Untrue by Kris Ripper

Author:Kris Ripper [Ripper, Kris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-07-17T04:00:00+00:00

This wasn’t ever going to be easy. May as well get it over with as quickly as possible, like ripping off the proverbial Band-Aid. Plus, if he said it right away, they’d have the rest of the counseling session to process it.

An edge of snide humor threatened to take over, but this time he pushed it back. No. That was cowardice. Whatever else had happened, these were the men he loved most in the world. He could give them his honesty, even if it felt like falling.

He breathed shallowly through his mouth, avoiding everyone’s eyes, and heard the words in his head before he spoke them. “There’s something I need to say. Before I lose my nerve. It wasn’t a secret. Or if it was, it was one I kept mostly from myself. I…have been thinking about having children. About…adding children, in some form, to our family. Becoming foster parents.”

“You want children,” Truman said, sounding numb.

“Not young children. Older children. Adolescents, possibly. I mean, I don’t want that more than I want—” The words were impossible. “It may be a passing impulse. I haven’t ruled that out.”

“How long has it been passing?”

The problem with telling the truth was that it so often made one seem ridiculous. “Not that long. Since…well, I suppose since Will moved back to the Bay Area. But I didn’t realize I was thinking in those terms until sometime later.”

“Holy shit.” Will shook his head and glanced at Ian. “Three and a half years. That’s the ‘not that long’ he’s talking about.”

Hugh clenched his jaw.

“Tell me what you know about the man who contributed half your chromosomes,” Ian said.

“As far as interventions go, this one leaves something to be desired.” Safer to vent at Ian than Truman, or god forbid, Will.

Ian only shrugged. “Lucy knows nothing. She regrets not having asked your mom.”

“Does she?” He’d never known that. Then again it wasn’t something that Lucy would have ever told him. “Mom was eighteen when she conceived. In her first year at Berkeley.”

“I didn’t know Cordelia was a Cal grad.” Will paused. “Unless…she didn’t graduate, huh?”

“She had me instead.” The old pain, the old guilt, rose in his chest. “Given that she didn’t have a job at the time she conceived, I have always assumed that the man involved must have been related to the school somehow.”

“Not a student?” Ian asked.

“I don’t think so. There was so much shame. I have always thought he must have been married, or in a position of some authority over her. Or perhaps he was a student and he was unfaithful. Something that made her feel…foolish. But I could be projecting. I think…my mother was very proud. And whoever he was, he violated her sense of pride.”

Will leaned forward. The topic would be irresistible to him, of course, after so many years of curiosity. “Yeah, but what did she say when you asked? Like, I assume you asked who your—who the guy was.”

“Only when I was very young. And she told me that he didn’t deserve us.

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