softly. “Didn’t leave any room for doubt. It happened that night, that night at the bonfire. Doesn’t seem like she’s got any reason to second-guess it.”
Silence fills the room again, and I flex my hands at my sides, digging my nails into my palms to try and pull myself the fuck together.This can’t be happening.But no matter how many times I repeat that inside my head, it doesn’t make it any less real. The four children upstairs, they belong to us—one of us, though there’s a crazy part of me that can’t help but see them as being a part of all of us. Four of us, four of them. It makes sense, right? I do my best to pull my shit together, but there are so many questions I hardly know where to start.
“Which one of us?” Carlisle says, as though asking enough questions will undo the shock of all of this.
Joe shakes his head. “She didn’t exactly explain that part to me.”
“So she doesn’t know?” Carlisle exclaims. “How can she not know?”
“I don’t know if you remember, Carlisle,” I retort. “But we were all with her that night. And it’s not like we were around to take a paternity test to figure out which one of us is actually the father…”
“Don’t get smart with me,” Carlisle shoots back.
I know he’s not actually mad at me, just lashing out at anyone close enough for him to make contact with. I don’t even want tothink what’s going on inside his head, with his own complicated relationship with his parents to consider. He must be tearing himself apart right now, and as he springs to his feet and begins to pace, I can’t say I blame him.
I stare off into space, my mind reeling from the fresh injection of information. On some level, I knew from the moment I saw those kids that they had something to do with us. Not just because the ages matched up, though that was a part of it, but because something deep inside of me responded to them with a protectiveness that I had never felt when helping other children in the past. I thought it might just be because they belonged to Angelie, because they’re natives of the same place that I called home for so long, I didn’t know—but whatever the reason, I couldn’t deny the connection I felt to them.
And now, I’m finding out that I might be their father.
Theirfather.The thought of it is almost laughable, given my history with women. I don’t think I’ve ever been with the same woman twice—at least, not two nights in a row, that much is for certain. I never wanted to be. It’s far easier to keep emotion out of the equation when you aren’t making the rounds more than once, and that’s how I like it. The women I’ve been with, I don’t dislike them, I don’t disrespect them, but I’ve always had my eye on what comes next, the next conquest, the next girl, the next chance to find my way into someone’s bed.
Which is what I thought I was doing with Angelie all those years ago. Okay, we might not have made it as far as her bed, but that was the end of it. How could I be with a woman a single time, and now find myself a potential father to four children?
I glance toward the stairs, and my stomach twists at the thought of it. At the thought of all the ways I could fuck them up if I trulywas their father. I’m not like Callum, even though we’re twins—I don’t have that same grip on responsibility that he does, the same feet planted firmly on the ground like him. I’m likely the last one among us Angelie would actually want to be the father of her children, but unfortunately for her, biology doesn’t always consider who’s the most stable and grounded choice when it comes to bringing little ones into the world.
“What the fuck do we do?” Carlisle demands, finally cutting through the silence.
“Could we get her to agree to a paternity test?” Callum suggests. “Figure out which one of us is actually the father?”
“What difference would that make?” Joe replies. “We were all there that night. Besides, it’s not like we haven’t shared enough as it is?—”
“But children?” Callum replies, shaking his head. “That’s different.”
“Why is it different?” Joe counters. “If we’re going to be there for them?—”
“Then we’d have to move back to Devin Ridge to do it,” Carlisle replies, and his voice takes on a hollow tone, as though it’s just now striking him how much it would demand from him. All of us turn to look at him, distinctly aware of all the reasons he left town, even if he’s not willing to put them into words.
“If she even wants us there,” I point out. “She would have gotten in touch with us if she wanted us to be a part of those children’s lives, wouldn’t she?”
“Maybe she didn’t know how,” Joe replies. “Not like we left a forwarding address when we enlisted.”
“Yeah, but she knows people here,” I continue. “She would have been able to track us down, if she had wanted to…”
Those words hang there in the air, the weight of them impossible to ignore.If she had wanted to.Considering that she chose to keep us at arm’s length for all this time, that suggests to me that she never intended for us to know about the children. Never thought that we would set foot in Devin Ridge again, never imagined that we would darken her doorstep, never believed for an instant that we would make ourselves a problem in her life all over again.
I could go to her right now and ask—figure out what it was that drove her to keep her distance for all those years, even as she raised our children without us knowing a thing about it. I cast my mind back over basic training, our first deployment, the struggle and suffering that I wouldn’t have made it through had it not been for the men who were there with me.
All that time, Angelie had been pregnant and giving birth and trying to manage the care of four babies all at once.
