Page 43 of Mistaken Identity
“It’s obvious now,” Cakes said. “I can see how y’all would’ve thought she was mine. But it’s the hair and the dimple. Different shades of blonde, but the curl pattern and everything. Like father and daughter.”
I agreed.
I also didn’t back away when Cakes came up to the window a couple of feet away from me.
My feet seemed glued to the carpet where I stood at the window.
Not even the men in the room—and there were a lot of them—could peel me away.
I was invested now.
So damn invested that not even my instincts that told me to run screaming out of the room could pull me away.
Audric gestured toward the house, and Webber said something else, and I wondered if they were going to do it right there in the front yard.
Webber’s nosy neighbor was in the front yard watering her flowers, staring at every single thing that was going on across the road.
“Think they’re just going to drop the bomb right there?” I asked the man at my side.
“He might feel overwhelmed and ganged up on with all of us here witnessing this. So I’m thinking probably right there,” Cakes said.
A ding sounded, and I looked toward the kitchen in surprise.
“That’s my cake.”
“You made cake?” Copper asked. “What the fuck, man?”
“You’ll get to try it now, at least,” Cakes said as he walked out of the room.
“I got out of prison. I got married. I’ve got a kid. And not once has he made me a cake. And my wedding doesn’t count because I never got a piece. But all of a sudden Gunner gets some great news, and he gets a cake?” Copper grumbled.
“Stop your bitching, brother,” Copper’s younger brother, Chevy, grumbled. “Each slice is like eight hundred calories. You’re not getting any younger, and that shit sticks to your gut.”
“Fuck off,” Copper grumbled. “I don’t have a gut. You do.”
“I do not.”
“Boys.” Silver laughed. “Neither one of you have a gut. And Cakes made a cake because he’s stressed. Not because he wanted Gunner to have it.”
I turned back to the lawn, and my heart dropped.
They’d told him.
Gunner looked like he’d been punched in the gut.
His eyes were huge, I could physically see the pulse at his neck throbbing. His mouth had dropped open, and his hands were fisted at his side.
He looked wild and in disbelief, and two seconds away from bolting.
They talked some more, and Gunner was shaking his head, his face ashen.
“He’s gonna bolt.”
Another man came up beside me, and I looked up to find the man they called Hagrid standing there.
He was over six-foot-five, had a long beard that resembled a Yeti’s, and looked like he could break lesser men in half.
Still, my instincts didn’t tell me to bolt.
