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“I, um.” Jackson’s tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth and words weren’t coming out. “Sorry.”
“I guess you really didn’t know, huh? Shit, I probably shouldn’t have said anything, I’m just so turned around by all this. You don’t expect the person you love to keep such a big secret for so long.”
“No, you don’t.” But Brand had kept it, just like Wyatt was keeping a big fucking secret of his own. There was no way that Brand just happened to have a mysterious kid out there the same age as Wyatt, and Wyatt just happened to end up working here at Woods Ranch. Which meant Wyatt had been lying to him for weeks while Jackson laid bare his worst secrets.
He’d lied while Jackson had slowly fallen in love with the feisty, accident-prone cowboy wannabe.
“I don’t mean to fuck up your Sunday night,” Hugo said. “I’m all right, I just need some time to sit with this before I face Brand’s family for supper. Obviously his parents know what went down, but I don’t know which of his siblings know about it. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing.”
“Take your time with it, bud, and you know Brand would say the same thing. This is pretty big news to learn about someone you love and trust.” He hated that he wasn’t just talking about Hugo right now. He needed to find Wyatt as soon as possible, so Wyatt could tell him this was all some huge cosmic coincidence, and that Brand Woods was not the Maybe Daddy he’d come to Weston to find.
Wyatthadto tell him that. Coincidence. Yep. Had to be.
Anything else would break his heart.
Wyatt kind of hated that he’d kept an emotional distance from Jackson for the past few days, ever since his conversation with Ramie about the child she’d given up. He hadn’t brought it up with her again, and she hadn’t either when they saw each other in passing at the house, so he assumed the subject between them was closed. It wasn’t closed for Wyatt, though. Not really. He needed to confront Brand with everything he knew and hope the truth didn’t get him fired. He also needed to talk to Jackson but he flat-out wasn’t ready to have either conversation. Not yet.
He was too scared of losing a family he was beginning to love and of imploding the best, healthiest relationship of his entire life.
So he stayed as professional as possible every day at work, even though he could see Jackson was chomping at the bit to talk to him about something. They’d both agreed to keep things completely professional while on the clock, and neither of them seemed willing to break that promise first, for which Wyatt was grateful. In some ways, it also made him a coward, because he was hiding behind this façade of professionalism when it was really fear keeping his mouth shut.
They both had Monday off, and Wyatt had spent the better part of his work shift Sunday talking himself into telling Jackson the truth tomorrow. He owed Jackson that truth if they were truly going to move forward, and Wyatt wanted to move forward. He was falling in love with Jackson, already had strong feelings for the man, and he didn’t want to be yet another reason why Jackson distrusted people or kept them at arm’s length.
Wyatt needed to be fucking honest with Jackson and Brand both about why, out of all the places in the entire ginormous state of Texas, he’d landed in Weston. At Woods Ranch.
So yeah, he’d avoided Brand all day, and then hidden in the barn like a coward hoping that Jackson would head home without cornering him for a conversation. He’d seen Jackson heading toward the garage at one point, which gave him a chance to make his getaway, and he did. Straight back to Ramie’s house. She wasn’t home because she was working a midshift. State laws required bars to close earlier on Sundays than other weekdays, so she’d be home around ten.
As much as he wanted to settle down and chill with a movie or something, Wyatt couldn’t sit still. He paced the living room for a while with music blasting from his phone, but it wasn’t enough. He was unsettled and upset and nervous as hell about what he needed to tell Jackson tomorrow. They hadn’t made any specific plans but their joint days off almost always began with a late breakfast at the truck stop.
He palmed his phone, intending to text Jackson and make sure they were still doing that tomorrow morning, when a familiar truck engine rumbled outside. He ran to the front window and peered out. Jackson was parking on the street behind Wyatt’s car. Surprise jolted through him, followed quickly by a terrible combination of delight and trepidation. Had his moment to confess this final secret just jumped up by more than twelve hours? Seemed likely. He really should talk to Brand first, but now that he’d made the choice to come clean about his Maybe Daddy, Wyatt couldn’t not say anything to Jackson tonight. Could he?
Jackson didn’t even knock; he yanked open the door and came inside like a tsunami, big and foreboding, and Wyatt’s heart sank to the floor before Jackson asked, “Did you come here to Claire County because you think Brand Woods is your biological father?”
Wyatt’s brain stuttered and his mouth fell open, shocked to his core by the blunt question and at how neatly Jackson had flayed open Wyatt’s exact reason for being here. How the hell had he found out? And how was Wyatt supposed to explain this in a way that didn’t make Jackson dump him for hiding the—
“I need the truth,” Jackson said. His red face and blazing eyes betrayed his hurt and confusion, and both things scorched Wyatt to his core. Wyatt had done that, put that pain in Jackson’s eyes. “I deserve the truth.”
“Yes.” Wyatt didn’t know what else to say so he went with the God’s honest truth for once. Even though everything inside of him rebelled against being confronted like this, before he talked to Brand, Jackson had somehow found out on his own and he deserved the truth. “I came here suspecting Brand was my biological father.”
Jackson stared at him from the doorway, his big body seeming to vibrate with anger and confusion and so many things that hurt Wyatt’s soul to see. “So you knew and you lied.”
“No, I suspected. What little I knew about my mother’s past led me here, and a little digging pointed me toward Brand, but I wasn’t sure about anything until a few days ago.”
“What happened a few days ago?”
“I talked to Ramie. She told me about Brand giving up a baby twenty years ago. Until that moment I wasn’t sure, Jackson, I swear. I didn’t want to say anything to you until I was sure, because it was all a theory. It was only a theory for a long time, and then Ramie had a birthday and she was really depressed, and we talked about the baby she gave up thirteen years ago, but she also let slip about Brand’s baby with a woman named Ginny and that was it. It was the proof I needed about what I’d only suspected.”
“You suspected Brand’s your father and now you’ve got the proof, but you never said anything to me.”
“I didn’t know how. I knew I needed to talk to Brand but I kept putting it off because I didn’t knowhowto tell you or him.”
“You just say it, Wyatt. You tell the fucking truth. And the truth is you came here with a suspicion about Brand. You applied to the ranch with that suspicion. You took the job and flirted with me and fucked me with that suspicion, without ever once admitting to it. And when you got proof your suspicion was right you never said a goddamn word.”
“I’m sorry.” The fact that he’d planned to come clean very soon, had basically talked himself into doing it tomorrow, didn’t seem to matter anymore. Not under the glare of Jackson’s obvious hurt.
“That’s it? You’re sorry for lying to me for weeks? For breaking my trust when you know how hard it is for me to extend that trust? I asked you so many times if I could help with this search for your father and you brushed it off. Not because you didn’t want my help but because you didn’t need it, because you knew who you were looking for the entire fucking time.”
Wyatt’s face crumpled, more devastated by the quiet fury in Jackson’s voice than if he’d actually hollered at him. “I wasn’t positive who I was looking for until recently, I swear. All I had were hints and ideas but no proof until the other night.”
