Chapter 25: : Chapter 25

This was awkward as hell.

Nate shifted in his seat, wishing he drank. He could use a bottle of vodka or three.

Nate, Kris, Roger, and Gemma sat crammed into a tiny booth at a Chinese restaurant near Alchemy. They’d driven here after the cafe closed because clearly, they had a lot to discuss. Well, Kris, Roger, and Gemma did. Nate was here for moral support, even though he’d rather be in the seventh circle of hell. That would probably be less uncomfortable. Not only did Roger keep glaring at him like he was the devil himself, but Nate felt like the worst kind of intruder in an intimate family matter.

But Kris had asked him to stay, so here he was. He’d do anything for her, including subject himself to Silent Torture By Girlfriend’s Father, aka the modern equivalent of getting drawn and quartered.

Nate chugged his tiny ceramic cup of oolong tea while Gemma explained why she was not, in fact, dead.

“I did get into a terrible motor accident,” she admitted, tracing the rim of her teacup with her finger. Her hand trembled, betraying her emotions despite her even tone. “I was pretty banged up and had to stay in the hospital for weeks. I was visiting my cousin in Quezon, and I told her—” Gemma took a deep breath. “I told her to lie and say I’d died. I used my savings and bribed the hospital staff to lie as well and to fake the paperwork—bribery is unfortunately common in the Philippines—in case anyone came asking.”

“Why?” White lines of tension bracketed Roger’s mouth. “Do you know how devastated your family was? Your parents, Mariana, and I—” He clenched his jaw and repeated, “Why?”

“To escape Ernesto. My husband at the time,” Gemma explained. Her eyes shone with pain and regret. “He wasn’t…a good husband, to say the least. He was twenty years older than me and had a temper, but I married him because he earned a decent living and my family thought he’d be able to take care of me. None of us knew what he was really like until after we married. Then, it was like a light switch flipped. He became abusive and lost it over the smallest things. My only relief was that he traveled a lot for work, so I wouldn’t see him for days at a time. It was during one of those trips that I fled to my cousin’s without telling him. I’d planned on running away, but I knew Ernesto was not the type to give up, especially if his pride was at stake, and he’d greased the palms of so many local officials and police I was afraid he’d succeed at finding me. The only way to get him off my trail was to fake my death.”

Gemma tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. Her hands shook harder. “It seems extreme, but I was also panicking because—” She swallowed hard. “Because Ernesto found out the truth about a secret I’d been hiding right before he left for his trip. He beat me so hard I cracked a rib and fractured my cheekbone.”

Jesus.

Roger flinched, his face white, and Nate instinctively reached for Kris’s hand. She squeezed hard, tension radiating from her in waves. She hadn’t moved an inch since Gemma started talking.

He didn’t blame her. It was a ton to take in in less than an hour.

“The truth about what?” Kris asked, voice strained.

Gemma answered the question but didn’t take her eyes off Roger, who looked like he was about to upchuck on his side of the table. “About us.”

Nate’s eyes traveled from Gemma to Roger. A thick rope of tension twisted between them—the type that only existed between lovers. Or ex-lovers.

Holy shit.

“You should’ve told me,” Roger whispered, sounding agonized. “I would’ve helped. I would’ve—”

“No.” Gemma shook her head. “You were already married to Mariana. She was getting ready to move to the States. I couldn’t ask her to do more for us, not when she’d already done so much.”

“Dammit Gemma, she was your sister! She loved you. I lov—” Roger drew in a shaky breath. “No wonder you never let us visit you.”

“Wait.” Kris’s grip on Nate’s hand tightened further. “You two had an affair behind my mom’s back?”

Nate poured himself another cup of oolong with his free hand. Forget vodka. He would sell his left ball sack for a shitty IPA right now. Anything to take the sting out of this surreal conversation.

“Not exactly. Sort of.” Roger rubbed a hand over his face. “I mean, my parents—your grandparents—were friends with your mom and Gemma’s parents before they immigrated to the States. Our two families had always planned on me marrying Mariana. It wasn’t an arranged marriage, per se, because nothing had been formalized, but I still felt obligated to go to Cebu and meet Mariana when the time came. I liked her, could maybe see myself starting a family with her. But when I met Gemma…” His face softened. “I fell in love.”

“By that time, I was already engaged to Ernesto, even though I’d only met him twice,” Gemma added, addressing Kris. “Your father and I, we didn’t do more than talk and spend time with each other. I fell in love with him too, but with my engagement and our families already making plans for his and Mariana’s wedding…” She sighed. “Plus, my mom was sick. Really sick. And that added to the urgency. She wanted to see both her daughters married before she passed, so we stuck to our original plans. But your father and I secretly met a few days before he officially proposed, knowing it’d be our last time alone together, and we—” Gemma sighed. “We shouldn’t have done it. It was wrong. I was promised to another, and he was all but promised to my sister. But we did.”

“I don’t regret it,” Roger said.

Gemma paled. “Roger—”

“No.” Kris’s father’s eyes flashed. “We both know Mariana didn’t love me. She married me because your family wanted her to and because she wanted to move to the States. If she’d felt anything, she wouldn’t have been so cold when she learned about the pregnancy.”

By now, Kris was gripping Nate’s hand so tight she cut off his circulation. He barely noticed, he was so caught up in Gemma and Roger’s story.

“What pregnancy?” Kris choked out.

Gemma shook her head frantically. “Don’t.” Panic imbued her voice, along with a hint of defeat.

Roger’s jaw hardened. “Mariana and Gemma got pregnant around the same time, soon after they married. Siblings aren’t supposed to marry in the same year because it’s considered bad luck in the Philippines, but with your grandmother’s health fading fast, there wasn’t much we could do. I’d held off on returning to the States because of Mariana’s pregnancy and how sick your grandmother was. Mariana’s baby was stillborn—and not mine. It belonged to the local fisherman’s son, the man she’d been in love with. She was honest about that. For all her faults, she didn’t want me to grieve what had never been mine—even though I still did. For her. I didn’t love her, but I cared about her, and she was hurt. Gemma, meanwhile, gave birth to a baby girl.”

Ice trickled down Nate’s spine, along with a healthy dose of foreboding.

Next to him, Kris sat still as a statue.

“The problem,” Gemma said quietly, apparently resigned to the fact that the truth was going to come out no matter what. “Was Ernesto and I never consummated our marriage. He had chronic diabetes, and it affected his…performance. I hid my pregnancy the first few months, but when it reached the point where I could no longer hide it, I convinced him I had to return home to help take care of my mom, who by then was so sick she couldn’t walk. Your father had hired a full-time nurse for her, but Ernesto didn’t know that. He agreed, and he had no desire to care for my family, so he didn’t accompany me. I didn’t tell anyone about Ernesto’s impotency or my pregnancy except Roger, because he deserved to know—it was his child—and Mariana, when we…” She trailed off.

“When we convinced her to take the baby girl as her own,” Roger finished with a grim expression. He looked at Kris, the lines of his face both harsh and sad beneath the fluorescent lights. “The baby girl was you. Gemma is your real mom.”