Wrongfully Claimed

Chapter Six

After Ryder finished on the phone call, he disappeared off somewhere and went out for a while, but returned shortly afterwards bagged up with medical supplies, extra blankets, and a portable heater.

"How are you feelin'?" was the first thing he asked her, before placing the things he'd brought in for her down on the table in front of her. " I took the liberty of goin' to the store to buy you a few things today and some Adderall.

He looked across the room from where he stood and noticed she'd hardly touched any of the food he'd prepared for her.

"What's up?" he said, his face lined with worry as if he expected she would have cleaned the plate by now while he'd been gone and was concerned for her well-being. " Not hungry?"

Aurora shook her head without answering him or even bothering to return his gaze and acknowledge that he was standing there.

She intended to wait until the time was right after learning that he had a child. But the second she laid eyes on him, she knew there had been no restraining herself and there was no turning back.

"Who is Sebastian and Marilyn?"

Pretending as if he hadn't heard her which he obviously did, as she'd blurted it out loud enough, he just stood there, with his back facing her while he began emptying the contents of the store-bought items on the table.

Until he got to the bottle of Adderall and slammed it down on the table so hard that, the lid ended up popping open, causing some of the pills to come flying out of the container and fall on the floor. She gasped.

" You know it's rude to eavesdrop in on other people talkin' on the phone," he scolded her, his ominous tone, causing her blood to run cold as if ice water were being injected into her veins.

" Didn't your mama teach you no manners!" he yelled at her. "Besides it ain't got nothin' to do with you. So forget what you heard and leave it at that, okay?"

"Why?" she asked, determined to find out what he had been hiding from her and why he was keeping them a secret from her." Are they your family or not?"

Aurora wondered how this supposed family of his hadn't noticed all these women he'd been bringing to the house for all these years.

Surely at some point, they must have suspected something and questioned him about where he was going when he brought all those trays of food to the girls he captured and disappeared for long periods at a time.

Or had they just been oblivious like the rest of everyone in his life? Whoever they were, Aurora knew she had to find out.

" Look it ain't what you think," he relented, his voice trailing off. "
Sebastian is my son -- yes. But Marilyn is a complicated situation."

He raised his head and looked at her for a long time before hunching his shoulders as if he were carrying the world on top of them. After an extended, never-ending silence, he, at last, came clean with her and started to open up to her.

"When I met Marilyn, I was in a very bad place in my life," he explained, pacing the floor in front of her.

"What happened?" she asked after he stopped and just stood there with his eyes fixed on the ceiling as if he were thinking of what to tell her next.

" Well, "he continued, his voice wandering off again, which seemed to happen often when he spoke of this woman. " While I was in the process of gettin' my life together, I was workin' at this crummy bar at the time. I was a barman and she worked there waitressin' the tables."

He hesitated for a minute, so Aurora asked him to tell her.

"One night she came up to me in tears and told me she'd just broken up with her boyfriend -- who happened to be a buddy of mine," he said." Said she caught him cheatin' on her with some girl at work. Anyway, like the nice guy that I am, I ended up consolin' her and one thing kinda led to another and we started sleepin' together for a few months."