I’m pacing the room, holding my forehead, pausing every few feet to look at Brennan and shake my head, only to continue pacing again.
I liked it better when I thought he was fucking her.
“How?” I ask. “How is that even possible?” I pause again and face him. “And why didn’t you guys tell me before now?” I feel slightly excluded, like Ridge and Brennan were trying to keep some big family secret from me. That isn’t right, because I’m their family. They lived with me after they left home. My parents took them in and gave them a roof over their heads and food on the table.
“Ridge doesn’t know,” Brennan says. “And I don’t want him to know until we find out for sure. We’ll have a paternity test done soon, but our schedules just haven’t worked out yet and it’s kind of expensive.”
Great. I can’t keep secrets from Ridge. We’ve been best friends since we were ten. I’ve never kept a secret from him, especially one this big.
“Warren, swear to me you won’t tell him. The last thing he needs right now is more stress, and if he finds out I’ve been in touch with our father, he’ll take it personally.”
My hands fly up in the air. “Your father, Brennan? Why in the hell would you ever want to contact that bastard again?”
He shakes his head. “I didn’t. After Bridgette found out that her biological mother had an affair with our father, she found me and asked me to help her find him.” He folds his arms over his chest and looks down at the floor. “I warned her, but she had to see it for herself. I won’t be seeing my father again, but if Ridge knows I even
took her to see him, he would think I was going behind his back to reach out to our parents, and I wasn’t.”
“What did your father say when you showed up after all these years?”
Ridge and Brennan moved in with me and my parents when they were only seventeen and fourteen, so it’s been about seven years since either of them has had contact with their father.
Brennan shakes his head. “He hasn’t changed. He barely said two sentences to us before he sent us on our way. I think it disappointed her so much, she’d be fine not having a paternity test completed if it weren’t for Ridge and me possibly being her brothers. I think she just wants someone she can call family, which is why I’m helping her out with all this. I feel bad for her.”
I can’t believe this. I never would have guessed it. “She doesn’t even look like either of you.” Brennan and Ridge look almost identical, and they both look just like their father. If their father is the common link between them and Bridgette, you would think she’d have some form of similarity to them. Other than her brown hair, there’s nothing about her that looks like Ridge or Brennan. Her green eyes aren’t even close to their dark brown eyes, so if she is their sister, she must have taken a hundred percent after her mother. I could just be justifying the fact that I don’t want them to look alike. That would be a little strange for me.
Brennan shrugs. “We still don’t know for sure, Warren. If it turns out she’s not his daughter, then Ridge will never even have to know about this.”
I nod, knowing full well that Brennan is right. Ridge has enough on his plate having to deal with Maggie’s issues, and until they know for sure, this isn’t something he should have to stress over.
“What happens to Bridgette?” I ask him. “If it turns out she’s not your sister.”
Brennan shrugs. “Then I guess she’s just our new roommate.”
I sit down on the bed and try to soak everything in. This changes everything. If she’s Ridge and Brennan’s sister, she won’t just be my roommate. She and her attitude and her tiny little Hooters shorts will be part of our lives forever.
I don’t really know how I feel about that.
“Are you sure she’s not just trying to swindle you?”
Brennan rolls his eyes. “That girl is just trying to survive, Warren. She’s had a really fucked-up life and even if it turns out we’re not related, she just needs someone to give her a chance. So please. You don’t even have to be nice to her. Just be understanding enough to allow her to live here.”
I nod and flop back onto the bed. “Sister?”
“So,” I say to Brennan, “I guess that means you’re definitely not interested in her, which means I can be.”
Brennan throws his pillow at my face. “You’re disgusting.”
