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“I remember.” His eyes are glazed over. Agonised. “I got shit-faced on some pills and booze I found in his private stash.”
I nod, letting my mind go back.
* * *
Caden’s soft snore echoes around his brother’s room when I peek inside to find him lying face down on Archer’s bed. As I draw closer, I see his face is red and mottled with any number of emotions.
I don’t dare analyse my thoughts too closely, fearful of what I might discover in the depths of my mind.
Guilt. Betrayal. Suspicion.
That last one has been niggling at me since the afternoon in the meadow. Layla’s revelation that she’d been sleeping with both twins had rattled me, and it had only been because of everything that happened since that I’d not found the right moment to ask Cade about it.
Something feels off.
I scrunch up my face, thinking hard about what it is I’m missing, but I’m torn from my thoughts when a red-eyed Layla walks in the door.
Her thin arms are wrapped around her waist. Her long dark hair is hanging limply by her gaunt cheekbones, and my heart clenches in my chest as I cross the room to wrap her in my embrace.
“Oh, Lay.”
Her shoulders start to move as silent sobs wrack her small frame.
“I don’t know what to do, Summer. I’m in big trouble.”
I pull away, frowning in genuine confusion. I’d assumed the tears were for Archer.
My uncertainty must show on my face because Layla drops her hands from around my shoulders, placing them on her almost concave stomach.
“I’m pregnant.”
My eyes widen as tears track along her pale cheeks. “Oh my God, Lay. Archer’s baby…”
I trail off when her eyes flick to the prone figure on the bed. My stomach sinks, and the world feels unsteady when her gaze darts back to me, containing a wild look I’ve never seen in her before now. “I don’t know whose baby it is, Summer. I don’t know who the father is.”
* * *
Caden presses a kiss to my brow, alerting me to the fact that I’d fallen silent upon disclosing some long-buried secrets.
“Thank you for sharing that with me, Bam. I—I know none of this is easy.”
I snuggle closer as a cool breeze snakes across our naked flesh. “It’s not easy for either of us, Cade.”
Raising my face to his, I pour every ounce of hope into my words. “But maybe now the truth is coming to light, we can make peace with the sins in our past.”
* * *
CADEN
Having made love one more time, we slowly set each other to rights and walk back to the house hand in hand. With the smell of the summer evening surrounding us, the feel of the sun as it sinks lower on the horizon, the taste of my lover on my tongue, it feels as though the stars have aligned.
As though this moment and everything leading up to it had been fated. Like the time is finally right for us.
The thought puts a shit-eating smile on my face that’s wider than the Golden Gate Bridge.
Summer nudges me with her shoulder, and I shift about to face her, my smile growing impossibly when I take in her beautiful bewilderment. “What’s got you so happy?”
“You, Bambi.Youmake me happy. Everything about this moment makes me so fucking happy, I could shout it from the rooftops.”
