Page 36 of King of My Heart

“You took my advice,” I said, looking back at the cap in my hands. “I’m sure people won’t even realize it’s you.”

He didn’t reply. A scoff was all I got from him.

Puckering my lips, I put the cap back down and took in the interior of the old pickup truck he was driving. “Have you had this car for a long time?”

“I got it when I moved to Hilton.”

“So you didn’t have some fancy car when you were still in Hollywood?”

He furrowed his brows. “I always had drivers.”

“Even when you went grocery shopping?”

“I had people doing that for me.”

Of course.

“Right, should’ve thought of that. So then…why do you have a driver’s license?” I asked, grabbing his wallet from the middle console and unfolding it to find his license.

“Who doesn’t?”

Fair point.

I shrugged and pulled out the card. “Some people never learn to drive because they—” I stopped as I read the name on his license and frowned as I was hit with a wave of…surprise? Shock? It was something because my heart skipped a beat. “Your middle name is Darwin?”

I turned my head toward him, watching him side-eye me and the card I held. “Why are you looking at that? Put it away.”

I ignored his request and let out a breathy laugh. “You have the same middle name as me, and you didn’t even tell me. Why? This is so…” I tried to find the right word as I dropped my gaze back to the driver’s license. “Cool. Though, mine’s spelling is more fun.”

“My middle name was never relevant to me.”

Of course, it wasn’t.

I rolled my eyes. “But you knew, and you didn’t tell me. We have a connection after all. Although…it is a strange one,” I said with a small laugh.

“We also have a different connection. An even weirder one.”

I knew what he meant.

Julian.

My ex.

His son.

I frowned, then scrunched my nose. “Wait. Does Julian know what your middle name is?”

“He does. Heshouldknow.”

Which made everything even stranger.

There were so many things I wanted to ask him. Things about him and Julian, and what their relationship had been before everything went to shit.

I studied him for a while, trying to determine whether the twenty minutes we had before arriving in Bruce Mines were enough to hear the full story of what truly went down.

“Will you ever tell me what really happened? I know Julian’s side, not yours. I want to understand this weird-as-hell full-circle moment.”

Caspian’s knuckles whitened as he gripped the steering wheel tightly. His forearms flexed, and his jaw tensed. “If I tell,you’ll think differently of Julian. You’ll dislike him. Maybe even more than you do right now.”

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