My mouth drops open, gaping at him. I rub my hand over my jaw, confused. For a second, I question whether they know each other or have some history, but it doesn’t make sense.
I know Haelynn wouldn’t lie to me. Certainly, that’s not what has him so upset.
“What the hell are you talking about? Bother you? Why would my relationship with her bother you?”
He sneers. “Oh, so Marc Krate’s daughter mysteriously drops into town, and I’m supposed to be okay with my best friend going off and hooking up with her?”
The name Marc Krate rings clear through my mind. It’s not a name that would be relevant to most people, but our jobs and our families' history with the Krates are no secret to us.
This is far more personal for Gage than I ever realized.
Marc Krate is the reason Gage, his namesake, is dead. He’s the reason he is who he is today, sitting right before me.
I have no words, staring at him with my jaw slack, unable to form a response to argue with him other than I had no idea. He can’t think for a second I had any inkling who her father was.
“Shit,” Alex mutters under his breath.
It’s like someone handed me a live grenade, and with a pull of the pin, everything in my world just blew up around me.
Chapter Seventeen
Haelynn
Madelyn didn’t bat an eye when I asked if I could finish out the week working from home. I was still trying to wrap my head around everything that happened, and being home felt like the best place to do so.
My number one priority right now is focusing on Huxton, but I can’t forget my conversation with Gage outside the studio.
He warned me to stay away from him and his friends. Although I know he was mostly talking about Corbin, Madelyn was lumped into it too. I get he was looking out for his friends, but I still can’t understand why he felt he needed to protect them from me of all people.
The way he looked at me, as if I was some sort of toxic imprint on their lives, and the only way to fix it would be to stay away from them.
I hadn’t planned on doing this, but when my mom called asking to take Huxton for the night, I jumped on it. It gave me the night to myself. Something that didn’t happen often these days.
I made the quick drive to her place with my windows down. The moisture in the air was thick. The news said there’s a big storm rolling through the Midwest. The sky was already beginning to turn a mixture of midnight blue and dark purple. It’s an ominous feeling, much like how I’m anticipating the rest of the night going.
I push the thought out of my mind when I pull into my mom’s driveway. She must’ve been waiting at the door because she pushes it open to greet us as soon as she sees us. Her hair is pulled up on top of her head, and her robe is tied around her waist.
I fully expected to walk in and find her on the couch, Wheel of Fortune playing on the TV, with her candles lit around the house.
“There’s my sweet boy.” She grins. Huxton takes off past me, racing toward the door.
“Hey, Huxie, can you do me a favor and play in the toy room for a bit? I need to talk to Gram for a minute.”
My mom’s eyes narrow at me. She must sense the change in my demeanor. I haven’t been able to get this conversation off my mind since my run-in with Gage.
For all my life, I believed what my mom told me about my biological father. I sat and stewed on this forever last night after I put Huxton to bed, but bits and pieces from my memory still weren’t adding up.
I vaguely recall being about Huxton’s age the first time she brought me back to Iowa. I’ve never forgotten because it was the first and only time I’ve visited a prison. At the time, I had no reason to think any differently. She told me we were seeing a friend of hers, but there’s something about the trip I couldn’t forget.
I remember the tears in his eyes and the look on his face when she introduced me to him. He had a tattoo near his temple, but his smile was a mixture of pride and sadness.
Toward the end of our visit, I could sense the change in her demeanor. I’ve only seen her this upset a few times, all of them for a good reason, except for this day. I don’t know what spurred it, but it was like a switch was flipped, and she was ready to leave.
She pushed me to stand behind her, hoping I wouldn’t overhear the words she uttered next. Thinking back on them now, I can still hear them run through my mind the same way she spoke them that day.
“You will never see or hear from her again. As far as I’m concerned, you’re dead to me. You’re dead to both of us.”
She never spoke of him or that day again. I never put two and two together, believing the lies she had told me about him passing away in an accident before I was born.