The Freeman Brothers: A Secret Baby Romance Collection

by Natasha L. Black

  In the morning the guilt was back in full force. It ate at me, making it hard to think about much of anything else. This wasn’t going to go away. I couldn’t just pretend it didn’t exist and let whatever else was going to happen unfold. It needed to be dealt with. All I had to do was find the strength.

  Willa hadn’t followed along with her new habit of getting up before me that morning, so I did my customary peek in at her and went to the kitchen. A pot of coffee brewing, I put together a quick breakfast for my little girl so Pam had one less thing to do. I knew she didn’t mind doing anything Willa needed, but I appreciated her so much if I could make her day a bit easier, I wanted to.

  I’d just finished breakfast and gathered up my freshly awakened daughter when Pam let herself in. I gave Willa a few extra cuddles and savored her throwing her little arm around my neck to give me a sleepy hug. Kissing her, I handed her off to Pam, told her about breakfast, and headed out to my car. I plugged my phone into my Bluetooth and called Kira.

  My sister wasn’t awake yet, making her voice come through the speaker groggy and confused.

  “What in the hell are you doing calling me before the holy spirit has had his first cup of coffee?” she asked when she got herself together.

  “It’s not that early,” I said. “But I needed to talk to you.”

  “Okay, you go ahead, but I’m just going to murmur occasionally, if that’s all right with you,” she said, already slipping well into her murmur.

  “No, it’s not all right,” I told her. “I need you fully conscious for this. Kira!”

  “Fine,” my twin sister huffed. I could almost see her flailing in her bed, sitting up and pounding her pillows into an acceptable position even though no one was there to appreciate her drama. “I’m up. Are you happy now?”

  “That was actually a really good segue,” I said.

  “Oh. Well, that’s not good,” Kira said, the sass gone from her voice.

  “Can you come down here, please? I need you.”

  It all spilled out in one stream of sound without any introduction, and my sister immediately picked up the anxiety.

  “What’s going on? Is something wrong?” she asked.

  “Yes and no. I’m not really sure how to answer that, which is why I need you here. I can’t wait anymore. I have to tell him, and I can’t do it without you here.”

  Kira didn’t hesitate to agree, and I had never been gladder for my sister.

  Just the thought of what loomed ahead of me kept me subdued all day at work. The only thing that brought a real smile to my face was when Greg’s mother helped him hobble his way into the garage on crutches. He said he was just there to say hi, but he ended up giving us all a boost of energy and motivation for the next race. We all knew we were doing it for him.

  23

  Darren

  The next day, it turned out to be Colby who had to skip out on our workout together. He said he woke up with a cold, but I chose to believe he’d put himself through the same workout he put me through and ended up straining something. Not something vital or that would take a long time to heal, just something that would aggravate him for a couple of days. It wasn’t the most humanitarian I’d ever been toward someone, especially not my best friend, but that didn’t stop me from also making a mental note to myself to not let him live it down for a good while.

  I could have taken it as a gift and spent the day being completely lazy. I considered it briefly and eventually came to the conclusion I couldn’t in good conscience not do anything. Parts of me were still aching after the brutal cycle Colby made me do the other day, but that convinced me even more to at least do something. That’s what led me to call up Vince while we were still at work and ask if he wanted to do a jog after work. Of all the brothers, he lived closest the complex, which made it convenient to head over to his place right after work and borrow some of his clothes to jog in. We had done a few loops through his neighborhood and were headed back to his house when I felt my phone buzz against my thigh. A few strides later, it vibrated again.

  “What’s wrong?” Vince asked when I reached down and pressed my hand against my pocket.

  “Somebody messaging me,” I said.

  “Do you want to check it?” he asked.

  He continued to bounce around when I moved off to the side of the road and pulled out my phone. The sight of him jogging in place right on the edge of my periphery was distracting, and I swatted at him.

  “Could you stop? You look like you have to pee,” I said.

  “Have to stay limber,” Vince responded.

  “For what? This is the first time I’ve seen you exercise in months.”

  I looked down at my phone and was shocked to see it was Kelly texting me. My face must have shown what I was feeling, because Vince stopped his bobbing up and down and took a few steps toward me.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “It’s Kelly,” I told him. “She says she wants to see me.”

  I was grinning so hard my cheeks hurt. I probably could have tried to have a bit more decorum, to play it cool so my older brother wouldn’t immediately latch on to the opportunity to make fun of me. Of course, that was far from happening. Seeing her name on my screen and getting an invitation from her to come see her brightened me up, and there was nothing I could do to cover that. Being the dedicated older brother that he was, Vince immediately jumped on the opportunity to give me a good ribbing.

  “Maybe she wants to change your oil,” he said. “Have you gotten a tune-up recently? Did you make an appointment with her to get your system flushed? She could rotate your tires to make sure they wear properly.”

  That one made me look at him strangely.

  “Do you want to throw a few more mechanic-themed double entendres out there?” I asked.

  Vince went back to his jogging in place, looking up and to the diagonal as he made a sound like he was deep in thought.

  “Um… something about… filters. I’ll have to think about that one and get back to you.”

  “You’re ridiculous,” I told him.

  “Are you going to go see her?” he asked.

  “Of course I am,” I said as we started jogging again.

  “You can take a shower at my place, and make sure you stop by the drugstore on the way,” he said.

  “It’s not that kind of visit,” I told him.

  “What do you mean it’s not that kind of visit?” he asked. “The girl texted you after work and said she needs you. That doesn’t take a whole lot of reading between the lines to know what she’s saying.”

  “She didn’t say she needed me. She said she wanted to see me. We’re just going to talk,” I told him.

  “You look pretty perky for a guy who is just going to go talk to a woman he’s obviously into,” my brother teased.

  I shrugged. “I’m hoping this means we can talk about a possible future. When she first started working at the complex, we agreed we were just going to keep everything professional, but I can’t do that anymore. I let her know my feelings had changed, and I’ve been taking it really slow with her. She hasn’t given me any real indication of where she is in the whole thing, so maybe this is it. She’s ready to talk about us.”

  I waited for some sort of dig or mocking response. Instead, Vince just nodded. There wasn’t a hint of hesitation or discomfort in his expression or posture. He seemed to think it was absolutely fine I wanted to date our mechanic. Either that or he was still contemplating the inappropriate filter joke and hadn’t gotten it worked all the way out yet.

  We stayed silent for a few more steps before he glanced over at me.

  “So, you’re serious about her?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I really am,” I told him. It felt good to admit that, to actually say it out loud and share it with someone other than Colby. I didn’t want to keep it hidden anymore, and I liked being able to say it openly. With a surge of energy, I flashed him a smile. “Race you back!”

  I took off running,
listening to him shout after me and laughing.

  When we got back to Vince’s house, I jumped into the shower. He had clothes waiting for me when I got out. He was slightly taller than me, but it wasn’t enough to make that big of a difference. I was just glad to be wearing fresh clothes rather than showing up at Kelly’s house in the same thing I was wearing at work. Like I usually did, I’d chosen one of the bikes to ride home. It was something I couldn’t do when the weather didn’t cooperate, so I always savored the nights I could just enjoy a ride that didn’t have anything to do with trying to come in first. Racing was a deep love of mine, and I was always excited to get out there and compete, but there was something special about just being able to relax and have fun on the ride.

  That’s what I did when I got on the back of my bike and rode toward the address Kelly sent me. It was a bit of a distance from Vince’s house, but that only meant I got more time to enjoy the feeling of the air rushing past me and the world flying by. When I got into the right street, I slowed down so I could find the right building. Soon I noticed Kelly’s Jeep sitting in the driveway of a duplex. Beside it was another car I didn’t recognize. It could have been her neighbor, but there was another driveway on the other side of the building I assumed belonged to whoever lived over there.

  Someone else being at her place when she called me over to see her felt off. There was something strange about her reaching out to me the way she did if she wasn’t alone. When I first read the text from her, it seemed like she was excited to see me. But now that I thought about it longer, it seemed more like urgency. She was adamant about me coming over to her place that night rather than us doing anything else or making plans for another night. It made me feel like she really wanted to see me, to get the conversation going, but now I had a sinking feeling.

  I parked my bike and walked up to the door. Taking a deep breath, I knocked. Any hope I had for this evening going well disappeared when Kelly came to the door. She was wearing stretch pants and a lightweight, long-sleeved shirt. Her hair was tied up in a messy bun, and she’d washed off the makeup she wore to work that day. But it wasn’t her quest to be comfortable that was bothering me. Instead, it was the red rimming her eyes and the puffiness just beneath them. She’d obviously been crying, and that made my heart sink and my stomach flip over.

  “Are you all right?” I immediately asked,

  Kelly stepped back to give me room and gestured into the apartment.

  “Come on in,” she said.

  I followed her in, and she led me to the living room. There I noticed another girl sitting in one of the chairs. When she turned to look at me, there was a surreal moment. The girl looked almost exactly like Kelly. They wore their hair differently, and she was wearing makeup, but their features were the same. They had to be twins. This was another detail of her life I didn’t know about, and the discomfort of us not talking or sharing anything about ourselves in her earliest days working with me sank back in.

  “Darren, this is my sister, Kira,” Kelly introduced. “I asked her to be here tonight while I talk to you.”

  “You asked her to be here… from Canada?” I asked incredulously. Kelly nodded. “Wow. Well, that doesn’t seem to start the night off on a good note.”

  “Sit, please,” Kelly said, ignoring my efforts to bring some levity into what felt like a tremendous amount of weight and stress filling the space.

  I sat on the couch, expecting Kelly to sit down beside me. Even if she was on the complete opposite end of the furniture, at least she’d be showing some sort of connection to me. Instead, she stayed standing and paced back and forth in front of me. She wrung her hands and looked at the floor. A full assortment of terrible thoughts started rushing through my mind, getting louder and faster the longer she paced without saying anything. Kelly was obviously trying to build herself up to something difficult, and I had no idea what it was.

  The fact that she’d called her twin sister and had her fly in all the way from Canada just to give her moral support through this conversation with me didn’t seem like a good thing. This wasn’t just asking someone to come a few blocks or cross town to be there in case of something going terribly wrong.

  I felt like I needed to try to prepare myself for whatever she was going to say. I went over options in my head, came up with different ideas, and tried to figure out how I would feel if that was what she was frantically trying to prepare me for. But nothing at all could prepare me for what she was going to tell me.

  24

  Kelly

  Darren sat on the couch watching me walk back and forth in front of him like an idiot. When I’d messaged him earlier, I was feeling at least somewhat confident. I knew it was the right time because it had to be the right time. If I kept waiting and waiting for the exact perfect time to come along, I would never get around to telling him the truth, and that just wasn’t an option. As soon as he agreed to come and then said he was on his way, it all went to hell. Fear and uncertainty immediately had tears streaming down my face, even though Kira was doing everything she could to calm me down and convince me I was going to be all right, that I could get through it.

  We both knew it was time for me to face it head-on. Kira had known since before Willa was born and reminded me on a fairly regular basis that it was just going to get harder and more complicated the longer I waited. Most of the time it was just knowing looks or conversations she slipped the topic into when we were spending time together. Occasionally she decided to take a slightly more dramatic approach in hopes it would make a difference.

  Back then I was able to cover myself by saying we weren’t living in the same country. I didn’t have any contact information for him. I didn’t even know his last name. Those made sense. They were perfectly viable reasons I couldn’t get in touch with Darren and tell him about our baby. She accepted that begrudgingly, but still insisted I do whatever I could to figure out a way.

  Now, I was out of excuses. Darren was no longer living in a different country because I packed up everything and moved down here with the express purpose of eventually finding him and telling him the truth. I absolutely had contact information for him, right down to knowing exactly where he worked on a daily basis. Because it was right across the garage from me. And I was very familiar with his last name. There was nothing left to hold me back except my own fear and uncertainty, and I couldn’t give in to that anymore.

  And it was exactly that fear that brought me to tears and made me feel like there was no way I was going to be able to handle this. It was too much and crushing down on me too hard.

  But Kira was there with me now, and I felt stronger just to have my twin beside me. She knew everything I’d gone through and what I was feeling. She also was going to be the one to not let me waver on my mission to finally get this out. If I started to hesitate or stopped before I got it all out, she would be there to make sure I kept going. It was truly the point of no return when he knocked on the door and I realized he was just a few feet away. Not just from me, but from where my two-year-old was sleeping. Where our two-year-old was sleeping. There was no turning back now. I couldn’t just let him in and pretend I had some other reason for inviting him over.

  He could tell something was wrong as soon as he walked in the house. That was probably for the better. I wouldn’t want to trail him along any more than I already had. When he sat down on the couch in the living room, it felt like every word I’d ever come up with, everything I’d ever planned on saying to him, just evaporated. I’d practiced ahead of time. More times than I could even count, I came up with ways I broach the topic or how I would ease into the conversation with him. But all that disappeared as soon as he sat down.

  So now I was pacing back and forth, trying to find my words again. Finally, there was really nothing else I could do. The whole thing was already a shitshow, so I didn’t know what else to do but rip off the Band-Aid. I stopped in front of Darren and stared right into his eyes.

  “You have a daughter,” I
blurted out. Then I drew in a breath to clarify. “We have a daughter.”

  It was the moment I’d been dreading for more than two years. It was out there now. I’d said the words, and there was no way to gather them back up out of the air and stuff them back into my mouth. The announcement hung there in between us. It wasn’t in my control anymore. I’d transferred it over to him, and all I could do was wait to see what he would say. If he would say anything. It was entirely possible he would just get up and walk out of the apartment, call Quentin, and have my notice of termination emailed to me before I could get the dead bolt locked.

  Darren didn’t do either. He just sat there. All he did was look at me, not speaking, not blinking. Possibly not even breathing. I took that as my cue to just keep going. I was waiting to give him more of an explanation of what happened for after he had a chance to respond, but since he didn’t do that, I just went on with it.

  “Her name is Willa. She’s a little over two years old. Obviously. I fully understand if you want to do a DNA test to make sure I’m telling you the truth. But I can assure you, there is absolutely no chance whatsoever she is anybody’s but yours. At this point, I know I really don’t have a bargaining chip of any kind, but I just want to go on record as asking… can you please not take her from me? She’s my everything.”

  Darren just went right on staring at me, not saying anything, not seeming to react in any way. I looked over at my sister, who moved toward the edge of the seat cushion and leaned forward toward Darren.

  “Are you okay?” she asked. “Is there anything I can do to help?”

  She lifted her hand as if she was going to reach out and pat him on the back comfortingly, but he didn’t give her the chance. Him exploding up out of his seat made Kira and I both jump back, and I gasped, my hand coming up to cover my mouth. The reaction was so sudden, so intense, I didn’t know what to expect next. He could have started screaming, which definitely would have woken up my little girl, and that wasn’t the type of introduction I ever imagined. But after a couple of seconds, there still wasn’t any screaming, and instead Darren just started pacing back and forth the way I had when he first sat down.