Page 137 of Unwritten Rules

NATE

“I told you, Nathan. We can’t. Please don’t make it harder for me.”

“Harder for you? Do you think this is easy for me?”

The stranger pounds his giant fist on his chest. “I needed to see you, Ana. Please, it’s not too late. Leave him, leave the child, and come with me.”

I fly from my hiding place, rushing at the man who would take my mother from me and pounding my fists on his broad thighs repeatedly.

“You can’t have my mummy! I won’t let you take her from me!”

“Woah, friend. Calm down.” The stranger, Nathan, easily grabs my hands in his much larger ones and kneels down to look me in the eyes.

Whatever he sees makes him stop moving. I think he might have stopped breathing until he looks back at my mum, who is standing there with tears streaming down her pretty face.

“Is he…”

He trails off, not finishing his sentence, as Mum nods slowly.

“Am I what?” I put on my most authoritative voice.

I’ve been working on it for Father, and I’m proud when it comes out just as I intended.

“What have I told you about being rude, Nathaniel?”

The stranger’s pale blue eyes fill with tears. “I didn’t know. I never knew.” A single tear falls down his cheek. “I’d never have left.”

* * *

“Nathaniel?”

Wetherby’s hoarse voice rouses me from my slumber. I sit up to find that I must have nodded off in the bedside chair, and now my neck is stiff, having slept at an angle.

I sit forward, rubbing the sore muscles as I blink the memory dream from my eyes.

“Is it true? Are you my father, Wetherby?”

He nods slowly, those same pale blue eyes from my dream – older now, but no less vivid – filling to overflowing with tears.

“Why did you never say anything? Why did you stay here, torturing yourself? None of this makes sense.”

He silently contemplates me for a solid minute, then another.

“Because I love you, son. Once I knew about you, I couldn’t leave you. Even if it meant bowing and scraping to the man who got to claim you as his own. And once your mother—” His voice breaks, unable to continue.

I’d long known this man had loved my mother dearly, but I’m just now seeing how much. And in the most intimate of ways.

“I needed to protect you, Nathaniel. Once I knew of your existence, it was too late. You were already his named heir. He couldn’t openly admit his wife had come to their marriage bed with another man’s child in her stomach. But pride cometh before the fall. He didn’t bank on you being your own man from such a young age. No bowing and scraping for you, no way. Watching you stand up to him and put him in his place as I should have done throughout my miserable life, well – it was a sight for sore eyes.”

He begins to cough – sharp, body-wracking coughs – and Tatiana enters the room as he falls back on the bed.

“Lord Hawthorne, you should have alerted me when he awoke.”

I step back to allow her through. She pulls a syringe from her pocket, injecting it through the line that feeds into the bend of his arm.

“What is that?”

“Morphine, sir. The cancer is widespread, so he must be in excruciating pain. I can’t quite believe he’s awake, let alone lucid.”