by Lexi Blake
“Oh, we were friends for such a long time.” Now that the moment was here, she felt a pit of panic open inside her. She wasn’t ready to tell him, but was she ready to lie?
His hand came out, tilting her head up. “Sera, did you sleep with Wes?”
She couldn’t lie to him. She simply nodded.
“I thought you were only friends.”
“We were. It was a mistake. I’d had a rough day. They were all kind of rough then. Everyone else had gone off to universities, and I couldn’t get through community college. Remy had lost our part of the restaurant. He had to sell to our cousin when he got divorced. Then he left and joined the Navy and we kind of fell apart for a while.”
Harry sat up, a blank look on his face. “So it was a one-time thing? You know my whole family thinks you and Wes were nothing more than friends.”
This was why she never talked about it. Well, one of the reasons. It was complex, and she could still hear Wes screaming at her, telling her she’d lied to him, had led him on for years. She could feel tears pulse behind her eyes. “We were friends, but we’d drifted a little. He was in school and I was home. He called a couple of times a week and he invited me up to see him, but I knew he wanted more from me. I knew I should put some distance between us.”
The old guilt came flooding back.
“But you didn’t,” Harry prompted. “So you were friends with him for years and one day you decided to sleep with him? I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be judgmental. I’m wrapping my head around it. It would be different if he wasn’t my cousin.”
“I honestly don’t remember much of what happened.” She hated this feeling. Loathed it. “I had just broken up with a guy I’d been seeing. He told me he had to get serious because he was about to graduate and I wasn’t a serious girl. I was a fun time. Then I got fired from the diner I was working at. Wes called and asked if I would come up. Wes always made me feel good about myself. We kind of helped each other out all through school. So I went to see him. I didn’t mean to stay, but he talked me into going to a party and I got drunk. I wanted to forget that I wasn’t one of them. I wanted to pretend I was a college kid with a future ahead of me. It got out of hand.”
“Did he . . .”
She shook her head. Her mother had the same questions. “I remember kissing him. I remember thinking maybe this could work. Maybe I had been wrong all along. But then I knew I’d made a mistake when I woke up the next morning and he talked about me moving in with him. It was way too much. I knew he’d had a puppy-love thing with me, but this was something more.”
“Cal says he was obsessed with you.”
“I told him that the night before had been a mistake and he got so angry with me.” They’d rarely ever fought, but he’d been a different Wes that morning. “I left and I didn’t see him again.”
“He went into the Army after that night.”
She nodded again. “He did, but I didn’t tell him to do that. Not once did I say he should go away. I couldn’t do what he wanted me to do. I couldn’t love him the way he needed.”
Harry’s eyes came up, catching her own. “Is Wes Luc’s father?”
She couldn’t say it.
“Damn it, Sera, why didn’t you tell him?”
She’d never heard Harry curse. “He left before I knew I was pregnant, and then I didn’t want to admit it even to myself. Then he was gone.”
“But his family wasn’t.” This was so complicated. It made his gut tighten with the implications.
“They never liked me. They didn’t like Wes being my friend.”
“That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have cared about their grandchild,” Harry argued. “How pregnant were you when Wes died?”
She hesitated but finally answered. “Four months.”
“So you already knew you were going to have the baby, but you didn’t write to him? You didn’t tell him?”
This was what she’d wanted to avoid. “It wasn’t like he could come home. He’d already been deployed at that point.”
“Somehow I think he could have figured a way,” Harry replied. “And none of that explains why you never told my uncle and aunt. My uncle was still alive when you had Luc. He could have had two years with his grandson.”
“He could have taken his grandson away from me.” It was what Angie had told her, and she’d believed every word she’d said. She’d believed it because she’d heard it all from Wes. Ralph Beaumont had been cold and distant and far more interested in his family name and reputation than his children’s happiness.
“The state doesn’t just go around taking children away from parents.”
It was obvious he wasn’t going to listen to her. What had she been thinking? She’d held the secret for so long, she’d thought it would never come out. She’d thought she could have Harry and keep her secret, too. She slid off the bed, wrapping the sheet around her because they were definitely not cuddling down for the night. “I was scared. The Beaumonts hated me. They blamed me for Wes leaving, and then they blamed me for Wes’s death.”
She needed to get dressed. She couldn’t have this argument with him like this. She started for her bathroom.
“Where are you going? We’re not done.” Harry shifted to reach out and put a hand on her arm.
It was a lot like what Wes had done. He’d reached out and grabbed her, hauling her in and snarling at her. Telling her what a tease she was and how she’d wrecked his life.
She pulled away and closed the door between them.
Her hands were shaking.
“Sera, come out here and talk to me,” Harry said.
She had a pair of PJ pants and a T-shirt hanging next to the shower. She pulled them on as her brain raced, looking for a way out. Harry didn’t see his aunt the way she did. Despite the fact that she’d had a good day with Celeste, she didn’t believe for a second there wouldn’t be a fight if she found out about Luc.
He knocked on the door. “I’m not joking, Sera. You can’t hide in there and expect me to go away. You understand that this means I’m actually related to Luc. I had a right to know that. I had a right to know I had more family.”
She opened the door. He’d gotten dressed and stood tall and imposing. She couldn’t let him intimidate her. “You had a right to nothing. He’s my son. I am so sick of men telling me what their rights are. Wes acted like he had a right to me. He always did. Do you know what he told me that day? He told me he’d wasted years waiting on me to wake up and see how lucky I was he wanted to be with me.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with the fact that you’ve been lying to my family.”
She wanted so badly to throw Angie at him. Angie had known exactly what her parents would do, and she’d saved Sera. But she couldn’t put her friend in the line of fire like that. It hadn’t been Angie who screwed up their secret. “Celeste tried to have my house condemned. She did it because she thinks that land should be hers, should belong to her family. Can you imagine what she would have done if she thought she had a grandson out there? Wes’s child? I know she seems to have changed her mind about me, but she would have come after my son. I didn’t have any money. Zep was just starting to get back on his feet after getting himself into a lot of trouble. Remy was gone. Do you honestly think I didn’t want help? Do you believe I would have hidden this if I didn’t feel like I had to? Of course I would have told Wes if he’d lived. I would have had to. But I listened to all his stories about being raised by Ralph and Celeste. I did not want that for my child, and I don’t think he would have wanted it, either.”
“You don’t get to make that call,” Harry said, a worried look on his face. “I don’t want to have this fight, but I think you’re wrong. I think you’ve been wrong about this all along. You should have told Wes the minute you knew. You should have let him help you.”
“I should have married him.” The
tears slipped from her eyes now. “That’s what you’re really saying. I should have accepted that I screwed up and I owed the rest of my life to a man I didn’t love. I know I don’t look like I have much of a life right now, but it’s mine. It’s my choice. I chose to have Luc. I chose not to put myself in a position where I had to marry someone I didn’t love, who I actively feared at the end of our relationship.”
“If Wes had lived, you would have had to deal with him. He would have come home and then what would you have done? You say you would have told him eventually, but it sounds like you would have punished him. Did he scare you so much you would have kept his son from him?”
She should have known he would never understand. “You don’t get to judge me. You don’t get to decide what my fear felt like.”
“You think I haven’t been afraid?”
“It’s a different kind of fear, and one you can’t understand.” She was suddenly weary. Harry wouldn’t understand what it meant to be a woman in the room with a man who could hurt her, and there was nothing she could do about it. He would never feel the dread, the smallness that came from someone he loved threatening him with real violence. There was really only one question she had for him now. “Are you going to go home and tell Celeste?”
That seemed to stump him. He stood there for a moment, hands on his hips. “I don’t think it’s my secret to tell. I think you should tell her.”
“I’ll give it some consideration.” She would need to prepare because she didn’t think he would stay silent forever. He would give her a little time to come around to his way of thinking, but if Harry truly believed there was an injustice he could fix, he would do it. He might warn her or he might not.
He sighed. “Come on. Let’s talk about this. You can’t think you’ll hide this forever.”
It was obvious she’d been doing what she always did. Procrastinating and praying things would simply work out. It was what she’d done her whole life. She’d floated through high school because she’d been pretty and charming, and floundered afterward because pretty and charming didn’t make a career. Now something good had fallen into her lap and she was letting the gorgeous man take over because it was easier than doing it herself.
“I think you should go.”
Harry’s brows rose in obvious surprise. “What? Hey, I know we’re having a disagreement, but that’s no reason to throw me out.”
“This isn’t a disagreement. This goes far beyond us arguing about where to eat for dinner.”
“Yes, it’s much more important. I’ll help you. We can go to my aunt together.”
There it was. He would insist. He would take over. He would make the decision for her. “No. You should go, and I would appreciate it if you would give me a few weeks before you tell her. I need to figure out how to pay for a lawyer. I need to prepare the rest of my family. Remy, Lisa, and my mom know, but Zep doesn’t. Neither do my friends.”
Harry seemed to understand things weren’t going the way he’d thought they would. “I told you I wouldn’t tell her.”
“And I don’t believe you. I think you’ll tell her when you realize I won’t.”
“Why would you want to keep your son from a loving grandparent?”
She huffed out a laugh that had nothing to do with humor. “Because at the time, I didn’t think they were all that loving. I made that decision when Ralph Beaumont was alive. I kept the secret because Luc is my son and I make the decisions concerning him. I know I’ll have to tell him one day and let him choose for himself, but that day is not today. I would like you to leave. I have to do some research because your aunt basically owns the only lawyer in town.”
“You don’t need a lawyer. You need to calm down,” he said in a beseeching tone.
The words did absolutely nothing to help his case. “Don’t you tell me to calm down. I am perfectly calm and I want you to leave.”
Harry went still. “I want to help you.”
She wanted that more than anything, but she couldn’t give in on this. “You can’t.”
He stared at her for a moment. “Is this really what you want? You are so scared of my aunt that you’ll throw away what we could have?”
Her heart was breaking because he was making her choose and there was only one choice. “Yes. I have to protect my son.”
Harry sat down on the bed they’d recently shared and pulled on his boot, tying it with sharp gestures. “This is ridiculous.”
“I agree. I should have realized it wouldn’t work. I was dumb, but then I always seem to make the wrong choice. I need to stop hoping some white knight will race in and save me, and I have to start saving myself.”
“Now you have to save yourself from me? How exactly did I become the bad guy?”
He wasn’t bad. He simply wouldn’t understand her. “You’re not. You’re probably right about everything, but you don’t know your aunt the way I do. I had a nice day with her. But she won’t forgive me. I walked into this relationship knowing it couldn’t work. I don’t even know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking at all.”
He stood in front of her. “You’re kicking me out because I don’t agree with you?”
“I’m asking you to leave because I need space and time to figure out what to do.”
“I want to help you decide.”
“No, you’ve already made your decision. You want to convince me to do something that could cost me my son because you don’t understand what’s at stake.” It was obvious he was going to try to argue until he wore her down. If she didn’t stand her ground, she would find herself walking into Beaumont House tomorrow and putting them all at Celeste’s mercy. She wasn’t so foolish to think one lunch truly changed things between them. “I’ve asked you for time, Harry. Are you going to give it to me?”
He was silent for a moment. “Yes. I don’t want this, but if you insist, I’ll give it to you.”
“I insist.”
He stared down at her, his eyes full of pain. “I think I could love you.”
She’d wanted to hear those words, but now she knew they came with conditions. “If I’m honest with your family.”
“I don’t think anyone should start a life together with a lie,” he said, his tone mournful. “I’ll come by in the morning and pick up Shep. I don’t want to disturb Luc.”
But he did. He wanted to disturb Luc’s whole life, wanted to shake it to the core and pray everything came out right on the other side.
She watched as he walked out. She managed to follow him down the stairs, lock the door behind him, and walk back up to her room. She managed to close the bedroom door before she let herself fall apart. It was okay because in the morning she would put herself back together and she would prepare for war.
chapter thirteen
Sera strode into Guidry’s the next day, looking for her brother. Remy was the one she needed to talk to. He was the one who knew people outside of Papillon. She made her way into the kitchen and found him stirring a big pot of gumbo. It was midmorning, before the lunch rush, but Remy would have already been awake and working for hours. Her brother and sister-in-law were dedicated to their business, to growing it and positioning it for the future.
It made her wish she could find something in her work life she could be as passionate about. Not that she had much of a work life. She had an asset she needed to sell, and now it looked like that money might have to go to ensure she kept custody of her son.
Her big brother looked up and flashed a grin. “Hey, sis. I didn’t expect to see you. You need a shift?”
It was what she did. When she was in between jobs, she took shifts here to ease the way to the next thing she would try, and her brother would make it simple for her. She couldn’t float through life anymore, depending on her brother to give her a safe place. “No. I’m going to work on the house this afternoon. I have a crew coming in to fix the
bathroom tile.”
“Which bathroom?”
“Pretty much all of them,” she admitted. She’d been ready to work on the bathrooms while Harry dealt with the stairs to the second floor of the house. She would need to ask Herve if his cousin was still available. “I need to ask a favor. Do you know any lawyers?”
A brow rose above her brother’s eyes. “Sure. Lisa’s brother-in-law is a lawyer. I’m pretty sure he’s licensed to practice in Louisiana. But what’s wrong with Quaid? If there’s something you need with the house, he knows Louisiana property laws like the back of his hand. He also owes me twenty bucks from poker the other night.”
If only it were that easy. “I need someone who can represent me in custody matters, and it can’t be Quaid because he’ll likely be on the other side of it.”
Remy stopped stirring and turned to her. “Michel, I’m going to need you to take over.”
The chef strode in from the back and eased into the place her brother had occupied.
Remy nodded toward his office. “All right, what’s going on?”
She followed him in. This had once been her grandfather’s office. It would have been her dad’s if he’d lived. Now it was Remy’s. He was carrying on the family tradition. So much of her trouble right now came down to family and how tightly knit they could be. So tight they sometimes frayed. “Celeste is going to find out about Luc.”
Remy sank to his seat. “How? Have you decided to tell her? I thought you didn’t want her to know.”
When her brother had come home after years away, she’d told Remy everything, including the fact that Angela had been the one to convince her to keep the secret about Luc from her family. “Harry found out.”
“And Harry can’t keep his mouth closed, why?”
She fought back tears at the thought of Harry. The night before had been perfect, right up until that fight. “He’s got a black-and-white view of the world. I’m afraid he believes in his aunt in a way I can’t. The funny thing is, she’s started to loosen up. When I began dating Harry, she decided not to fight it, and we’ve gotten fairly tolerant of each other.”