The Reckoning, A Wilde Brothers Christmas (The Wilde Brothers Book 4) Read Online Free Page A

down. Don’t get up,” he said. “My dad left us when we were kids. Him and Mom split.”
    Julia not only didn’t lie back down, she pushed her way up until she was sitting beside him. “What? I didn’t know that. Your mom and dad are together now.” She sounded truly put out, truly upset.
    “Hey, it’s over. It’s something from the past. Every family has something they don’t talk about, some secret or something that’s scarred them.”
    “I don’t understand. So why do your brothers come to you and not go to your dad? What happened?”
    He realized she wasn’t going to let him get any sleep until he told her, so he propped up his pillows until he was leaning against the headboard and reached for her, settling her in his arms. Her cheeks brushed his bare chest, and he could feel her looking up at him. “I don’t know what went on between Mom and Dad, but one day, Dad packed a bag and drove away in our beat-up pickup. Mom was a mess, crying. I was fourteen at the time, just a kid who’d enjoyed being a teenager until I had to grow up overnight and become the man of the house. Jake was so young—we all were, but Jake had just started school. He was a baby.” He sighed, thinking of his brothers and how terrified they had been, watching their dad leave. Hell, he had been terrified, too, but he hadn’t been able to show it. He’d had to be the strong one.
    “Why did he leave? How long did your dad stay away?”
    He could feel her breath whisper across his chest, and it was so natural to smooth back her hair and kiss the top of her head. “I think it was close to a year. It was hard. There wasn’t enough food, and Dad didn’t come often. I learned to take care of problems for my brothers. Mom had to get a job, and she barely made enough. Dad was supposed to give her money, you know.”
    “You mean child support?” She started to sit up again, and he could feel her tension. She was getting agitated.
    “Just lie here and relax. It was a long time ago, Julia,” he said. “Yes, it was money for us, to feed us, but it was such a mess, the whole thing between Mom and Dad. Dad worked at the lumber mill, and he got by, but he wasn’t wealthy. One day, Mom sent me with some of his things to the place he was renting, a small piece-of-shit farmhouse not far from us. I planned on talking to him, asking him to come home, because I listened to Mom cry at night. I know she didn’t think I heard, but I did. I practiced what I was going to say as I went up those rotted back steps, and I started to knock as I looked through the small window in the door. There was Dad, screwing some woman on the kitchen table.”
    He felt his stomach tighten as if he were reliving that horrible, awful moment. He’d stumbled from that step and fallen to his knees, puking in the overgrown bushes. Then the back door had ripped open and his dad had stood there with a pained look on his face. Logan had just tossed him the shaving kit his mother had sent, and then he’d run, listening to his father’s pleas echo after him.
    “Logan, I’m so sorry. That had to be awful. Your mother took him back after he did that?”
    How could he explain? He’d never told anyone but Ben, and that had been only a few months ago, when that oil scandal had ended Ben’s career. No, his mother had started to date—only once, though, because when his dad found out that same week, he stopped paying child support. That was the first time Logan had hunted out of season, ditching school to kill a deer. At least they’d been able to eat.
    “I never told Mom what I saw. It would have killed her, and I couldn’t do that. She had so much on her plate looking after us.” He sighed, wondering what would have happened if his mother had known. It would have changed the dynamics, he was sure, of so many choices he’d made. He wouldn’t have joined the military, first of all, which was a choice he’d made after reaching an impasse with his dad. No, there were