round belly. “Relax, Bry. I’m not insulting the kid. After all, it’s the actual truth, right?”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence from all four of them, confusion and distaste together. Brian met Nick’s puzzled eyes in the rearview and realized that Nick was on the confusion side.
He doesn’t remember it’s probably my kid? Oh God, he really doesn’t remember.
He’d thought they just weren’t talking about that day and all the stuff that went down before Nick got kicked in the head. Like, they’d mutually agreed not to go there, not that Nick didn’t actually know. Brian swallowed hard.
Charlie said, “Huh? You were married to Marston legally, weren’t you?”
Lori’s laugh sounded totally natural. “Oh, yeah. I guess I forgot.”
“Forgot?” Nick shook his head. Brian wished he could see Nick’s expression now, but the mirror reflected only his hair. “That baby’s the heir to a dukedom or whatever Marston was. How could you forget?”
“I’ve been playing roles my whole life.” Lori glanced at Charlie and fluffed her hair with a steady hand. “Lorraine Anderson is a single woman with a deadbeat baby daddy she’s not even going to put on the birth certificate. I can hardly name Marston, right? Best I can do is leave the kid a sealed envelope for when he hits eighteen. As of right now, this mini place-kicker is a bastard. Just like me.”
“I guess.” From Charlie’s slow tone, he probably suspected there was more to the story.
“It’s the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth. No one cares.” Lori settled deeper in her seat. “I need a bathroom, like, yesterday. Whoever invented pregnancy was a man.”
“Um.” Brian bit his lip against the things he didn’t want to say. He should leave it to what Lori said. Not add anything. He was crap at lies. He messed them up. “I don’t think pregnancy was invented.”
“No duh.”
They were all quiet for the ten minutes it took to get to the motel. Charlie climbed out of the car stiffly and gave Nick’s window a thump. “See you tomorrow. I’m off to my bed.”
Lori said to Brian, “Can I have your room key?”
“Huh?”
“For the bathroom?”
“Oh. Sure.” He dug in his pocket and handed it forward over the seat. “Here.”
“Be right back.” She hauled her ungainly bulk up out of the car and waddled to the door of their unit. Brian watched her with vague unease. It was odd to see her so weighted down, different from the Lori he’d always known. And yet, he was just as worried about whether she’d make trouble for Charlie as he was worried about her.
When she’d vanished inside the room, Nick said quietly, “There’s something you know that I don’t know.”
He covered his surprise with a shallow cough. “I bet there’s lots of things I know that you don’t.”
“About that baby.”
“Oh. Um.” His mind raced. “What don’t you know?”
Nick twisted around to fix him with a penetrating stare.
Brian shifted uncomfortably. “You were there, same as I was.”
“Where?”
“In the storage building. With, um, Marston and Lori and…”
“And Damon,” Nick continued for him when he ground to a halt. “Yeah, I figured that much out.”
“You really don’t remember?”
“I really don’t. But you do. What is it I’m not remembering? What’s the joke?”
“It’s not a joke.” Heat rushed to his face. He rubbed at the prickling behind his eyes.
Nick must’ve noticed because his voice got quieter. “I didn’t mean it like that. I want to know.”
“Maybe I don’t want to tell you. You ever think of that? Maybe it’s not a good thing.”
“So if it’s something bad, I don’t get to know about it? You just keep me in the dark?”
Brian shook his head. Where do I even start? I can’t do this! Lori came back out the door and he grabbed for the welcome excuse. “Not now. Tonight. I’ll tell you. When it’s just us.”
Nick flicked a look at Lori coming toward them. “All right.”
Brian stayed silent and disconnected through the drive to the farm, as Lori and Nick talked casually about moving— about the stuff stored temporarily in Yasmin’s barn, how to juggle a rental truck between two locations, and what absolutely had to be bought right away. At dinner, Zander sat across the table asking questions, Nick made fun of the places they’d looked at, and Brian managed a smile or two, but the churning in his belly made him push away his plate half full. How do I tell him this?
He went out to take care of some neglected chores, despite the rapidly falling darkness.