Relief, joy, gratitude rush through me like a current and washes away my hangover, my dread and my regret.
I jump off the bed and sweep her into my arms. “Marry me,” I growl in her ear.
She throws her arms around my neck. “Of course I’m going to marry you.” She laughs happily and presses a kiss to my cheek.
I pull back and stare at her. “When did you find out?” I ask.
“Today,” she beams. “I had a blood test.”
“How far along?”
“Ten weeks,” she says, and I squeeze tight before I remember myself and let her go.
“You can hug me,” she says.
“I don’t want to hurt el bambino.” I put her down and kneel in front of her and press my cheek to her stomach. “There’s a baby in there,” I say in complete wonder and awe.
She runs her fingers through my hair and says, “Hayes, we have so much we need to talk about. I wasn’t going to tell you about the baby until later, when all of this was over, but then you said all of that romantic stuff and it just came out,” I say.
“So, what you’re saying is that you’d like to table this conversation?” I ask and stand back up. I lean in to kiss her and she leans back.
“Nah, you need a shower and a toothbrush,” she says and jumps out of my grasp.
“Go do that and then come down and let’s talk.”
I walk into the kitchen to find her sitting at the table, two mugs on the table in front of her. A white envelope sits on the table in front of her. It has my name and social security number on it. My stomach plummets to my knees. I know right away it’s the DNA test results. But, I ask anyway.
“Is that it?” I ask and nod toward the envelope.
“Yeah, Amelia gave it to me. You have to be the one to open it,” she says, her eyes dry and firm, but full of concern as she watches me closely.
“I’m okay,” I say, and I find that I am. My future is set, because Confidence and I are set. This is just a hurdle I’ve got to clear on my road to where we’re going together.
“You want coffee?” she asks and pads on her bare feet across the travertine tiled floors into the kitchen. “Were you at work?” I ask, noticing her skirt and blouse for the first time. “Yeah, this morning, but then I went to the doctor and then came here.”
I pick up the envelope, rip it open, and pull the paper out.
“Hayes, don’t you want to sit down?” Confidence sounds alarmed. I hear her hurried footfalls as she rushes back to the table, but I just stare at the paper and gather my resolve.
“No, let’s not make an event of it. I just want to know.” I unfold and read what it says out loud. “With regard to the DNA of Hayes Rivers, when compared to the DNA sample obtained from Jason Rivers, twelve of the fifteen DNA markers were a match. This indicated sanguinity but does not indicate paternity. The matching markers follow the patterns we see between nephews and uncles and grandsons and grandfathers.” I finish and look up at Confidence. Her face is pale, and her hand is squeezing her lips together.
“How is that possible? He couldn’t have been my grandfather. He didn’t have any children besides me. So, if he’s my uncle …. then what does that mean? Uncle Thomas is my father? How?” I ask. Her eyes widen and take up almost the entire first half of her face. She’s shaking her head back and forth and her eyes start to fill with tears.
I stand up and walk over to her and yank her hand down. “What does it mean? Say it,” I demand, irrational in my fear and anger. I’m demanding she answer a question she couldn’t possibly. And yet, because she’s so much braver than me, she does.
“Gigi,” she croaks like it hurts for the words to pass her lips.
“No.” I shake my head.
“Who else? Does your father have other siblings?” I ask.
“I don’t fucking know. I didn’t even know Gigi existed until I was fourteen. Anything is possible.” As it starts to sink in, other realities rear their heads. I start to pace. If he wasn’t my father, then his dead wife wasn’t my mother, either. I don’t know the name for what I’m feeling. I’ve grieved for people I don’t know. Who aren’t my parents.
“So, I’m a Rivers, but not my father’s son. Who are my parents?” I ask.
“I don’t … I don’t know,” she says and I want to shake her.
Or shake this house.
Or shake the world.
I want everyone to feel what I’m feeling. The ground beneath my feet has shifted in a way that’s permanent. I will never be the same.
“Confidence. Who am I? Who is my family? What is my family?” I shout these questions at her. The horror on her face is too much for me. I turn away from her. I’m talking to the wrong person, anyway.
I pick up the receiver of my landline and hit the second preprogrammed button and press the phone to my ear.
“Prego?” Gigi’s voice is husky with sleep and I look down at the alarm clock by my bed and realize it must be one or two the morning in Positano. I haven’t called her during any of this. I didn’t want to worry her, and now I realize she’s the only person who can answer my questions.
“Gigi, I took a paternity test,” I say.
“Who’s pregnant?” she asks.
“To determine my paternity,” I clarify. I’m met with silence. I look up at Confidence who still looks like she’s seen a ghost.
You okay? I mouth and walk to the fridge to get her a bottle of water.
She’s carrying my fucking kid.
I crack it open and put it down in front of her and realize that Gigi hasn’t made sound.
My heart sinks.
“You knew,” I say and Confidence’s hand pauses in midair on its way to put her water to her lips.
“Hayes, I—”
“You what? Whose son am I?” I ask her slowly. My heart thuds wildly. My entire body is tingling, and my head is swimming.
“Hayes, it’ s not that simple—” she starts.
“Yes. It is.” My hand slams down on the table before I even realize it’s in motion. Confidence jumps up and comes to stand beside me. She puts a hand on my shoulder and I want to shake it off.
I don’t want comfort. I want answers.
Gigi starts to cry softly.
“Whose child am I?” I ask her again.
“Hayes …” She’s weeping loudly now.
So is my queen. I watch her. Want to go to her. But not until I have answers.
“Gigi, tell me. Now,” I ask, and the words taste like ash in my mouth.
“Mine,” she sobs, and I drop the phone.
I don’t remember sitting down, but I must have.
“Okay, Gigi, okay,” I hear Confidence saying, and then I hear the phone clatter into its cradle into the counter.
“My life is a lie. All of it. I’m a lie. I’m …” Bombs are exploding somewhere inside me. My memories are imploding. My father disappears from the memory of learning to ride a bike. He vanishes from the conversations we had about the birds and the bees.
“You are Hayes Rivers. You’re a brother, a son, a friend, a lover, a father.” She takes my hand and puts it over her stomach.
“A father.” I pull her to me and press my face into the soft, tiny swell in her abdomen.
“I’m going to be okay,” I say. She’s like a shot of valium, and my pulse starts to slow.
“Hayes, the worst is over,” she says, and like the fool I am, I believe her.
HISTORY
GIGI
“I will begin by saying that I am only sorry for the deceit and the fact that I had to live my life pretending that you weren’t mine,” I say slowly and force my eyes to stay on Hayes’s face. I want to look away so badly.
Those green eyes are shuttered and as cold as chips of emerald. Except, those are his father’s eyes and they have never been able to hide the fire that is always burning inside of him. The curiosity, the feeling, the passion, the thirst for better, the compassion, and right now, the anger.
“So, y
ou suffered?” he asks.
I nod. “Good,” he snaps and I smile. Because, there I am. That cold, unforgiving streak that makes me a Rivers and him my son.
He’s been a mirror to everything I’ve lost, and yet has reminded me how lucky I was to have had any of it in the first place.
“I did what I did for you,” I continue.
He laughs and my patience snaps. I stand up and walk over to him, plant my feet and stare down at him.
“I know I owe you a lifetime of explanations and apologies, but no matter what I have done, I have loved you first,” I say through lips that are barely moving, and a jaw that is so tightly clenched that I know I’m probably doing some real damage to my teeth.
“Yes, so much that you let someone else raise me for the first half of my life and then lived with me for the second half but lied the entire time,” he says sullenly.
“Hayes, there are some things that are more important than our individual needs or wants. Now, please, I’m here because I wanted to tell you this face-to-face. Will you let me?”
He opens his mouth to speak and Confidence’s hand slides over his and she says, “Yes, he will,” and squeezes his hand when he starts to contradict her.
I misjudged this woman, and I’m so glad that Hayes has better judgment than I do because she is exactly what he and this family needs. And she loves him something fierce.
I smile gratefully at her and sit back down.
“The Riverses founded this city. With our carpetbagging money we came and bought land, financed cotton gins, and gave the Allens money to buy the land that this city is sitting on. And then, we settled here. And in this city we are titans. Power covets power. Above all. Money and fame were never the goal. Power was how you survived. Power was what gave you the ability to execute your vision. And with it came the money, the fame, the access to anything you could ever want.
“Once you’ve tasted it, you never want anything else. That’s how we were raised. When I was eighteen, I had my coming out. It was a silly thing, but a tradition that the ruling families of Houston had started to make sure that the next generation was shaped by the best and brightest.”
“According to whom?” Confidence asks.
“According to the men who saw themselves as masters of the universe. The rules of entry were steep and enforced to the letter. Number one was no new money, which—to the founding families of Houston—was a dirty word. Either way, that was how they kept people from buying their way into the elite club they’d made. This group of people produced governors, presidents, titans. They didn’t want to share that.
“And girls like me? We went to college not to get an education but to find a husband. My parents sent me East to Wellesley College.”
“Isn’t that all girls?” Confidence cuts in again. I smile at her and think that for all her hard-earned street smarts, this girl has a lot to learn about the family she’s joining.
No matter how much she’s grounded Hayes, he’s still got the blood of ambitious, ruthless titans in his veins. He’s not chasing a win in the moment. He will always think about his place in history. Like all of the men who came before him that have dreamt about the eternal sunlight of their glorious time as rulers among men.
“Yes, it is. And all of the men at Harvard, MIT, BU, Brandies, and Tufts knew it. So on the weekends, our parties were packed with men. And that’s when I met and fell in love with your father.” I look at Hayes “At a party where neither of us were having a particularly good time. I tripped, he caught me, we sat down to talk, found out we were both from Houston and spent the rest of the night falling in love. When we went home that summer, we found out that my family was opposed to the match,” I said.
“Is that really a thing?” she asks.
“Oh, yes. In fact, the boys in my vintage would say—”
“Vintage?” Confidence says with a scowl of confusion.
“That’s stuck-up speak for ‘in the same year at school,’” Hayes tells her quickly. I frown at him before I continue.
“Yes, in my year at school, they would say ‘heiress or above only,’ and it wasn’t something they said behind closed doors. It was a rule. And for heiresses like me, the same applied. My love—he had money, but not the kind that they liked. And there was someone else they wanted for me.
“His family was offended. They decided I wasn’t what they wanted for their son. And family, to both of us, was everything. We went our separate ways.
“He married someone else. I moved back East. But then, after my father got sick, I came home. We ran into each other at a fundraiser.” I can’t help my smile as I remember that night. Seeing him again.
“We made a choice. When we got married, your grandfather disinherited me. Made your fath—" I stop when Hayes blanches. “I’m sorry, Jason, his heir. He was a newlywed, home from Cornell with his pretty, Beacon Hill heiress on his arm. He married the right girl, from the right family, and she had good childbearing hips—as my father called them,” I recall.
“You moved to Italy?”
“Not then. Your father and I bought a farm out in Brenham. We were raising steer, and I was three months pregnant when he just … disappeared.”
“What does that mean?” Hayes asks in a sharp voice.
“He left early one morning to go into town and just never came back home. It took me a week to call the police because I was sure he’d come back with a story about how his car ran off a cliff and he’d had to camp in the woods and wait for rescue. But after a week, I realized I couldn’t hide anymore. I went to his family. They had no idea where he was and accused me of having something to do with it. They had money of their own; they were smart and they wanted revenge. So, I hid you. Right under their noses. James’s wife’s hips weren’t so childbearing and she was ill. My father had disinherited me, and Thomas was on the verge of being expelled from West Point. We were all such a disappointment to him. The only thing he saw value in was you.
“He refused to reinstate my inheritance. But he would give it to you. If I let James and his wife raise you as theirs. At the time, I thought it was a good idea. I was beside myself with grief and without two coins to rub together. And despite everything, I still believed in the Rivers name and I wanted my son—the true oldest child—to take his rightful place. And Thomas didn’t know. By the time he came home at the end of that term, I was in Italy. James and Ann had their brand-new baby boy in their arms and he was none the wiser. I don’t know how Thomas found out.” I shake my head dismally.
“Well, Amelia has a clue. They obtained a copy of Anne’s autopsy. It says that she’d never given birth. And so, their hope is to prove that I’m illegitimate. They have no idea of the truth,” Hayes says in a low, dark voice that gives me the chills. I want to rewind, and I want to kill my little brother. He’s always been such a selfish pain in the ass.
“I don’t know what is wrong with Thomas. He is so resentful of everything and I don’t understand it. He says he loves his family, but he’s forgotten just like our father did that family is the people who make it up. And the name is only as good as the people who bear it. I’m worried about him. That he would do this. But power is all he’s ever wanted. But he’s going to be sorry. This is going to open up another can of worms that none of us wants to revisit,” I say.
“What? What could be worse than playing musical parents with me?” Hayes asks.
“Nothing could be worse than that,” I say quietly. My heart is breaking that this is how he has to find out. But, it’s time.
“So ...”
“Your father. His name was Lucas Wilde,” I say and wait for the light to go on. His head draws back and his eyebrows shoot into his brow line. He shoots out of his seat and stalks over to the huge mantle over the fireplace in his living room.
Confidence’s hand slams over her mouth, and her eyes dart between Hayes and me like she doesn’t know where to look.
“Do you mean, the late Lucas Wilde?” Hayes asks without turning a
round to face me. He braces his hands on the mantle.
“Yes. Him,” I say.
“The father of Remington, Regan, Tyson? Him?” Hayes repeats.
“Yes,” I say.
“I thought he died when Remi was a kid,” Hayes says slowly.
“No, that’s when he divorced Remington’s mother and ran off and married me. He was declared dead years later,” I answer and find that my defensiveness is still there.
Hayes turns around then. His eyes are dark, red-rimmed and so angry that my heart convulses with the knowledge that it’s all directed at me.
“You ran off with a married man who had three children?” he asks me the question I ask myself every single day.
“Yes,” I answer, and when he turns back around, as if the sight of me is too much, I look at Confidence who is staring ahead blankly, unseeingly.
I get up and walk over to stand behind him. “We were in love. And he married me,” I plead. “I know it sounds so wrong. I know we shouldn’t have been, but these things happen—”
He turns around again, his eyes narrow slits now. I flinch at the expression in them.
“You know what doesn’t happen? You don’t give your kid away and pass him off as someone else’s,” he rages.
“I didn’t give you away,” I cry. I look at Confidence for help, but she’s watching Hayes intently, her eyes reflecting the ache of sympathy inside of her.
Hayes stands up. “Wait. Remington Wilde is my older brother?” he asks in abject horror and shock. My stomach sinks and my panic rises. This could be a disaster. But I don’t dare ask Hayes for his discretion. Instead, I give him the truth.
“Your half-brother, but yes. You have the same father. Or you did,” I respond and my heart constricts at the thought of Lucas and how much I loved him. How much he loved me, how badly he wanted to raise Hayes and Remi together, even though, in the end, he chose me over the possibility of being with his oldest son.
“And Remi’s mother, grandmother, they all know this?”
“Well. They know Lucas left me. They know I was pregnant. This is why they hate us so much. But, they don’t know who you are. Everybody thinks you’re James and Anne’s child. I told them and everyone else that I lost the baby,” I say and feel like vomiting at the look on Hayes face.
The Rivals Page 31