Page 130 of Fierce-Jax

The next morning he denied it but finally caved and said it’d happened.

But did it?

One of those things she’d been doubting for years.

Until now.

Martha sighed. “Alec lost his temper first. He threw a baseball at Luke and almost hit him in the head. They’d been fighting about Alec’s friends.”

“Because Luke thought Alec was gay and often said that to him,” she said, lifting her chin.

She wasn’t pulling any punches here.

She wanted to see Martha’s reaction to what she’d been told.

To see how much truth there was to those statements.

“We never knew with Alec,” Martha said. “Luke was wrong to do what he had, but he didn’t understand Alec well. It’s why Alison didn’t stay with us much and stayed with her mother more. I should have protected Alec, but I didn’t. Luke saved me when I was alone and pregnant and had nowhere to go. I guess that was why I never fought back and accepted the treatment I received.”

She frowned. “Is Luke not Alec’s father?”

“No,” Martha said. “But Alec didn’t know that. We said we’d never tell him. Alison was from a previous relationship of Luke’s.”

Which might explain why Alec hadn’t brought up Alison to her.

It was no wonder Alec was the way he was.

He’d been living a lie his whole life too.

“I’m trying to understand. What you’re telling me is a lot of why Alec didn’t want you in his life and you think I’m going to let you near Gianna?”

Her mother put her hand on the table. “Can I ask a few questions?” her mother asked.

The server interrupted them to bring over a few glasses of water and take their orders.

Dillion wasn’t positive about how much of an appetite she had, but she got a salad so she could pick at something.

“Please,” Martha said. “I’ll answer whatever you ask. I just want to get to know Alec’s daughter. I’m grieving the loss of my son all over again. When I couldn’t find him on any social media I hired someone to look for him and that is when I realized he was a doctor and had died years ago. When they said he had a child with you, it was even more stunning. Your daughter is all I’ve got left of my son.”

“I want to say I’m sorry for your loss again,” her mother said. “But if you wanted your son back in your life, you would have tried long before now. Why now?”

“I wanted to for years but knew Luke would fight me on it. They’d had some harsh words for each other when Alec graduated from college. I didn’t even know he was going to med school. He never told us anything about his life.”

She found that hard to believe that his parents wouldn’t know things like that.

“But he came home each summer, right?” her mother asked.

“Not the past few years of his undergrad,” Martha said. “After he graduated he just picked up the rest of his stuff, Luke and he fought again. Luke was drunk and regretted what he’d said.”

She fought the snort from escaping. Seemed to be the theme here and only validated a lot of what Alec had told her.

Imagine being punched in the face by the man that you thought was your father.

“What was said?” she asked

“I don’t remember it all,” Martha said. “It was so long ago. Alec never felt he would be good enough for Luke. He was always smart, but not into sports or drinking or anything that Luke was.”

“Different personalities happen all the time with parents and kids,” she said.