Page 124 of The Hardest Fall

I gave her a genuine smile and she left us alone.

“I can’t help you with Dylan. I have no idea what you did to him, but I’m not going to get—”

“This is not about Dylan. I told you that.” I smoothed the envelope again and his eyes dropped to watch me do it.

“Then I have no idea what you want to talk to me about, and I can’t really say I feel comfortable sit—”

Fuck it. I decided to just go for it.

“You won’t believe me, so I thought bringing this would help.” I pushed the envelope toward him and clasped my hands on the table when he reached for it.

“What is it?”

“Open it.”

I watched him read the single sheet of paper with bated breath. With every passing second, his frown got deeper and deeper. After he was done, he pushed away his coffee mug, put his elbows on the table, and leaned toward me, reading it again and again.

“Is this some sick joke?”

Before I could answer, he started reading it again, only this time he was reading it out loud.

“The alleged father, Mark Wilson, is not excluded as the biological father of the child, Zoe Clarke. Based on the genetic testing results obtained…the probability of paternity is 99.9999%.”

He glanced up at me.

“He wanted to make sure I was his, so we had it done three years ago.”

His brows moved up toward his hairline. “You…had it done three years ago?”

I swallowed. “Yes.”

He licked his bottom lip and leaned back, the test result still clutched in his hand. He read it again and again, and I waited patiently. I took a sip of my water and placed it back on the table, getting ready to tell him the rest. What surprised me the most was that I no longer felt like the world was about to end. I also didn’t feel light and happy, or anything close to it. Sure, I needed to pee very badly, but that always happened when I got really nervous about something. I was just relieved that it was happening and he finally knew at least fifty percent of it. The rest would be harder to hear and accept, but I wasn’t scared to tell him.

When he finally looked at me, I was ready to explain the rest.

“This…” He shook the paper in his hand. “Three years?”

I nodded.

He threw the paper on the table and rose to his feet.

“Chris, I—” I started, surprised that he was leaving. I scrambled to my feet, but he lifted his hand to stop me.

“Give me a minute.” He slowly backed away from the table, from me. “Don’t leave. I’ll be back.”

I nodded. “I won’t. I have more to say.”

Without another word, he walked out of the diner.

Trying to calm down, I patiently folded and stuffed the document back into the envelope then put it back in my bag.

Moira caught my eye and winked. God knows what she thought was going on.

I checked my phone. I sat back and listened to the family sitting behind me for a few minutes. They were talking about which movie they were going to watch that weekend, the little girl trying to convince her brother to go with her choice and the dad and mom weighing in. They sounded happy.

The little bell over the diner door chimed and drew my attention. A second later, Chris slid in across from me again. His face looked slightly flushed, his eyes wide and stunned, though it might have been because of the wind. I didn’t ask him where he’d gone, but…

“You didn’t call Mark, did you?”

His head tilted as he tried to read me. “No.”

“Okay. Thank you.” I moved back in my seat a little and reached for my water.

“You said you have more to say. Tell me,” he ordered.

I placed the glass back on the table and licked my lips. “I’m not sure where I should start.”

“You’re my half-sister—start from there.”

“Actually…” I winced. “Actually, I’m not.”

Over the next few minutes, I told him everything—everything that had been told to me, everything that had happened after I came to Los Angeles. The second I started, I couldn’t hold any of it back. He listened without asking a single question.

Chris was rubbing his temple with the fingers of his left hand while the other held the edge of the table in a white-knuckle grip. Once I was done, I kept quiet and watched him try to process everything. He reached for the mug and downed half of the lukewarm coffee in one go.

A few minutes of complete silence had passed when he finally spoke. “Why are you telling me this now? Why would I even believe you?”

“Why would you believe me?” I shrugged and stopped playing with the salt shaker I had latched onto at some point. “This isn’t how I imagined it would happen, trust me, and I wasn’t the one who wanted to wait. I came here three years ago and I was ready to tell you then. Your father—”