“It struck a note,” I say in a neutral tone.
“Right,” he says with a sigh. “I suppose you have a lot of questions but I’ll go ahead and answer the first by saying, I swear I didn’t know.”
“You’re telling me she never told you about me?” I say, unable to hide the incredulity in my voice. I think of all those weeks—months, Mom and I barely made rent, bundled up rather than turn the heat on, survived on ramen while Doctor Duncan was somewhere out there getting his medical career off the ground.
“That’s the thing, she…didn’t really have a way to get in touch. What happened between your mother and me lasted the sum total of a weekend.”
“So, long enough to fuck but not exchange names and phone numbers.”
I can just imagine him cringing on the other end. Good.
“No, she had a name, but…it wasn’t my real name. It’s not something I’m proud of, but I was a young, stupid twenty-one year old visiting Detroit for a week with friends one summer. It was this stupid game we played—not even really a game, just…young men being jerks, honestly. We’d make up names to give girls so there would be no…entanglements.”
I cough out something between a laugh and a sudden loss of air in my lungs.
“I know it makes me sound like a perfect asshole, but, to be fair, I don’t think she wanted anything more out of it either,” he continues. “We both understood what it was. If it helps, I’d like to think I didn’t treat her horribly. It was more than just a…well a quick thing.
“That’s probably why I remember her name. Mallory is pretty original, and Serafin… I remember explaining to her that it meant angel, trying to impress her. She never knew what it meant before then. I took it and ran with it, drunkenly pointing up to the sky, telling her each of the stars was an angel or something like that.” He laughs softly to himself, as though embarrassed at how corny it all seems in retrospect.
Now the loss of air in my lungs is real.
That was the one thing Mom and I had, those nights of her pointing up to the sky to the stars that were angels, just like us. As it turns out, it was just taken from some drunken asshole trying to get her into bed.
The same asshole who fathered me.
“So what is it you want?”
The tone of my voice seems to startle him since he doesn’t answer for a moment. “Like I wrote, I don’t need anything from you, at least not what you might be thinking.”
“What does that mean?” I say, feeling my suspicion start to grow.
“Well,” he starts, then pauses again. “Like I mentioned, I have a daughter. She’s fifteen. She was the one to actually get me to… The thing is, she’d really like to meet you.”
I frown as I stare at the wall across from me. He wants me to meet his daughter? Just like that?
“I mean, I of course am interested in meeting you as well,” he says, misinterpreting my silence.
“Sure,” I say, distractedly.
“Great,” he says, seemingly relieved. “That would be…that’s great, Dylan.”
My suspicion is back, but his enthusiasm is just too encouraging. “As it turns out, I have plenty of free time these days. Would tomorrow work?”
“Oh. Well, yes—yes, of course that would be great,” he says with cautious surprise.
“Cool. Well…I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
We work out the logistics and I hang up. I stare at the wall for a long moment, feeling the anxiety set in.
I’m Dylan Sexton. After every endeavor I’ve taken, every hardship I’ve suffered—I don’t do anxiety. But this isn’t some money-making scheme or me charming my way onto someone’s couch for a few nights.
I’m meeting my father.
“Fuck.”
* * *
I passed on having him pick me up from the airport where the private jet flew me in. The last thing I want is an awkward car ride where we wonder what to say to each other.
I also passed on the coffee shop he suggested, reminding him who I was and how little privacy we might actually have.
Instead, I’m meeting him at his house. The hired car stops in the circular driveway of a home taken right out of a movie. In fact, it’s vaguely reminiscent of that house in Home Alone. I laugh for a second, until I remember the various homes I grew up in.
I get out and walk up the brick steps to the door that’s framed by two potted plants—no doubt taken straight from Good fucking Housekeeping Magazine.
Robert opens the door before I can even press my finger into the doorbell. I blink in surprise. I’m not sure if it’s him preempting me or the face staring back at me.
The picture from his profile online was obviously taken at least a decade ago, and touched up. That’s not to say the man standing in front of me looks much different, but he’s definitely aged. His hair is more salt than pepper, and he’s got a bit of a paunch, but still pretty fit for his age.
Those eyes are mine, though. The jaw is a bit softer, but I can see how it might have once help lure a young woman into bed, just as mine has many a time. He also has my height, meeting me almost at eye-level.
What do I even call him? Robert? Maybe he goes by Rob? Dr. Duncan? I’m sure as hell not calling him Dad, or any version of it.
“Dylan,” he says, a smile coming to his face. He opens the door wider. “Come in.”
I walk in and look around. It feels surreal taking in the homey feel of it, from the pictures at the top of the stairway in front of me, to the umbrellas in the stand next to the door—one in basic black and another clear with red polkadots.
My life has gone from zero to sixty, straight from seedy apartments to penthouse views. There was little in the way of “average” in between. I didn’t think people actually lived like this in real life.
“So, we can sit and talk or I can give you the grand tour.”
My eyes instinctively dart to the photos I first saw.
“Ah, yes I suppose you’re curious,” he says before leading me up the stairs.
I zero in on one before all the others. It’s a picture of a girl, about thirteen years old, in a soccer uniform. She has my green eyes—his green eyes. Her hair is a more reddish shade of dark brown than our black coloring. But that smile on her face—more of an amused smirk—instantly has me smiling myself. I’m sure if I looked in a mirror, it would look just like hers, one side hitched slightly higher than the other.
“Layla,” Robert says next to me in a sentimental tone.
I glance over to find him staring hard at the picture with a strange look in his eyes. He catches me and his face instantly brightens. He points to another photo—a professional family setting, obviously taken one Christmas. Layla looks a little older in this one, the smirk on her face slightly more cheeky in this one, as though she was only participating to indulge her parents.
I grin as I stare at it. She must be what they call precocious.
“This is all of us a couple of years ago. That’s my wife Julia.”
She’s an attractive woman with auburn hair and the sort of patrician looks befitting a doctor’s wife, who also happens to be a doctor herself.
How very sophisticated.
I pull back to let my eyes explore the rest of the photos: Layla as a chubby happy baby, family trips to Disneyworld, school yearbook photos, Robert and Julia at some formal gala.
“Nice,” I say, unsure of what else to add after my eyes have had their fill.
I turn to find him giving me a sympathetic smile. “How about a drink?”
“I could go for that.”
He chuckles and leads me back downstairs. I get a brief glimpse of rest of the first floor as he leads me back to a room that must be the library, all comfortable chairs and oak shelves filled with books. There’s a small built-in bar that he heads toward as soon as we enter.
“I’ve got bourbon and bourbon,” he says with a smile. There’s a hint of that same crooked hitch to it that both his children have.
“Bourbon
sounds good,” I say with a milder smile.
He pours us both a glass and takes a seat in the chair opposite the one I’ve settled in. We both sip for a moment before he sets his down on the small table between us.
“I took the day off work, so I have time to answer any questions you have. My wife is at work and Layla...she’s out as well.”
“School day?”
“Right,” he says with a tight smile after a moment.
“So, she was the one who wanted us to meet?”
His smile goes even tighter, as though Layla is not exactly the first thing he wanted to discuss.
“Yes.”
He takes a longer sip of bourbon, swallowing with a wince before setting his glass down again.
“Actually, I should probably just tell you. She’s not at school, she’s in a rehabilitation center.”
That’s a surprise. I recall that spunky girl in the photograph and try to replace her with one addicted to drugs or alcohol and just can’t picture it. Then again, I never would have pictured it with my mother either.
“What was she addicted to?” I ask, wondering if I have any right to know this much.
He blinks in surprise, before his lips curl into a smile that’s half amused, half sad. “Not for addiction. For recovery. From a spinal injury.”
The sip of bourbon in my mouth goes down hard with a burning streak. “Is she…?”
“Paralyzed?” His eyes look away. “It’s still early, but they say after a year with no voluntary movement…”
He returns his gaze to me and allows that sad smile to fill in the rest.
“Shit,” I mutter. “I’m sorry. How did it happen?”
“Accident during a ride back from a volleyball game at another school. The van was hit by a drunk driver. Flipped the whole thing over twice. Ten girls and the coach and she’s the only one who came out of it paralyzed.”
He stares down into his drink with a grim look on his face, probably wondering for the hundredth time, why Layla?
He brings his head back up and meets me with a brief smile. “We’re looking into options. I’m a damn doctor, so that has to be good for something. Apparently the University of Louisville has a spinal cord injury device that could…work some magic, but in this early stage it’s mostly rehab and wait.”
I sip my drink and ponder this. I can’t even imagine what he and Julia have been going through. Hell, I can’t even imagine what Layla’s going through. And yet, in the middle of all of this, she managed to get her father to get in touch with me.
“So…she wanted us to meet? You actually told her about me?”
Robert’s mouth cocks up into a half-smile. “Not exactly. She…well, she has a lot on her plate so—”
“I get it.”
He sighs. “She overheard me talking with Julia. It was stupid, especially right outside her door, but I was just in so much shock when I saw that article. Layla kept pressing me until I told her the whole truth. It was hard enough to say no to her before…before the accident. These days, she pretty much gets a pass.”
I grin with understanding, now wondering what she’s like.
“Listen, if it’s too much for her to take on right now, I’ll understand. I can always come back another—”
“No, no. She really wants to meet you. You came all this way, you might as well. You are her big brother after all. Half-brother.”
He stares at me as though that idea is suddenly hitting home for him. I watch him down the last of his drink.
I do the same.
Chapter Forty-Two
Dylan
“How fucking stoked am I to find out Dylan Sexton is my very own brother!”
Both her parents react at once. “Layla!”
“Sorry,” she says, lowering her eyes with such false contrition I want to laugh.
I like her.
I’ve literally just met her, and I can say that much. When I walked into the room, she had the caretaker laughing over something she’d just said. The girl lying on the bed looked just like the one in the photographs. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say nothing tragic had happened to her at all.
“It’s nice to meet you, Layla.”
“Nice to meet you, Dylan,” she repeats, almost in a mocking voice. She rolls her eyes to her parents. “Do you think I could have some alone time with my brother?”
Julia’s eyes dart to me with panic. She grabs her neck as though clutching at imaginary pearls. “Well, I think maybe it would be best if we were here.”
Layla gives an exaggerated sigh and throws her head back. “We’re not Luke and Leia, Mom. Don’t worry, there will be no brother-sister action going on here. Even Pornhub doesn’t cross that line. Besides, it’s not like I can do much more than lie there. I seriously doubt it would be worth it for him.”
Julia looks horrified.
Robert just looks at her with exasperation. “Layla, that isn’t helping things.”
“What if Dylan promises not to diddle me.” She turns to give me a wickedly conspiratorial smile.
I fight back the smirk that threatens to come to my face, knowing it would do no good.
“I think giving them some time to get to know each other might be good,” Robert says, placing his hand on his wife’s back as a hint.
She gives me one last slightly worried look before closing her eyes and nodding.
“We’ll be close by,” she says, looking first at Layla then very pointedly at me.
“We’ll go get some coffee,” Robert says, giving me an apologetic smile.
They make sure to leave the door wide open as they go.
“Finally, I’m free to be me,” Layla says, throwing her hands up in exasperation.
“Have you thought about maybe giving them a break?” I say with a half-amused grin. “This has all got to be tough on them too.”
“If I stop acting like a pain in the ass, they start smothering me,” she says mater-of-factly. Something softens her face and adds sentimentality to her tone as she continues. “It’s easier on them for me to be a thorn in their side than a problem they can’t fix. When the whole never-walking-again news came down, I played along with the woe is me crap. Frankly, I was too tired and weak to do anything else. That got old real quick. Now, at least they’re unified in their embarrassment of a daughter, constantly apologizing for my inappropriate mouth rather than wringing their hands with worry. At the very least, I make the doctors and nurses laugh, I owe them that much for how anal my mom tends to get.”
“Well, you’re handling it better than I would,” I say, impressed by her attitude.
“I mean, don’t get me wrong. It sucks. I do think about the things I’ll miss out on in life. But…it is what it is, you know? I read somewhere that people tend to settle back into whatever state of happiness or misery their personality is set at no matter what hits them. Lottery winners? Or…people who get hit by drunk drivers and are the only member of their team to get paralyzed? We all eventually return to almost the same state we were in beforehand. I was always pretty fun to be around, cracking jokes to make my teammates laugh, driving my parents crazy. Now, I just do it without the use of my legs.”
I crack a smile, wondering if I’d be so happy-go-lucky under the circumstances. Would I, after losing so much, jump right back into hustling and working on new endeavors?
She perks up and gives me an impish grin.
“But hey, at least now you know we have to be related. Both of us always getting ourselves into trouble. Makes you wonder what wicked skeletons Dad has in his closet.”
I raise my brows and twist my lips.
Layla laughs. “I guess we have our answer.”
She tilts her head to the side to consider me, and I can feel the questions coming on. “So, did he tell you how he met your mother? What happened? He wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“I think maybe that’s one he should tell you himself.”
“Why?” she pleads. “It’s just as much your st
ory as his. Hell, in some small way, it’s mine too. Maybe he held a candle for her all these years, and my mom was the only woman who reminded him of her? Maybe she broke his heart, and my mom was just the rebound…after about ten years of celibacy.”
She manages to force a laugh out of me. “Nothing that romantic.”
“So he did tell you. Come on, tell me. The only entertainment I get here each day is Wendy Williams in the morning. That’s hardly enough gossip to tide a girl over. You can’t deny me. I may never walk again.” She gives me an almost convincing hangdog look.
“You really are shameless.”
“It runs in the family,” she says, perking up with a devilish grin.
“Okay, but let’s keep this between us, yeah? I don’t want him disowning me all over again.”
“Is that what happened?” she asks, eyes wide.
I shake my head. “No, it’s much simpler than that.”
She gets everything Robert told me.
“Wow,” she says, falling back on the bed. “So, he really was an asshole.”
“Don’t judge him too harshly. He’s hardly different from many men at that age. Something to be cautious of when you make it to college. Don’t make it too easy for them.”
She smirks at me. “Well, it will be harder for me to get away from them so, good point.”
I blink in surprise, then horror. With her lying in bed, and her snappy, sarcastic attitude, I completely forgot the reason she’s here. “Oh, fuck.”
“Oh, stop,” she mimics with a laugh. “I know that look, and the last person I need it from is you. Aren’t older siblings supposed to give their younger ones shit?”
I rake my hand through my hair. “Hell, how would I even know? This? This is all a lot to take in at once.”
“Welcome to my world. But not to worry about my love life, Josh, my boyfriend, still comes to visit every weekend like a lovesick puppy. I gave him an out, but he won’t take it. Go figure. I think it’s because I let him feel me up that one time…under the bra.” She grins and winks at me.
For some reason, hearing about that has me shifting on my feet. “I’m not sure how I should feel about that one.”
Dylan: Ex-Bad Boy: An Ex-Club Romance Page 20