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What if he never did?
“Does Nick know?” Leo asked. “I mean that he and Logan are twins?”
“I haven’t been in touch with Adler,” Juliette admitted.
“I talked to her a few minutes ago,” Vivian said. “She sounded fragile. I offered for her to come over here or for me to go and see her but she said she needed to be alone.”
“I’m so sorry. We should all be getting ready for the rehearsal. I feel like we’ve ruined her wedding.”
“You have,” Vivian said. “You and August have always played your little power games without thinking of the cost. We’ve barely had time to process the fact that August is Nick’s father before your news comes out about Logan. It’s like tit for tat.”
“Mom,” she said.
“It’s true. It took you until last year to finally have a decent relationship with Mari because your anger at August got in the way.”
“I never meant for it to end up like this,” Juliette said. “Mari, you know I love you very much.”
“I do,” Mari said. “And Dad can drive us all up the wall at times. I’m not sure what you meant, Gran, but I’m pretty sure Mom didn’t know about Nick and hadn’t been plotting to one-up Dad with her secret about Logan. I think Mom just wanted another son to love. Maybe you should cut her a break.”
Juliette was surprised that Mari had come to her defense. She wasn’t sure she deserved it but Mari definitely understood her better than Vivian did. “Thank you, Mari. I’m so lucky to have you as my daughter.”
“I know,” Mari said with a wink. “This isn’t a great situation to be in or a great time to have this come out, but it has and I think we should remember that all Mom ever did was love us and raise us the best she could.”
“I agree,” Dare said. “We’ll make sure we are there for Logan and he’ll find his way back to us.”
She hoped her kids were right. But having them in her corner, she felt luckier than she probably had a right to feel.
Eleven
Logan could feel himself going down the moody, self-loathing, angry route as the afternoon wore on. Quinn left to do her job and he jogged to the grocery store, bought two bottles of Jack and dodged several paparazzi who weren’t fooled by his sunglasses and Bisset Industries’ baseball cap.
Go figure.
He gave them the finger as he left the grocery store and then gave them the slip at the hotel. Walking through the lobby of the hotel where a lot of his extended family and all of the wedding guests were staying wasn’t his brightest decision, but it was safe to say that he wasn’t firing on all cylinders at this point.
Reeling from his parents’ revelations and wanting nothing to do with reality wasn’t like him. He went up to his hotel room, packed a suitcase and then realized he was going to have to walk back to Quinn’s.
Why was he going back to her? He had originally gone to her place to spend time with her but she had to work. And, really, did he want Quinn to witness this? Hell, he was living through it and he didn’t want to see it. He texted her that he’d gone back to his hotel in case she came home and worried.
Then he opened the bottle of Jack and poured himself a couple of fingers of whiskey. He sat on the couch in the junior suite he’d rented for the weekend.
He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t deal with the fact that the woman who’d raised him wasn’t his mother. He knew the arguments—that she’d loved him, that she’d raised him—but at the same time she’d betrayed him.
It wasn’t that he wouldn’t have been able to deal with being adopted—Well, maybe he wouldn’t have, but it would be different if he’d grown up believing that about himself.
But he hadn’t.
At least Nick, that lucky bastard, had always known Tad wasn’t his father.
There was a knock on the door and Logan ignored it. He wasn’t really in the mood to do anything but drink until he was numb.
The knock came again. “I know you’re in there. Open up.”
It was Quinn.
Images of the two of them from the other night on the beach danced through his mind. She’d always been too...he wouldn’t say good for him, but just too nice for him. She cared about other people, something he’d always struggled with. Hell, now that he knew his biological mother had given him up minutes after his birth, he might have his explanation. He hadn’t inherited her kindness gene because they weren’t related by blood.
“Logan.”
