“I don’t care how he meant it,” Adam said. “You deserve better.”
“See, now I feel like you’re just trying to use this as a way to put a wedge between Michael and me again,” I said. “I came to you for your help.”
“I know you did,” he said. “And that’s what you’re getting. Any rational person would say the same. You just can’t think clearly about it because you’re letting your feelings for him cloud your judgement.”
“Any rational person would say what?” Rob asked as he walked over to where we were.
“Private conversation,” Adam said.
“I don’t think so,” Rob replied. “Not unless Lisette wants me to leave, that is.”
“You can stay,” I said with a smile. Rob was proving to be the most level-headed person among us now. “I was just getting ready to go inside anyway.”
I turned and headed back toward the door, and as I left, I could hear Rob talking to Adam.
“You need to back off,” he said.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Adam snarled at him.
“Whatever it is that she’s talking to you about; she’s talking to you as a friend, not a lover. Don’t screw that up by confusing the two.”
“You’re just jealous that she came to talk to me instead of you,” Adam said.
“No, I’m glad that she came to talk to you about it first. It will be easier to show her that I’m not such an asshole in comparison.”
I kind of giggled a little bit about that as I walked away, but as soon as I walked inside the cabin and saw Michael sitting on the couch in front of the fireplace alone, I sobered right back up because I was still no closer to finding a way to reach him than I had been before. That’s when I came up with my own idea. It was a little crazy, but then again, so were most of the ideas that ended up being worth anything. I went to go sit down beside Michael on the couch and I leaned over to kiss him as soon as my thigh was flush against his on the seat cushion.
At first, he resisted me, but then he couldn’t help but give in. He kissed me back, wrapped his hands in the hair behind my head, and slipped his tongue between my lips. When our mouths pulled away, I kept my face close to his and talked to him as if I were disabling a bomb—carefully and precisely.
“I am going to show you that you are worried about something that isn’t worthy of taking up space in your head,” I said softly.
“What are you going to show me?” Michael asked as he looked at me curiously.
“Do you know who your father was?” I asked.
“No, not really,” he said. “I only know what I heard. People talked about him at Lineage all the time. The ones who spoke highly of him were the worst of people, and the ones who hated him were the people with compassion and reason; the people that usually ended up being the targets. That, and I also heard the things that my mother would say about him. She told me what an awful and evil man he was, and that if I thought she was bad, I should have been glad that he died before I could get to know him. I was able to put together a pretty awful picture of my dad through all of that.”
“What if he wasn’t so bad?” I asked. “What if it was your mom who was the truly evil one and your dad wasn’t as bad as you thought him to be. What if he was just a victim caught up in an overly ambitious situation like my mom was?”
“That’s highly unlikely,” Michael said. “Everyone that knew my dad is either dead now or wishes that they were. His horrible reputation followed him everywhere, even after his death.”
“Okay, but all I’m saying is that it’s worth looking into since all that you really know about your father is hearsay,” I said.
“What does this have to do with me now?” he asked.
“If your dad wasn’t the monster that you thought him to be, then it would show you that this whole theory about genetic predisposition to be an awful parent wouldn’t apply. It was just self-doubt that you learned from watching your mother and her vile ways.”
“And what if we dig into this and find out that my father was every bit as evil as I thought him to be?” Michael asked.
“Then we will try something else,” I said.
I realized that it wasn’t the best and most encouraging answer, but it was all I had, and it was an honest one. I wasn’t about to give up until I showed Michael that his fears were baseless.
“I will not abandon my love for you,” I said as I stared into his eyes.
“You might not always feel that way,” he said. “You might decide down the road that you want one of the other guys that can give you everything that you want, even a family if that’s what you want in the future.”
“Now you listen here,” I said as I got angry with his obstinance. “You and I are family, and don’t you ever forget that. If we do, or don’t, have children, we can figure that out down the road. But I will not have the reason for you pulling away be because you think I would be better off with someone else that can father a child. This is absurd and you know it.”
He started to protest again, but I was all done listening to it.
“Tomorrow, we start doing some research on your dad. If that turns up nothing, then you and I are going to have another heart-to-heart about how none of this extraneous stuff matters. The only thing that matters is that you and I love each other and there isn’t anything in the world that we can’t work out and overcome together,” I said as I leaned forward to kiss his lips.
“You’re right,” he said, finally calming down about it. “There’s absolutely nothing that we can’t overcome to be together.”
“Nothing,” I said in agreement.
I believed that more than any truth in the universe. Michael would see, one way or another, that he had nothing to worry about and that if we did ever have a baby, that he would make a great father. And, if that didn’t happen and we ended up never having a child together, then that was okay too. Because the only thing that mattered was that he and I were together and inseparable. Still, I liked my idea of digging into some of the past about his father.
Maybe some research would turn up that would help Michael heal from his past childhood trauma.
If his dad proved to be not as much of a monster as Michael was made to believe, then surely that would make him feel better. And if it turned out that his dad was an evil bastard, then it was something that he and I both had in common and we could help each other bury our past demons together, once and for all.
That night, the four of us laid in bed together, arms and legs intertwined. Michael and I were always the last ones to fall asleep, it was like we were internally synched with each other. But tonight, all four of us had open sets of eyes that stared up at the ceiling.
“What are you guys thinking about?” I asked.
Rob answered first. “I’m thinking about how weird it is that we are all still sleeping together but no one is having sex,” he said.
“That’s not true,” Michael said. “Lisette and I—”
I interrupted him before he finished because I didn’t think that his answer was going to help anything. “Adam, what are you thinking about?” I asked.
“I’m thinking about Paula,” he said.
“You’re thinking about my mom?” I asked. “What about her?”
“I was just thinking about how she was such a big part of so many lives, and how we are all more interconnected than we ever realized.”
That was true. It was strange to think about the different ways that we were all a part of each other’s lives, even before we chose to be.
“How about you, Michael?” I asked.
He waited for a moment before he answered. Then he sighed and shifted his body closer to me.
“I was thinking about what we might find out about my father.”
“Does it worry you?” I asked.
I really felt like we all needed a break from worry for a while.
“No,” he answered. “In fact, I was lying here thinking about it just now and I realized that I don’t even care wh
at we find out about him one way or another. It doesn’t matter what it is, because nothing can change what we have.”
I turned my head around to kiss him and then snuggled up with all of them. Michael was right and that night, I was the first one to fall asleep.
23
The internet was definitely not a miracle cure for finding a goldmine of information about Michael’s father.
Even his name was nearly impossible to nail down. Apparently, he had several alias names, which were accredited to his need to “retain a low profile” due to shady business dealings while at Lineage.
Essentially all that Michael really knew for sure was that his first name started with a J and that there were several variations of what name he actually went by; Jason, Jerry, Jack. One of the names was even a foreign name that I couldn’t pronounce. Michael’s father was as slippery and elusive as they come, and even after his death it felt like his identity was still being covered up.
Rob and Adam tried to help too. Rob had access to lots of old police records and confidential information about people that we couldn’t get at. Adam was just good at being cunning and thinking about ways to find information in places that the rest of us wouldn’t even think to look. I figured that we’d give it a day or two, see what we could come up with, and then drop the notion altogether if our efforts didn’t turn up anything of substance. Michael didn’t seem to need this as much anymore. He seemed to be able to come to terms with his own closure after giving it some rational thought and sleep.
I sat in his lap on the desk chair as we scrolled through things on the computer. There was a lot more information about my father on there than his, which was saying a lot in terms of how covert Michael’s dad must have been, because mine had done a pretty good job of hiding under the radar and pretending to be dead for years. I guess being “actually” dead makes it a bit easier to disappear from sight. It was a bit strange though, how no one seemed to ever talk about Michael’s dad and how no one seemed to really know him or anything about him. If Marta was still alive, she would be the only one that would be able to give any solid information on her husband.
Aside from her, it seemed like Michael’s dad was more like a ghost of a Lineage legend, than an actual person.
I swiveled around in his lap and distracted Michael from the computer, and he didn’t seem to mind at all. He reached around my waist and turned me into him until our open mouths met and the desire to do any further researching was replaced with the desire to make out in the chair.
“Get a room you two,” Adam said with a giant and exaggerated roll of his eyes.
“They have a room,” Rob teased. “But unfortunately, it’s our room too.”
Michael stood up from his seat and picked me up with him to carry me to the bedroom.
“Hang on there, lovers,” Rob said as he got up as well. Let me get my keys and jacket out of the room before I end up needing to come in there. I need to run out to the store and get some more cycle parts.”
Michael set me down on the ground while we waited for Rob to get his stuff, and then went to the kitchen to get some water.
“Find anything interesting?” I asked Adam as I leaned over his shoulder to look at the computer.
“Actually, yes. And I think you should take a look at it.”
I peered at what Adam was pointing to on the screen and tried to figure out what the significance of it was.
“What am I looking at exactly?” I asked him.
“When I couldn’t find much on Michael’s dad, I decided to do some backdoor searching and come at it from a different angle by looking up Michael instead, and hoping that it would lead me to his dad.”
“Wow, you’re really taking this seriously,” I teased. “I had no idea you would be so interested in Michael’s family history.”
“Oh, you know, anything I can do to stir up a little trouble between the two of you,” he said.
I wasn’t sure if that was a joke or not.
“This is Michael’s birth certificate,” he said. “Notice anything weird about it?”
I moved my face closer to the screen to read it.
“Aside from his dad’s name being the same as mine, not really. Please don’t tell me that you’re making something out of that coincidence. There are a million Jacks in the world, and besides, they both have different last names. We already knew that one of the names he went by was Jack. I don’t see how this is a big deal.”
“It’s not,” Adam said. “Until you look at the rest of the paperwork.”
He scrolled his finger down and pointed to the part that listed the address for Michael’s father, which was the address of my childhood home.
“What the hell?” I said under my breath.
“Yeah,” Adam said. “So now we have his father and your father both having the same name and the same address. See how it’s a big deal now?”
As weird as that was, there had to be some sort of explanation for it.
“Maybe it was a typo,” I said.
I knew that sounded absolutely absurd. How many typos were there on official birth records and what are the chances of my family’s address being the one used by mistake. There was just no way that was plausible.
“Come on, Lisette,” Adam said. “I love you and all, but don’t be stupid. There’s no way that was a typo.”
I shook my head. “Maybe there was some other reason. Michael said that my mom helped him when he was growing up; maybe there was a reason that they used my family’s address.”
“Okay, again I’ll say it; don’t be stupid. Michael was a newborn, and your families hated each other. There would have been no reason for them to use your address.”
“Okay then, Adam,” I said as I started to get pissed off at being called stupid. “What do you think the reason behind this, then? Please tell me all of your conspiracy theories.”
“I only have one,” he said as he turned around in his chair to face me. “And I honestly don’t think that it’s far-fetched enough to be a conspiracy theory.”
I waited for him to say it and hoped that he would just keep it inside his own head because I already knew what he was going to propose, and it was ludicrous and absolutely impossible.
“I think that Michael is your brother.”
“God damn it, Adam!” I screamed at him.
He was just doing this to create drama and drive a wedge in between us again. There was absolutely no way it could be true. There were way too many contradictory things that didn’t add up. Yes, it was all very strange, and the coincidences were unnerving, but that’s all that they were—strange and unnerving coincidences.
“What’s going on?” Michael said as he rushed out of the kitchen to see what I was yelling about.
“Nothing,” I said.
Adam quickly changed his computer screen to look like a blank internet search browser.
“I don’t think you’d be shouting at him if it was nothing,” Michael said as he looked suspiciously at us both.
He had a point.
Rob came out of his room when he heard the commotion as well.
“What did you do now?” he asked as he lightly smacked Adam on the back of the head.
It was more a gesture of brotherly and playful banter than it was ill will.
“Nothing,” Adam said. “Just trying to talk some sense into Lisette again.”
“About what?” Rob asked.
He was starting to look just about as suspicious as Michael was.
“Hey, I need to go to the store too,” I said to Rob quickly.
I didn’t actually have anything that I needed at the store, but I needed to get out of the house and get out of the bedroom that Michael and I were headed to. I just needed a second to breathe, not that I believed anything that Adam said about it, because I didn’t. I just wasn’t feeling quite in the mood right now to go and have sex.
“What do you need at the store?” he asked. “I can grab it for you if you want.”
>
“Nope,” I said as I grabbed my jacket off the back of the chair. “Girl stuff. I need to go look myself.”
“Sure thing,” Rob said. “Come along and get whatever you need. I’ll take the girl stuff answer over the I’m pregnant one any day of the week.”
I laughed, but it was more of a nervous laugh than an amused one.
“Do you really need to go right now?” Michael asked.
“Yeah,” I nodded quickly.
“I’ll come with you,” he said.
“No it’s fine, I won’t be long,” I said as I started out the door before Rob even had a chance to catch up.
I could feel Michael’s confused stare boring into the back of my head. It would be fine. I’d come up with some sort of story to tell him about why I needed to leave for the store so abruptly once I got in the car and had a second to think about it. I stood by the car door and waited impatiently for Rob to come and unlock the car. Once we were about a half a mile down the road, he turned to me in the passenger seat.
“Want to tell me what that was all about?” he asked.
“Not really,” I said as I sighed so big that it was hard to miss my frustration. “Okay, actually yes, I do want to tell you what it was about. But I need you to promise me that you won’t tell Michael about it.”
“Uh oh,” he said as he shook his head slowly. “That disclaimer definitely doesn’t sound like a good idea. I thought you two were all done keeping secrets from each other.”
“We are,” I said. “But this is different.”
“Please tell me that this doesn’t have something to do with whatever you were shouting at Adam about. Because if it has to do with something between you and Adam, then I really don’t feel comfortable with keeping it a secret from Michael. You probably just shouldn’t tell me.”
“No, it isn’t something between me and Adam,” I said. “It’s something between me and Michael, but I don’t think it’s true and I need your help with it I think.”
I stopped myself and took a deep breath. I needed to calm down so that I could think straight and not sound panicky.
“I know it’s not true,” I said as I corrected myself. “I just need your help in proving that something is a completely unrelated coincidence before Michael finds out about it so that he doesn’t freak out, that’s all.”
Vicious: A Dark Bully Reverse Harem Romance (Beautiful Tyrants Book 3) Page 19