by Brenda Novak
Mack shifted uncomfortably. His brothers had never been supportive of him having a romantic relationship with Natasha. And they had some valid concerns. The way she’d come into their lives. The age difference. The fact that they’d all be put in a bad position if the relationship didn’t work out.
But deep down he knew it wasn’t any of those things that’d stopped him, at least not later, when she was older and they made love after bumping into each other during Victorian Days. The intensity of that night had frightened him, made him unwilling to follow up. He knew that, with Natasha, he wouldn’t be able to get away with risking just part of his heart. She’d demand the whole damn thing.
He frowned at the DNA test that kept drawing his eye again and again. Did he dare mail it? What if Lucas was his son? What would he do then?
Ten
Mack was expecting to get Kellan’s voice mail just like last time, so he was surprised when Dylan’s son answered.
“What’s up?” Mack said.
“Not a lot,” Kellan replied. “You still in LA?”
The boy sounded down. There was no doubt about that. But why? “I’m on my way home right now.”
“Are you still going to move there?”
“I’m seriously thinking about it.”
“Will you take me with you?”
Mack felt his eyebrows shoot up. Where was this coming from? “Aren’t you a little young to move out of your parents’ place?”
“I could live with you.”
“You know I’d take you in if you ever needed it,” Mack said, passing a slower-moving vehicle in front of him. “But why would you want to leave Whiskey Creek and all your friends when you have a great home already?”
“Because I can’t stay here.”
“Why not?”
“Have you talked to my dad?”
“Yes. He’s worried sick about you.”
Silence.
“Kellan? What’s going on?”
“Does he know?” Kellan asked.
Mack detected tears in his nephew’s voice. “Know what?”
“That I’m not his son?”
Mack’s heart nearly stopped. Cheyenne loved Dylan so much; there was no way she’d cheat. “Of course you’re his son.”
“I’m not,” he said firmly. “And I have the DNA results to prove it.”
Mack turned down the music that was playing. “What are you talking about, bud?”
“You know my friend Josh?”
“Yeah.”
“He looks nothing like his father, who’s a big jerk anyway. They fight constantly. So Josh thought that maybe he belonged to someone else.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
“I’m getting there. He talked me into taking a DNA test with him, so that he’d know what the results should look like. We both swabbed our cheeks. Then we told our fathers that we needed them to swab theirs for a science project and sent it all off to the lab.”
“They let you do that?”
“Yeah. It was easy.”
“How’d you pay for it without a credit card?”
“Josh’s older half brother has one, and Josh gave him cash for his and mine.”
“Josh paid for yours.”
“Yeah. He has lots of money.”
“Where does he get it?”
“He sells dope.”
Mack winced. “I don’t think I’d mention that to your dad.”
“You mean Dylan?”
“Come on, Kellan—”
“Come on, what? Josh shares fifty percent of his DNA with his father, and I share only twenty-five percent with mine.”
Mack wasn’t sure how to respond. He’d just swabbed his own cheek, might soon be dealing with DNA results that threatened to change a lot of things in his own life, but he wasn’t that educated in this sort of thing. “I’ve never looked into it, but maybe those ratios fluctuate or...or differ between people.”
“That’s not how it works,” Kellan said, adamant.
Mack didn’t think so, either, but he’d been grasping at any possible explanation. Kellan had to belong to Dylan. Who else could he belong to?
“I’ve looked it up on the internet,” Kellan was saying. “I also emailed my biology teacher from last year. Twenty-five percent is the amount of DNA I would share with a grandparent or an uncle—not a father.”
Holy shit. “But...you look exactly like Dylan!”
“I look like an Amos,” he clarified, “because I have Amos DNA. I’m related to Dylan. But he’s not a close enough match to be my father.”
Mack had to pull off the road. This was so shocking and upsetting that he needed to get out of his car, move around. “There has to be something wrong with that test,” he said. “Maybe the sample you got from Dylan wasn’t large enough or...or it was too degraded because the package got hot in this warm weather or...something. Or they messed up in the lab.”
“If there’d been no match at all, maybe we could blame it on one of those reasons. But the fact that there’s a twenty-five percent match indicates that Dylan is related to my father. My biology teacher said so.”
This was going to destroy Dylan. That was Mack’s first thought. Then the meaning of that 25 percent match hit him—really hit him—and he stopped dead in his tracks. An Amos who was a brother or a father to Dylan had to be Kellan’s father? What the hell? “There’s more to being a father than donating sperm,” Mack heard himself say, desperate to do all he could to keep the family together until they could get this sorted out. “No matter how you were conceived—and I don’t pretend to understand what’s going on here—Dylan’s loved you since the day you were born. He’d die for you, and you know it. You and your mother mean everything to him.”
“I love him, too.” Kellan’s voice broke, and he had to clear his throat to be able to continue speaking. “But...who’s my real father? That’s what I want to know.”
Mack couldn’t answer that question. He had no idea—and he was afraid to find out. “Does it really matter?” he persisted.
“It matters to me,” Kellan replied, now defiant. “I’m not coming home until I know.”
“Kellan—” Mack started, but Kellan had already hung up.
“Shit!” Mack yelled to the miles and miles of countryside surrounding him that was mostly filled with dairy farms. Dylan was waiting for him to call and report on this conversation with Kellan, but how was he going to tell Dylan this?
He wasn’t. Not until he could sit down with his brother face-to-face.
* * *
It was after noon when Natasha got up off the floor, where she’d been playing with Lucas, to get a drink and found the money Mack had left for her. It was right in the middle of the table, partly tucked under one of her potted plants. She probably would’ve noticed it sooner, but she hadn’t been paying attention to much of anything—other than her son. She and Lucas had made all kinds of creations out of clay and building blocks, had watched a movie and read a stack of books. Even if she hadn’t been recovering from the flu, she’d needed a day like this, where she could focus almost exclusively on her child and simply enjoy being a mother. So, after Peggy’s call, she’d turned off her phone. She hadn’t wanted to hear from her in-laws again, or Ace or her own mother. She hadn’t even wanted to hear from Mack.
But she was beginning to wonder about Kellan and whether they’d found him.
“What’s that?” Lucas asked.
Natasha hadn’t heard him follow her into the kitchen. She’d been too caught up in her own thoughts. “Mack’s money,” she replied.
“Why’d he leave it here?”
“To be nice.” And to make sure she had what she needed. There was a note beside it, written in Mack’s chicken scratch writing, which she read aloud. “‘Use this for whatever you need. See yo
u soon. M.’”
When she fanned out the bills, Lucas’s eyes went wide. “That’s a lot!”
There were quite a few twenty-dollar bills, which gave her the impression that Mack had visited an ATM right before he left. The amount suggested the same, because it was the maximum amount allowed by most ATMs—five hundred dollars.
Lucas scrambled up on a chair. “What’re we going to do with it? Can we buy toys?”
“I think he left it for emergencies, bud.”
“Just one toy, then? Can I ask him? Please?”
“I’m afraid not,” she replied, chuckling. “We don’t ask Mack for toys. And we don’t use his money unless we absolutely have to.”
Slightly relieved to have some cash on hand, she put the money in her purse. But then, feeling the need to thank him and see if he’d learned anything about Kellan, she powered up her phone.
“There you are,” he said when she called. “Where’ve you been? Sleeping?”
“No. Lucas and I have just been chilling together, playing games and watching a movie.”
“Are you feeling any better?”
“I am.”
“That’s good. I’ve been worried.”
She’d learned not to put too much weight behind statements like those. “Are you home yet?”
“Not quite. But I will be soon.”
“Have you heard anything more about Kellan?”
He hesitated before he said, “Nothing definitive.”
“You still don’t know why he ran away? Was there an argument at home? A punishment or something? What triggered it?”
“Things are...unclear right now. I’m hoping to figure it all out after I hit town.”
She could tell by his voice that he knew more than he was saying. “Oh, I see.”
“What?” he said.
“This is ‘family business,’ which makes it none of my business.”
“No, not at all. It’s just...sensitive.”
She cared about Dylan. Like Mack, he’d done a lot for her, so she couldn’t help feeling a little left out. But the Amos boys always looked after each other first and foremost. “It doesn’t matter. I’m just calling to thank you for taking care of me while I was sick, and for leaving me with some money. I’m embarrassed that I need it, but I’ll Venmo you as soon as I receive my first check.”
“Keep it. You’re going to need your first check for other things by the time it arrives.”
“No, I’ll pay you back.” She tried not to remember his hands moving over her soapy breasts, but it was impossible. Since she’d started feeling better, her mind had gone back to that experience in the tub again and again, especially that moment when his hand had slid down between her thighs before she gave him the look that made him withdraw it. The mere fact that she was excited by those memories meant she had to get him back out of her life. She couldn’t move forward if she was always longing for something—or someone, in this case—from the past. “Did you drop off the paternity test?” she asked.
“Not yet,” he replied. “Because of everything that’s going on with Kellan, I didn’t want to take the time to find a post office when I can just drop it off after I get home.”
She glanced back at her son, who was using a plastic dinosaur to break apart the Lego structure they’d built. “It’s not too late to change your mind, you know,” she said into the phone.
“About the test?” Mack asked.
“Yes. It’s a big decision. You should take some time to think about it. I mean...once you know, you can’t not know. And a child’s a lifelong commitment.”
“I would never expect you to shoulder more than your share of the responsibility.”
He sounded offended that she’d even suggest it, but she had to think about how she could best get back on her feet. And now that she’d relocated and she was getting over the flu, she felt it would be wise to move on from here without his involvement. “That’s just it,” she said. “I don’t want you to act out of a sense of obligation. After everything you’ve done for me, I’d rather not continue to be a burden. That night at Victorian Days was my fault. I know that. You’ve always been careful to avoid anything physical. So I’ve got this. Even if Ace bugs out, Lucas and I will be okay.”
“Tash, I’m mailing the test. We’ll know in a few days.”
He sounded tired but resolved.
Closing her eyes, she sank into the closest seat. “You could be opening Pandora’s box.”
“I understand that. But I wouldn’t want to be the kind of man who would hide from the truth—not this truth.”
So he was going to do the right thing.
She wished she could be happy about that.
* * *
Mack went straight to his brother’s house. Dylan had been calling and texting, demanding to know what was going on, and although it hadn’t been easy, Mack had held him off by saying they’d discuss it when he arrived.
Well, now he was here, and he knew what he was going to face. He’d never had to cross Dylan, had never wanted to, either. It wasn’t so much that his oldest brother was a force to be reckoned with—although there was that. Mack couldn’t bear to hurt the man he loved more than any other. And he knew what he had to say would devastate him.
The door of Dylan’s house flew open as soon as Mack pulled to the curb, and Dylan came charging out.
“Here we go,” Mack muttered as he cut the engine and got out.
“What’d Kellan say?” Dylan demanded. “What’s going on?”
Mack held up a hand. “Before I tell you anything, I need to talk to Cheyenne.”
Dylan gaped at him. “What? Why?”
“Because I need to speak to her first. Please. Just...trust me on this.”
Dylan was so worked up he couldn’t quit moving. “Trust you? Nothing about this is making any damn sense. What could you need to say to her that you can’t say to me?”
Cheyenne appeared in the doorway, and Mack could tell, even from where he stood on the walkway, that she’d been crying. “Have you heard anything?” she asked, looking fearful as he approached.
“I talked to Kellan this morning, Chey.”
“Why would Kellan answer the phone for you when he won’t pick up for any of the rest of us? We don’t even know what we’ve done wrong.”
“Mack and Kellan have always been close,” Dylan replied, trying to comfort her.
“Can you take a ride with me?” Mack asked, focusing on Cheyenne.
She cast a worried glance at her husband. “Without Dyl?”
“I’ll be okay. Go with him,” Dylan said. “The sooner we get to the bottom of this, the better.”
Dylan gave him a look over his wife’s head that said he was banking on all the love and trust they’d developed over the years, and Mack nodded to indicate he was well aware that he held Dylan’s heart in his hands and would remain mindful of that.
By the time he’d started his truck, Cheyenne had her seat belt on, but she also had her arms folded so tightly she looked as though she was trying to hold herself together.
It was difficult to leave Dylan standing in his front yard, but Mack didn’t feel as though he had a choice.
“Do you know what I’m going to say?” he asked gently, once they were a block or so away from the house.
Her gaze remained fastened on some imaginary point straight ahead of them. “I hope not,” she murmured.
He studied her profile. “Kellan knows,” he said.
She squeezed her eyes closed, but that didn’t stop a tear from slipping out and rolling down her face. “How?”
“He took a DNA test—mostly on a lark, which is the crazy part.”
She made a strangled sound, probably trying to hold back tears. A DNA test meant there was no wiggle room, no way to lie out of the situation or make it m
ore palatable to the individuals it affected.
Mack drove straight out of town. He was looking to get away from all the buildings and people, so he could pull over and they could talk without worrying about being seen or interrupted. “Who’s Kellan’s father?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. Her gaze fell to her lap and she sniffed as tears continued to drop from her chin.
“Chey, I know it’s one of us. So does Kellan. The DNA test showed that Dylan was a brother—or a son—to Kellan’s real father.”
“A son!” she snapped, surprising him by speaking up right away. “It certainly wasn’t J.T.!”
“Thank God,” he said, but he hadn’t really thought it was. “Who, then? Rod?”
She shook her head and dashed a hand across her cheeks.
“Chey? Who was it?”
“Aaron,” she finally responded with a sigh.
“Aaron!” That was the last name Mack had expected Cheyenne to give him. Aaron and Dylan hadn’t become close until the past ten years. Because Aaron was only three years younger than Dylan, it’d been most difficult on him to have his older brother take over when their father went to prison and try to control his behavior and tell him what to do. They’d fought so often back then. There were times Mack thought they might kill each other. He’d automatically assumed it had to be another one of his brothers—and Cheyenne had always seemed to get along best with Rod. They were always teasing each other.
“He didn’t want to do it,” she said. “I mean, he didn’t want to do it behind Dylan’s back. But...I didn’t want Dyl to have to know. I just...couldn’t bear to put him through anything more than he’d already been through.”
That sounded an awful lot like an affair. But how could she have had an affair with her own sister’s husband? Actually, she and Presley weren’t related, but they’d been raised together. “So...was it just a onetime thing or...?”
His words fell off. He couldn’t even say it. But she knew what he meant.
“We never slept together,” she snapped, looking suitably horrified by the mere suggestion.
Mack sagged in his seat. He felt stupid for having asked, but he was also relieved by her response. She’d been faithful, at least. He wasn’t going to have to break his brother’s heart in that way. Or Presley’s, either. “Then...what happened?”
