In His World

Chapter 13

Elena POV

Adrian came out of his father's room and he looked down, his face completely white and his eyes not focusing on anything, and when Charlotte asked him what happened he didn't answer, just walked past her toward the exit.

"Adrian, wait," I called and ran after him. "What did your father say?"

"We need to leave." His voice was flat and empty.

"But your father just died, shouldn't we stay with Charlotte and James—"

"We need to leave now, Elena, please just come with me." He was already halfway down the hallway and I had to jog to keep up with him.

We got to the car and he unlocked it and got in without opening my door for me like he usually did and I climbed in beside him. "Adrian, what's going on?"

He started the car and pulled out of the parking lot too fast and didn't answer.

"Adrian, you're scaring me, what did your father tell you?"

Nothing.

We drove in silence and every time I tried to speak he just shook his head and kept driving, his hands gripping the steering wheel so tight his knuckles were white, and I didn't know what to do except sit there and wait.

The traffic light turned red and we stopped and Adrian finally spoke. "He said he knew your mother."

"What?"

"Your mother, he said he knew her, that they worked together twenty years ago." His voice was still flat. "That they had an affair."

My stomach dropped. "That's not possible, my mother would never—"

"He said it lasted six months and then it ended and they both moved on with their lives." Adrian wasn't looking at me, just staring straight ahead at the red light. "He said when he saw your file and saw your mother's name he had to check if it was the same woman."

"Why would he check, why would it matter—" I stopped because I understood what he was saying before he said it. "No."

"He said there's a chance he's your real father, that the timeline matches up with when you were born." The light turned green but Adrian didn't move and a car behind us honked. "Which means there's a chance we're siblings."

The world tilted and I couldn't breathe, couldn't think past those words echoing in my head. "That's not possible, my dad was my dad, I look like him, everyone always said I had his nose"

"He ordered a DNA test." Adrian finally drove through the intersection. "The results come tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?" My hands were shaking. "We have to wait until tomorrow to know if we're…."

I couldn't finish the sentence because finishing it would make it real and I couldn't handle it being real.

"If we're siblings then everything we've done—" I started.

"I know." Adrain cut me off

"The kissing and the almost—" I continued

"I know, Elena, I know." His voice cracked. "I know what it means." He concluded.

We drove the rest of the way home in silence and I kept thinking about my mother, about whether she could have done this, whether she could have had an affair and gotten pregnant and never told anyone, and the more I thought about it the more possible it seemed because I didn't actually look that much like my dad now that I was really thinking about it.

I looked like my mother and I looked like Sophia and Sophia looked like Richard's other children which meant maybe I looked like them too because maybe we were all related.

I felt sick at the thought of being siblings with Adrain.

Adrian pulled into the parking garage and turned off the car but neither of us moved, just sat there in the dark quiet space not looking at each other.

"What do we do?" I asked.

"We wait for the results." Adrain replied to me dryly.

"And until then?"

"Until then we stay away from each other, we don't touch, we don't—" He stopped. "We just wait." I completed.

"Okay."

We got out of the car and rode the elevator up in silence and when we got to the apartment, Adrian went straight to his room without saying goodnight and I went to mine and closed the door.

I sat on the edge of the bed and tried to process what had just happened but my brain wouldn't cooperate, just kept circling back to the same thoughts over and over. My mother had an affair. Richard might be my father. Adrian might be my brother. Everything we'd done was wrong.

I lay down and stared at the ceiling and listened to the city outside my window and thought about my mother who I'd always thought was faithful and good and honest, and I didn't know if I was more angry or heartbroken that she might have lied to me my entire life.

Had my dad known? Had he raised me knowing I might not be his?

Or had my mother lied to him too?

I heard footsteps in the hallway and then Adrian's door closing and then silence.

A few minutes later I heard him pacing, back and forth across his room, and I imagined him trying to process the same things I was processing, trying to figure out how this had happened and what it meant and whether we could come back from it.

The pacing continued for hours and I lay there listening to it and staring at the ceiling and not sleeping because how could I sleep when my entire world had just been turned upside down.

Tomorrow we'd know the truth and tomorrow everything would either go back to normal or it would be destroyed completely and there was nothing I could do except wait.

I closed my eyes but I didn't sleep, just lay there in the dark listening to Adrian pace and thinking about mothers who kept secrets and fathers who might not be fathers and brothers who might be husbands.

Neither of us slept that night.