you to be together. Talk to them. He’s home now. Get him back.
“Let me see,” Breck wheedled, making grabby hands. Leo passed him the picture on my nod.
“Who is it?” Danny asked.
I didn’t answer, lost in trying to figure out how I was going to do this.
“For fuck’s sake, Carson,” Ridge said as Shauna carried over a tray that looked like it weighed more than she did, “who is it?”
“It’s me and my mother.”
Conversation halted while Shauna unloaded the tray without mixing up a single order. “Y’all need anything else?” she asked.
No one did, so she left.
“Well, dayumn,” Steele said reaching for the photo. “Carson’s got a real-life momma.”
“Of course, I do. Unlike you, I wasn’t hatched from an alligator egg.”
“Alligators lay eggs?” Breck asked. He tilted his head in thought and then gave a little shrug. “Well, yeah, I guess they would. Don’t know why that sounded wrong.”
“Because you’re not that bright?” Ridge offered. Breck reached across the table to steal a piece of bacon in retaliation.
“I can guess which one is you,” Steele said after a few seconds of examination. “Are you ‘Jake’ or ‘Eric’?”
“Jake,” I admitted. “My real name is Jake Karlsson.”
Silence greeted that announcement.
“Thanks for trusting us with that,” Danny said, his upper-middle-class manners coming to the fore.
I gave him a faint smile. “Yes, well. Don’t forget to use it. I don’t want to hear the name Carson Grieves anywhere near the state of Wisconsin.”
Even though I knew it was safer for my family if the name Carson Grieves wasn’t connected to them in any way, it still felt strange to not use it. It felt like I was disavowing a part of myself.
Carson Grieves wasn’t just my name, it was my Name with a capital N; my moniker. It was how I was known in the criminal underworld. It contained the entirety of my reputation and was both armor and a weapon. And now I was going into enemy territory without it.
The weird thing was, I truly couldn't say if I was taking off a familiar mask and revealing the real person, or if Jake Karlsson was just another mask. When I tried to think of what a grown-up Jake Karlsson would be like, it felt no more or less real than Carson Grieves.
Sometimes I felt like I’d been so many other people for so long, I no longer knew the real me or if there even was such a thing. Did people have some kind of unchanging essence that formed the core of their personality, or were we all just creatures of our own creation?
I didn’t know. Sometimes I felt like an onion. Peel away all the layers and what was left? Nothing. So what if I’d carefully crafted my persona? Everyone else did it. Letting popular opinion dictate their likes and dislikes, be it in agreement with the masses or in opposition to. Forming their opinions from Facebook circle jerks populated only by people who thought exactly like they did. Posting carefully curated photos on their social media, pretending they had it all together.
At least I’d created myself consciously and I could guarantee there was no one else like me in the world, no matter which me I was at the moment.
“If you’re Jake,” Steele said, “then that pretty lady with the great ra—”
I cut him off. “Don’t finish that sentence unless you want to sleep with one eye open for the rest of your short life.”
Breck snorted. “He already sleeps like that.”
“Occupational hazard,” Steele said with unexpected gravity.
Breck pulled him in for a hug, kissing the side of his head. “I know, babe. Don’t worry. I’ll protect you from Car—Jake—in the middle of the night.”
“That sounds so wrong,” Steele said.
“What about the daytime?” Ridge asked.
“Then he’s on his own. If Car—Jake—gets the drop on him while he’s awake, that’s on him.”
“True,” Steele asked. “So, who are the other people?”
I sighed at leaned back against the booth. “As you guessed, the woman with the Lollapalooza T-shirt is my mother. The child in the stroller is my brother, Sammy. The older child is, obviously, me. And call me Carson until we’re in Wisconsin.”
“It sounds so wrong,” Ridge said. “You don’t look like a Jake.”
“He does here,” Steele said, tapping the picture. “Look at that adorable sweet potato.”
“No,” Leo said.
“No, I wasn’t an adorable child?” I asked with faux hurt.
“No, we should start calling you Jake to get used to it.”
I sighed. “I know. But I don’t like it.” I could feel myself reverting to