Honestly Love You (PASH: Russells/Chad)-Chap. 19
by caroline crane
 

Luis opened the door of the Book Cafe and scanned the crowd for any sign of his best friend. He finally found him at a table in the back, leaning toward Beth and whispering. Whatever he said sent Beth into gales of laughter, and Luis' eyebrows shot up as he wondered when his two best friends had gotten so cozy.

He strode across the room purposefully and slid into a seat at their table, ignoring Hank's scowl at being interrupted and the flattering blush in Beth's cheeks. "I need to talk to you," Luis said, his voice low so none of the cafe's other patrons could overheard. "Hey, Beth."

"What's the emergency?" Hank asked, his annoyance at Luis' bad timing subsiding as he took in the expression on Luis' face.

"You're investigating Chad's birth parents, right? Well, check this out." Luis pulled a piece of paper out of the inside pocket of his jacket and carefully unfolded it, looking around again to make sure no one was eavesdropping before he pushed it across the table toward Hank.

Beth leaned closer to Hank and they both scanned the document, their eyes growing wider as they reached the signature lines. "Where did you get this?" Hank asked when he finally looked back up at Luis.

"It was hidden in a secret compartment in Julian's desk," Luis explained. "I bet it's been there for years, we found it in the desk on his boat."

"Julian has a boat?"

Luis rolled his eyes impatiently at the absurdity of Hank's question. "Of course he has a boat, we're talking about the Cranes. What do you make of this birth certificate."

Hank leaned back and ran his hands through his thick hair, squeezing his eyes shut as he tried to process the information in front of him. "I can't believe it's this easy. But Eve? And Julian? What...when?"

Luis shuddered involuntarily as he remembered the pictures Sheridan had found. "It's true, buddy. There were pictures."

Hank winced at the thought of photographic evidence of Eve and Julian's affair, but Beth barely seemed to hear the latest development as she picked up the birth certificate and looked more closely at it. "You guys, this can't be real."

"I know it's hard to believe, Beth, but it makes sense," Luis said. "I mean, Julian with an illegitimate black son, it follows that they'd try to hide him and forget he ever existed."

"No, I mean this birth certificate. It can't be our Chad's. The dates are all wrong." She shoved it back toward the center of the table, pointing at the year of birth and the dates that Julian and Eve had signed it. "Look, this says the baby was born in 1974. Chad's only twenty years old, there's no way this could be his birth certificate."

A broad grin crossed Hank's face as he glanced over at Beth. "I knew there was a reason I kept you around," he teased, leaning over to plant a chaste kiss on her cheek. She laughed and shoved him away, but her eyes lit up at the easy familiarity between them.

"This is serious, Chad's counting on us. I mean, Julian Crane as his potential father? That would make him and Ethan brothers."

Luis and Hank exchanged glances at the thought of Chad and Ethan being half-brothers. "Well, it would explain why Chad puts up with the little punk," Hank muttered. "But if the dates are wrong and this isn't Chad's birth certificate, whose is it?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Luis said. He glanced past the two of them toward the counter. "Chad's not here, is he? I'd like to ask him a few questions about his adoptive parents."

"Hey, no fair trying to steal our case," Beth teased as she stood up. "He's not here anyway. Bridget's working...somewhere. I better go check on her. Be right back."

Hank turned and watched Beth walk away, a goofy grin lighting up his face as he watched her long hair swinging across her back and the way her hips swayed as she moved. When she finally disappeared behind the counter he tore his eyes away from the back of her head and turned back to Luis. "Don't worry about it, buddy. If I find out anything I'll let you know."

Luis raised his eyebrows suggestively as he studied Hank's face. "What is going on with you two?"

"With who? Me and Beth? I told you, she's helping me look for Chad's birth parents. Chad's very important to her, she wouldn't take no for an answer."

"That's not what I meant. I'm talking about the way you were looking at her just now, and the fact that you two have been acting like a couple lovestruck teenager since I got here." Luis glanced over at Beth and caught her staring at Hank, but as soon as she saw him looking she blushed and turned away. He laughed and turned back to Hank, a smirk tugging at the corners of her lips. "Or how about the way she was just staring a hole in the back of your head."

"Yeah?" Hank grinned and turned to glance at Beth but she was busy with a customer, her attention focused completely on the person in front of her. He shrugged as he turned back to Luis and stifled his smile. "There's nothing going on, Luis. We're friends, same as always."

"So you didn't take her on a date the other night." Luis laughed at the shock on Hank's face. "It's a small town, buddy. Miguel and Charity saw you at the pond."

"It was just skating at the pond. No big deal."

"Whatever you say," Luis said, shaking his head at his best friend as Hank turned to glance at Beth again. "If you find out anything about that birth certificate let me know. I'll do some digging on my own and see what I come up with."

~

Chad stopped in front of the Crane mansion and looked around, wondering for the second time that morning if he was doing the right thing. It had been one thing to let Ethan talk him into staying in town to look for his parents, but it was another thing to let his friend finance the whole project. He hated taking charity from Ethan or anybody else for that matter, but without Ethan and Hank's help he might as well pack his bags again and head to New York tonight. He'd been discouraged about his visit with Orville, and he still couldn't understand why Orville had called Eve as soon as they left the room.

He wondered suddenly if Hank had found out anything else about Orville's past, and he briefly considered calling to ask. But he didn't want to hassle Hank, Ethan had been doing that enough for both of them and after losing his temper with Orville he didn't want to give Hank another reason to quit the case. As he stood outside the mansion contemplating whether or not to check in with Hank the front door swung open and Ethan stormed out, his face an angry mask as he nearly crashed into Chad.

"Yo, Ethan, what's up?" Chad asked. He'd seen Ethan get upset plenty of times, but he'd never seen his friend looking quite so murderous.

"Damn him," Ethan hissed, looking back at the mansion without answering Chad. "Just because he was always too weak to stand up to Grandfather, he expects me to just cave and do whatever they want. Well, I won't. I'm not giving up Theresa."

"Ethan, calm down, man. Who wants you to give up Theresa?"

Ethan looked at Chad for the first time as he felt his friend's hand come to rest on his shoulder. "Father and Grandfather. They think just because they say so I'm going to break things off with her and go back to Gwen. As though they're just interchangeable."

Chad sighed inwardly; now was obviously not the best time to tell Ethan what he and Hank had discovered about Orville and his connection to Eve, not when Ethan was so fired up about his own family. "That's rough, bro. But you kind of had to see this coming."

Ethan scowled but he nodded as he turned to stare at the house he'd grown up in. "I guess I did. I mean, I knew they weren't going to be happy about me falling in love with Theresa. But I guess I always hoped that at least my parents would see that I was happy and want that for me more than a merger with the Hotchkiss fortune. Grandfather sees everything in terms of transactions and bottom lines, I know that. But I thought my father at least loved me enough to want me to be happy."

Chad shrugged as he and Ethan walked around the back of the house toward the snow-covered lawn. "He probably does. I mean, your pops may not seem like he's standing up for you, but he's probably looking out for you the best way he knows how. Maybe he thinks if you give up Theresa now it'll mean less hurt in the long run. But all this stuff with Theresa must seem pretty sudden to them, maybe they just need time to see that you really love her."

"Yeah, maybe." Ethan glanced over at Chad and smiled gratefully. "Thanks, Chad. You're a good friend."

"Hey, if it wasn't for you I'd be in New York right now, and who knows what I'd be up to. You're the one that made me see I should stay and finish what I started."

As they talked they crossed the veranda behind the house and found themselves overlooking the stables. The air was cold and a soft snow had begun to fall, just flurries but with the promise of more. Ethan looked out over the property that would someday be his and wondered if he'd find himself making a choice between all of this and true love one day. As he contemplated the choice before him two riders emerged from the stables and trotted across the lawn on their way to the paths back in the woods. Ethan nudged Chad and pointed at the quickly disappearing riders.

"Whitney's been spending a lot of time here lately," he said. "Sheridan seems to have taken a real liking to her. They go riding together nearly every day."

"Yeah?" Chad struggled to keep himself from sounding genuinely interested in Whitney's whereabouts. "Cool, Whitney could use a friend. Maybe Sheridan can get her to talk, I sure couldn't."

"When are you gonna stop being mad at her for believing Kay's stupid lie?" Ethan asked, crossing his arms over his chest as he turned toward Chad. "Sometimes I think you're hanging on to your anger so you won't have to deal with your feelings for her."

"It ain't like that," Chad protested. "Look, Whitney accused me of doing the one thing that I would never do. If I had a kid somewhere I wouldn't walk away from it, let it spend the rest of its life wondering who the hell it was. I'd be there, no matter what. I wouldn't do what my parents did." He stopped talking and watched Whitney and Sheridan as they were finally swallowed by the trees along the property line. "If Whitney actually believed that I could do something like it would be different. But she knows me better than that. She was using it to push me away. If that's what she wants, that's what I'll give her. She can have all the space she wants, I'm through trying to make her admit how she feels."

Ethan sighed and thanked God that it was easy with Theresa. She was an open book where her emotions were concerned, sometimes she was even a little too expressive. He patted Chad's shoulder consolingly before turning back to the house. "Come on, let's get in out of the cold. I'm starving."

~

Sheridan glanced over her shoulder and forced herself to smile at Whitney as she met the younger woman's eyes. She'd come to really look forward to their rides together, but today she could barely bring herself to look at Whitney without feeling a stab of guilt at the information she had about Eve. Whitney's own mother, sleeping with Julian all those years ago, and producing a child? A child that seemed to have feelings for Eve's oldest daughter. A shudder ran through Sheridan as she realized what that meant. Whitney and Chad weren't even speaking now, but she couldn't help wondering how far things had gone before they had their falling out.

Then there was the fact that Chad could very well be her nephew. It would explain his closeness to Ethan, but at the same time it didn't make any sense. Chad would have been born just before T.C. and Eve got married, how could he not know that his wife was pregnant with another man's child? And Julian - if he'd known about the baby all these years and hidden his child with an abusive, neglectful family in Los Angeles...No. Sheridan forced the thought out of her mind as quickly as it appeared. For all the faults he had, Julian loved his children, she knew that without question. He had a strange way of expressing it, but she could see it as clearly as if he told them every day.

No, if Julian had an illegitimate child out there somewhere he would have gone to great lengths to make sure the child was well cared-for. He certainly wouldn't have let Chad fall into the hands of a family that threw him out and left him to his own devices on the streets of L.A. If Chad was Julian's son, somehow her brother didn't know. And somehow Julian had kept the knowledge of his love affair with Eve from Ivy, although how he was able to hide the look of pure joy she'd seen in the photos she'd never know.

Sheridan slowed her horse's pace as they came to a clearing and fell back alongside Whitney and Katherine's Dream. "Whitney, can I ask you a question?"

"Sure, Sheridan," Whitney replied, smiling shyly at her friend. For all the time they'd spent together and all the talks they'd had, Whitney still couldn't bring herself to relax around Sheridan.

"I know you and Chad had some sort of misunderstanding," she said carefully, not wanting to bring up bad memories. "But before that - were you two...were you dating? I mean, were you serious about him?"

Whitney laughed nervously and looked toward the woods ahead of them. "No, I have never been serious about Chad," she said firmly. "We weren't dating, we weren't anything. We weren't even really friends."

"So he never - I mean, you never even kissed? I'm only asking because I've seen the way you look at each other, and it seems a shame that you're not together when you feel so strongly about one another." Sheridan bit her lip as the lie escaped her, hoping Whitney wouldn't take her words to heart and do something stupid like run to Chad and make up with him. Until Hank and Luis figured things out it was best if Chad and Whitney didn't even speak.

Whitney blushed at the memory of the few stolen kisses they'd shared, but her smile faded as quickly as it appeared and she let out a small sigh. "He kissed me a couple times, but it was really nothing."

"Oh. Well, I'm sure you two will work things out." Sheridan took the lead again as they reached the end of the clearing, guiding her horse down the path that would lead them back to the main house. "The snow looks like it's getting heavier, we better get back."