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“I don’t know if you’re my nephew or not, but the resemblance is uncanny.” Our family genes are strong as fuck if it’s true.
“That’s for sure, but there are a fucking ton of people who have doppelgängers. That’s no reason to attack him,” Harley insists. I show a slight bit of remorse, but I can’t say I care that much. He still had my girl.
“When is your birthday?” he asks me.
“June twenty-fifth,” I answer.
“What year?” I pull out my ID and hand it over to him.
Now it’s his turn to get pissed off because he looks just as angry as I was earlier. “Since my brother and I were nearly identical, it’s possible that you took after us. He was two years older than me and married his high school sweetheart. They were always having problems from day one. Frankly, I’m surprised they bothered to marry at all, but they did.”
“Shotgun wedding?” Boomer tosses out.
“No. That’s why it was surprising. There was no need for a rushed wedding.”
“He was working for our father’s company when I’d gone into the military right out of high school, and his wife was pregnant. Seven months into the pregnancy, I got a call from my mother that my brother had been killed in a car accident after leaving his lover’s house. When I came home on an emergency leave for the funeral, she was no longer pregnant and claimed that the affair and his death caused the miscarriage.”
Sam brings us some drinks and we both take a shot of whiskey and ask for another. Everyone else sits around waiting with rapt attention for the rest of the story.
“There was a little coffin buried with him that had you in it. Now, I’m not saying she’s lying, because he was cheating, which means if you are his son, that means you could have been a son of his girlfriend. He wasn’t a rapist. A cheating rat bastard, but a rapist? No. Where was this hospital that you were born in?”
“St. Vincent’s.”
“I’m sorry that I missed out on watching you grow up.”
“You’ve been like a father to each one of us,” Boomer adds, clasping a hand on his shoulder.
“Thanks.”
The sound of the front door swinging open can be heard, and someone says, “The doc is in.”
He reaches us, and everyone parts to let him get to the table where we’re sitting. “What the hell is going on now?” he asks, scowling and quickly surveying the room.
“Doc, nothing major. I need a DNA test done, please.” His head jerks between the two of us as we sit across the table from each other. “To see if he’s my uncle,” I add to make sure he understands.
“Wow, holy shit. Really? Because he fucking looks like you back in Kabul.” So they all served with him in the military, it would seem. No wonder they all have his back, and I’m starting to feel like a big prick.
“I know.”
“Wow, that looks like a good one.” He reaches out and touches Boss’s jaw. Then, he turns his attention to Harley. “What are you doing out of bed, young lady?”
“He came looking for me.” Doc whips his head around toward me and snarls. I can feel the tension rippling off the doctor.
“Relative or not, if he’s the one who…” Even this fucker wants a piece of me.
“I’d never hurt a hair on her head,” I say, promising not just to them, but directly to Harley. I brush my hand over her back.
“Just my heart,” she whispers. Fuck. I wince like she just slapped me across the face.
“Harley,” I sigh. “It’s hard to explain.” My eye flit toward my supposed uncle and then back to her.
“Tell me about you. Where did you grow up?” He takes some sympathy on me.
“I lived with the woman who I thought was my mother. She told me when I was about ten that my real mother had given me up. Later on, when I was thirteen, she developed an aggressive form of cancer.” I pause, feeling the pain of the memory. She meant a great deal to me as the one person who gave me love when I was abandoned.
Harley rubs my hand gently, coaxing me to continue. “However, before she died, she explained my parentage to me so that I knew the truth. She said my mother came in, claiming that I was the product of rape and that even though she tried to love the idea of me, she couldn’t, so when I was born a preemie, she wanted nothing to do with me and gave me up. The woman who adopted me was the nurse who took care of me at the hospital. After she died, I went into foster care until I aged out.”
“I’m sorry.”
