“Lyla!” I snapped. “Just fucking tell me.”
“She met up with your dad, Braxton. There are pictures, lots and lots of pictures of them in compromising positions—although he’s kind of agile for such an old man. Still, gross.”
“Wait…” I muttered, trying to keep up with her. “My dad? As in, Darcy is fucking my father?”
“Fucking. Dominating. Making him her bitch. Whatever you want to call it, it looks like that’s what is happening in these sick pictures.” She made a gagging noise, but I was too stunned to tell her to chill.
Darcy and my father.
Which meant Darcy was pregnant with my little brother or sister.
That was so fucked up.
If Darcy had gotten her way, she could have pretended her lover’s child was mine since my dad and I looked similar. We could have the same blood type, share DNA.
And they were both trying to pass it off as mine. Trying to fuck up my life because they’d screwed around and now Darcy was knocked up.
“Brax? You still there?” Lyla’s voice finally penetrated my rage-filled fog.
“Yeah, Ly. I’m here.” I scrubbed my hands over my face, the lack of sleep and my aching leg finally weighing down on me.
“What do you want me to do with this intel? I can have it overnighted to you, but honestly, you don’t want to see your dad being that flexible.”
I looked at Nevaeh again, and everything inside me just turned off. I didn’t care that my dad was fucking my ex. I didn’t care what they did or how they figured this shit out. Let them deal with their own problems, because the only thing that mattered to me was holding on to Nevaeh. “Burn it. Use it as wallpaper. Do whatever the hell you want with it. I don’t care anymore, Ly. I’m done with this shit. It’s not worth it.”
“Worth what?” she asked curiously. “You sound weird. Is everything okay? Fuck, I just realized the time difference. Did I wake you up?”
“No, I was already awake.” I blew out an exhausted sigh. “Do what you want with the intel, Lyla. I’ve got more important things to deal with.”
“Are you sure I can do anything with this?”
I grimaced. “Yeah. Whatever you want. Just don’t involve me, because I’m done with it all.”
“Okay, then. I’ll let you get back to whatever it was you were doing at fuck-early in the morning on the West Coast. And if you need anything, Brax, anything at all, just call.”
“Thanks. Later, Lyla.”
“Bye, cuz.”
Dropping the phone on the counter, I leaned back and watched Nevaeh as she took the carrots and chicken from the pot. The chicken was left to cool while she put the carrots in a pan and added a little butter to sauté them with some chopped onion.
“Everything okay with Lyla?” she asked over her shoulder as she turned the burner to low heat before starting to shred the chicken. All while not looking at me once.
“I had a tail on Darcy to find out who her baby’s father is,” I told her, and I saw her shoulders stiffen. “Turns out, it
’s my dad.”
She turned so suddenly, the forks she was using to shred the chicken fell at her feet. “Shit.” I bent to pick them up at the same time she did, our fingers grazing each other. She swallowed hard and snatched them both up before straightening. “I… What? Your dad?”
I was slower to straighten and shrugged. “It makes sense, I guess. Darcy would call me Collins sometimes when we dated. I guess she calls him that too, and her mom just assumed she meant me.”
It was more fucked up than I’d first thought when I realized Darcy was pregnant and trying to play her kid off as mine, but I didn’t give a single fuck what her plan was now. Nevaeh was more important than dealing with Darcy and my father’s freaky relationship.
“That’s kind of disgusting,” she said, making a face. “I mean, yeah, okay, my parents have a large age gap and all, but it’s not big enough that people think he’s her father.”
“Lyla apparently agrees with you,” I told her tiredly.
Nevaeh tossed the forks into the sink and pulled two more from a drawer before glancing at me. “What do you think about all of it? I mean, I know it’s got to be weird for you. Finding out the girl you used to have sex with is now doing your father has to be a total mindfuck.”