After I walk away from Mari—promising that we’ll talk later and explaining to her how to find my house and the parking spot for her Airstream—I wander back to the office to fill in Clark.
I know he’s in there, dying to know what the hell’s going on. Even though Clark’s my least gossipy brother, there is no way he’s not tearing his hair out waiting for an update.
And sure enough, when I step through the flimsy trailer door, he’s sitting in his cheap swivel desk chair, waiting for me. He immediately lunges out of the chair and grabs me by the arms. “Is it yours?”
I laugh, because the situation is so absurd, and his agitation is so extreme, and I need to blow off steam.
He looks at me like I’ve lost my mind, which maybe I have.
I sink into the guest chair. “Jesus, I need a beer.”
He grabs two from the low-slung dorm fridge next to his desk, pops the tops, and hands me one. “I wish I had something stronger for you, dude.”
I down a huge slug of beer, take a deep breath, and say, “It’s mine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Well, no, of course not,” I say. “But she offered a paternity test, so I guess I’ll do that. She said there’s some noninvasive way they can test, but honestly, I believe her. If there were another guy who was easier to track down than me, wouldn’t she have done that? It’s not like she came here looking for anything. She had no idea I was here.” I frown at Clark. “You didn’t warn her?”
“When she showed up and I realized she was pregnant, I said ‘I think you might know my brother.’”
“But not, ‘I think my brother might be the father of your baby.’”
“Seriously?” he demands. “If I was wrong, that would have been so awkward.”
“As opposed to what just happened out there, which was not-at-all awkward?”
We glare at each other, and then I start laughing again.
“Kane. You okay?”
“Sort of?” I sigh and take another slug of beer. “She’d been planning to choose adoption. Until she found me.”
“Whoa,” Clark says, big-eyed. “What did you say to that?”
“I asked her to take some time. Reconsider. Let me in on the decision-making process.” I hesitate. I almost don’t say it… but this is Clark. If anyone can understand where I’m coming from, it’s him. “If she can’t get her head around the idea of raising it maybe I could.”
“Double whoa. That would be a fuck ton of work, Kane. Raising a kid?”
“I know how much work it would be. But it’s what I want. You know I’ve always wanted kids.”
“I know, but you wanted them in the context of marriage and a family, right? What about Veronica?”
“We broke up.”
His eyes go wide. “You—when did that happen?”
I bring him up to date on the events of the morning. You’d think he’d be beyond surprise at the moment, but the breakup-by-parents still has shock power, and his mouth drops open.
“Wow. You’ve had quite the day. So Veronica’s out of the picture… But are you sure you want to go down this path with Marigold?”
“I mean, what’s the alternative? Tell her to go ahead, arrange the adoption? Let her and the baby walk out of my life?”
We stare at each other. He’s the first to look away. When he looks back, he says, “I know how crazy you were about her. Marigold. I’ve never seen you the way you were after that one-nighter.”
“Yeah.”
Clark’s the only one who knows how much that night rocked my world, how hard I worked, unsuccessfully, to get her out from under my skin.
He shakes his head. “This is nuts, Kane. It’s so impulsive. It’s not you.”
“Me hasn’t been working that well for me lately.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’m tired of doing the safe thing. The sane thing. The well-trodden path. If what you’re doing isn’t working, try anything else,” I quote. I finish the rest of the beer in a long continuous swig, and Clark hands me his, still untouched. He leans back toward the fridge to snag himself another one.
When he faces me again, eyes gentle on mine, he says, “I’ll back your play, dude. You know that.”
I’d guessed he’d be on my side no matter what, but still, hearing it feels good. “Thanks.” The word feels inadequate. “I asked her to give me three weeks.”
“To convince her to sign over rights?”
“Or to stay so we can raise the baby together.”
His face darkens. “Kane. Are you sure you’re thinking straight on this? Tell me this isn’t just about her. About the sex.”
“It’s not about the sex,” I say. “What matters is getting the baby’s future sorted out, not me getting laid. I’m going to keep my hands to myself and my dick in my pants, till we figure this out.”
He shakes his head. “If I had money for every Wilder brother who’s uttered those words, or ones just like them, I wouldn’t need to renovate those fucking trailers.”
“This is hard core, though, Clark. Baby’s future.”
We both sit with that for a moment.
“What do you think the chances are? Of convincing her to stay?”
“I don’t know. She’s lived her whole life on the road and said she’d never thought about having it be different.”
He squints. “Lucy didn’t think she wanted small town life.”
“Yeah, well, Lucy also didn’t live in an Airstream motorhome and design RVs for a living.”
“Point taken,” he says. “On the other hand…” His mouth quirks. “Wilders are persuasive.”
“They are that.”
“So… what now?”
“Now I do everything I can to show her how amazing things could be. And that I’d make one hell of a dad.”
Clark shrugs. “Piece of cake.” He frowns. “But if you can’t convince her? What if…” He frowns. “What if she flakes and leaves with the baby or something?”
“I’m not going to think about that now,” I say. “Whatever happens, I’ll deal with it. When I didn’t put that condom on, I signed up to figure all of this out.”
My brother’s expression slowly eases. “You’re a good man, Kane.” He pulls out his phone. “You want me to call a family meeting? Lay this out for everyone? They’ll all back your play. Amanda, Mom, all of them. That baby will have more aunties than it’ll know what to do with. And uncles.”
“Yeah, so about that,” I say. “I definitely want her to see the Wilders in action. Maybe have Jessa invite her to a family dinner or something, so she can see how great everyone is with the kids. But you can’t tell anyone yet that the baby’s mine.”
“Wait, what?”
I explain to him about Mari’s legit worry that if everyone knows, they’ll bear down on her.
“I think this is going to go better if she can just get to know me, get to know the family, get to trust us. Make up her mind. Then we can unleash the hounds of Wilder. The last thing I want is to scare her off by having Mom and Amanda try to talk her into anything.”
Clark snickers. “Okay, you might have a point. That said, there’s no fucking way you’re keeping this thing under wraps. She’s, what—seven months pregnant? It’s not subtle.”
“Yeah, but you’re the only one who knows I’ve ever seen her before today.”
He opens, then closes, his mouth. “Wow. Yeah. Actually. You’re right.”
“She could have a husband and three other kids somewhere in Alabama. What would possibly make everyone think I got her pregnant?”
He leans back in his chair. “Huh. Yeah.” His forehead wrinkles. “But you’re a Wilder male, and this is Rush Creek, Kane, the gossip capital of the universe. This is where secrets come to walk like the undead. And you may think you’re a superhero of make believe, but you probably aren’t as good at hiding things from the women of this family as you think you are.”
He fixes me with a laser sharp gaze.
“Take it from a guy who tried and failed.”