Page 255 of One Wild Wish

Which had me wishing again for my belly to swell with our baby. Not a healthy sentiment when the guy at the core of that wish looked ready to faint.

“I know your father’s name,” he said.

Arms locked around my waist, I squinted at the park bench, trying to piece together his statement. That bench was the reason we were here. I’d almost searched it when I’d arrived, desperate to learn if my father’s last name had been scratched into the wood, but I hadn’t wanted to do it alone. Telling August I’d booked my flight had been the larger thing in the moment, my need to tell him what I’d done.

Now it felt like a swarm of wasps had invaded my belly. “You searched the bench already?”

“No.” Again with the swallowing. “I knew before. I wanted to tell you yesterday, when I came by the house. It’s why I was there, then that suitcase showed up and the energy between us…” He tugged at the back of his hair, eyes pleading with me to understand.

I didn’t understand. Not by a long shot.

He knew my father’s name? Pre-crazy scavenger hunt? “Are you saying you knew before I found the journal? Before we traipsed around the city looking for clues?” Before I’d made love to him on my apartment floor.

My knees weakened, and I landed hard on the bench. The wasps in my stomach turned vicious, stinging at will.

He crouched in front of me, hands on my knees. “I knew, and I had every intention of telling you, but then there was that spark between us, which I never expected, and I delayed. Just…to be with you, Gwen, like that, like old times but better—I couldn’t give that up. Then you started learning things about your mother. You were seeing her in a different light. Right or wrong, stupid or smart, I didn’t want to steal that from you. If I told you, you’d have stopped reading her diary. I know you. I know you’d have tossed it aside, and you needed the closure. You still need it. It’s why you cried last night, why you finally let it out. I couldn’t tell you yet.”

I was in no state to unpack his comments about my mother, but the desperation in his voice tamed the angry wasps. He had shown up at my mother’s to tell me something. It had gotten brushed aside with everything else: the suitcase, the journal, our intense attraction. He couldn’t have planned for any of that.

It still explained nothing.

“How long have you known? How’d you even find out?”

“I know this’ll sound bad, and I feel like shit about it….” He was still in his uncomfortable squat, clutching my knees. He inched closer. “I got a letter from your mother. She gave me his name and wanted me to be the one to tell you.”

“My mother told you? Why the hell would she tell you and not me?” I’d only asked her a million and one times.

“I don’t know why. I can only guess it was to bring us together.”

My confusion amplified. My mother had actively distanced herself from me. Choosing this stealthy way to finally show she cared made no sense. How had she even known I’d had feelings for August? Unless she hadn’t been as oblivious about me and my life as I’d believed. I tried piecing through her possible motivations, but stopped abruptly. “She died thirty days ago, August. When did you get this letter?”

His brow crumpled. “A couple months ago. February.”

“Excuse me?” I flinched, the ripcord tethering me to him shredding apart.

Two months. He’d known two months, and he’d said nothing . No. Scratch that. He’d said plenty, lying to my face, pretending he didn’t know this one, crucial fact.

I pushed him away, and he nearly fell on his ass. I needed space. More air. The city sounds around me muted, like I was under water. I hunched forward and dropped my head to my hands.

Breathe in, breathe out. It should be a simple action, second nature, but each inhale serrated my throat.

The past twenty-four hours he’d let me follow that stupid diary, never letting on what he knew. Wasting my time. All because he thought I should discover my mother? I lifted my head. The thing weighed a thousand pounds. “You had no right to keep that from me.”

“I know.”

“You stole that time, and I feel like a fool. I dragged you around the city, for Christ’s sake, chasing after someone whose name you already knew. All because you thought I needed to know my mother fucked my father at a fucking lookout point?”

I recoiled at my own harshness. It wasn’t the truth. Not based on the diary. My mother had lost her virginity to a caring man, and I’d just turned it into something ugly. “You should have told me.” My fight drained, leaving my voice weak and shaky.

“I should have, but that letter hit me like a stack of bricks, brought a lot of hurt and issues back. It took me a while to gather the courage to see you, then this craziness happened. But we found each other during that time, Gwen, like your mother must have wanted. If I told you first thing at her house, where would we be now?”

His question depleted my reserves. My breath shuddered. Where would we be? Not planning a future together, buying nonrefundable plane tickets, and booking vacation time. I wouldn’t have seen him play my revised hate song. We wouldn’t have had a ketchup and mustard fight. Sex might not have happened.

The possibility was unthinkable.

His issues and hurt—the reason for his delay—had been my doing, not his. My WTF was why he’d waited to tell me, and he had intended to tell me yesterday, at my mother’s. He was telling me now , twenty-four hours after barreling back into my life. Not days or weeks. The omission still stung, but there was no denying how overwhelming our reunion had been for both of us.

I curled my toes in my boots, tried to unsnarl the clutter in my head. All I was doing was wasting more time. “What’s his name?”