The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,126

I want to shake her.

Or shake this house.

Or shake the world.

I want everyone to feel what I’m feeling. The ground beneath my feet has shifted in a way that’s permanent. I will never be the same.

“Confidence. Who am I? Who is my family? What is my family?” I shout these questions at her. The horror on her face is too much for me. I turn away from her. I’m talking to the wrong person, anyway.

I pick up the receiver of my landline and hit the second preprogrammed button and press the phone to my ear.

“Prego?” Gigi’s voice is husky with sleep and I look down at the alarm clock by my bed and realize it must be one or two the morning in Positano. I haven’t called her during any of this. I didn’t want to worry her, and now I realize she’s the only person who can answer my questions.

“Gigi, I took a paternity test,” I say.

“Who’s pregnant?” she asks.

“To determine my paternity,” I clarify. I’m met with silence. I look up at Confidence who still looks like she’s seen a ghost.

You okay? I mouth and walk to the fridge to get her a bottle of water.

She’s carrying my fucking kid.

I crack it open and put it down in front of her and realize that Gigi hasn’t made sound.

My heart sinks.

“You knew,” I say and Confidence’s hand pauses in midair on its way to put her water to her lips.

“Hayes, I—”

“You what? Whose son am I?” I ask her slowly. My heart thuds wildly. My entire body is tingling, and my head is swimming.

“Hayes, it’ s not that simple—” she starts.

“Yes. It is.” My hand slams down on the table before I even realize it’s in motion. Confidence jumps up and comes to stand beside me. She puts a hand on my shoulder and I want to shake it off.

I don’t want comfort. I want answers.

Gigi starts to cry softly.

“Whose child am I?” I ask her again.

“Hayes …” She’s weeping loudly now.

So is my queen. I watch her. Want to go to her. But not until I have answers.

“Gigi, tell me. Now,” I ask, and the words taste like ash in my mouth.

“Mine,” she sobs, and I drop the phone.

I don’t remember sitting down, but I must have.

“Okay, Gigi, okay,” I hear Confidence saying, and then I hear the phone clatter into its cradle into the counter.

“My life is a lie. All of it. I’m a lie. I’m …” Bombs are exploding somewhere inside me. My memories are imploding. My father disappears from the memory of learning to ride a bike. He vanishes from the conversations we had about the birds and the bees.

“You are Hayes Rivers. You’re a brother, a son, a friend, a lover, a father.” She takes my hand and puts it over her stomach.

“A father.” I pull her to me and press my face into the soft, tiny swell in her abdomen.

“I’m going to be okay,” I say. She’s like a shot of valium, and my pulse starts to slow.

“Hayes, the worst is over,” she says, and like the fool I am, I believe her.

HISTORY

GIGI

“I will begin by saying that I am only sorry for the deceit and the fact that I had to live my life pretending that you weren’t mine,” I say slowly and force my eyes to stay on Hayes’s face. I want to look away so badly.

Those green eyes are shuttered and as cold as chips of emerald. Except, those are his father’s eyes and they have never been able to hide the fire that is always burning inside of him. The curiosity, the feeling, the passion, the thirst for better, the compassion, and right now, the anger.

“So, you suffered?” he asks.

I nod. “Good,” he snaps and I smile. Because, there I am. That cold, unforgiving streak that makes me a Rivers and him my son.

He’s been a mirror to everything I’ve lost, and yet has reminded me how lucky I was to have had any of it in the first place.

“I did what I did for you,” I continue.

He laughs and my patience snaps. I stand up and walk over to him, plant my feet and stare down at him.

“I know I owe you a lifetime of explanations and apologies, but no matter what I have done, I have loved you first,” I say through lips that are barely moving, and a jaw that is so tightly clenched that I know I’m probably doing some real damage to my teeth.

“Yes,