Page 78 of Must Have Been Love

It hasn’t escaped my notice that my love language is apparently caffeine. Or that the two new men in my life seem to understand that. I’ve gone from being a loner – albeit with a small family that I love – to having this extended network of people who care about me. If I think about it too long it’ll make me feel uncomfortable. I know how to be alone.

I don’t know how to be part of a community.

“It’s what Dad wanted,” he says. “For me to tell you when the time was right. It just…” he shakes his head. “It never felt right.”

He called into work sick for the first time since he’s started working there, apparently. And I can see why. He looks so pale he’s almost ghostly. There are dark rings beneath his eyes like he didn’t get any sleep.

And his eyes themselves are full of regret.

Hudson and I walked and talked for an hour along the beach this morning before he took me at my word that I felt better and agreed to go home.

We talked about my family – the one I knew and the one I didn’t. About my dad and how I feel more upset about him not telling me than about Jesse and the rest of the island keeping it from me.

I have so many questions I started losing track of them. Hudson gently suggested I write them down in my phone so I could have them ready for Jesse.

He looked almost shocked when I did as I was told and got my notes app up on my phone and typed in a dozen questions in one go. Like he expected me to ignore him. But he was right. I’m starting to think he’s always right.

And now I’m going through those same questions methodically, feeling almost like the adult I should be as I ask Jesse each one.

“How long have you known about me?” I ask him. That’s question number two. The first was why my dad didn’t tell me. Jesse’s answer was as honest as he could be without actually knowing the answer. Because my dad took a lot of secrets to his grave.

“So you need to know a little about my life for me to answer that one,” he says. “I didn’t know Wayne was my father until I was sixteen.”

I blink. “Seriously?” I would have been eighteen or nineteen. After the wedding. I wasn’t speaking to Dad by then.

Jesse takes a deep breath, his brows knitting. “My mom never told me. Or Wayne. They apparently had a short fling, then he left the island for a while and she went back to my dad. It was only years later when my dad died that she finally admitted that Wayne was my biological dad. He was back on the island full time by then, running the bar. We did a DNA test.” He shrugs.

“Were you close to him?”

“As close as anybody gets to him I guess.” He presses his lips together. “He was a drunk. You know that. And even when he tried to get his drinking under control he was sick.”

“A dry drunk?”

“Along with the liver disease and everything else that comes with abusing your body for that long, yeah.” Jesse’s jaw tightens. “He encouraged me to play the guitar. Gave me gigs here. But he was more of an uncle than a dad to me.”

“And you went to his funeral.” My chest tightens.

He nods. “I was hoping you’d be there.”

“I was avoiding…” I let out a long breath. “Everything.” Our eyes meet and there’s so much understanding there. “I guess the apple doesn’t fall that far from the tree.”

“You’re nothing like him,” Jesse says firmly. I lift a brow and he smiles. “Okay, you’re only like the best parts of him. He had his moments. He loved to sing and dance. When you got him talking he’d tell you all about his travels. He had a restless soul but that was a good thing. How boring would it be if we were all settled down from an early age?”

“Having a restless soul can hurt people,” I say. And I think we both know we’re not talking about my dad anymore.

“It can also inspire. Light up the world. The sun isn’t always here. She has places to go, but when she does show her face…” He tips his head, the warmth of her rays illuminating his skin. “She makes you feel good like nothing else can.”

A smile steals across my lips. “Are you comparing me to the sun?”

“I’m just saying, you’re you. And Wayne was Wayne. He spent a lot of time fighting who he was. Drank a lot of alcohol to try to forget who he was. If he’d just accepted it…”

“He would have been happy?” I say, completing his sentence. My little brother is wise. I like that a lot.

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “But anything is better than fighting yourself, isn’t it?” He looks at my phone, still open on my lap. “What’s your next question?”

“Does everybody on the island know that he’s your father? And have they always known?”

“Once we took the DNA test it wasn’t a secret that I was his son. They knew that Wayne wanted me to be the one to tell you, and they honored that wish.” He swallows hard. “Don’t blame anybody else for this, it’s all my doing. I should have told you earlier. I wanted to. I was just…”

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