Finding a real job is a job.

I’d spent the entire week researching and applying to every non-profit that concerned childhood obesity that I could find. I reached out to camps, counseling programs, basically any job out there that was in the realm of what I'd figured out I wanted to do.

And still no calls back. So this is what adulthood felt like.

The weeks had dwindled down to nothing, and in four days we had to be out of the house. Some new set of knucklehead jocks were coming to take our house over. This was going to be their kingdom for the next two years. I envied them so much. I didn't want to grow up. I wanted to stay in the craphole college residence with my best friends and my girl, sitting on the couch and watching sports all day then venturing out to Sammy's at night.

But at the same time, I was looking forward to moving on. Helping children who were currently in the place I'd been in. Those who felt down on themselves and didn't know how to change that. I was damn excited to get started.

I was also pumped to start this new chapter with Kelsey. We hadn't talked much about where we would be, if we would live together, how this would work. As of now I was planning to head back to Alabama for a month or so to get my ducks in a row, check up on my parents. She was going to stay here, work at the preserve and crash with Jackson until we figured something out.

Jackson. I hadn't had time to think about what to do with the tidbit of suspicion that had been nipping at my brain for two weeks. Until today.

I was on my way over to the preserve in my shitty old SUV to confront him, ask him some questions, and get some real information for Kelsey. It’s bad enough her mother lied to her for this long. But to have Jackson, the one parental-type figure she trusts in her life do that to her? She will be crushed.

A pang of guilt hits me in the ribs. If she finds out I've been keeping my suspicions from her, she might be royally pissed at me. But I needed to protect her from the pain of this as long as I could. No sense in hurting her if I am wrong, which I very well could be.

I find Jackson filling plastic tubs full of raw steaks near the tiger dens. His instincts must be razor sharp, because he turns before I'm even within 30 feet of him. He straightens and waves, shielding his eyes with his weathered, tan hands from the sun in his face.

"Clint, nice to see you back so soon. Where's Mother Nature?" He shakes my hand, his eyes peering around me to see if Kelsey is just behind me.

"Just me today, I'm afraid. I thought maybe you and I could talk."

Jackson's face molds into worried frown lines, and I know he knows this isn't going to be a good chat.

"Sure, let me just take this food to the den. How about you meet me up in my office?" He points to a 1980's style trailer that sits just on the crest of the hill. Figures a rugged type like Jackson would refuse to be in the shiny office building down near the front gates.

I nod and make my way up as he carries the red hunks of meat to what I can only assume is going to be a feeding frenzy. Swinging open the rusty, metal door when I reach the trailer, I walk into what has to be an exact replica of Kelsey's bedroom, only office style. Papers and water bottles litter the desk and spill onto the floor. One end of the burnt orange couch is covered in back issues of National Geographic, and the walls are plastered in diagrams of the animal kingdom and species charts. Now I know where my girl got her impeccable tidiness from.

Jackson lumbers in as I'm leafing through a November 2013 copy of National Geographic that features a piece on the O'Brien's. Go figure.

His lean, wiry body moves effortlessly over the mess on the floor. Jackson looks exactly like what you picture when you think of a zoo keeper. He wears nothing but khaki's, has a continual scruffy brown-blonde beard, and his skin is always the color of polished leather. He's like Steve Irwin's clone, except he's got a bit of vintage cowboy mixed in there. And of course, the facial features that match Kelsey's so much its uncanny.

"So what can I do for you, son?"

A weird sensation has my neck hairs standing on end at the word son.

"How long have you known?" I'm not one to pussyfoot around. Especially not when it comes to matters concerning Kelsey.

I see the recognition in those worn brown eyes, but he doesn't play along. "What's that now?"

Deep breath, Bellows. "I know you're her father."

Jackson sucks in a breath and then blows it out. But I can tell in his body language. He's been waiting for this day. Waiting for someone to finally call out the one thing he's been hiding for so long.

"How did you guess?"

I snort, still not knowing if I should have my defenses up with this guy. "How could I not know? You practically cloned her. She has all of the same mannerisms. Jesus, she's got your damn nose. I don't know how she's never noticed."

"Because I've managed to stay just far enough out of reach for all of these years."

"You're an asshole. Lying to her like that. I thought you cared about her."

Rage sparks in his eyes as he slams his palms flat on the cluttered desk. "Don't walk onto my preserve, into my office, and pretend to know something you have absolutely no idea about. You have no clue just what it’s been like to lie to her. To live 20 years of my life orbiting around my child who I can't even claim as mine. Don't you dare accuse me of that."

I back down, dropping into a chair as a sign of peace. "So then tell me. Why lie for all of these years?"

Jackson slumps, all of the energy leaving his body. As if telling his secret has left him bereft and empty. "Well, I'd have to start at the beginning."

He pauses, his face drawn up into a thinking scowl. "I met Madeline O'Brien just a year after I'd graduated college. I had spectacular dreams of traveling the fields of Africa, saving animals from extinction and all that. She'd just burst onto the scene with Hugo, the wonder couple who was blazing the trail in zoology. I was smitten, and she was lonely. Late nights in the lab led to a talking, which led to a friendship, and then you know what happened after that. I was in love with her, although I never knew her feelings in the whole matter. Then one day, things just stopped. She wouldn't even look at me, left to start research in Panama. Hugo approached me, told me I could keep my job and a place in their empire if I promised never to breathe in the direction of his wife again."

He wipes a hand over his face, trying to erase the grief so evident in his features. "Of course, years later I realized what had happened. She'd gotten pregnant. We'd gotten pregnant. And instead of stay with me, she chose him. She chose her career and greatness and all of the things it meant to stay married to Hugo O'Brien. The first time I saw Kelsey..."

Jackson's voice cracks. Its then I know that this secret has been eating away at him for decades.

"Madeline and Hugo came for this new exhibit being put in, gazelles I think. And they'd brought the baby. Of course I'd heard she'd given birth years ago, I tried not to follow them too closely. It’s easy when your bosses are traveling to different continents every week and you're just a lowly employee in their Virginia preserve. But seeing Kelsey for the first time, Christ. I knew instantly. She was probably four or five, with these fire engine red locks that were down to her butt because she wouldn't let anyone cut her "lion's mane." She ran right up to this pack of elephants and began playing with their trunks. No fear, just joy. I knew then that she had to be mine. I felt like I was seeing a ghost, a long lost piece of my heart that I had only just discovered was missing. I confronted Madeline immediately. At first she denied it, but I pressed her. Told her I'd take her to court for a paternity test. That's when I really pissed off the ice queen. She told me I'd be hurting my own daughter, dragging this scandal through the press. So I used it as leverage. Told her she had to settle close by with Kelsey, someplace where I could see her often. That's why they chose Mitchum. And so I started a relationship with my daughter. A friendship. I looked after her as best I could, all the while slowly cutting out my own heart that she was living under another man's roof."

I see tears in his eyes. In the middle of this shitty metal can, this man who seems so solid and formidable, is crumbling like an ant beneath the glare of the microscope. I hear the wind squealing in through the crack in the trailer window, and don't know where to go from here. "You have to tell her, she deserves to know."

"This secret, it’s become a part of my soul. I wouldn't even know where to start..."

The door cracks open violently behind my chair, sending shockwaves through the entire metal tube. And in the opening stands Kelsey.

"Baby-" It’s the only thing I get out before she silences me with a finger. I know better than to speak again.

Jackson and I stand there, two idiots caught with our proverbial pants down as she glares at us. It’s more than a glare. Those hazel eyes are onyx, all of the rage has been sucked from the world and transplanted into this gorgeous pixie. Red tendrils stand up this way and that, her face shines with a fresh coat of glossy tears. She must be tearing holes in her palms by how hard she's clenching her tiny fists.

"You can start by getting the fuck out of my life." Kelsey's words are venom, meant to cause bodily harm to Jackson.

"Kelsey, I can explain...I never, I never wanted you to find out this way. Please, can we just talk?"

A biting laugh bubbles up from her throat, sarcastic and cruel. "You had 20 years to talk to me. 20 years! You lied to my goddamn face my entire life. When I was crying to you about my parents, about Madeline. You knew how alone I felt, how misguided I was."

Jackson makes a strangled noise in his throat, but Kelsey presses on.

"And you!" She rounds on me, her nostrils flaring and voice breaking on a sob. "You promised me. You told me to trust you. How long have been keeping this from me? I guess that honesty only applied to situations you decided were important."

I move for her out of instinct, trying to wrap her in my arms. "Roo..."

"No! Do not touch me. I never want to see either of you again. You are not my father," she shouts at Jackson, who whimpers. "And we are over."

I feel like I've been smacked in the face. Gutted. My chest has been flayed open and fried.

Kelsey's halfway down the path to Jackson's trailer when I shake the body-numbing grief I'm currently under the spell of. Sprinting from the office, I shout her name, trying to catch the sand that's quickly slipping through my fingertips.

Before I can reach her, she's throwing her Jetta into reverse, the tires kicking up lung-filling dust into my face. And then she's gone, speeding out onto the main road through the gates.

I bend at the waist, feeling like I've been socked in the gut, the balls, the throat. I can't breathe properly. What the fuck did I just do?

But I know what I did. I committed the one sin I promised her I'd never commit. I broke her trust. And now the gypsy is in the wind again, running from anything that might hurt.