Total pages in book: 176
Estimated words: 167257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 558(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 167257 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 836(@200wpm)___ 669(@250wpm)___ 558(@300wpm)
I walked away for the second time, hoping this time would be the last time, and kept my gaze on the exit, refusing to look back. I knew it would only weaken my resolve if I did.
I couldn’t hear much over the pounding of my heart, which was likely how he’d managed to sneak up on me. He slammed his right hand on the door, the image of a snarling lion roaring his fury as much as the hand it was tattooed into, halting my exit.
Pinned underneath Rowdy’s palm was another goddamn photo. This one was a grainy polaroid of a baby that looked an awful lot like…me.
It…was me—unless I had a twin I didn’t know about.
My parents had enough baby photos of me hanging around the house that it was impossible for me to mistake the newborn in the photo for anyone else.
It occurred to me then that the earliest photo my parents had of me was when I was maybe three or four months. I couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old here.
I felt the heat of Rowdy’s body pressing in as he rested his forehead on my hair. “I’ve been struggling with how to tell you—if I should even tell you—just how bad I fucked up.” His voice was hoarse with pain.
“Why do you have this, Owen? How did you even get it?”
“Jada.”
My blood went cold. “Why does Jada have a photo of me as a baby?”
“You know why, Atlas. I saw it on your face the moment you figured it out. At least half of it, anyway.”
I swallowed but said nothing. I didn’t have to.
Rowdy continued speaking, deciding it was time to get it all out in the open. “You found out you were adopted, and then this letter arrived telling you where to go to find out where you came from. It led you to me.”
Needing to see his face, I spun around. “What are you saying, Owen?”
“I’m saying…” He swiped a hand down his face, but the pain in his eyes remained as he stared at the ground. Whatever it was he needed to tell me, once he spoke the words, it would change everything forever. “I’m saying it’s possible that Jada is your birth mother.”
“What does that have to do with us, Owen? Why can’t you kiss me and be with me? Why can’t it be like before?”
It didn’t make any sense, and I wondered if Rowdy was using it as an excuse to break up with me.
But no, that didn’t sound like the brash, careless Rowdy I knew. He would simply tell me if he didn’t want to be with me anymore. He wouldn’t care how much it hurt.
“Because…” He finally looked up. At the same time that he finally let me see the truth in his eyes, I connected the dots, remembering what I’d discovered in that tackle box.
“Because you also fucked Jada twenty years ago,” I finished for him. My voice was barely a whisper, so I was surprised he’d heard.
“Yes.”
“And you think you—I’m…um…”
“Yes,” he croaked.
I sucked in as much air as I could after feeling like I’d been punched in the gut. I had a hard enough time coming to terms with the fact that Joren, of all fucking people, might be my birth father, but this…oh, God please…not this. How could I live with myself knowing that I—
“No,” I cried and shook my head. “It’s not true. Why are you doing this, Owen? You said you loved me.”
“I do love you, baby. I promise that hasn’t changed. Why do you think I pushed you away?”
I didn’t respond. I was too busy searching for signs of myself in his features, but the details of Rowdy’s face slowly blurred away as tears filled my eyes. I didn’t realize I was shaking until Rowdy pulled me into his arms and held me. Slowly, my trembling faded until only my quiet sobs remained.
God couldn’t be this cruel, could he? To let me love and be loved this deeply only to take it anyway in an irrevocable way? Even in death, I would be allowed to love him. Want him…
But if Rowdy and I were connected in the way he feared…
Impossible.
“I want you to come home,” Rowdy said as if he’d heard my thoughts and sought to defy them.
The laugh that escaped me was sad and slightly hysterical. I shook my head against his chest even as my hands tightened their hold. “That’s a terrible idea, Owen.”
The reasons I was forbidden to love him didn’t matter. I couldn’t just turn off my feelings.
Did I ever truly love him if I could?
I thought about Sutton and how I had gone numb toward him after he cheated on me. I always thought it was because my grief was too great, but maybe not. I never mourned our relationship. I don’t even think I’d cried for him.