“Help me understand all of this.” He slid them back into the folder and handed it to me. “What does this have to do with my brother?” He didn’t meet my eyes. He pieced it together.
“Rupert… Rupert was your brother’s son?” he asked, and I nodded. “And your brother kept him from Bodie… kept him from us all these years?”
This was one thing I’d been dreading. He might say with his full chest that he knew his brother was an alphahole, but that wasn’t the same as hearing what I needed to tell him next.
“No.” My tears broke through. “It’s not like that, not like that at all. Harvey told your brother he was pregnant. He went to him the second he saw those two blue lines, before he told me.”
My heart was racing, my vision blurred by tears.
“Your brother told him to get rid of it and to never see him again. Those were his exact words: ‘get rid of it.’ He called their son a thing. And my brother, he wasn’t willing to do that. He wasn’t.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. And then another, and another. He finally looked up at me just as the door opened, our server coming inside with our food. The last thing I wanted to do was eat. As it was, I felt like puking.
I put the folder back in my messenger bag, leaving the album on the table for later. The band-aid had been pulled off. Now it was time for the next step. If only I had known what that step should be.
“I’m gonna leave this here for when you’re ready.”
He gave a single nod.
“And if you have more to ask, feel free.”
