Step Wilde: A Stepbrother Romance (31 page)

“Mission accomplished,” I said, leaning the couch back down.

Cat Guy nodded with relief. “Thanks, Mr. Wilder,” he said.

“Call me Nick,” I said.

The shocked look returned. “Nick. Alright,” he said, rubbing his hands together and smiling. It was a real smile, too, not the pasted-on ones I saw him dole out to Hailey with regularity. “I’m Robert. I don’t think you actually know that.”

I felt a moment of shame. So he
had
noticed that I had never bothered to learn who the fuck he was. “Robert. Sorry about never asking for your name, man.”

He shrugged. “You helped with the cat. Let’s call it even.” He held out his hand and I shook it.

“I’ve got to hit the road; meeting my friends for dinner at their place,” I said. “I’ll probably see you tomorrow morning. Sleep well!”

Robert walked me to the door, opening it for me. He looked like he wanted to say something.

“Something else?” I asked him, stepping into the carpeted hallway.

He opened his mouth and closed it several times. “Later,” he said. “I’ll tell you later.”

I shrugged. “Alright. Good night!”

“Night,” he replied, shutting the door.

I’d forgotten about the interaction by the time I stepped into the elevator.

Ninety minutes of walking through late-evening New York later and I was at Amy and Josh’s apartment. They owned a loft in Battery Park that Amy had renovated into a glass-and-steel modern paradise. The doorman let me into the building and I walked to the elevator, enjoying the quiet ride upstairs.

I stepped out into their hallway and rang the doorbell of the corner loft. I didn’t have to wait long.

Amy yanked the door open and yelled “WILDE!” with her arms flung wide open.

I hugged her as hard as I could. “How are you?”

“Not freezing my ass off anymore, thankfully,” Amy replied, shutting the door behind me.

We walked through the hallway that was plastered in sleek-framed photographs of Josh and Amy. My face had made it into a few, which I considered an honor.

“It smells amazing in here, Amy.”

She beamed. “Josh hard at work as usual, you know how it is.”

We turned the corner into the open-concept living room and kitchen and I was greeted with the view I always missed when I wasn’t here: the Statue of Liberty lit up at night.

“Fucking Christ, I never get tired of this,” I announced to Josh who was covered in an apron.

Amy smiled, her hands on her hips. “We honestly don’t either.”

I walked over to Josh. “I’d give you a hug, man, but I’m covered in pot sticker sauce,” he replied.

I laughed and settled myself onto the barstool.

“I’ll settle for some fucking conversation that doesn’t involve talking about photographers, world tour plans, and who gets to wear the eight-million-dollar, diamond-encrusted bra at the Victoria’s Secret holiday fashion show,” I sighed.

“You want wine?” Amy asked, pulling out a bottle from their under-counter wine fridge.

“Nah, I’m fine,” I replied.

Josh and Amy exchanged looks. “Vodka? Whiskey?”

“Water is fine, honestly,” I insisted.

Amy raised an eyebrow and leaned across the counter, placing the back of her hand on my forehead as if checking for a fever. “Are you sick?”

I laughed. “Seriously, assholes. I’m just not drinking right now. I felt my liver crying out for relief awhile back and thought I’d listen.”

Josh went back to stirring and Amy grabbed a crystal glass from the cabinet, filling it with water from the tap. She pushed it across the counter. I took it gratefully.

“So, no Hailey?” Josh asked.

“No Hailey,” I confirmed, drinking from the glass. “She wasn’t feeling well.”

Amy laughed. “Right, okay. So she didn’t want to see
me
, then, I’m guessing.”

I nodded. “Dead on correct. Not that she would admit that to me. You know how much she hates honest women.”

Josh guffawed. “That’s a kind way of saying that Amy ‘takes no bullshit.’”

“Well, that too,” I replied. “You need help setting the table?”

“Yeah, that’d be great,” she said, handing me the plates, bowls, flatware, and chopsticks.

I stood up and walked to the enormous dining table. It had charcoal-metal fabricated legs and a smooth, dark wooden top covered in reflective lacquer. I set the plates down, carefully laying out the flatware.

Josh came over with a huge pot of soup and a platter of pot stickers with dark brown sauce in a tiny bowl nested in the middle. I pulled out a chair and sat down. Amy joined me, bringing me my water glass and settling in.

“How’s the baby?” Amy asked.

“Fine, all fine,” I replied.

Amy and Josh exchanged significant looks. “You’ve checked to make sure there
is
a baby, right?” Josh quipped, taking off his apron and draping it over the back of his chair before sitting down.

“Yeah. I took care of that first thing,” I replied, spooning out a helping of soup into a bowl.

Amy cleared her throat. “And you know it’s yours?”

I set my spoon down and sighed. “As far as I know.” Suddenly I realized that apart from both of them wanting to see me,
this
had been the reason they’d invited me over. Amy was sharp. She knew that Hailey wouldn’t want to come. “Look. It’s complicated.”

“You’re going to get a DNA test, right?” Amy asked bluntly.

I pushed my bowl away, soup untouched. “Can this not wait until later? The grilling and the endless questions?”

“Look, man. You texted me saying that you and Olivia were together. Then you texted me saying you’d fucked up. Then you texted me
again
saying that you were together. And then two days later I go on TMZ and you and Hailey are holding hands through the concourse coming out of LAX. Then I get a Google alert saying you’re going to be a dad. And I’ve barely heard from you since then. That was, what? Four months ago?”

Amy was staring at me in the insightful, piercing way she had. “She’s got something on you, doesn’t she?”

I laughed nervously. “What makes you say that?”

Amy sipped from her wine glass and smiled, setting it down with a
clunk
. “Because I seem to remember a night in Palm Springs where you swore in front of all of us that if Hailey ever claimed to be pregnant with your baby, you’d get a DNA test. That’s how little you trusted her. And now you’re hemming and hawing at my dinner table.
That’s
what makes me say that.”

Josh went back to moving pot stickers from the platter to his own plate with chopsticks. “She’s got a point, man.”

I had kept this secret for six months. I’d told
literally
nobody. It was why I hadn’t called Josh much. I didn’t trust myself
not
to spill the story once I heard his voice; and after all, I was fairly convinced that Hailey had bugged my phone. Tonight, I’d left it behind at the hotel on purpose. I stopped myself from glancing around the room as if Hailey were going to pop up from behind the sofa. I was only
sort of
paranoid.

“Okay. I’ll tell you everything.”

Amy and Josh had traveled to almost every continent in the course of their documentary careers. They’d seen more shit in seven years than most people see in a lifetime. They were familiar with my life dramas and the associated bullshit of Hollywood. But even
they
couldn’t hide their shock as I told them what had happened.

There was silence as they processed, the meal untouched by all of us and growing colder by the minute.

“Holy shit,” Josh swore out loud. “I – man. I don’t even know what to say.”

“So you haven’t had
any
contact with Olivia? Not a text, not a phone call? Nothing? You just…abandoned her?” Amy asked with disapproval.

“Did I have a
choice
?” I said, feeling angry. This wasn’t
my
fault but Amy was making it sound like I had done something wrong.

“Well, you could have gone to her at least. She has a right to know that Hailey Holliday illegally filmed a sex tape of her.”

I stood up, shaking. “Which would have done
what, exactly?
Hailey
has me
. She got me this time. There is no way out of this. I’m protecting Olivia. Jesus fucking Christ. I can’t believe you’re telling me that I did something wrong here, when this – all of this – is Hailey’s fault.”

I started pacing the living room.

“Sit down, Wilde,” Josh said, sounding worried. “We’re just trying to understand here.”

Amy cleared her throat. “I’m not trying to understand anything. I think you’re full of shit, Wilde.”

I spun around, nearly knocking over a three-foot-tall black ceramic vase filled with wooden sticks. “
Excuse me
?”

“You heard me. I think it’s not your baby. I think you know that, deep down. And I think that you should have let Olivia decide about the video.”

I laughed darkly. “Well, fucking twenty-twenty hindsight. Thank you. That’s just
so
fucking helpful.”

Amy wasn’t backing off. “I think that a part of you was afraid that you were going to hurt Olivia one way or another. And you were afraid of committing to her. Hailey was an easy excuse.”

“EASY!” I screamed. “
Easy
? You think it was
easy
to abandon the woman I love?” It was the first time I’d admitted that out loud since college.

Amy and Josh went silent. I felt like my body was going to vibrate through the ceiling. I stormed out of the dining room and into the hallway, ripping open the front door and marching past the elevator.

I ran down all thirty flights of stairs and out the side exit door. It was warm for November in New York – only fifty degrees. I was already sweating after running down the steps.

I had no idea where I was going or what I was doing.

So I just kept running.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

WILDER

It was another two hours before I realized where I was going.

I’d looked up the address a few hundred times over the last decade. I’d memorized it in drunken stupors at three in the morning. I’d visualized walking here from a thousand different starting points, mapping my way through New York City in my mind. But I’d never actually been here.

Now I was.

I stood in front of the giant, rolled-steel garage doors and took a deep breath. Then I pounded on them, the vibrating metal echoing down the mostly empty street. A few drunken people were stumbling home. It was nearly midnight. I didn’t know how I knew he would be here. But I felt it.

After about a minute, the doors rolled open from the piss-soaked ground upwards. Suddenly I was staring at my father.

He looked shocked to see me. He was wearing grease-covered jeans and a black t-shirt that looked like the same brand I wore. He had a black mark across his nose. His fading tattoos were visible across his muscular arms.

This was the guy I remembered. Not the suit-clad man in Italy. I almost felt like I’d taken a time machine to get here.

I inhaled and smelled motor oil and solder; just like my earliest childhood memories. “Dad,” I said simply.

He nodded his head. “Come in, Nicholas.”

I stepped inside the brightly-lit shop, enormous halogen-bulb-powered industrial lights hanging from the ceiling. A dozen black, wheeled tool cabinets lined the perimeter of the space. Motorcycle tires were organized neatly in long, metal racks. Hubcaps decorated the walls, and the shiny, painted white floor was almost spotless. I wondered how many times a day he polished it. Or had one of his staff polish it.

My dad shoved his hands in his pockets and looked everywhere except for my face. “First time here, isn’t it? At the new shop, anyway.”

I nodded. “Yeah,” I said.

The unsaid statement there was that this was the place he’d moved his business to within a year of my mom’s death. He’d barely been home in the months after she passed, and in that time had grown his business enough that he could expand. He’d invited me over and over again. I refused so many times that eventually he stopped asking me.

We stood in uneasy silence for a long time. Then my dad ran his hands through his hair. I realized that I was standing next to my future twin. It was almost like looking in a mirror.

“You want to help me with this bike?” he asked, still not looking at me.

“Alright,” I replied.

He motioned to my outfit. “You’ll probably get those fancy jeans dirty.”

I shrugged. “I have more. I’m not worried.”

He nodded. “Alright.”

The motorcycle proved to be as much of an icebreaker as was possible between the two of us. We worked mostly in silence, but it was a relaxed one. It turned out that I remembered the names of the various tools and bolts.

After about an hour, my dad stood up. “Want a beer?”

I shook my head. “I wouldn’t turn down a Coke,” I said.

He walked over to what looked like an old-fashioned soda machine but was actually just the exterior that had been renovated into a full refrigerator. He pulled out a Heineken and a glass bottle of Coke. He popped the bottle caps off against the edge of the countertop with one fluid motion of his hand.

I took the soda gratefully. “I never did learn how to do that,” I said with a smile. “Plenty of practice and chipped marble countertops at my apartment, though.”

My dad chuckled and took a swig of the beer. “It’s a God-given gift, apparently.” He started peeling off the label of his bottle. “Plenty of things you’re good at that I’m not, though.”

I had never heard my dad pay me a compliment in my entire life. I stared at him. I knew not to say anything. If he was offering his words freely, it was best to just let him finish.

“I’ve watched all your movies.”

“All of them?”

He nodded. “Front row. First showing. Even the midnight premiere ones. You’re really good, even when the movies aren’t.”

I laughed. “Thanks,” I said. “I had no idea.”

My dad shrugged. “How would you? It’s not like we’ve talked regularly.” He paused again. “Or at all. Not since your mother...” he trailed off, letting the sentence finish itself in my head.