Page 29 of Stepbrothers with Benefits
“Oh...yeah, I guess I do,” I said with a surprised laugh. “Not going to lie, I wasn’t expecting my online bullshit to bring someone like you to my doorstep...almost literally.”
He smiled. “Sorry about...just showing up like that.”
“You know, I’d say it’s okay,” I said, leaning forward and frowning. “You being my dad and all, but like...how the hell did you even find me? I mean, I know better than to have my stuff easy to find with the whole social media thing.”
“Well, it helped that I knew your mom was here. From there, it was just finding someone to do the digging for me,” he admitted. “And how do you know if I’m really your dad? Did you, uh...talk to your mom?”
“No,” I admitted, because while the thought had occurred to me, I had kept the meeting quiet. I loved my mom, she was a good mom, and for the most part, I couldn’t say a thing against her. But she had kept his identity from me, and from the way she acted about telling me about Marshall, I’d always suspected she knew more than just his name. Still, it would have been a lot easier if she’d just lied a little, shrugged, and said she’d beendrunk and couldn’t remember his name, just that he was blond and...I don’t know, something about his personality. That would have been enough to stop me asking more, so why act in a way that would make me suspicious?
I don’t know, guilt?
“And, uh,” I gestured toward him, and then to myself. “The whole Dad thing is...pretty obvious.”
He leaned forward, but that wasn’t helpful with the shitty lighting. Still, it was like looking into a mirror of time, but not by much. Despite being twenty-five years older than me, he could have passed for his late thirties. Then again, so could my mom, which was one thing I hopefully had to look forward to. His hair was paler, but I’d seen the gray when he’d awkwardly stood outside the door to the apartment. But they were all mine, from the hair color, even its stubbornness, to his build, and even the exact color of his eyes.
“It’s a little weird,” he admitted. “I mean, people say genetics can be a funny thing, and kids really do look like one parent over the other, but...this is like looking at a living picture of when I was in my twenties. It’s not genetics, it’s cloning.”
“It really is,” I agreed, reaching up to tug at a lock of my blond, pink-tipped hair and hold it out. “You know, from how hard Mom tried to keep me from knowing about you, it had to suck to see your clone walking around sometimes. I wonder if that ever bothered her.”
An uncomfortable expression crossed his face, and he lightly flicked at the bottom of his glass. “Ah...well. I don’t... know enough about your mom to say.”
“Wow,” I said with a laugh. “She said it was a pump n’ dump, but I didn’t know if she was underplaying it.”
His eyes widened. “She said that?”
“Well, no. She said it was one night of fun that she didn’t regret, especially because she got me out of the deal,” I said with a snort. “That was my phrasing, not hers.”
“You...have a way with words.”
“Thanks, you should hear Mason, he’s even worse.”
“I remember him,” Marshall said, surprising me. “He would have been...eleven? Twelve? Same as his sister, I suppose. That kid couldn’t sit still, and he wasalwaysup to something, funny as hell though. The sister, though, she’d look at you with those dark eyes and you started thinking about all the shit you did recently and wonder if she was about to give you hell about it.”
“Literally nothing has changed, except they’re older and Moira is now the mother she always acted like with us kids,” I said with a laugh, cocking my head. “When did you meet them? I thought it was just a one-night thing.”
He shifted uncomfortably in the seat. “We can talk about your mom and me, but...it’s not exactly a good story.”
“I mean, I figured that out when she wouldn’t talk about you,” I said, mentally weighing which direction to go. My mother wasn’t unreasonable, and she wasn’t exactly dramatic beyond what all mothers were when it came to their kids; she had to have a good reason for not wanting me to know about Marshall. At the same time, she was still human, and it had been what, a year or two after the loss of her husband? I could see someone still being emotionally raw and sensitive, and who knew how things had gone down between her and Marshall. Maybe all it had taken was him to say or do the wrong thing, and she was bitter and angry.
But even then...I was still mad at her for keeping his existence from me for so long, even when I was twenty-four goddamn years old. That might still be a child in her mind, but I was an adult. I didn’t need to be protected like that anymore, and I definitely didn’t need to be held back from meeting mybiological father just because she held a grudge, whatever the reason.
“I’m not happy she decided to keep you a secret for so long,” I admitted with a grumble. “So maybe we shouldn’t talk about her right now.”
“Your mom was...and probably is, a very passionate woman,” he said, and when I raised my brow, giving a little smirk, his face flushed. “I meant...you know what I meant.”
“It’s nice to know that foot-in-mouth disease is hereditary,” I chuckled.
“But she’s not crazy or unreasonable. She has her reasons for doing stuff. Plus, she had her hands full with three kids, one of ’em was a baby, and a toddler. Then she found love again, had a new kid to deal with, and?—”
“Three more.”
“What?”
“Yeah, she adopted Dom after his parents, one of whom was Mom’s best friend, died when he was little. Then, after Mom and Marcus got together, they adopted Arlo. They said they had room in the family for more kids to love, but I think adopting Arlo together was the way to cement their relationship more than the wedding was.”
“I...” his face screwed up for a moment, eyes going to the corner as he thought. “That’s...six kids?”
“Yeah, seven now if you include Micah.”
