wife, and there wasn’t much anyone could do to fix that.
They all missed their mother. It didn’t matter that it was the natural order of things to lose a parent. You knew that you would. If everything went according to plan... You did.
But you were never ready for it. It was never time.
It would always feel too soon.
But it really had been too soon.
And they’d been suffering the aftereffects of grief, as a family incomplete, ever since.
Incomplete and different. Jackson had been distant. But Jackson had always been closest to their mother. Still, it was just another thing.
Creed hadn’t had a drink or a bite to eat all day, mostly because he felt like he was being fueled by desire for Wren, but he was about ready to go and get himself some brisket when everything inside him went still.
He’d experienced this a couple of times in his life. But not for a long while. And it was never for a good reason. It was only ever for one reason. He closed his eyes, steeling himself.
Why the hell would she come to this?
He turned slowly, and that was when he saw her.
Louisa Johnson. Her accomplished doctor husband, Calvin Johnson. And as far as all the world was concerned, their four children. Including their oldest son, who was taller and broader than his father.
As a matter of fact, the boy looked a hell of a lot like Creed.
His stomach went acid.
He hadn’t seen the kid in... Maybe going on four years.
The boy was eighteen now. Creed knew his birthday. Every year marked itself on his heart. A deep groove. A line in a particular chart that spoke of the hours, weeks, months, years that he’d been father to a son he could never acknowledge.
It was a small town. He couldn’t always avoid Louisa. But her actually coming to one of his events was a study in sadism. Even he didn’t think she could be quite that evil.
Just self-centered and hell-bent on creating the life she wanted. Never willing to admit she had given her virginity up to somebody other than her longtime boyfriend. And that when she’d gotten pregnant at sixteen it had not been with Cal Johnson’s baby. But she’d gone and fixed that uncomfortable fact really quickly, slept with Cal right away and claimed the kid was his.
Creed knew the truth.
Creed had thought they were in love.
A virgin himself, he’d believed that having sex with her meant something. That her climbing into the bed of his truck with him had mattered. And he’d been so overwhelmed by desire that he hadn’t stopped to think about anything.
He was sure... He had been so sure that it meant she was going to break up with that college-bound boy for him. Even though he wasn’t from a fancy family, wasn’t a future doctor. He’d been sure she’d fallen for him all the same.
But no.
And even when she had found out she was pregnant...
He wondered, to this day, if Calvin knew who fathered the kid. Wondered if he didn’t especially care, not given the life they had built on the back of that lie.
Creed realized he had been standing there frozen for a full minute, and Louisa hadn’t even looked his way.
The kid was harassing a younger sibling, laughing.
And then Calvin reached over and playfully punched his oldest son in the arm, gently telling him to knock it off.
They were a family. Built by years and birthday parties, Christmases and good-night kisses. By fights and celebrations and soccer games and barbecues in the backyard. In the face of all that, genetics didn’t matter.
Except they mattered to Creed.
Because he’d had eighteen years of never getting to know that kid, and all the regret that went with it.
But what was he supposed to do? She hadn’t put his name on the birth certificate, refused to admit they’d ever had sex. Creed’s father had tried, he had damn well tried to get a court-ordered paternity test, but the judge refused to do it. To subject an underage girl to scrutiny, to call her a liar when she said staunchly that the only boy she’d ever slept with was her longtime boyfriend.
There had been nothing Creed could do, and everyone had said that he was just mounting a smear campaign against a girl who had rejected him. A girl who’d already found herself in a delicate situation.
They were happy. Clearly. She had Calvin. Their four kids.
What was he?
He didn’t even know.
Suddenly, he felt a soft hand on