The Rivals - Dylan Allen Page 0,242

lived in but doesn’t recognize. And is talking to a man he sired but doesn’t know.

“Thank you, kindly. Both of you.” He nods and smiles a closed-mouth, grateful smile at Kal and takes the sandwich from me. His hands are a mess. Dirty, with fingers that look like they’ve all been broken with what looks like decades of dirt under his fingernails.

“John, you have no idea where you came from?”

“Nope. I have some snatches of memories. I dream. But nothing I can remember. The first thing I remember is the lady who found me.”

He takes a bite of the sandwich and Kal hands him the Thermos cup she’s filled with hot coffee.

“She stayed until the hospital let me go. Then, she took me to an apartment in San Antonio. Said it was mine.”

“She took you to her apartment?” Kal’s expression is as bewildered as mine.

“Yeah. Said it was mine. I stayed there with her for a few days, but then…” He shakes his head. “It didn’t feel right. So I left one night when she was sleeping. I started walking… right back to that ditch.”

“Is that where you live?”

“No. I don’t live anywhere. I move around. I get by with odd jobs. Sleep outside and try to remember. But I don’t.”

“Do you remember the lady? The one who took you from the hospital?”

“Oh, yeah. Of course. My memories from the hospital and everything after that are clear.”

“What did she look like?”

“She was pretty. A black lady. Long dark hair with a streak of white down the middle of it.”

Chapter 35

BROTHERS

REMI

THREE DAYS LATER

“Thank you for seeing me.” I sit down across the desk from Hayes Rivers. I study his face. I’ve seen it countless times in the last year, but now, I can see my father’s features stamped all over it.

It’s in the broad tip of his nose, that deep bow on his upper lip. His dark wavy hair, his hazel eyes and his olive coloring, he must have gotten from his mother’s side.

But everything else, his height, his build, his confidence, all of that are from the part of him that is a Wilde.

“Fuck you for missing my wedding,” Hayes says and I grimace apologetically.

“I didn’t know there was a wedding…” I say vaguely. When he cocks his eyebrow at me, I shift a little uncomfortably. “And, I’m sorry I missed it.”

He eyes me, and he smiles. “I held your spot.” He picks up a picture that’s facing him and hands it to me.

He and his wife, Confidence, stand in the center of the picture, kissing while their wedding party flanks them on either side. Next to his brothers, and in between another man I don’t recognize is a space where I guess I was supposed to be standing. I feel a pang of real regret as I look at what I missed.

“You look great. I mean your jacket is about half an inch shorter than it should be, but other than that,” I say without looking up.

“Ah, shut up, Remi. There’s not a damn thing wrong with my jacket.”

I huff a small laugh and hand it back to him. “Confidence looks beautiful, as always. When is the baby due?”

He picks up his phone and pulls open an app. It has a countdown clock.

“Eight weeks, three days and fourteen hours left to go.”

I nod approvingly. “Congratulations, kid. You did good.”

He puts the picture down, his smile falling and his eyes growing serious.

“We have a lot to talk about, Remi.”

“I know. I’m sorry I ghosted on you like that. I know you were probably reeling, too.”

He sighs, and steeples his fingers under his chin. “I was. But… I’d known for a couple weeks by the time she told you. I’m sorry for that. She wasn’t sure that you didn’t know. She said she’d come to your family to tell them she was pregnant with me and that your dad was missing and they turned her away.”

He drops this last bit of news and it lands like a two-ton bomb.

“You didn’t know that?” he deduces from my silence and expression.

“Clearly, I don’t really know anything. They told us that our father died in a boating accident when I was two. That’s all. I was too young to remember anything. They had a memorial service for him and everything. I’ve seen the pictures. What a crock of shit,” I spit.

“Why is a memorial service a crock of shit? They thought he was dead, right? I mean Gigi did. She said he wouldn’t have