“I’m sorry. I hated hiding it from you. We’ve never kept secrets from each other.”
“How was it easier to tell that undertaker dude but not me? That’s really fucked up.”
“What?” My face contorts in confusion. Then I realize he means Cedarwood. “I didn’t tell him. He assumed. Shocked me too.” I shrug.
He frowns as if he doesn’t quite believe me.
“Why would I lie about it now?” I throw my hand in the space between us. “You even made a mini-me joke.”
One corner of his mouth twitches. “I guess so.”
“Everything I thought I knew about myself—my family, my history, my damn identity, was flipped upside down, Blake.” I frantically think of the best way to explain it. “Thinking of Rock as a father figure then having him actually be my father was a real fucked-up pill to swallow.” There’s the reason I needed to have this reckoning with Blake away from Rock.
“Yeah,” he says with slow sarcasm. “You’re a regular Luke Skywalker.”
I scratch the side of my head and frown at him. “Are you comparing Rock to Darth Vader?”
Finally, he cracks a smile. “No.”
We stare at each other.
I got nothing left to say. No more explanations to give.
“I wish…” He jams his hands in his pockets and looks away. “I hate that you went through that alone.”
I open my mouth to protest. Rock, Hope, and Charlotte all knew.
“Yeah, yeah, Rock and Hope knew. Your girl knew,” he says, as if he’s read my mind. “But I know you couldn’t be honest with them the way you can be with me.” He shrugs. “I hate that you dealt with that on your own.”
My throat tightens. “If you make me cry, motherfucker…”
“What?” He throws his arms out wide. “You gonna punch me?”
“Maybe.” He’s asking for it with his arms wide open, so I grab him and yank him in for a hug.
For a second, he freezes. Then he returns the hug. “I’m sorry I didn’t take it well at first,” he says against my shoulder.
I release him and shrug. “Hey, I hightailed it to Canada when I found out.”
He dips his chin. “That was when, huh?”
“Yeah.” Shit, I don’t want him doing the math again. “Thank you for doing what Heidi needed. Being there for her. It tore me up, thinking about how to tell her.”
He releases a long, slow breath, his gaze falling somewhere over my shoulder. “She loves you. I think she’s happy for you but a little sad for herself. It is what it is though.”
One of my least-favorite phrases. But he’s right. “Are you okay if we tell the club, now?”
Blake takes longer to answer than I expected. “Yeah, it’s your news to share. Not mine.”
“I know. I don’t want to spring anything on you again.”
“Jesus, Marcel, you don’t have to run everything by me now.”
I slap his shoulder. “Yeah, I kinda do. You’re my VP.”
He scowls and shakes his head. “I gotta get home.”
“All right. I’ll follow you.”
I breathe a sigh of relief as I straddle my bike. Things aren’t back to normal yet, but this is progress.