Page 46 of Playboy Husband

CALLUM

Ihadn’t expected to enjoy Michigan this much. A big part of me wished we could stay longer. Strangely, I fit in there.

After I’d jumped through Maisie’s brothers’ hoops, they’d let me in, and at this point, it felt like I’d known them for years. Mason, Michael, and I got on like a house on fire and Matthew kept watching us in that steady way of his. Unless I was very much mistaken, he approved of me too.

Of course, Brody was the star attraction. Everyone doted on him, myself included, and he was lapping it up. After being separated for so long, the twins couldn’t get enough of him and Michelle and Matthew seemed to have decided to pack as much bonding into these few days as they could.

It was clear that they’d missed him, but as Michelle dragged her hand through his hair at breakfast, it also became clear that she played an active role in his care and well-being while she was with him.

“You need a haircut, baby,” she said, smiling. “Get a little cleaned up before the wedding. I’ve never been to Scotland before, let alone an estate there, but the pictures they’re going to take will be on your wall for a long time. You want to look your best.”

No one questioned her. Not even Brody. Matthew simply grinned and got up once he was done eating. “Louis will be happy to see you.” He glanced at me. “That’s our family barber. I’ve been going to him since I was twenty-five and the boys grew up with him too.”

“I miss him.” Brody sighed but got up with a huge grin on his face. “Do you think I’m too old for the lollipops now or will I still get one?”

Mason chuckled. “Even I still get one, buddy. I’m sure you will, too.”

Five minutes later, we were all piling into Michael’s SUV. The only member of the family who was missing was Michelle, who had an appointment to keep at her own hairstylist. Matthew kissed her goodbye and the others groaned, but I smiled.

They were an awesome couple. Definitely people to look up to when it came to marriage.

Before I could get carried away, however, we were on the move.

The barber shop we pulled up to only a few minutes later looked like it hadn’t changed since the seventies, a brick building with vintage chairs facing a wall of mirrors on the inside.

“Brody!” a much older man, presumably Louis, called as soon as we walked in. “How are you, little man? It’s been a long time.”

Brody launched himself at him, giving him a warm hug before climbing into the chair like a pro. “We live in San Francisco now. That’s why I haven’t been here.”

He said it completely matter of fact and Louis chuckled as he moved in behind him. “How has it been, living there? Your grandpa won’t stop bragging about how good you’re getting at hockey. So, what are we doing with you today, sir?”

“Shaving it all off,” Mason joked, pumping his eyebrows.

Louis winked at him. “Is that it? I was hoping to leave behind a lightning bolt or perhaps a flame.”

“Over my dead body,” Matthew chimed in. “We just need to tidy him up a little bit.”

“You too, superstar.” Michael turned to me and jerked his head at the chair beside Brody. “Sit down and let the man make you look decent. You can’t be getting married with a mop like that.”

I ran a hand through my hair, realizing that it was longer than I usually kept it. I’d always worn it messy and maybe even a little boyish. Usually, I didn’t get it cleaned up until Sterling started threatening me with a comb.

Rolling my eyes, I strode over and dropped into the chair beside Brody’s. “I’ll do it, but only if you stop calling me that.”

“You played D1. That makes you a superstar,” Mason joked before he turned to Louis. “We need a clean shave over there, too.”

“This is Maisie’s fiancé?” Louis asked as he eyed me, waving over one of the younger barbers. “Do we like him? I might really let Jim shave it off if we don’t.”

Matthew let out a soft bark of laughter. “Good lord, she’ll kill me if you shave it all off. Just give him a trim. Maybe a proper shave.”

I shrugged. “I can’t argue with that.”

The cape swept around me and scissors snipped at my hair not long after. The younger guy, Jim, worked fast, shaping and trimming. “This cowlick is horrible. That’s the best I can do, I’m afraid.”

I chuckled. “I’ve been fighting it my whole life. Just let it be.”

The guy nodded. When he finished shaving me with a straight razor, even I had to admit that my jawline felt sharper. I liked it.

As I got up, Louis finally started on Brody. He talked to him like a long-lost friend he’d been looking forward to catching up with, the two chatting back and forth with either Mason or Michael chiming in every so often.

For the most part, I was happy just to be included, really not feeling like an outsider anymore. Everything was perfectly normal until Brody tipped his head as the clippers buzzed around his ear. Right behind it, small and barely noticeable, was a red birthmark.

Insignificant, really, except that it wasn’t. Not to me.

Because I had the same one.

So did Sterling.

And my father.

My stomach rolled. My heart felt like it was about to stop. Brody and I had the exact same birthmark. In the exact same place.

That couldn’t be a coincidence. That wasn’t just a random smudge. It was ours. I suddenly felt like I’d missed a step on a hundred-story staircase for how instantly my stomach completely bottomed out.

“Darn cowlick,” Louis muttered. “I wonder if you’re ever going to grow out of it.”

I suddenly knew he wasn’t. Because just like the birthmark, the cowlick was mine, too. Also in the exact same place.

Everything Sterling had said about how much he resembled me came tumbling back into my head with the force of a freight train. I looked at Brody then, properly, and it felt like my life was flashing in front of my eyes.

For possibly the first time, I really saw the way Brody’s nose scrunched as he grinned at Louis. I thought about his hockey skills, his height, his appetite.

They were all things we had in common. Along with the cowlick that couldn’t be tamed and the birthmark?

It was mine. All of it. Not only mine, but ours. They were Westwood traits through and through.

Brody glanced up at me in the reflection of the mirror, bright eyed, trusting, and completely oblivious, and I tried to smile like nothing had changed. But in that moment, everything did.

I’d snapped a picture that night, wondering why he looked so much like Sterling, but I looked like Sterling too.

If it hadn’t been for the age difference, we could’ve passed as twins.

I’d thought about asking him if he was sure he hadn’t run into her about eight years ago, but that suddenly seemed ridiculous.

Eight years ago, Maisie and I had been at college, and to the best of my knowledge, Sterling had never set foot on campus. I had, though. Not only had I set foot on campus, but I’d slept with her.

Brody was seven and a bit. I did the math, factoring in the months she would’ve been pregnant, and that put us right around the time of that night. The night she and I had gone home together after a party and she’d ended up in my bed.

Holy fuck. Brody’s mine, isn’t he?

“Callum?” Mason’s voice cut through the static in my head. He leaned against the wall, eyeing me like I’d grown a second head. “Are you alright, man? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

I blinked and forced a nod. “Yeah. I’m fine. I was just thinking about the flight.”

He frowned for another moment, then grinned. “A private jet, huh? That’s pretty darn fancy. I’ve never been on one.”

“You’ll love it,” I said, but as he ran a hand over Brody’s freshly trimmed head, my jaw clenched so hard it ached.

We were leaving for Scotland tonight, and now that the last errands had been run, I could feel the excitement building among the Morgans. For me, however, the rest of the day blurred.

I packed bags into cars and answered questions about everything from the plane to the bedrooms at the estate. I double-checked travel arrangements for after we’d landed and talked to Matthew about fishing in the lochs.

Mason and Michael wanted to know about winter sports and whiskey, but while I cracked jokes, responded when spoken to, and did my best to be present, worry sat like a hot coal at the center of my chest.

On our way to the airport, I looked around the car and wondered if they knew. How would they react when they found out?

It was possible Mason and Michael had clocked it before I had. Michelle might’ve pieced it together the second she’d seen him and me sharpening his skates in that garage the very first time I’d met her, and maybe that was why Matthew didn’t say much to me.

And Maisie, shit. Did she even know that I was the jackass who’d knocked her up and left her to raise our baby alone?

There might’ve been someone else back then. Someone she hadn’t mentioned and that I didn’t even want to think about. Suddenly, the thought that she might not know he was mine burned like hellfire.

My head was pounding when we climbed out at the airport, everyone around me laughing and herding luggage and each other. They were acting like this was the start of some grand adventure, and maybe it was, but all I could think about was the conversation that needed to happen.

Not now. Not with her family around me and Brody wide-eyed between her mother and me. But soon.

The second we landed in Scotland, I was going to find Maisie. Get her alone. And then, I was going to ask the question that had been eating me alive since I’d seen that mark behind Brody’s ear.

Was Brody mine, and if so, why the fuck hadn’t she told me?