“Let me say something, first,” Talon said.
“Of course.” I’d always listen to Talon. He was my hero, my savior.
“You’re our brother, Ryan. Always. In every way that matters. I love you, man.”
Now I was really freaked out. “Tal…I’m not sure you’ve ever said that before.”
“It’s not what guys say,” Talon said. “But I love you.”
“I do too,” Joe said.
Jonah had said he loved me recently, and now Talon? Very odd. “I love you guys too, but you know that. What the fuck is going on?”
Jonah grabbed the manila folder he’d brought with him and took out some documents. “We came into some information recently. Information we were hoping would be proved false.”
“Yeah?” Icy fingers crept up my spine.
Joe cleared his throat. “You know Wendy Madigan?”
“Of course.”
“While I was with her, after she kidnapped me, she made a claim. About you.”
“What about me?”
“God, Joe, how can we do this?” Talon asked.
“We’re going to rip the Band-Aid off,” Joe said, and then looked me straight in the eyes. “These documents prove something. Something we hoped wasn’t true, but is.” He cleared his throat. “I wish I didn’t have to tell you this.”
“Tell me what? Jesus Christ, Joe. What the fuck is going on?”
Jonah exhaled. “Ryan, Wendy Madigan is your mother.”
Chapter Thirty–Three
Ruby
I jolted as fists pounded on my door.
“Damn it, Ruby. Open up!”
God. Ryan. They must have told him. Why would he have come here?
I opened the door, but what greeted me wasn’t the Ryan Steel I knew. His hair was unruly, his shirt untucked. He had a feral and crazed gleam in his dark eyes.
“How could you?” he said. “How could you not tell me?”
“I…” I had no words. He was right. I should have told him everything. “We didn’t know each other very well. We didn’t—”
“Fuck that noise, Ruby. We had something special.”
Had? Was it over? Probably. He had every right to en
d it. Every right to hate me. “Well…you know now.” What a stupid thing to say.
“I know. What innocuous words those should be. Knowledge should be a good thing, shouldn’t it?” He waved the DNA test papers at me. “This is knowledge. Knowledge I never wanted.”
“Ryan, come in and sit down. Let’s talk about this.”