But she was too late. Remorse is a pointless emotion when you can’t do anything to rectify the situation.
The next night, hung over, sad, lonely, she accepted the offer of a handsome man who wanted to buy her a drink. She needed the dog’s hair anyway, and was running low on cash; tips weren’t as plentiful when she wasn’t on her game, and she wasn’t on her game tonight.
The handsome man bought her a drink, then another, and another. Daisy was feeling better, more confident, surer, and he was a specimen, wide shoulders winnowing to a small waist, square jaw, straight teeth. Brown hair slicked back, jeans that filled out in all the right places. His name was Ed, Ed Hardsten, and several drinks later, when he offered to give her a ride, and he wasn’t just talking about his car—wink, wink—she thought, what the hell. What do I have to lose?
Those were words that always came back to haunt Daisy.
The “ride” was an excellent one, and when Hardsten asked to see her again, she agreed. Languorously wrapped in his sheets, she hadn’t felt like this much of a woman since . . . Well, she didn’t like to think of that night, when Dr. Edwards took her up against the wall in the stairwell at the college.
She married Hardsten three months later. They bought a little house with a white picket fence and got to work starting a family. And she told herself how happy she was, day after day after day.
CHAPTER 55
Aubrey
Today
Aubrey came to on the couch, with a worried Chase inches from her face.
It was too much. It was all too much.
“Aubrey, are you okay? Please, listen to me. Please forgive me.”
She held up her hand. “Stop. Just give me some space.”
He handed her a glass of water. She drank it, mind still spinning, half with anger, half with relief. She set the glass down and pulled her legs up onto the couch, making herself into a small ball. She searched his face for any sign he knew what was going on. She saw only a man who had feelings for her, but he wasn’t innocent anymore. She couldn’t trust him. And her heart broke. It all crashed together again, and Aubrey shut her eyes.
Daisy.
Sons.
It all made such a sick, weird kind of sense now. There are no coincidences in life. Chase had been sent to her, a gift, a way out of her own grief. He’d been using her, and now she was being punished, yet again.
But she breathed out a sigh of relief. She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t seeing things. That’s why he seemed so damn familiar.
“Chase, I need to ask you a serious question, and I need you to tell me the truth. Were you adopted?”
“What?” He whirled away, eyes blazing. “Jesus, Aubrey. You just drop this bomb that your dead husband might be alive, tell me I’m not allowed to love you, and then ask that? What the hell?”
She tamped down the anger, the betrayal, the urge to lash out. Got up and went to him. He didn’t move, was breathing hard. She took his cheeks in her hands, looked deep into his eyes. Mad as she was, she was tempted to kiss him, but didn’t. It was all over between them. She couldn’t have him, and he couldn’t have her. But she needed to know the whole truth, no matter where it took them.
“I know this sounds like it’s coming out of left field. But you have to tell me. Were you adopted?”
He stood there, frozen, staring at her. Then he closed his eyes and sighed a great shuddering breath, took her hands from his face, and sat down hard on the couch.
“No one knows. How did you find out?”
“Educated guess. So you are?”
“Yeah. I found out two years ago, when my mom first got sick. She was diabetic, had been since she was a kid. The disease finally ravaged her kidneys, and she needed a transplant. Of course I was the first in line. But our blood types weren’t a match. I asked what mine was, and the doctor gave me this look. I will never forget it, just this sideways glance, like, ‘He doesn’t know. Don’t ruin his life.’ It didn’t take long to do the math—so I went to my stepdad and asked him about it.
“He wouldn’t tell me who the woman was, but admitted my real father had a one-time-thing affair, and got the girl pregnant. She wasn’t in a position to have a child, so she delivered me in secret and my parents took me home. They got divorced a few years later, and my mom remarried Robert Boden. My real dad left, and Robert Boden and my mother adopted me.”
He eyed her. “Why are you asking me this, Aubrey?”
“Chase,” she said softly, “I think you’re Josh’s brother.”
Chase jumped to his feet and started stalking around the living room. Winston watched him, his head turning in circles.
“That’s insane.”
“It’s not insane,” Aubrey said. “It makes perfect sense. That’s why you look so much like him even though you don’t. Why you have the same mannerisms, the same set to your shoulders, the same walk. It’s why Daisy finally admitted to all of us that she had sons—more than one. Because she recognized you, even though she didn’t know for sure. Do you know your birth father’s name?”