Jennifer shook her head. “Not as far as I know. It doesn’t seem to worry him, but then again, he’s a pretty special kid. Talented soccer player and a mean guitarist.”
Nick licked at his lips again. His mouth was dry.
“Now it’s my turn,” Jennifer was saying, her voice level. Serious. “How long ago did you and Lauren have your…thing?”
“It started twenty odd years ago.” He gave her a sideward look, his pulse pounding far too fast in his neck. “Lasted a few more after that.”
“So not just a casual fling then?”
Nick’s chest squeezed tight. “No, not just a casual fling.” He thought of all the days and nights spent with Lauren. Laughing, loving, just enjoying being with each other even if it was doing something as menial as washing the dishes after dinner. God, he missed doing the dishes. How surreal was that? He missed talking to Lauren about her day as he wiped the suds off their freshly washed plates.
An image came to him, Lauren nursing a tiny baby, her face softened with a sleepy smile, her gaze moving from the babe to Nick and back to her child. His chest squeezed again, a gripping vice that was borderline painful. “I always knew she’d make a good mother.”
“She is. Very good. Not always easy with a teenage boy, mind you. Especially one as full of life as Josh.”
The image of the baby in Lauren’s arms became a boy—one with dark hair and blue eyes. Nick slid his gaze to Jennifer again. “How old is he?”
“Fifteen.”
His breath caught in his throat at the answer Lauren wouldn’t give him. Fifteen. Jesus, her son was fifteen.
Fifteen.
Jennifer was saying something. Something about Josh just having his birthday only three months ago. Something about Lauren buying him a…a…
Three months. That means the baby was born seven months after you left her. Which means she was two months pregnant and you didn’t even…
“Know it,” Nick murmured, a numb weight pressing down on him. All over him.
“Sorry?” Jennifer stopped, giving him a confused look. “What did you say?”
Nick shook his head, his mind whirling. “Nothing.”
Her eyes narrowed. “When you say your…thing…with Lauren lasted a few years more, how many more are we talking about exactly?”
Nick ran his hand over his mouth, that pressure bearing down on him some more. Suffocating him. “It ended fifteen years ago,” he said, the words like dust in his mouth. “Fifteen years and seven months to be precise.”
Jennifer stared at him. “Oh, fuck.”
Nick’s gut clenched. His blood roared in his ears. His heart slammed into his throat. Hard. Fast.
Jesus, he had a son. He had a son to the only woman he’d ever loved and she hadn’t told him.
The world swam. Sickening waves of cold pressure crashed over him. He thought of the shit of the last two years of his life. Of discovering he was adopted when his parents were killed in a car accident. Of tracking down his biological mother to a gravestone in Germany. Of learning he had a kid brother who never knew he existed either. A brother who’d been abused by his biological mother’s boyfriend. A brother who’d committed suicide only months after Nick found him.
He thought of all the secrets in his life he’d never known and now this. Now he’d discovered he had a son.
A son. And he’d never known that either. Fifteen years he could have spent getting to know him. Hell, at the very least lived with the knowledge the woman he loved had borne him a child. But, as with the rest of his existence that had nothing to do with music, it was a fake reality. His family, his life, a farce. Nothing but words to a fucked-up song written by some other composer.
His whole fucking life was a lie. And Lauren, the one person he trusted, the only person he loved, had kept the most important thing a man could ever know from him.
Someone reached into his chest and ripped out his heart. Someone else slammed a fist into his gut. He stood motionless, his brain incapable of comprehending any of it. Christ, he’d come to ask her to a wedding, to say sorry for treating her like he had and now he had a son?
His knees gave out. Just like that he was stumbling sideways.
“Hey!” Jennifer’s hands grabbed at his arm and hauled him back upright. “I think you need to—”
He shrugged her off, shaking his head as he did so. “I’m fine.”
“Err, yeah, that’s why you almost collapsed.”
He shook his head again. “I’m okay.”
Bullshit you are. Fuck, you’ve got a son. A son you never knew existed.
Why hadn’t she told him?
Why hadn’t Lauren told him?
You still don’t know if Josh is yours. You were hardly home the last few months before you up and left her for good. She may have found someone else. You don’t know—
But he did. This was Lauren. Infidelity and Lauren didn’t go together.
And Nick Blackthorne and Dad do?
“I guess I should have worked it out before,” Jennifer said, the words like smoke tickling at Nick’s fraying nerves. “Josh looks like you. Hell, he even sounds like you, especially when he sings.”
Nick’s heart smashed harder, trying to splinter his breastbone. “Sings?”
Jennifer gave him an unreadable look. “I’ve been at Lauren’s house when Josh is playing SingStar with his best friend.”
A shiver rippled over Nick’s skin, making his hair stand on end. He closed his eyes, trying to picture a fifteen-year-old him. He couldn’t. It was too long ago, a life too far in the past. Hell, at fifteen all he could think about was Lauren Robbins and what colour undies she was wearing. It would take a couple of years before he found out. At fifteen he’d had no clue where he’d be standing at the ripe old age of thirty-six. At fifteen, he’d had no clue he’d be who he was now.
Who’s that? A rock star? Or a selfish prick?
“So, Mr. Blackthorne?” Jennifer still studied him with that guarded, ambiguous expression. Like she was half way to thinking he was about to go crazy and climb the nearest clock tower. “Do I take you to your car now? Are you driving back to Sydney? Or are you staying in Murriundah tonight?”
He blinked, the questions kicking him out of his stupor. “Do you mean am I going to do a runner now I know about my son?” He shook his head, awakening fresh pain in his temple. “No.”
“But you’re not going around to Lauren’s tonight, are you?”
That protective edge was back in the vet’s voice—a hard strength he couldn’t miss even in his shell-shocked state. He gave her a small smile. “Something tells me if I said yes right now I’d find myself waking up on your sofa with a headache.”
“I have the Detomidine ready to go.”
Struggling to cling on to his sanity, Nick raised an eyebrow. If he focused on something else, something believable, maybe his world could make sense again. And at the moment, whatever the vet beside him was talking about was more real than the notion of him having a son. “Detomidine?”
She nodded. “Perfect for sedating big dumb animals. Will knock out a horse in a few minutes.”
He laughed, a short hollow chuckle. “Jesus, remind me never to piss you off.”
“Don’t hurt my best friend and we’re good.”
His throat filled with a heavy lump. Hurt Lauren? It seemed he’d hurt her enough to last a lifetime already. Enough for her to not tell him he had a son. Christ, how much did she have to hate him to keep something like that a secret?
And how much had
she
hurt him
now
? How did he even begin to process what he’d just discovered? Fuck, he felt like he’d been torn apart and—
“Are you staying at the Cricketer’s Arms?”
He turned to Jennifer. His head ached. A lot. Christ, it felt like it was about to split open. “Their penthouse room.”
She laughed, the sound nervous. The top-floor room at Murriundah’s only hotel, two stories off the ground and adjacent to the communal loo, was hardly
penthouse
status. The Cricketer’s Arms was, however, the only option an out-of-towner had, and that’s what he was now, an out of towner. He’d stopped being a local sixteen and a half years ago.
“I tell you what,” Jennifer said. “You can crash on my sofa until you figure out what you’re doing next. That way I can keep an eye on your head.”
“No.”
She raised her eyebrows at his short answer.
His stomach lurched. He didn’t need to be near anyone at the moment. He couldn’t. He needed to be alone. He wanted to climb into a bottle and stay there. Drink his shock away until the hurt in his soul was drowned. Get so drunk he didn’t have to consider that every time he got back on his feet he found or lost another person in his family.
He swung away from Jennifer, studying the darkness beyond her front porch. Murriundah sat silent around him, as if it felt his disbelief. “Where’s my car?”
She stiffened. “Where are you going?”
“To the pub.”
“To the Arms? Not to Lauren?”
He bit back a harsh growl. “No, not to Lauren.” Not right at this moment. He didn’t think that was smart. He wanted to ask her why she hadn’t told him. He wanted to ask her if it was true, if Josh really was his son? His son.
His gut knotted.
He needed to go. Now.
He needed a drink. He needed…
Lauren.
“I’ve gotta go,” he muttered, stepping down Jennifer’s front steps. “I’ll come collect my car keys tomorrow.”
“I don’t think—” Jennifer began, but he ignored her. He hurried away, the night’s chill biting at his skin. His jacket was inside, along with the keys to his rental car, but he didn’t want to go back into Jennifer’s house. Not when one look at the bed’s crumpled duvet would remind him immediately of what he and Lauren had been doing on it moments before she revealed she had a son. He had his wallet and his phone. That’s all he needed tonight. That and a bottomless bottle of scotch.
The loose gravel on the side of the road crunched under his feet as he made his way to the Cricketer’s Arms. He didn’t have to orientate himself to know where to go. A person could walk from one side of Murriundah to the other in thirty minutes flat. All he needed to do was find the main drag, a straight strip of crumbling bitumen that sliced the town in two, and follow it toward the mountains overlooking the eastern end of town. He refused to think about the situation. He refused. He focused on the sound his feet made, focused on putting one foot in front of the other. He wouldn’t let himself think about it. Not now. Not yet.
Not until he’d had a drink.
Not until he was well and truly drunk and numb. Not until he could think about what Lauren had done without wanting to… Christ, without wanting to what? Wring her bloody neck for keeping the truth from him? Scream at her until he lost his voice—and wouldn’t Walter Winchester just love that? Shake her? Hug her?
Kiss her for giving him family when he thought he had none?
Fall to his knees and sob at her feet?
Turn away from her? Run away from her—and your son?
Less than twenty minutes later he was sitting in a booth in the back of the pub, wrapped in the warmth of the Cricketer’s Arms’ blazing open fire, the smell of beer, old cigarette smoke and peanuts flowing through him with each breath he took. His fingertips still stung from the cold and his head still hurt—more so from the surge of blood flowing through the bruise on his temple thanks to his walk. His belly burned from the two scotches that he’d downed straight up within a minute of walking into the bar. All these sensory inputs and all he could think about was one woman and one teenage boy he’d never met.
He stared at the glass in his hand, the surface of the amber liquid within somehow glinting under the muted lights. He sat in the shadows, knowing the barkeeper was watching him. Knowing the man was about ten seconds away from recognising him. Knowing but not caring.
He lifted the glass to his lips and threw back his head, swallowing the scotch in one mouthful. It turned to liquid fire on the way to his gullet, a stream of heat that should have made him feel less numb. It didn’t.
He poured another shot from the bottle he’d bought, the only bottle of Chivas Regal the Cricketer’s Arms had on the shelf, and sent it down his throat after the third.
And still, he felt…
“Thirsty,” he muttered, refusing to ponder how he felt. He wasn’t ready.
Chicken.
Another drink burned its way to his gut, smooth fire streaming down through his being. And another.
The barkeeper watched him, the white towel hung over the man’s shoulder like a white slash of purity in the muted bar. Nick poured another drink. He wondered what Lauren was doing, pictured her at her home. She turned and looked at him, giving him a smile as she passed him the popcorn. Loud noise blasted from the television, Linkin Park wailing about a divide. A massive robot ran across the screen and turned into a semi trailer, the action making the boy sitting beside Nick laugh.
His son.
Nick killed the image and poured another drink.
“Are you Nick Blackthorne?”
The question jerked his attention from the glass and he gazed at an elderly couple—maybe in their seventies—standing beside his booth. The woman had her hand resting in the crook of the man’s elbow, a warm smile on her face as she waited for Nick to answer.
“I am,” he said, the whiskey in his throat turning the words to a husky murmur.
The woman gave her partner a triumphant look, slapping his shoulder with a gentle smack. “See? I told you so.” She turned back to Nick. “We’re the Missens. You used to mow our lawn for us when you were twelve. Saving up for a guitar, I think you were.”
Nick raised his eyebrows, staring at the two elderly people. They didn’t seem to want to stand still. Or maybe it was the world that didn’t. Or him. He licked his lips.
“What are you doing now, Nick?” the older man was asking. “Still playing the guitar?”
Nick licked his lips again, his throat hot. The side of his head hurt, a dull pain not even close to the ache in his chest. “I don’t know,” he answered. The words felt wrong in his mouth. Like a lie. He did know. Didn’t he?
Jesus, he didn’t. He didn’t have a fucking clue.