Cocky Cowboy: A Second Chance Romance (Cocker Brothers of Atlanta Book 3) (11 page)

M
y hand is cradling
my abdomen as I stare off.

I can’t breathe.

I can’t think.

Jaxson...

And a man who was not my father might have raised me.

All these years might have been a lie. All the Christmases. All the birthdays. Going with my parents to the Cocker house for dinner and that man might have been my real father.

My mom is smoking her second cigarette, lit up as soon as the other went to the nub. She quit years ago. Must have picked up the pack on the way here.

I can’t imagine what she must have been feeling when she heard from Ryan who I was with, and how long I’d been in Georgia.

She and I haven’t said a word after she whispered, “Rachel,” and I croaked, “Shut up.”

I woke up with our limbs entwined, blissfully enmeshed and knowing I love him. And now he might be my brother.

Jaxson explodes onto the porch, coffee splashing unnoticed as he locks eyes with me. He’s tortured, too. We’re both having a hard time looking at each other, so much pain.

Numbness starts to take hold of me as I watch him plant his feet and bark at my mother, “When did it start?”

Mom’s staring off into his ranch. The cows are making a lot of noise in the barn. No one was there to let them out. I heard them in our silence while we waited, but Jaxson hasn’t noticed.

He wants answers. So do I.

As memories play out before her distant blue eyes, Mom tells the story she’s held from us for decades. “You never plan these things you see. John and I moved a couple houses down from the Cockers during a difficult time. We were having trouble conceiving. It was putting a strain on our marriage. I’d had three miscarriages, and wanted a baby more than anything.” She takes a slow drag on the cigarette. “Michael was so handsome. So charming. So easy to talk to you just as neighbors. We didn’t plan the affair. No one ever does, I think. But I ran into him quite by chance when I was visiting my mother in D.C. Michael was there working for a congressman, hoping to be one himself someday. We had lunch and then…” She inhales sharply at the memory’s strength. “I lied to my mother and said I had to go home early. Instead I went to Michael’s hotel. He didn’t want to let me in anymore than I wanted to be there. But the chemistry was too strong for us, and he’d given me the key already. It was too hard for me to turn it down. And with me standing there, he let me in.” She closes her eyes and whispers, “Shortly after, I became pregnant. But so did Nancy. Michael said my baby might not be his. I hated him for that, but agreed to keep quiet, even to keep it from John. We tried to stop, but time and again we weren’t able to resist the pull. It was too strong and we weren’t.”

Jaxson growls, “Mr. Sawyer found out.”

My mom glances to him from her daze and whispers, “Yes. Eventually he did. And he made me choose. We had to move. The first year in New York was one of the hardest of my life. The withdrawals from Michael were so painful.”

“Mom,” I groan, covering my face. “How could you guys keep this from us?”

She shrugs, defeated. “When you were kids, it didn’t matter. You were too little for me to worry that something would happen between you. But then when you ran off with him I saw his Jeep and knew who it was, first I shouted, then I called and called. I was going to tell you then but—”

“—I left my phone there.”

“Imagine my horror when I heard it in the guest room,” she takes a drag off the cigarette, the damage done. “I didn’t know where he lived or I would have driven here. And I didn’t have the courage to ask Nancy then. Michael and I have never spoken since I moved away.”

Jaxson asks, “You talked to my mom today?” He’s glaring at her like he might rip her throat out.

“Jaxson, calm down,” I whisper.

“Calm down? Do you know what she did to us?!”

“It wasn’t just me!” Mom cries out. “No one ever blames the man!”

This truism sinks into Jaxson instantly and with fists clenched he spins around to punch a hole in one of his screen windows. “Did you tell my mom about this?” he growls, protective of Nancy Cocker, the woman I remember my mother disliking. Now I know why.

“No! Of course not. I told her there was an emergency. She doesn’t know anything. She didn’t even know Rachel was here. I didn’t tell her about the baby.” Mom covers her face with the cigarette poking out. “My God, the baby.”

I rasp in pain, “Oh Mom!”

“I’m so sorry Rachel honey. I should have told you a long time ago. This is all my fault.”

“And my father’s,” Jaxson growls, pacing to gulp his coffee and slam the cup back on the table. “Why did you come back to Atlanta, Ellen? To see him? Because I won’t let that happen.”

She scoffs, “I most certainly did not come back for Michael. Forty years with a good man makes you love him more than you did when you were young and foolish. I don’t want to be with your father, Jaxson! I don’t care if I ever see him again. But my John was raised here. This is his home and he wants to die here. I promised him he has nothing to fear, and he doesn’t. Not from me.”

Bile rises to be dealt with. I rush inside and release more vomit than I think I ate food. Washing my face off with the coldest water from Jaxson’s well, I stare at my reflection and realize I have to make a choice.

Returning to the patio, I find my mother alone. “Where is he?”

“Milking the fucking cows,” she mutters, pulling a long drag from a fresh cigarette.

In bare feet I rush out to the barn. Jaxson’s faced away from me, applying the milking machine to Connie’s udders as she tells him exactly how she feels about him being late. Poor thing is in pain.

His back tenses as he hears me come in.

“We’re going to get tested, Jaxson. DNA. That’s what we have to do.”

He looks over his hunched shoulder. “Who can we trust?”

“I don’t know. I don’t live here.”

He stares at me and a dawning anger darkens his face. “I know who.”

D
octor Lee Saurnet
has excused himself to close the blinds of his private practice. Today his waiting room feels claustrophobically small. The receptionist is absent for secrecy – yet another way of making this feel all the more disgusting.

Ellen and John Sawyer sit on a single chair with her in it, looking like she needs another cigarette. He’s balanced on the arm, holding her hand, silently staring forward, his decision to face this head on resolute. But then again, he’s had years to digest this bullshit.

Rachel is chewing her fingernails on the farthest chair from her parents, and won’t look at either of them. Occasionally she glances to me and I catch it every time, like I know she’s about to. We’re in sync, and it’s driving us both crazy. I growl, “This is fucking ridiculous,” and walk to put my hand on her shoulder for support.

Her eyelashes rise slowly as she lifts her head to me. She closes her eyes and touches my hand, holding it so I won’t leave.

I catch her mom watching us and shoot at her, “What? I’m not abandoning her during this just because you fucked up. If they find out we’re…” I can’t even say the word siblings. “…it’s not going to change the fact that I’m her friend.”

A knock sounds on the door, so familiar it can be only one person. My father.

I swing it open with judgment and condemnation all over me.

“Jaxson,” he says, his voice solemn. Stepping inside, he glances behind him. “Did anyone see you come here?”

“You mean Mom? No, she wasn’t strolling down this street by happy coincidence, Dad. What took
you
so fuckin’ long?”

At my cussing, he frowns, but doesn’t have the balls to call me on it like he did with Jett when they fought at Jake’s wedding. This time our perfect congressman father is the one in the doghouse.

But I’m not relishing it.

It’s a sad day in a man’s life when his father falls off the pedestal.

He enters, locks the door and sees the Sawyers. They remain seated, both of them holding his look.

“John. Ellen. I know I said it back then, but…I’m very sorry about this.”

Mr. Sawyer’s cleanly shaven jaw clenches as he inhales through his nose. I can tell by his face he’s imagining his wife and my father in bed. Even today you can see the appeal of my dad, his presence powerful, his height formidable, and his looks haven’t dipped in age. John Sawyer is by all appearances average, but a good man. Can’t say my father is that right now.

Ellen’s blue eyes cast downward, her grip tightening on her husband’s hand.

My dad glances to me as he turns to address Rachel. “I’m very sorry we’ve put you in this position.” She nods, teary eyed as she stares at who might be her biological father. Tense and curt, he politely continues, “We hoped it would never—”

“Cut the crap, Dad!” I shout. “You should have forced your hand! You might be her father! Do you understand what that means?”

His pale green eyes cut to me, and steel. “Of course I do, Jaxson.” Glancing to my fists, his voice softens. “I need you to understand if we had told your mother, you boys would have been raised in a broken home and turned out very differently than you have.” He struggles against unexpected emotion, and confesses, “Jerald might never have been born. Or Justin, Jason…” he stops, unable to continue.

He loves us.

I know that.

But now I’ve learned something else by this confession.

He loved Ellen, too.

So much that he thought of leaving Mom after Ellen got pregnant with Rachel and when I was on the way, too.

I stare at him in shock, then rub my face like I want it clean of this mess. Whispering to myself, “That’s why it went on for years.” He couldn’t stop seeing her because he loved her. I blink into a past where my brothers were never born.

Dad scans everyone’s faces, guilty of being honest and of saying something that hurts everyone in this room. He returns to me with imploring eyes as he calmly says in his stoic way, “I love your mom. You know I do. I never meant to hurt her, or John. This was nothing we wanted and we fought it. Things aren’t always black and white.”

Rachel gets up, pulling my focus.

“I have to throw up again,” she whispers. Her eyes dart to her mother before she vanishes down the hall. The doctor passes her and asks if she’s all right. “No.”

Wearing golfing pants and a Polo shirt, Dr. Saurnet shakes hands with his college friend, his expression somber as he tries to cover his personal reaction at how far this affair has spun out of control. “Michael.”

“Lee. Thank you for leaving your golf game to help us.”

He shakes his head. “I owe you for ’97. Don’t give it another thought. So, it’s going to be a simple blood test since you’re all here.”

Ellen asks, “What about a prenatal test for the baby?”

“How far is your daughter along?”

Ellen looks to me for the answer, realizing suddenly that she has no idea.

“Nine weeks,” I tell him, crossing my arms and feeling heavy.

Dr. Saurnet nods, pursing his lips a moment. “It’s safer to do after she’s twelve weeks but we can do a test now where we inject a needle into the womb —”

“—You’re not poking needles in her.”

My father looks at me. “Jaxson.”

“No! First find out if Rachel is my sister. Then we wait until the child is
safe
before we go digging around, potentially hurting it.”

Like my brothers and I do when we don’t like something, Dad shoves his hands in his pockets, his lips a thin line.

I cut my focus back to the doctor. “So Doc, let’s start pulling blood samples. Dad, you first.”

My father has always been my hero. Today he’s just a man. Human. Flawed. And I hate him for that. Every motherfucking second of this bullshit is tearing me apart.

We are all quiet as one after the other Dad, John and then Rachel, walk back to get their blood drawn. Rachel is so pale she’s scaring me.

As we wait for her, the deciding factor in how deep this debacle goes, I cut a look to my dad as he rolls down his sleeve, warily watching me.

“If she’s your daughter you are a piece of shit.”

“Jaxson, you need to cool down.”

“Cool down?!” I get in his face. “She might be my sister! And do you know what we’ve been doing?! Do you!?” Agony rips into me and I punch my own chest. “You could never know how this feels! If you had been honest, she and I never would have happened!”

I shove him and storm out of the office into the sunlight of a bright Sunday afternoon. Birds are fucking chirping. Stupid cars are driving by with their windows down, music from their radios blurring past me.

The world is still spinning, but to me it’s ended.

For the first time in my life, I’m not proud to be Michael Cocker’s son.

“
D
id I hear Jaxson leave
?” I ask the room. Mr. Cocker locks eyes with me and exhales through his nose like Jaxson does when he’s containing his emotions. He nods once.

I look over at the father who raised me, and who I love dearly. He’s looking at me like he might lose me. I walk over to whisper, “Dad?” He rises up to take my outstretched hands. “Whatever happens with those tests, you are my real father.”

Tears jump to his eyes. He pulls me into a hug and says into my hair, “My sweet girl. I’m so sorry. I should have told you but from the second you were born I loved you. When I found out, I didn’t want to share you. It was selfish. I’m so sorry.”

He sobs into my shoulder and I just want to escape. “I have to go,” I tell him, pulling away and heading for the door.

Mom calls after me, her voice cracking, “Rachel!”

I ignore her.

As the sunlight hits me something else does, too.

I’m a hypocrite.

I’m pregnant. And I don’t know whose it is.

She was here years ago in these same shoes, only there were marriage vows involved.

But right now Jaxson’s hurting, too, and probably almost as much as I am because both of us know we may have committed a mortal sin. I need to be with him.

We promised we would be friends.

And we will be.

Even if that’s all we’ll ever be again.

I love him and I will watch him get married to someone else and carry it to my grave that I loved him once, more than I should have.

Searching the sidewalk in both directions, I feel peculiar and separate from my body, like this is not my skin. My hand travels to my stomach and I wince as stubborn nausea continues to claws at me.

“Rachel, I’m here.” Jaxson Cocker steps out from a shadowed divot in the building next door. “What now?”

We walk to meet each other.

In a hushed voice, I explain, “He said normally he’d send tests back to the lab.”

Jaxson exhales through his nose, eyes on the ground.

“But since my dad called in a favor and we’re a scandal, he’s running them himself.”

“He’ll have the results tonight, Jaxson. In a few hours. He’ll call you directly as you asked him to.”

“I need some time to get ready for this anyway.”

“Me too.” I step closer to make him look at me. “Can we go to the ranch? I want to be where it’s quiet.”

Rubbing his face like he’s trying to scrub reality from his skin, Jaxson rasps, “Come on.”

Hearing those two words cuts me to my core.

He almost takes my hand and then decides against it, swearing under his breath. He walks around the Jeep and opens the passenger door for me, but doesn’t touch me.

“Friends can still help someone into a car,” I gently tell him.

“Rachel, I can’t.” His teeth are gritted together as I climb in and he shuts the door hard.