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I sighed and swiped a hand down my face. “I’m not awake enough for this.”
She yawned. “Me neither.”
I pressed a kiss to her lips and rolled out of bed. I was still naked. Right. I tugged on a pair of boxers and grabbed my phone as it started ringing again. I yawned dramatically, taking the call out on the pool, where our clothes were apparently still draped. No one walking by was going to have to guess what had happened here. I smirked. Damn straight.
Finally awake enough, I glanced down at the phone and saw Jordan’s name on the screen.
“Hey, Jor,” I said with a yawn. “It’s early. I’m in Mexico. Is the vineyard burning down? Because I don’t know why else you’d be calling me.”
“Fuck, you’re in Mexico. I forgot.”
“Yep. So…not burning down? I can go back to bed?”
“No, I’m guessing you haven’t checked your email.”
“Was kind of busy.”
“Right,” he said. Then I heard something in my brother’s voice that I rarely heard…fear. Or at the very least, unease.
I straightened and tried to wake up more fully. “What’s going on? Is everything okay? Is it Mom?”
“No, no, Mom is okay. But I got an email this morning. It was sent to you, too.”
“Okay?” I asked uncertainly.
“Just…just go read it and then call me back.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah. Or I can wait. Whatever.”
He was serious. Jordan wanted me to read this email. I shrugged. “All right.”
I put the phone on speaker and dropped into a seat in front of my laptop. I’d done some work from the resort while Jennifer had been busy. It was already up and ready for me. I clicked over to my email and scrolled through the long list of spam emails that I really should have unsubscribed from earlier.
“See it?” Jordan asked.
I didn’t know what I was looking for, but there was only one email there that looked out of place. Only one that immediately drew a red flag.
“Yeah. I see it.”
From: Weston Wright
Subject: Quick Question…
I clicked on it.
Then, I blinked and blinked again.
“Jor.”
“Yeah,” he said softly.
Hey,
My name is Weston Wright, and I think…you might be my brother.
I stopped reading there. Because…what the hell?
“This can’t be true,” I whispered. “Can it?”
“I have no idea. He sent it to both of us.”
I finished the letter. Weston said that he lived in Seattle and worked as a musician and computer tech. He was seven years younger than me, nine years younger than Jordan. His dad was Owen. He’d had no idea that he had another family. That we could be half-brothers.
I reread the letter and read it again. Then I slumped back into my seat, wishing I hadn’t woken up. “What the fuck, Jor?”
“I really have no idea what to think about it.”
“Did Dad cheat on Mom?”
“I mean, time wise, it might have been when they were separated.”
“Right.”
I’d been young when our parents separated. They were apart for a year or maybe over a year. I didn’t have many memories of it. Jordan seemed to have internalized the whole thing way more than I ever did. I’d been six or seven and Jordan had shielded me as much as he could. As he always had.
“Are you going to respond?” I asked.
Jordan took a minute before saying anything. “I don’t fucking know what to do, Julian. Like, what the fuck do we do?”
“I don’t know.”
“If it’s true, then Dad has had a whole other family this entire time. If it’s not, then what the fuck does this guy want? Why does he think that we’re brothers?”
Jordan had always had a temper, and I could hear it flaring up at this news. He’d been working so hard to deal with his issues with Dad. And they cropped up all over again.
“I don’t have the answers. But I think we should probably talk to Mom and Dad before we do anything. Mom might be able to tell us if she already knew about this. Why they would hide it from us, you know?”
Jordan huffed, “I know why they’d hide it.”
“Yeah,” I said. I didn’t want to add the I told you so, but he must have heard it in my voice.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jordan grumbled. “Just get your ass back to Lubbock, so we can talk to Mom. I’m not going to talk to her or Dad without you. I want to know what the fuck this bullshit is. I’ll look up Weston Wright in the meantime.”
“You mean, stalk him,” I said with a short laugh.
“I want the truth.”
“Me too,” I assured him. “Jen and I are leaving tonight. We can talk to Mom when I get back. When is Dad coming back into town?”
“This weekend,” Jordan said. He sounded like he was grinding his teeth. “It’s Fourth of July. He wants to spend it with us, go golfing Saturday. I think we’re going to have a very different conversation.”
