is very important that we talk. There’s a cafe just around the corner.”
Was it Harper, or was this whole situation crazy?
“Why don’t I call William? He can join us.”
“Oh, I don’t like to bother my son when he’s at work. Besides, this is something to be kept between you and me.”
Despite his misgivings, Harper agreed.
“Okay, I guess. Lead the way.”
A few minutes later, he was sitting opposite the well-dressed omega who claimed to be William’s father. Harper could see the family resemblance in his eyes and the shape of his mouth.
“I’m Samuel. Perhaps William has told you about me.”
“He hasn’t said a word.”
“Well, that’s not a surprise, I suppose, given the circumstances.”
Harper sat back and folded his arms. “I’m listening.”
“Poor dear. I feel a lot of pity for you, I do.”
“And why’s that?”
“You must have wondered, I’m sure. About why you’ve never met William’s family or his friends.”
Harper was about to retort that he had met William’s friends when he realized that the only person he’d ever met was Beckett, and that was through Zac. But there’d never been a reason for William to introduce him to anyone else. He wasn’t William’s boyfriend. The story they’d spun was just that, a story.
His silence was answer enough, and Samuel was encouraged to keep talking.
“He hasn’t been fair to you, Harper. Not at all.”
“I’m not sure I follow. Has he told you about me? About us?”
“Well, he’d hardly tell me he was cheating on his fiancé, would he?”
Harper’s heart skipped a beat, squeezing painfully inside his chest.
“Fiancé?”
“On, you poor thing. My son is a good man, but he’s no angel. I won’t lie, he and Dante have had their problems. And living away from each other hasn’t helped things. But I never thought he’d get some young man into trouble like this.”
Harper's stomach was a ball of lead. William was engaged?
“I’m sorry, I can see all of this is a shock to you. But it seemed only fair for you to know, so you could make the right decision about your… situation.”
“My situation?” Harper struggled to focus on the conversation at hand, still trying to get his head around the revelations.
“Being a single parent is a tough thing, especially for an omega. Luckily, these days, there are options. When I was your age, it was so much harder. I’m glad times have changed. Dr. Arnold’s nurse has left a prescription for what you need at the reception desk, so you don’t need to go through any more poking and prodding.”
At Samuel’s words, his stomach somersaulted, and he pushed back his chair.
“I’m sorry, I have to go.”
“I understand. But once I heard about you, I couldn’t hold my tongue. It isn’t fair to you or Dante.”
Dante… William’s fiancé.
Harper swallowed hard. “I should go.”
“Of course. If you need any help paying for the medication…”
He didn’t answer, just turned tail and rushed away.
He walked home, his mind going a mile a minute. The person on the phone hadn’t been Samuel, but whoever it was had lured him there deliberately so that Samuel could talk to him. And then there were the bombshells Samuel had dropped in his lap. William being engaged. William having a fiancé.
As Harper walked, his feet pounding the pavement almost soundlessly, the shock started to fade. And with that came questions, so many questions. The more he thought about it, the less sense it made. Beckett was William’s best friend. If William was engaged, if there was a fiancé waiting for him back home, Beckett would know. And by extension, Zac would know. Why would Samuel tell him that William was engaged when it was something that would be so easily contradicted by a simple conversation? Unless Samuel didn’t know anything about how he and William had met. He either didn’t know Beckett and Zac were William’s friends, or he had no idea Harper had any connection with them.
He walked on, barely paying any attention to where he was going. It seemed unlikely that William had asked his father to talk with him. If he had, there were better ways to do it than luring Harper to the clinic under the pretense of an emergency. But that first time at the clinic, William must have seen someone he knew. Whoever it was had been nosy enough to do some digging into why they were there and passed that information on to Samuel. Harper burned with anger at the invasion of his privacy but set that aside. There was still the matter of