24. Chapter 24
24
My chest was a vice.
“Brothers?” Esta repeated as we fell into tense silence.
I narrowed my gaze toward Hale, and wondered if Esta was seeing the resemblance between the three of us. Hale and Ruck were carved from the same tree, with their striking hazel eyes and messy brown hair. But I was different.
My vibrant red hair, spring green eyes, and smattering of freckles tricked the eye. But if you looked long and hard enough, it was clear we all had the strong Hartlock nose.
“We’re half-brothers.” I cleared my tight throat.
Esta tugged my hand, urging me onto the couch next to Ruck. I couldn’t look at her, focusing on my brothers, their expressions mirrored and grim. The fireplace crackled, blissfully unaware.
“I don’t understand. Your parents were so in love.” Esta filled the silence.
It wasn’t my shame.
I wasn’t the one who strayed from their marriage. Betrayed their loving wife in another’s embrace. But I was forever a living symbol of it, and I was used to the tight way my skin felt when I was reminded of my birth.
“I like to think they were, certainly deluded myself into the idea of it,” Hale said.
There was nothing for it but honesty. Here goes.
“I’m a bastard. We share a father.” My shoulders drooped. “My ma worked at Madam Silver’s.”
Esta didn’t recoil or screw up her nose. That was a good sign, wasn’t it? Nobody in Misery Creek knew my true lineage, the story around town was that Mrs. Hartlock had such a kind heart that she took in the child of a whore.
“I walked past there, but I don’t know what the place is.”
I grimaced. How to explain the cheaply painted shell of a home I grew up in?
It was rarely quiet except in the late mornings when the women slept. Muffled laughter, arguments and strange voices filtered through the walls. The clink of bottles and the racy lyrics sung by drunken patrons.
My clothes carried a lingering stench of cigar smoke and fake omega perfume, even though I spent most of my time in the kitchen with Maria. I used to help her clean dishes just to wipe the ingrained scent from my skin.
I’d live moment to moment, hoping to catch a glimpse of the queen, my ma. Even the sight of her heels kicking up her silk robe was enough to send a spark of pride and wonder through me.
I didn’t question what made her so special, and why all her demands were granted immediately, including keeping me away from her. She was as gorgeous as the gods Maria told me about.
“It’s a brothel. A place where women sell their bodies, doxies, whores. My ma was one of them.”
Esta made a soft noise and covered my clenched fists with hers. I was a ball of tension, wound up tight. Being a bastard was a stain, but son of a whore? I’d experienced over and over how well to do people reacted to that news.
“She was an omega,” Hale added in a gruff voice, his hat all but destroyed in his lap.
Esta gasped, a soft whisper at the revelation.
An omega in the wildlands was a rare jewel. And she was a queen between four walls.
“That’s why you hate omegas. Because your father…” Esta’s eyes widened. Her intelligent mind put it together so quickly. Her shine made me look dull in comparison. I wanted her like a fool covets a kingdom. With nothing to offer except my desperate hope. I ground my teeth together.
“He came to her willingly, forked out a fortune to bed her. Despite whatever he told you.” I snapped to Hale. “Ma loved attention. Folks rode from miles around to bed her. Her reputation was well known. Gents brought fancy trinkets, sweet scents, and anything they thought might please her. She ruled the roost. Those in her bed wore a muzzle. She didn’t need to seduce anyone, and having a child wasn’t in her plans.”
Didn’t I know it.
I still felt the sting of her easy dismissal. I was drawn to her like a moth to a flame, but I was nothing but an annoyance.
“I’m getting that I’ve been wrong about a lot of things,” Hale admitted.
My venom faded, and shoulders slumped against the couch. I’d seen how desperate ma’s Designated clients were. The lengths they went to have her. It was useless to explain it to Hale, not when he wore such heavy blinkers about the person his father was.
Esta reached out and cupped my cheek, offering comfort. My stomach twisted as I leaned into her touch.
Maybe, maybe, maybe.
There was no judgement in her gaze. It warmed me.
“The winter our father slept with your mother was brutal. I remember the biting cold,” Ruck added.
“He’d spent the nest egg we needed for goods,” Hale explained. “We suffered a good month snowed in this house, our parents fighting or ignoring each other. Every meal was porridge and jerky. Almost starved to death because he spent all our money on an omega. Then you came to us at Bram’s age, and I didn’t know who the heck you were. Except that my mother hated you, and my father was enamored. ‘His boys’ he used to call us.”
I flinched, and suddenly, Esta was in my lap. She looped her arms around my neck, smothering me in a giant hug. Her sweet touch stopped my chest caving in. Her scent kept me from sinking into dark memories.
“Ain’t no way it should have happened. The ladies were awful careful. I learned a lot more than I should about contraception as a kid.” My huff of laughter was bitter. “Ma wanted nothing to do with me. I was a bump in her plan. She was a sight, and even decent folks would sneak around at night to bring her gifts. The other ladies in Madam Silver’s became like aunties to me. I spent the first ten years of my life underfoot in the kitchen. There was a beta woman named Maria who was more like a ma to me than my own. But they both caught the pox, the one that took out most folks all those years back. Madam Silver penned a letter and told me to come to Hartlock Ranch. I’ll never forget the look on your mama’s face when she read it.”
“Mama did her best.” Hale was protective of his mother, and his jaw ticked as he waited to see if I would fight him on it.
“I was a burden she never asked for, a reminder of her husband’s deceit. Can’t fault her for not talking to me. She was never cruel, but that clear disregard hurt some. It was just like what my ma did to me. Fix her gaze on a spot above my head till I quit tryin’ to catch her eye.”
All those years I waited for my ma to see me, but she never did. There was a brief moment when I first arrived that I thought I might find a place in a real family.
Mrs. Hartlock sat me down in the kitchen, and I rubbed my concave stomach at the apple pie she was putting together. She read the letter I brought, the one that looked like squiggly lines to me. And I knew there would be no mother here for me either.
My insides were a mess, and it took everything in me not to crumble when Esta trailed her hand down my cheek.
“I see you.”
“I know.” My voice was hoarse on the realization.
Esta was a star at the edges of my vision, no matter how I tried to avoid her initially. I thought she’d hear my words and think me slow like some people did when they caught my long drawl. Or that she’d find me lacking compared to her fancy dresses and manners.
But she’d never, not once, looked through me. Maybe that’s why it was impossible for me not to fall in love with her. It was a powerful thing to be seen by someone so deeply.
It bolstered my declaration.
“I’m used to being in the background, making myself sparse. When Mrs. Hartlock spoke to me, it was to call out my coarse language. I got quiet. Learned to take scraps and not complain about it. But not anymore. I need you, Esta, and I want you more than anything. From the moment I saw you in the kitchen with your chapped hands. I tried to fight it, to push it down, I know it’s complicated. But we could be so good, all of us.”
This was a precarious moment. The scents of my brothers battled with Esta’s sweet, thick scent.
My jaw worked on the tension.
She could say no, and I would never speak on it again.
I would fade into the background and love her from afar, never ask her for anything.
“It could be amazing,” Esta leaned forward and purred softly.