Chapter 6 Dylan
DYLAN
Joe leans back against the door to the bedroom, making sure it’s clicked shut before he follows me back downstairs to join the rest of the guys.
I can tell from the look on his face that there’s something heavy in his head, and given the stakes here, I don’t know if I want to find out exactly what that might be.
But we don’t exactly have a choice.
Angelie is resting upstairs, her four toddlers curled up around her as she gets them fed and comfortable for the night. She hardly spoke as we brought them up to her, not making eye contact with any of us, like there’s something heavy hanging in the air that she can’t bear to mention.
The second Joe emerged into the main living space once more, I could tell that he had asked her the question, the one that’s on all of our minds—and I don’t know if I’m ready to hear the answer.
“She okay?” Carlisle asks bluntly, and Joe nods, not missing a beat.
“Fine,” he replies, leaning against the door, arms crossed, eyes staring off into space.
I know him well enough to be able to tell that something is stressing him out.
He’s usually the first to take the weight off his feet when he’s able, something I’ve always teased him about—him being the oldest of the group and acting like a damn grandpa half the time.
But right now, he looks like the tension might tear him apart from the inside out, and I don’t know how much longer he can keep it to himself.
“Did you ask her?” Callum demands, and I shoot my brother a look, not sure if I’m relieved that he’s come out with it or annoyed that we won’t be able to dodge the answer any longer.
Joe grimaces, but then he nods. “Yeah,” he admits. “I asked her.”
A rush of tension fills the room. Callum and I exchange a glance. I don’t know what answer he’s hoping to hear, but I’m hoping he’s better equipped to handle whatever it might be than I am. Even as I stand here, I feel like my head might burst with the enormity of the situation.
Because I already know the answer. Of course I do. Joe would have walked in here and told us right off the bat if there was nothing for us to worry about, and the fact that he hasn’t tells me that he knows damn well what’s going on here. He asked her, and she told him the answer, which is…
“She said that it’s us,” he finishes up at last, his voice dropping so low I can hardly hear it. “We’re the parents. One of us, anyway.”
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Carlisle mutters, flopping down onto the couch like his legs won’t hold him up any longer.
Callum doesn’t move an inch, staring off into space like he can barely believe what he heard.
I feel like my entire body is frozen, my feet rooted to the ground right where I stand.
Joe, as the bearer of the news, stares off into the distance, like his entire world has crumbled around him and he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with the pieces that are left.
“You’re sure?” Carlisle interrogates him. “It couldn’t have been anyone else—”
“She’s sure,” he replies softly. “Didn’t leave any room for doubt. It happened that night, that night at the bonfire. Doesn’t seem like she’s got any reason to second-guess it.”
Silence fills the room again, and I flex my hands at my sides, digging my nails into my palms to try and pull myself the fuck together.
This can’t be happening. But no matter how many times I repeat that inside my head, it doesn’t make it any less real.
The four children upstairs, they belong to us—one of us, though there’s a crazy part of me that can’t help but see them as being a part of all of us.
Four of us, four of them. It makes sense, right?
I do my best to pull my shit together, but there are so many questions I hardly know where to start.
“Which one of us?” Carlisle says, as though asking enough questions will undo the shock of all of this.
Joe shakes his head. “She didn’t exactly explain that part to me.”
“So she doesn’t know?” Carlisle exclaims. “How can she not know?”
“I don’t know if you remember, Carlisle,” I retort. “But we were all with her that night. And it’s not like we were around to take a paternity test to figure out which one of us is actually the father…”
“Don’t get smart with me,” Carlisle shoots back.
I know he’s not actually mad at me, just lashing out at anyone close enough for him to make contact with.
I don’t even want to think what’s going on inside his head, with his own complicated relationship with his parents to consider.
He must be tearing himself apart right now, and as he springs to his feet and begins to pace, I can’t say I blame him.
I stare off into space, my mind reeling from the fresh injection of information.
On some level, I knew from the moment I saw those kids that they had something to do with us.
Not just because the ages matched up, though that was a part of it, but because something deep inside of me responded to them with a protectiveness that I had never felt when helping other children in the past. I thought it might just be because they belonged to Angelie, because they’re natives of the same place that I called home for so long, I didn’t know—but whatever the reason, I couldn’t deny the connection I felt to them.
And now, I’m finding out that I might be their father.
Their father. The thought of it is almost laughable, given my history with women.
I don’t think I’ve ever been with the same woman twice—at least, not two nights in a row, that much is for certain.
I never wanted to be. It’s far easier to keep emotion out of the equation when you aren’t making the rounds more than once, and that’s how I like it.
The women I’ve been with, I don’t dislike them, I don’t disrespect them, but I’ve always had my eye on what comes next, the next conquest, the next girl, the next chance to find my way into someone’s bed.
Which is what I thought I was doing with Angelie all those years ago. Okay, we might not have made it as far as her bed, but that was the end of it. How could I be with a woman a single time, and now find myself a potential father to four children?
I glance toward the stairs, and my stomach twists at the thought of it.
At the thought of all the ways I could fuck them up if I truly was their father.
I’m not like Callum, even though we’re twins—I don’t have that same grip on responsibility that he does, the same feet planted firmly on the ground like him.
I’m likely the last one among us Angelie would actually want to be the father of her children, but unfortunately for her, biology doesn’t always consider who’s the most stable and grounded choice when it comes to bringing little ones into the world.
“What the fuck do we do?” Carlisle demands, finally cutting through the silence.
“Could we get her to agree to a paternity test?” Callum suggests. “Figure out which one of us is actually the father?”
“What difference would that make?” Joe replies. “We were all there that night. Besides, it’s not like we haven’t shared enough as it is—”
“But children?” Callum replies, shaking his head. “That’s different.”
“Why is it different?” Joe counters. “If we’re going to be there for them—”
“Then we’d have to move back to Devin Ridge to do it,” Carlisle replies, and his voice takes on a hollow tone, as though it’s just now striking him how much it would demand from him.
All of us turn to look at him, distinctly aware of all the reasons he left town, even if he’s not willing to put them into words.
“If she even wants us there,” I point out. “She would have gotten in touch with us if she wanted us to be a part of those children’s lives, wouldn’t she?”
“Maybe she didn’t know how,” Joe replies. “Not like we left a forwarding address when we enlisted.”
“Yeah, but she knows people here,” I continue. “She would have been able to track us down, if she had wanted to…”
Those words hang there in the air, the weight of them impossible to ignore.
If she had wanted to. Considering that she chose to keep us at arm’s length for all this time, that suggests to me that she never intended for us to know about the children.
Never thought that we would set foot in Devin Ridge again, never imagined that we would darken her doorstep, never believed for an instant that we would make ourselves a problem in her life all over again.
I could go to her right now and ask—figure out what it was that drove her to keep her distance for all those years, even as she raised our children without us knowing a thing about it.
I cast my mind back over basic training, our first deployment, the struggle and suffering that I wouldn’t have made it through had it not been for the men who were there with me.
All that time, Angelie had been pregnant and giving birth and trying to manage the care of four babies all at once.
Four children—that seems like it has to mean something.
Callum and I are twins, and I know there are multiples way back in our family line.
It’s hard not to see that as some kind of statement, something that must connect to the reality of the situation before us.
Does it mean that one of us is responsible for those children?
A ridiculous part of me wonders, briefly, if that’s the way her body responded to being with all four of us—four children for four men, like each of us planted a seed in her body that grew into one of the toddlers currently curled up in bed with her upstairs.
“We have to get the fire under control before we do anything else,” Carlisle says, his eyes hardening as he turns his attention toward the map once more.
And, as though he has summoned it by the sheer power of his mind, two of the lights blink on and an alarm starts its loud buzz through the house.
I mutter a curse under my breath and close the distance to the map, narrowing my eyes to figure out where the sensors have caught wind of smoke and fire.
“Anywhere near here?” Joe demands, glancing toward the stairs, like the first thing on his mind is keeping those children safe.
I shake my head sharply. “No, other side of town, near the north edge,” I reply. “We need to get out there. Looks like it’s coming in fast, and the wind’s blowing in that direction so anything is going to carry toward us quicker than normal.”
“Water tanks full?” Joe asks, slipping into business mode.
I get the feeling that, despite the chaos of this situation, he’s relieved to have something more concrete to focus on.
What’s going on with Angelie isn’t exactly a flaming forest fire, but it might as well be for as much as it’s tearing through my mind right now.
“Not yet,” I reply. “I’ll get them filed up. Callum, come on, let’s get moving…”
My brother follows me out of the house, and as I gulp down a breath of fresh air, I vow that whatever I’ve just left behind, I will deal with it as soon as I get the chance. Whatever’s going on with those children, that family upstairs that might be mine, I will not turn my back on it.
But there is a fire that needs containing first. And right now, as crazy as it might sound, I’m glad for the distraction it offers me.