Chapter 22 #2
“I’m sorry,” Parker said. “I can’t imagine that.” Her eyes filled with tears. “I remember Mom dropping me off at kindergarten. Did she take you to kindergarten?”
He shook his head. “No. I started kindergarten after I got left with Grandma.”
“Was Grandma nice?”
Now he felt a little bit bad, because there was no nice way to talk about any of this.
“You know, there’s time. And Mom doesn’t have to know that we’re meeting up.”
“She does. I can’t speak for the rest of you,” Parker said. “But I have to tell Mom that I know what she did. That I know that she made it so we wouldn’t see you today. I have to tell her that I did anyway. I’m just not okay with this. And I don’t think that we should all be living a lie.”
“You know what you’re saying,” he said. “This might blow up your parents’ marriage.”
“Yeah. I know it might,” she said. “And I can’t say that I’m going to be happy about that, but how can you live a lie like this?”
“Plenty of people can,” Lila said softly.
She was probably about only a year older than his sister. But he saw the wisdom in her eyes that Parker didn’t have yet.
Because she had been protected, shielded. It sounded like things hadn’t been perfect, but it also sounded like there had been someone there trying to make sure that everything was held together as best as it possibly could be.
That was something that Lila had, but not with parents, with her brothers.
She was world weary. She also probably understood, more like Nolan did, how much a family like this was worth.
And he had to say something about that.
“I understand why it feels like the truth is the most important thing here,” Nolan said. “But you don’t know what it’s like to not have your family. Mom and Dad together in that house. Lila and I know what that’s like. And I don’t want to be the cause of that unhappiness for you.”
“Truth matters to me,” Parker said. “Not just being happy, and I can’t go back to the secrets.
I think it would be different if she had done it differently.
I do. But she just left you, and she never told us about you, and that’s the thing that I can’t understand.
And then...hurting you like this. We’re adults.
You dealt with all this when you were a child. No, I can’t let it go.”
“It’s up to you. But I’m not asking that.” He felt almost desperate. He had lobbed a bomb into their lives in a way that he hadn’t imagined. The idea that he was such a secret, that floored him.
“How old are you, Parker?”
“Twenty-four,” she said.
Her answer was a shot to the gut. That meant his mom might have been pregnant when she had left him for the final time. Which meant that when she had started seeing their father...
And she had never told him about Nolan. Then she had gotten pregnant, and she had seen her way out.
But she had been such a mess and...and then she had put on a show for him.
But never for Nolan. But all of that...it wasn’t the girl’s fault.
This mess, it wasn’t their fault, and now he had brought it home to their doorstep.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I feel like I made a misstep here.”
This time, it was Fallon who spoke. “No, you didn’t make a misstep.
Our mother made her choices, and just as she made her choices, you’re allowed to make yours.
It was reasonable that you would want to come and find your family.
Reasonable, I suppose that she wanted to protect her secret, but also reasonable that that doesn’t feel acceptable to us.
It’s not our secret. And it was never yours. ”
That shifted something inside of him. It was never his secret. It hadn’t been his to keep.
“It wasn’t your shame,” Parker said.
And that shifted everything.
Lila was obviously trying to be sensitive to the whole situation, and she hung back when they left, then said something softly about how he could drop her back off at her place.
He didn’t listen. He just kept on driving.
And he took her back to his place.
Something had changed. And it wasn’t just that he had met his half-sisters. It wasn’t just that he had faced a fear that was among the biggest that he had, and it wasn’t just that everything had worked out... almost okay.
He had wanted her with him. He had known that he needed to introduce her to his sisters. He knew that she belonged by his side.
“What do you think about this place?” he asked as they lay in bed together, looking around the bedroom.
“What do you mean?”
“I just mean, it’s really different than your house.”
“Yeah. But I like it.”
He was on the verge of asking her. Of saying something. Making a confession of some kind, or a profession, even, and yet, he found that it was difficult. Like there were some things that needed to get sorted out inside of his head, or maybe just some final fears that he needed to let go of.
She fell asleep, and he lay there, staring at the ceiling.
This was a pivotal moment, he had a feeling. Because at this point, it was forever, or it was going to explode.
And he knew that as much as he knew anything about himself, anything about the world.
He got out of bed, and he walked outside in the gray early morning.
It was so early, the sun wasn’t up yet.
He walked barefoot to his truck, and climbed into the driver’s seat, sat there for a moment before he started it.
He didn’t know where he was going until he got there. Up to the top of Painted Ridge, this view that overlooked this whole property.
The property that had become part his because of his relationship with the Graysons.
He looked out over the valley, and thought about how important these relationships were to him.
It was great that he had met his biological siblings today.
Great that he had met Christy, but the Graysons would always be his family.
But Lila was his person.
In a way that transcended everything. It was why when her being Cody’s younger sister should have been a deterrent, it wasn’t. It was why he had brought her today, why she was the only one who knew about all this.
The sun began to crest over the mountain, pink spilling down onto the land, just as the mustangs began their early morning run through the property.
It was sacred. This place.
The horses had been here since long before the Graysons, since long before David Reynolds before them.
They were the heartbeat of this land. Time didn’t change it, it only changed how they moved through it.
And right then was when he realized that for far longer than he’d known it, Lila Grayson had been his heartbeat.
His partner in crime, his person that he had confided in, and that was because he loved her. Time hadn’t changed it. It only changed how she made his heart beat. Not that she did.
He had loved her as someone who just wanted to take care of her for a long time, and then he had loved her because he wanted her to take care of him. Because he wanted her brand of feisty, her brand of honest, her brand of intense, her everything.
He loved her.
That was why he had brought her today. And that meant that he had to claim her.
There was only one thing left. Well, beyond telling her. And it was perhaps true that she would tell him to fuck off. That it had only been sex. But he didn’t think so.
He didn’t think so, because he was so damn sure that he and Lila were on the same page.
He really hoped they were. Because he was about to put it all out there.
But some things just were. And he had spent a whole lot of time worrying about things that might be, or might not be.
About acceptance or rejection, and what he had failed to realize was that he had already been home this whole time.
And he already had the acceptance that he needed.
He needed hers. Everything else was gravy in the end.
Whatever Cody said. Whatever Walker said.
If he had to choose one person.
He was choosing Lila.
He sat there and watched the Mustangs for a while yet, and then he started the engine and began to drive down to the main barn. On a day like today, it was possible that even Walker would be there for a morning meeting.
And that was a good thing.
Because he needed to talk to them. Both of them.
When he pulled up to the barn, only Walker and Cody were there, standing there conferring over something on Cody’s phone.
He threw the truck into park and jumped out. Didn’t even turn the engine off.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
His friends looked up.
“What?” Cody asked.
“You good?” Walker asked at the same time.
“No. I’m not good. I’ve... I’ve been lying to you.”
They both just stared at him.
“Or rather, I haven’t been completely honest, and it’s time for me to do that. I’m sleeping with Lila.”
He waited. Braced himself for something. A fist to the face. Yelling.
Instead, they were both standing there, staring.
“Go on,” Cody said, looking intently at him.
“Yeah,” Walker said. “Elaborate.”
For a moment, he couldn’t figure out how the hell he was supposed to elaborate on that.
“I... It started a couple months ago. While we were working on the trailblazing.”
“She has a boyfriend,” Cody said.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Nolan said, the hackles on his back raising, because he knew exactly what they both thought, because Lila had said that she was sleeping with that stupid asshole.
“I don’t... No, Marlowe told me...”
“Lila lied. Because she was hanging out with all the girls, and she figured she ought to tell them she was sleeping with somebody, so she used that moron she met on the rafting trip as a cover. She’s sleeping with me.”
Cody and Walker looked at each other again. And yet again, neither yelled, nor did either of them punch him.
“I’m just going to need a little more information,” Cody said.
“You don’t believe me,” Nolan said, flabbergasted.
“I believe you,” Cody said, lifting both of his hands up. “I just... I’m confused. And I feel like I’m missing some information here.”
“Aren’t you mad at me?”
“Bewildered,” Walker said.
“Shocked,” Cody added.
“Dumbfounded,” Walker added.
“Intrigued?” Cody asked.
“Maybe too far,” Walker said.