Rugged Guard - Jason Collins Page 0,72
breaths coming out heavier and heavier. “We’re supposed to be meeting with Viv, and I don’t want her to think…”
“You don’t want her to think that you spent your morning on top of me?” Derek grinned.
“…I don’t want her to think that we’re being rude by running late,” I corrected.
Derek nodded up at me in response. “You’re right. We should head over there, then.”
“Earplugs.”
“What?”
“Earplugs,” Eddie repeated as he sank down beside me on the living room couch. “That’s apparently what I’m going to have to invest in if I want to eat my breakfast in peace nowadays.”
“What do you mean?” My words were lined with nervousness as I waited for him to tell me what, deep down, I already knew was coming. “Why would you need earplugs?”
“Oh, because you and your boyfriend apparently like to go at it really early in the morning,” Eddie replied, his tone casual. “Which is super annoying, by the way.”
As soon as Eddie confirmed my suspicions of where the conversation was going, I felt my skin go pale at the mention of the topic.
This was my worst nightmare.
And it was coming true in real time.
And even though I was completely mortified, I managed to formulate the beginning of a response. “Sorry about the noise—”
“I’m not that annoyed by the noise,” Eddie interrupted. “I’m annoyed by the fact that you never told me that you and Derek were officially a thing. How long were you going to keep that from me?”
“We just didn’t want to…” I tried to explain. “It was complicated. He was crossing a line, by being with a client. And we didn’t know how it was going to turn out, so—”
“Sounds like it turned out fine.” Eddie smirked. “I’m happy for you two. Really. But seriously. Feel free to buy me a set of earplugs. Or two. Or three.”
“I will.” I leaned even further against the couch before I said, “Now, can we please literally never talk about this again?”
Eddie chuckled, and it looked like he was about to add something else to the most embarrassing conversation I’d ever had in my life. But thankfully, in that same moment, Viv walked into the room with Derek standing next to her. She’d taken him off to the side when she’d first arrived, their private conversation inaudible to Eddie and me as we sat on the couch.
“Okay, then.” Viv looked over at Eddie and me before nodding along to words she hadn’t yet said. “There’s no easy way to say this, so, I’m just going to say it.” Viv then held up a finger as she calmly said the phrase, “There’s another Williams brother.”
“So, it’s confirmed?” I asked. “You know for sure that he’s… our father’s?”
“Here’s some copies of the birth certificate,” Viv said, pulling two sheets of paper off a nearby counter. “I’ve looked over it a million times, but I want you two to tell me if anything stands out to you, at first glance.”
She handed me and Eddie separate copies of the birth certificate.
As soon as I had the copy of the birth certificate in my hands, I spotted a familiar signature, down in the bottom left corner.
“He signed it,” I murmured, my attention still focused on the document. “Dad signed the birth certificate. That’s his handwriting.”
“Holy shit,” Eddie chimed into the conversation next. “Parker, do you see the name on this thing?”
“Dad’s name?”
“No. The other one,” Eddie continued, softly nudging me in the shoulder. I looked up from the birth certificate in my hand, and looked over at Eddie’s copy, wondering if he was seeing something on his that I wasn’t seeing on mine.
“Austin Sherman,” Eddie uttered. “Doesn’t that name sound really familiar to you?”
“Wait...” My eyes went wide as I tried to process the realization. “Our Austin? The one who’s been staying with us for weeks?”
“They’re one and the same,” Viv added. “At least, according to my records. My best guess is that either Austin knows exactly who he is, and who you two are, or there’s been a freak coincidence in the cosmos.”
“You don’t believe in freak coincidences,” Derek said, his phrase aimed toward Viv.
She offered him a bright smile in return. “You’re right. I don’t. Which means it’s probably the other thing.”
“We should find out, either way.” Eddie sighed. “Although, I really hope he already knows. It’s going to be crazy trying to explain this to him if he really has no idea.”
“You can leave that part up to me,” I suggested, already rising from my seat on