Page 3 of The Secret

I stormed back the way I came, back to the epicenter of the explosion that was currently my life.

Penn and Rafe had let themselves in and I found them in the kitchen, the baby still in the car seat and currently parked on the island counter. I gave it a wide berth, like I would anything that had the potential to detonate, and perched on the kitchen table instead. Penn took one look at me and disappeared.

Rafe had opened the letter and was reading through it, pages and pages of something I knew instinctively was about to blow my life apart. His expert eyes flickered as they scanned across the words. He was an excellent lawyer, even if he did look like he belonged in a biker gang most of the time. When he wasn’t dressed like a choirboy in a suit and tie, he was usually seen with full sleeves of tats, riding about on one of his vintage Harleys, or in any number of his sports cars, especially the Bugatti.

“Do I want to know what that letter says?”

I mean, I didn’t. I really,reallydidn’t.

He kept reading, his eyes still moving. “Well, apparently she’s yours.”

The rest of my stomach bottomed out as he finally looked up and I gripped onto the edges of the table to stop myself from falling over, because the room was spinning worse than anything any hangover could produce.

“How?” I managed to croak.

“Do you remember last Memorial Day when we were up at the house?”

I nodded, because even without specifics, I knew we’d been there. Every Memorial Day weekend since we’d been at college had been spent at the summer house Rafe’s family owned in Bridgehampton.

“Yes, what about it?”

“That was when it happened.”

“Allegedly.” Penn returned carrying a bottle of twenty-five-year-old Glenfiddich single malt scotch and three glasses. “And anyway, that weekend is always boys, so there’s no fucking way it happened then.”

Rafe shook his head. “I thought that, but remember Rory and the boys turned up with that group of girls they’d met on the way and decided to bring them along too?”

Penn’s paused in the pouring of the bottle as his memory came back. “Fucking Rory.”

Rory was Rafe’s youngest brother. He’d taken the weekend off from Harvard and brought his housemates. And while Rafe had never played Varsity, Rory was the king; Quarterback and Captain of the football team. He was a legend among his peers, and a magnet for all women. His whole house was, because they all played together and sport was currency. He’d turned up explaining to Rafe that a weekend of just guys was a wasted weekend, and the girls would join us for twenty four hours, then leave.

Which they did, but not before making it clear what they were up for.

We’d all got very drunk, and I’d ended up wrapped around a beautiful brunette several times over the course of the evening, all night and the next morning. We never exchanged numbers and afterwards went our separate ways, or rather, she’d left with the girls as Rory had agreed.

And the most I could say about it was… it was fun.

“Annabel? Lizzie? Fuck. I can’t remember what she was called. And I don’t think I ever knew her last name.”

“Reagan…” he shook one of the pages at me. “She clearly knew who you were.”

That wasn’t hard. I was in the financial pages more often than not, not to mention that the three of us were regularly featured in any number of fucking stupid lists of Most Eligible Bachelors or whatever. As much as Rafe tried to stay under the radar with his do-good, not-for-profit legal aid firm, his family name got him noticed, and even if Penn wasn’t currently on a one-man mission to fuck every single actress/model/singer between the ages of eighteen and forty in a massive but totally unnecessary act of rebellion, he was practically American aristocracy, and anything he did garnered headline news. Couple that with the fact my two brothers-in-law were part of New York’s sporting elite…

Bottom line, people knew who we were. We liked to party, but we also worked fucking hard and had no plans to apologize for it, unless legally required to - which Penn had been - on more than one occasion.

“I want a paternity test. I have never had sex without suiting up.”

“I agree, and I’ll sort one out, but I have to say, I don't think this is financial. She's signed over everything. There’s not even a birth certificate, so we have to sort that immediately. She doesn’t want this baby.”

My head fell in my hands. What the fuck was happening? Was I in some kind of alternate universe that I was about to return from at any second?

“Why didn’t she have an abortion? Or put it up for adoption?” Penn handed me a glass of scotch, which went straight down my throat.

Women could do whatever they wanted with their bodies, I was not one to judge, but if you didn’t want a kid then don’t have one to just give it away. My sister, Freddie, had been adopted, and there was no shame in that either. But he had a point, because however you looked at it, this situation was fucked up and I’d been left to pick up the pieces.

“She said she found out too late and couldn’t go through with adoption; she said she tried. She also said her family doesn’t know; she’s kept it a secret. She was still on her parents’ insurance.”

Penn looked at my ashen face and asked the question I didn’t want to. “Fuck, how old was she?”

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