Damaged Like Us (Like Us #1)(45)

“The headline.”

I reread. “It says he’s the best in the world.”

“And he vehemently disagrees. Ryke’s humility is another limb. I’ve tried my best to amputate it in the past, but it’s never leaving.”

Humility.

I blink a couple times, my eyes growing. I’m highly aware that I’ve been called humble multiple times. My gaze starts to narrow.

Jesus.

Christ.

How many traits do I share with him?

I just leave the magazine and sit on a leather couch. Which faces a few leather chairs in his office’s lounge section. My uncle trades his desk for the chair across from me.

I pop a couple knuckles, a bad habit, but I keep eye contact with Connor. He’s all about self-confidence. Eye contact. Never cowering to any adversary, and where he has employees running into cubicles or staring slack-jawed, I’ve never been intimidated by his godly presence.

“You know my mom was on the front page of Celebrity Crush this morning?” My shoulders are locked. “The headline: Lily Calloway Goes Back to Her Old Wild Ways! They had a photograph of her sticking her hand down my dad’s pants. And Uncle Ryke is upset over a cover where he’s scaling a mountain during a damn sunrise.”

A bad, acidic taste drips down my throat, but I don’t look away.

I meet everything head-on.

Connor barely blinks, none of this fazing him. “Ryke was ten times more upset about the tabloid yesterday than that National Geographic hanging in my office. That, I can assure you.”

I used to look up to Ryke as a little kid.

I used to dress like him: leather jackets, fuck-if-I-care style. I used to want to be him. I constantly asked him to take me camping. I begged him to let me ride his motorcycle.

Then I learned about the rumors. That my mom and my dad’s half-brother slept together. That I’m actually the son of Ryke Meadows.

I don’t believe those rumors. My mom has been adamant that she’s always stayed faithful to my dad. And she looks proud whenever she says, “I’ve never cheated on Lo.” A sex addict who never cheated—it’s a big deal.

My mom is strong as hell.

But there was one time where I questioned the rumors. I was twelve. I asked my dad flat-out. I asked him who’s my biological father—and he said, me. Unequivocally, wholeheartedly. Me.

I believe my dad. I’ve seen the DNA tests, and they confirm that I’m Loren Hale’s son. We’ve even publicized the DNA tests.

People don’t like to believe facts. They want to believe the most salacious story. The one that makes you keep flipping the pages.

That story isn’t always the truth.

I like the narrative where my mom and dad helped each other battle their addictions. Two addicts who used to enable one another were able to pull through together and become sober and healthy. I like my reality. My real-life parents. Who possess an unconscionable amount of strength that most people will never know and never see.

They’re my heroes.

And I’m damn proud to be their son.

Recently those paternity rumors have been running rampant again. I want the world to know that I’m proud to be the son of Loren Hale. I want to honor my dad, and I have no idea how to do that other than to look more like him. So I dye my hair.

I need you all to know that I love him.

So damn much.

“We’ve got tacos!” My dad barges into the office, his light brown hair artfully styled. His daggered amber eyes rarely lose that edge, just like his voice and his jaw, but there’s something so human and warm about my dad.

It’s his love of the people around him.

His love for his wife and children.

His love for me. It’s more powerful than anything I’ve ever known.

Ryke enters the office behind my dad, the walls frosted for privacy. He shuts the door—I jolt as a foiled taco lands on my lap.

My dad towers nearby, his face scrunched at me. “You look a little pissy. What’d I miss?”

I gesture from me to Connor. “We were talking about how Uncle Ryke was pretty upset over the Celebrity Crush issue this morning.” I start peeling the taco foil, and I look up as my dad and Ryke turn to Connor. The source of the info.

Ryke glowers.

My dad’s jaw sharpens. Not happy that Connor fed my frustration over Ryke and my mom’s friendship.

Connor stares at me. Only me. “Context is really a beautiful thing, Moffy. Let’s try not to lose that.” To my dad, he says, “I was making a point that was lost in translation. And to be clear, it was poorly translated by your son.”

It’s true, and as my smile forms, my dad sinks on the couch beside me. Ryke takes the chair next to Connor. And they pass around food.

I look between the three of them. “Is anyone going to mention how that photograph was taken in the neighborhood?”

My dad and my mom were in the backyard. Their backyard. In the same gated neighborhood with twenty-four hour security. How Alpha let a photographer capture a shot of my parents from who-knows-where—I have no idea.

What if paparazzi are in the trees? What if they hired one of the neighbors to spy?

It’s not okay.

“We’re looking into it,” my dad says, sifting through his paper bag of food. Off my stern expression, he adds, “Don’t worry about it, Moffy.”