Page 121 of Vicious Little Games

“Thank you for this, for finding him, Cassie. I can never repay you…” he says to me, his eyes filled with so much warmth it scares the shit out of me. I still let myself soak in his admiration, knowing that this is what it must feel like to be loved. And then I just get angry because I can't. I can't let him love me or he'll never leave.

“Page Andrew Phelps,” I go over and tell the front desk manager. Neither Cole nor I bet on this man to be his father.

“What…why?” the mousy little woman asks.

“Tell him he has a phone call at the front door,” I huff.

Just a few minutes later, after the announcement is made, the tall, lean man from the photo comes strolling toward the front desk with the same swagger in his walk as Cole’s. I can’t believe we didn’t notice it last night while we were watching the guys get drunk.

Cole stops breathing next to me as Andrew comes to a stop at the front desk. Smiling genuinely and friendly at the clerk he says, “Hi, I’m Andrew Phelps. The announcement said there’s a phone call for me?”

The manager looks nervously over her shoulder at me and Cole. When Cole doesn’t say anything or even take a breath, I step forward. “Hi, Andrew. You’re with the fraternity reunion from USC?”

“Yes,” he answers. “Where can I take the call?”

“Ah, well,” I hedge, glancing at Cole then his father. “Actually, there’s no phone call. Sorry. We meant to call a different Andrew.”

“Oh,” he says, his smile dimming. “Well, no harm, no foul.”

Wow, he seems like a really nice guy. And handsome for a man in his forties. There’s so much of Cole in him just at the surface level. No telling what else they could have in common.

“Have a good night,” he says before he turns to walk away.

That’s when Cole finally snaps out of his trance. “Wait!” he calls, halting the man’s steps.

Cole

It’s him.

He’s really here.

My father in the flesh. The man who I share blood with. He not only has a name but a face, a voice, and a seemingly kind personality.

“Yes?” Andrew Phelps says when he turns back around.

Thinking quickly, I clear my burning throat and ask him, “Do you…maybe you remember my mother from your time at USC. Her name is Vanessa.”

The man’s brow furrows. My father’s brow furrows. After a moment of serious consideration, he says, “No, I don't remember any Vanessas at all. Sorry. It was a large campus. Maybe she was there a different year than I was.”

“Right. Yeah. Actually, she may have gone by a different name at the time. Maybe if you saw her again…” I trail off, not ready to let him walk away just yet. I quickly pull up a photo of my mom on my phone and show him the screen. He comes closer to the desk, squinting at the image as I study his face up close and personal, searching for similarities. I swear we have the same nose and mouth.

“Wow. She's beautiful,” he says. “And vaguely familiar, but…I can't place her.”

“She should look familiar. You had sex with her at least once at the fraternity house,” Cass bluntly informs him, thankfully letting the cat out of the bag when I couldn’t.

“What?” Andrew chuckles and glances around as if looking for cameras like he thinks he's on a show being set up for laughs. “That’s…how would you know who I had sex with when I was in college? I can barely remember myself.”

“She knows you had sex with her because I'm your son,” I blurt out. Quick like ripping off a Band-Aid and it’s done and over. There’s no going back now.

“My...no.” He shakes his head, still smiling good-naturedly. “That's...that's impossible.”

“Cassie, show him.”

“Even better,” she says while tapping on the screen. “I can print out a copy for him to keep.”

“A copy of what?” Andrew asks, glancing between the two of us in confusion.

A moment later the nearby printer spits out the page. I grab it and offer it to the man. While he reads it, I tell him, “You know that DNA sample you gave Friday night? It wasn’t for a clinical trial. It was a paternity test.”

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