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Hayes’ text is curt and ominous.
My first thought is that something has happened to Regan. Then, I remind myself that if that was the case, he wouldn’t be the one calling to tell me. I’m not surprised she’s the first person I thought of, though, there hasn’t been a night, since I got back to Colombia, that I haven’t dreamed of her.
They’re vivid dreams, all set on that beach in the Sea of Cortez. They alternate between nightmares of me drowning or her disappearing and wet, hot fucking where my mouth and dick learn every inch of her intimately. I feel them all like I’m living them. I wake in throes of emotions and physical sensations so strong that either my pillow or boxers are wet with proof of how gripped by the dream I was.
And every day, I leave my bed and force all of those thoughts to stay there. And they do. I go through my day in complete isolation from my emotions.
But three months of trying to pretend that I don’t miss her, has left me exhausted.
Something tells me that Hayes’ news, even if it’s not about Regan, is going to force me to call on the same discipline that saw me through the night the first time I lost a patient.
I put my percolator on the stove and walk out onto the small balcony of my apartment.
I stare out at the fog-covered valley I call home. The sun will be up soon, and the small courtyard of our building is already full of the aroma of coffee brewing and bread baking. The city stretches out in a sprawl of churches, and homes and businesses that mingle to create a vista of soaring stone steeples and the red tiled rooftops that are ubiquitous to this area. On the edges of the city, modern residential skyscrapers sit like sentinel barriers of the town and ominously dark Cordillera Oriental, a discontinuous cluster of are part of the Andes range.
The view never fails to steal my breath. This morning, I barely notice it. My attention is still on Hayes’ text. My reluctant spirit slows my movements as I pull my phone out, and with a resigned sigh video call my brother.
He answers on the first ring and his grim face fills the screen.
“Hey, what time is it there?” His dark hair falls in messy waves over his forehead and he pushes it away from his face and rests his head in his hands. He reminds me of the way I felt the first time I had to inform someone that their loved one had died.
“Five thirty in the morning. Sun’s almost up, so your timing is good,” I make small talk, even though my heart is beating out of my chest.
He doesn’t seem to hear me.
“No easy way to tell you this…so I’m just going to say it. Gigi Rivers is my biological mother.”
My stomach clenches as if it’s just been kicked by the sharp end of a boot. “What? What does that mean? She and your dad…he’s her brother.” I jump out of my chair, my coffee cup crashes to the floor, shattering against the concrete floor.
Scalding-hot coffee splatters all over my legs and I register the pain somewhere behind the loud rush of blood in my ears.
“Jason Rivers wasn’t my biological father. Gigi was married, got pregnant with me, but my father…her husband went missing before I was born.”
“What?”
“She was alone, disowned by my grandfather and shunned by her husband’s family. So, she gave me to her brother to raise as his own. And she moved to Italy to start her new life.” He sounds like he’s reading from a script, but the devastation in his eyes is very real.
I barely feel the bite of the ceramic shards digging into the soles of my bare feet as I walk back into my apartment and grab my jeans and a t-shirt from my closet. I don’t know why I’m getting dressed but I feel the need to be ready
“I don’t…How? When… did you find out?” I stumble around the questions and rifle through my drawers for a t-shirt.
He lets out a long, weary sigh and grips the back of his neck with his hand and closes his eyes. I trap the phone between my shoulder and cheek so I can step into my jeans while I wait for him to answer.
“Two weeks before Gigi was shot.”
I stop in mid-motion and the phone clatters to the floor and spins halfway across the room.
“Shit, hold on,” I call and run to scoop it up, but my heart feels like it paused at his answer. “Before we saw you in Mexico?”
“Yes.” His expression is regretful, but unapologetic. “I couldn’t say anything, Stone. Not without talking to Remi first. And until last week, I didn’t even know where he was.”
A chill of dread washes over me at the mention of Regan’s twin.
“What has Remi Wilde got to….” The answer to my question comes to me before I can finish asking it. One of the curses of a quick mind is that nothing comes to me in a soft cloud of thought. Thunderbolts are more my mind’s style, and this one packs the punch of a thousand of them at once.
Hayes stares at me and waits for me to say what is so obvious.
“Not Lucas Wilde?” I ask it, but it’s less of a question and more of a desperate plea for him to say I’m wrong.
