Chapter 27
Rohan watched Jalen pace the expanse of her living room.
He wasn’t sure what, if anything, he could do to calm her down.
She’d gotten the call to pick up the paternity test results that now sat on the coffee table.
She would glance at them now and then, but hadn’t touched them since they’d picked them up.
She, her sisters, and Vega had gone on Monday afternoon once the girls had gotten out of school to give their samples.
It had taken three days for the results to come back in, and Jalen had called him asking if he would take her to pick them up.
Since she was working the night shift that evening, she’d allowed Kodi to drive them all to school.
Rohan was sure that if he didn’t distract her somehow, didn’t get her mind off of the envelope, she’d more than likely be pacing for the next hour until her sisters got home from school.
She hadn’t wanted to check them out early, and since they only had an hour of school left, she decided there was no harm in waiting.
He knew she hadn’t thought of how the anticipation would get to her.
Mostly, Jalen hadn’t been concerned with what the results would tell her. She told him as much. Her biggest concern was for her sisters and how, whatever the conclusion was, it would affect them.
There was a part of him that knew she was curious about whether Vega could also be her father. Though she was the oldest, he knew that didn’t take away from her having hope in the possibility.
Getting up from where he sat, he went to her, grabbed her wrist, pulled her into his chest, and wrapped his arms around her. Leaning down, he placed a soft kiss on her lips.
“You’re going to work yourself up,” he told her.
“I didn’t think I’d be this nervous about what a piece of paper says.”
“That piece of paper doesn’t change things. Vega’s already told you and the girls that, regardless of what it says, he plans on being a part of your lives. I don’t see him going back on that.”
Jalen nodded at him as she exhaled. “You’re right.”
Rohan pulled her over to the couch and down beside him. Picking up the remote, he turned the television on and left it on whatever was playing. He just wanted something to take her mind off the manila envelope on the table.
It was about twenty minutes later when there was a knock at the door, and Jalen got up to get it. They’d called Vega when they’d arrived back at her apartment. She’d been so anxious to get the results that she’d ended up leaving her phone, and Rohan didn’t have the other man’s number.
When the two entered the living room, he and Vega greeted one another as the other man sat on the loveseat.
Jalen retook her original seat, and nothing was said between the three of them as all eyes turned to the television.
He was sure that Vega was anxious too, but was keeping it at bay because he could tell that Jalen was as well.
The minutes seemed to tick by slowly. Even for him, and he assumed it was because he could pick up on what the other two were feeling.
While he was curious and wanted to know if Vega could be Jalen, Landon, or Mikal’s father, the weight of it didn’t sit as heavily on him as it did with the other two in the room.
He was invested because it would affect Jalen and her sisters, and because Kodi had been right. His feelings for the woman beside him ran deep. So, he was always going to have a vested interest in anything that had to deal with her or her sisters, because Rohan cared about them too.
He was sure the concept of time was far more distorted for the other two than it was for him. Which meant that when Kodi unlocked the front door and the five of them walked through it, it felt like hours to him even though it had only been one. He was sure it felt like days for Jalen and Vega.
“Vega, hi!” Nathan stated, dropping her backpack at the door, and running over to him.
“Rohan!” Omari squealed simultaneously, skipping over.
Both men chuckled, and Omari climbed onto the couch into Rohan’s lap. “Do you want to know what I did at school today?” she asked.
He smiled at her. He made it a point to ask her and Nathan that question whenever he saw them on weekdays. “I do, but first Jalen needs to talk to you.”
“You picked up the results, didn’t you?” Kodi inquired from the arm of the couch, where she’d sat.
“I did,” Jalen responded. “I wanted to wait until you all got here to open them.”
“Well, it’s better if we rip the band-aid off, right?” Landon asked from where she stood beside the loveseat.
Jalen nodded, leaning up and grabbing the envelope, and Rohan didn’t miss the fact that her hands shook a little. Reaching over, he placed his hand on her knee, rubbing circles around it.
The room was quiet; even the twins were tuned in, and it seemed as if they were all waiting with bated breath as Jalen opened the envelope. She pulled out three sheets of paper and looked at the first one.
“You aren’t my father, Vega,” she spoke on an exhale that Rohan knew was not of relief, but of disappointment, because he was sure a part of her hoped. “You aren’t Landon’s either,” she then told him once she’d moved to the second page and looked it over.
Rohan glanced at the mentioned teenager to see her biting her bottom lip, and she swallowed hard. Attempting to swallow down tears he knew were forming. She’d wished, probably harder than anything, that Vega would be her father.
“But you are Mikal’s,” Jalen concluded, and Rohan watched as the eleven-year-old’s eyes grew wide.
Landon let out a pained gasp, inhaling sharply before leaving the living room. It was only a split second later that Jalen followed her.
????????????
Jalen followed behind Landon as she went into her room. Collapsing onto her bed, she immediately cried into her pillow. Stepping inside the bedroom, she closed the door behind her and went over. She sat down beside her on the bed and rubbed the teenager’s back.
As she watched Landon cry, Jalen’s heart broke for her little sister.
She knew Landon would be upset if it turned out that Vega wasn’t her father, and while she knew that she could have gone along with him asking her to tell her sisters that he was, she knew it wouldn’t be fair to her sisters, and it wouldn’t be fair to their fathers if they ever looked for them, found them, and reached out.
Jalen had also never been one to lie to her sisters. Her childhood had been built on a foundation of lies and abuse, and she’d promised herself she’d keep nothing from them and be better than what she grew up with.
There was nothing that she could say that would ease her sister’s hurt, that could ease her heartache. So, she wouldn’t try to. Instead, she would be there to comfort Landon and let her know she was there if she wanted to talk, if she wanted to vent.
They stayed like that for several long minutes until Landon had cried all the tears she had at the moment.
Landon sat up and suddenly threw herself into Jalen’s arms. She buried her face in her neck and apologized. Jalen furrowed her eyebrows, puzzled.
“What are you apologizing for?”
“Because,” Landon started, her voice muffled by Jalen’s neck. “You just found out he wasn’t your dad either, and here I am throwing my pity party.”
Jalen shook her head. While she wouldn’t have been opposed to Vega being her father because from what she’d seen of him, he was a good man, another part hadn’t gotten her hopes up.
She was at the age that she would be fine never knowing if that were the case, and while, like any child, she’d always wondered and wanted that connection, it was nowhere near as deep as it was for her sisters.
“I’m okay, Landon. I’m more worried about you.”
The teenager pulled her face from Jalen’s neck and looked at her. “I mean, I knew when you told us at dinner that he was Kodi’s father that there was a possibility he wouldn’t be mine, but I hoped. I’d spent all that time talking to him and getting to know him.”
“This entire situation has given me a new outlook on the men who could be our fathers. If Valerie never told Vega, then she probably didn’t tell the others, and she may not have known who they were.”
Jalen was well aware of the fact that her mother was a hoe. She used men to get what she wanted, and in order to do so, she used every asset at her disposal.
“So, I’ll help you look for your dad if that’s what you want.” She paused for a moment. “Vega said he would as well.”
Landon nodded. “Can I think about it? I don’t know if I’m ready to start that journey again, and besides, Nathan was right. We have Rohan.”
Jalen smiled at her sister. They’d worked on patching their relationship since her first teenage rebellion, and she was not na?ve enough to think it was her last, but Landon was getting back to her old self.
Jalen also figured that Rohan might have had something to do with that.
While Landon had been suspended, she’d spent several of those days with him at his office.
“I like him, Jae. I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but I do. I like the way he treats you, and I like that he never makes us feel left out or like an inconvenience he has to deal with because he’s dating you.”
There was a knock on the door, and Jalen made sure Landon was okay with whoever it was entering before she called them in. The door opened, and Vega walked in a second later. He approached and squatted in front of both of them.
“I know what that piece of paper said,” he told them.
“But I was deprived of knowing my children for seventeen years, and the possibility that I could have had four made me extremely happy when I found out. So, that piece of paper doesn’t matter to me.
I will be your father if you will allow me to be. ”
Jalen watched Landon surge forward, hugging Vega, as Jalen herself blinked back tears. She didn’t know many men in his position who would have done the same thing. But she was grateful to whatever higher power had brought him into their lives. That had destined him to be two of her sisters’ dad.
“I can deal with having two dads,” Landon said. “It’d be fun to confuse people when I’m out with you, Jalen and Rohan,” she finished as she pulled away from Vega with a watery smile.
“You just want to make me feel old,” Rohan replied from where he’d stepped into the doorway and leaned against the frame.
“Teen pregnancies are a thing, my friend,” Landon responded with a smirk.
“They better not be a thing you’re thinking about,” Jalen told her.
“Please do not imply that again,” Vega added.
“Not for you,” Rohan replied.
Landon looked between them before she laughed. “This sounded good before I realized that it meant three lectures when I was in trouble.”
The men chuckled, and Jalen stood from the bed. She needed to check on Mikal too. She knew that Vega not being Landon’s father would hit her harder than the news that he was Mikal’s.
“I’m going to go check on Mikal,” Jalen informed.
“She’s a champ,” Rohan responded. “She asked Vega if it would be weird for him if she called him dad. When he told her no, she smiled, said cool, and then asked if he wanted to see the new comic book she got.”
Jalen smiled, shaking her head. “That sounds like Mikal.”
The four returned to the living room as Mikal walked back into the house with the comic book in her hand.
Jalen assumed that she’d left it in the car.
She bounded over to where Vega sat and took the space beside him as Landon sat beside her.
Kodi came out of the kitchen with Nathan and Omari, with a tray of snacks that she set on the table.
Grabbing a cookie, Omari bounded back over to Rohan and hopped into his lap. “Do you want to hear what I did at school today now?” she asked, and Rohan nodded, throwing out an, “Of course I do.”
Nathan climbed into Jalen’s lap and held up a picture she’d drawn that day at school.
Jalen didn’t miss the smile on Kodi’s face as she took in the scene in the living room before taking out her phone and taking a picture.
She placed the phone back in her pocket and sat on the arm of the couch to look at Nathan’s drawing as well.
Jalen made a mental note to get Kodi to send her that picture.