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“And Riggs doesn’t want to know. If he did, he’d have found me easily. Though Abby didn’t put my name on his birth certificate, she gave her father my full name. All he had to do was ask. Funny, I always assumed that he would.”
Abby.Riggs’s mother. The woman I hated with every atom of my body.
I pressed my lips together, trying to keep calm. “Both his grandfathers died when he was a small boy.”
Charlie’s face became as pale as the walls behind him. He looked torn to pieces. A part of me wanted him to hurt for what he’d done to Riggs. The other wanted to cry because he was in pain. Emotions really were quite a messy ordeal.
“Where did he grow up?” Charlie’s mouth remained open.
“Ask him.” I stood up. “When you tell him you’re his father. Which is going to be tomorrow, next time he comes to visit you.”
“I already told you—”
“Enough!” I raised my voice, smashing my purse against the foot of his bed. “I don’t care that the truth is uncomfortable. It is still thetruth. Not to mention, it’s not a family reunion that I’m after.” My palms and the back of my neck began to sweat. “Riggs has been having ... headaches.”
Charlie frowned. “Okay . . . ?”
“Nagging headaches that won’t go away and have no explanation.”
I raised my eyebrows, staring at him pointedly. It took a second before the penny dropped. Headaches were a telltale sign of something worse, and I imagined Huntington’s disease was one of them.
Charlie was green in the face now. “He needs to know.”
“Hemustget checked,” I agreed.
What I left out was that I had already booked Riggs an appointment. He just needed to reschedule it. That was because I wasn’t only worried for his health—he deserved to know the truth. What he chose to do with it afterward was his business alone.
“Tomorrow.” I bent down to kiss his cold cheek. “Otherwise, I’ll do it, and he’ll kill you himself.”
By the time I got home, I was proper knackered. I felt like I hadn’t slept for a hundred years. My mind was reeling with the revelations that Charlie was dying and that he was Riggs’s father. Amid all this, I also had to deal with the uncomfortable knowledge that I couldn’t stop thinking about my husband every second of the bloody day. I was obsessed with the man, and the prospect of him finding out about Charlie and getting upset made me want to hurl myself under a bus. I didn’t even want to unpack the idea of Riggs possibly having Huntington’s disease, which alone was a breakdown-inducing prospect for me.
Riggs was on the settee, smoking a joint and drinking a beer when I walked in, the picture of clean living. I flung my purse onto the coffee table, resisting the urge to scold him to take better care of himself, because his no-show dad could have passed a deadly disease to him.
“Hello,” I greeted. I tried to maintain “icy and proper” whenever we weren’t in bed together. “Look at you, being a health guru. Would you like a few lines of cocaine to go with your beer and weed?”
“You mean a bump?” He chugged the rest of his drink carelessly, rising to his feet. “Sure, if you have it.”
“I do not.”
“I’m shocked and shaken,” he replied acerbically, clutching his chest.
“How was your day?” I ignored his sarcasm.
“Terrible, yours?”
“Same.” I paused, frowning. “Why was your day terrible?”
He didn’t answer, but hedidlook like he could murder someone. And rather enjoy it too. I’d never seen Forlorn Riggs before. Cheeky Riggs? Yes. Annoyed Riggs? Most definitely. Even Angry Riggs made a cameo once or twice. But this was new and unwelcome.
We stood in front of each other, our gazes clashing like titans. I didn’t know what had changed between earlier this morning and right now, but something had. There were secrets between us. Unspoken things that could ruin us.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I huffed. I was tired, sad for Charlie, devastated for Riggs, and mostly—terrified. I couldn’t fall in love with my husband. I simply couldn’t. He had no interest in my heart. If I gave it to him, he’d chuck it in a bin on his way to his next, leggy conquest.
“Never mind about my shitty day. You seem off.” Riggs squinted.
“Well, because Cha—” I started, then zipped my mouth shut. I wanted to tell him it was about Charlie dying, but Charlie never told Riggs what was wrong with him. It wasn’t my place.
I shook my head. “I’ve had a long day.”
