Chapter 14: The Garage

Jared's POV

Gage was already inside my shop when I got there, with the lights off and a wrench in his hand.

I locked the roll-up door behind me and turned on one bulb.

"Say it again," he said. "What you said at the table."

"I slept with her once. November, five years ago."

"In my bed?"

"In the back office, here."

He hit me with the wrench hand, and I went into the workbench.

Tools came off the pegboard and rang on the concrete.

I stood up slowly.

"Hit back," Gage said.

"No."

"Hit me, you son of a bitch."

"No."

He swung again, and I took it on the jaw.

My teeth cut the inside of my cheek, and I tasted blood.

He is my cousin, and we learned to ride on the same dirt road, and he has never once been able to hit me hard enough to make me hit him.

That was true when we were ten and it was true tonight.

"She told me she was with me the whole of that month," Gage said. He was breathing hard. "She told me in February."

"She told me the same thing in a letter. That month and that baby were yours."

"They are mine."

"Then the lab says so on Sunday, and I'll apologize on my knees."

He stared at me.

Under the bulb his brown eyes were wet, and I looked at them and thought of a small girl who has never once looked like him.

"You knew," he said. "About Hattie. You knew for two years."

"I knew you had a child at Marlow's Landing. I didn't know she might be mine."

"You knew, and you let me lie to my wife."

"Yes."

"You watched Mara make my coffee and you said nothing."

"I did," I said. "That's mine to carry, and I know it."

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