20. Evan
20
EVAN
W alking into that office, seeing what I saw gutted me. Amber all wrapped up in Jacob’s arms was an insult. She clung to him the way she should’ve been clinging to me, and she didn’t even have the nerve to tell me what was going on. Something was going on. I knew that much. She’d been distant and evading my questions. Every time I asked her to come to my office she brought Shelby with her, and though we had dinner plans tonight, she’d been hesitant to give me that response.
Now I didn’t know what I wanted to do. Jacob was the grumpy one, not me. I knew, however, that if I was in a room alone with her, face-to-face, I’d probably snap at her. I didn’t want that. I just wanted answers.
I paced the office and raked my hand through my hair. The sight of them all cozy and cuddled up made my blood boil instantly. I’d slammed that door so hard, the windows of every office in this hallway rattled. Gavin had looked up at me through his window as I stormed past, and I slammed my office door just as hard, before remembering that it wasn’t my office. It was Jacob’s.
Jacob’s office, his job, apparently his woman. I wondered if this entire time I’d been here, I was just a stand-in for my big brother. I would never have thought Amber capable of such callous lack of emotion or respect, but maybe she was. Maybe I had her all wrong and it wasn’t my brother who was the problem. My mind was mixed up, my emotions running rampant without the facts to hedge them in.
“What the heck was that, Evan?” I hadn’t heard the door open, but Jacob stood there over the threshold with a glower on his face. His eyes were narrowed on me, his chest puffed out.
“You tell me. What was that?” I didn’t want anger to come spewing out of me like this, but I felt out of control. I was in love with the woman who my brother had some unnatural obsession with, and neither one of them wanted to tell me what was going on.
“You’re out of control.” I hated how he could be so calm. The expression on his face was anger, not calm. His forehead was bunched together, lips pursed deeply. He shut the door and walked into the room past the table where I’d shared meals with Amber. Past the chair where we had sex, right up to the desk where I thought we had really connected in an intimate way. I had been wrong.
“I’m out of control?” I said loudly. “You’re in there with her…” I couldn’t finish. Saying the words out loud would make it real. It couldn’t be real. Amber and I were going somewhere. Jacob wasn’t about to come back into this office and take that from me. I loved her.
“Have you spoken with her?” Jacob asked. He rested a hand on his desk and scowled at me. My mood shifted to defensiveness. I didn’t understand why it had to be my responsibility to talk to her. Why wasn’t he telling me what I needed to know?
He wanted to shift blame, to make me seem like the bad guy. He’d done that our whole lives, making me seem like the younger, irresponsible brother. He was always a step ahead of me in everything—school, sports, with girls…I wasn’t taking it anymore.
“Does Erin know?” I asked, going on the offensive. My blood boiled with rage at the idea that this man was playing one woman against the other. “Did you tell her how cozy you are with Amber? Does she see the way you hold her and treat her like the love of your life? The way you go out of your way for those innocent kids?”
The creases in Jacob’s forehead deepened, and I watched his fingers curl into a fist. I was pushing buttons he didn’t want pushed. I liked it. “What happened, Jake? Fire went out, so you found someone new?” I stepped closer to him, puffed out my chest more. He gritted his teeth and his lips pursed harder. The muscles in his jaw flexed, bulging out along his jawbone.
“Cat got your tongue? You had an affair and you’ve been covering it up…So what…She’s mine now. I’ve been seeing her. We slept together about a dozen times or something now.” I had no idea how many times it had been but smearing my brother’s nose in the truth felt good. “Right here on this desk even.” I stepped closer still, pushing my chest into his. I wished he’d hit me so I could unleash on him.
He held his tongue, but the fire in his eyes told me I was on to something. His nostrils flared as I said, “You don’t even get it do you? The way those kids look just like you…Erin has to know by now, Jake. Just come clean. Move on.” I was starting to calm with his silence. He wasn’t denying anything, which in my experience with him meant he was having his ass handed to him.
“You’re wrong,” Jacob said, and he pushed his chest into mine, making me take a step backward.
“I’m not wrong. Just look at their faces. It’s as obvious as the buttons on your suit.” I reached up and almost pushed him, but he grabbed my wrist with such fury in his eyes, I thought he might spontaneously combust.
“The kids are yours, Evan.” His grip tightened as his words smacked me in the face. His chest was heaving, eyes wide, hand like iron on my arm. “You were irresponsible, she got pregnant. You went off to Europe at my command, and she knew how much you wanted it. It was all you could talk about—the European women, the culture, living your best life…”
I tried to take a step back, shaking my head, but his hand clamped down harder. I thought he’d break my wrist. I didn’t want to hear this. It was just another lie. He was covering his tracks and making me the scapegoat. If it was true, Amber would have told me.
“She found out after you’d been gone a few months. I never knew you two were even together. She was shocked, and her whole life turned upside down. I was there for her just like I promised Chester I would be.” I shook my head, finally wrestling my wrist from his grasp.
“You’re lying …”
“I’m not,” he shouted, shaking me. “Grow up!” It was Jacob’s turn to advance on me. “Amber has gone to hell and back trying to be a good mother for those kids. I promised Chester to be like a father to her. That’s what you saw. Erin and Mona know the whole thing—go ask them. Amber didn’t want to disrupt your life in Europe…Then you came back, and you were dating Holly.”
My head was spinning. My chest felt like a balloon blown up to the point of rupturing. I pressed my palm to my forehead and backed farther away. This couldn’t be true. None of it. Amber would have told me.
“Evan, I’m telling you the truth. I kept her secret because it’s what a good friend does…” He turned as I walked past him, but he didn’t reach for me. If he had, I’d have been tempted to slug him. As it was, I felt devastated and appalled that my own brother would keep something like this from me.
“What does a brother do then?” I said, and I stormed out the door, this time leaving it open in my wake.
I didn’t look up at her office as I passed. I didn’t know if she was in there anymore, and I didn’t want to know. If we bumped into each other, she was likely to see a side of me she never wanted to see. I was enraged, furious with the fact that someone so close to me could keep such a dark secret. I had seven-year-old twins? And no one told me.
I kept my head down as I fumed all the way to my car. I left my coat in Jacob’s office. It was freezing out, and the car took forever to warm up. When I started driving, squealing my tires out of the parking lot, I had no clue where I was going. I weaved through traffic faster than I should have, and when I stopped, I was parked near the cemetery entrance, where I used to go to clear my head.
Anger drove me onward, out of the car through the stiff, cold breeze. It was like I didn’t even feel it, like the horrible emotional chasm Jacob’s words had opened up released so much heat into my body through rage, I didn’t feel it as November’s cold snap bit down on my skin.
I walked aimlessly, tormented by the idea that my brother and Amber had hidden such a huge secret from me. I remembered Europe and how those first few months I pined for her. How many times had I tried to reach out only to have so many hurdles with international communication that I’d given up entirely? And to think, that entire time she knew she was having my babies. Jacob could have reached out to me through company means. He did, just not to tell me this secret.
I kicked a tuft of grass hard and almost slipped and fell. My meandering took me right to my father’s grave, where I stood over his headstone, ready to kick it I was so mad. I felt like crying, but I couldn’t. I knew the anger I was feeling was secondary—that deep down what I was feeling was betrayal, that the anger was there to protect me from feeling vulnerable, but I didn’t want to feel anger.
What I wanted was to be preparing for the end of my day, getting my home ready for Amber to come over and have a relaxing dinner. I planned to tell her how much I loved her, to ask her if she thought we had a real chance at something tonight. Then I planned to ask her to open up about the twins’ father. Now I didn’t have to.
Jacob was not a liar, but I still found it hard to believe he was telling me the truth. Though, the idea of him cheating on Erin really did sound absurd. I knew how much Jacob loved his wife. I had come to that conclusion as the most illogical, but only realistic way to explain how Parker and Vera looked like our family, and I bypassed entirely any thought that they could be mine.
All because I trusted her.
It was that trust in my heart shattering into a million pieces that made me drop to my knees over my father’s headstone and sob. The tears came from someplace deep inside my gut that had never been touched so harshly. I cried onto the grave marker, letting all the emotion out. The woman I believed and who held my heart was capable of keeping a secret from me that could cause me this much pain. I didn’t know what to do with that knowledge.
Jacob said she had done it because she cared about me and wanted me to have what I wanted. But how did she know what I wanted? Why hadn’t she at least given me the opportunity to make my own choice about what I wanted?
I sat there until my body was shivering. The cold caught up to me and I knew I had to get back to my car or risk frostbite.
I pushed myself up and used my sleeve to wipe my eyes. No amount of crying or breaking down would fix this problem. The real issue wasn’t that I had twins. It was that I had been lied to—not directly, but by omission. I had long ago warmed to the idea of being a father, especially to those two adorable little kids. They stole my heart the first time we interacted. I just had no idea how to get past her lies to be what I was supposed to be—that was assuming everything Jacob said was the truth.
Time was what I needed—to process my thoughts and fears. To think about this rationally so I didn’t overreact or lash out. Amber had her reasons; that was fine. I wasn’t going to go off the handle with her. I had learned a long time ago to temper my reactions. Today in Jacob’s office was too much. My old ways reared up. I hated that version of me. I knew better.
So as I walked back to my car, I decided I would take a few days to clear my head. I walked slowly, hands in my pockets, shivering with my head hung. I read the headstones as I passed, thinking of how all of these people lived a life like mine, or maybe unlike mine at all. Were they happy or sad? Had their ideas of life and love and relationships been true, or were they as traumatized as I was? Then I noticed a name that stood out: Chester Lawson.
I paused for a second and read the dates on his tombstone. Almost eight years ago he died, leaving Amber a broken mess for me to scoop up and love. And had I ever…She never knew it because I was too caught up in my selfishness to show her then, but I loved her more than life itself. I still did. There just seemed to be no way forward now.
I wondered if Amber was even the woman I fell in love with anymore, or if she had changed. How could she keep such a secret from me?
It hurt just to see her last name. I didn’t think I’d ever feel the same way about her again.