One Hot Secret by Sarah J. Brooks

Chapter 34

Kyle

I’m mentally exhausted when I get home, and the only face I want to see is Grace’s. I find her in the sunroom, her concentration so great that she doesn’t hear me when I push the door open. I stay still to watch her as she works. She looks so beautiful and peaceful with her hair held up in a messy bun at the top of her head and wisps of it falling on the side of her face. Her hand masterfully moves the brush across the canvas creating a gorgeous landscape of the snow-white beach.

I take a step closer, and that’s when she looks up, and a smile lights up her face. Then a look of concern replaces the smile.

“Hey there,” she says as she stands up.

“Hi, sorry for interrupting. I just needed to see you.” I open my arms, and she walks into them. I hold her tight against me, losing myself in her softness.

“Don’t even say that. I’ve been looking out the window every five minutes,” she says and squeezes me tight. “How are you?”

“I’m okay, but I could do with some coffee,” I tell her.

“Let’s go.”

Hand in hand, we go downstairs, and I sit on the island stool while Grace gets the coffee machine going.

I let out a yawn. I feel tired, and it’s not two o’clock yet. Grace makes me a sandwich as well and places it together with the coffee in front of me.

“Thanks.”

“How’s your father?” she says sitting across from me.

“As rude as ever,” I tell her, trying to lighten up the moment. I tell her everything that happened from the moment I walked into my father’s hospital room.

In between talking, I eat my sandwich, glad to have a distraction.

Grace is not aware that she has fisted her hands. A range of emotions flits across her very expressive face. Horror, disgust, and then barely concealed anger.

“Your father is a horrible human being,” she finally says. “I’m sorry that you’ve had to deal with that all your life.”

My chest expands with emotion. It’s nice to have someone say aloud what no one had ever said. My father is the one who is flawed.

“I thought they could never say or do anything to hurt me anymore. I was wrong,” I tell her. “It hurt like hell when the first thing my father said to me had to do with money when we haven’t seen each other in years.”

“The people we love have the power to build us or to hurt us,” Grace says. “I wish I was there to hold your hand.”

“I’m glad you were not.” I would not have wanted Grace to witness my father’s meanness and rejection.

“How can someone treat their own son so badly?” Grace says, speaking as if to herself. “What about your mother?”

I shrug. “She was okay, and she scolded him, which was a huge change from how she used to be. Still, the damage was done a long time ago. I always felt as if she was choosing him over me. It’s crazy to feel that way about your parents, but that’s how it was.” The dynamics of our family were weird. We were never one unit. It was always my father against me, which left Mom to pick sides, and she always defended him however wrong he was. That had hurt badly, and it still did.

“I know what you mean. It was weird in my biological family too. The only difference was that I don’t think my parents realized I existed. My mom’s life revolved around my dad’s, and in not paying attention to me, it felt as if he always came first in her life. Which I suppose he did.”

“Why do people have children if they don’t intend to take care of them?” I ask Grace.

She shrugs. “I’ll reward the person who ever gives me an answer to that question.”

That makes me smile. “We’re two fucked up people, Grace.”

“Used to be. We’ve healed each other, and we continue to heal each other,” she says.

Before I can respond, my phone vibrates in my pocket. The temptation to ignore it is great, but I reach for it and make a mental note to turn it off afterward.

I glance at the screen. “It’s Sebastian. He probably wants to know how my dad is.” I swipe to answer.

“You need to go back to the hospital. Your father has had another stroke. This one’s bad. They are resuscitating him at this very moment.” His tone is urgent, and a cold shiver goes through me.

“I’ll be there in a few.”

“Ethan is ready for you.”

I disconnect the call. “My father has had another stroke. A bad one. I have to go ...”

Grace jumps to her feet. “I’m coming with you. Give me a minute; I’ll meet you in the car.”

I want to protest that I’m okay going alone, but the truth is that I do need Grace with me. I nod and carry our dirty dishes to the sink. I wait for her in the foyer, and when she comes down, she gives me a quick hug and a kiss.

Grace keeps my hand in hers for the entire drive to the hospital. So many things flit through my mind. What if he doesn’t make it? I don’t have any strong feelings about that. My parents haven’t been a part of my life for so long that the thought doesn’t cause me any undue distress. What saddens me is that we’ve never had the kind of father and son relationship other people enjoy. I don’t understand why it was so hard for us to bond.

“Fuck.”

I glance out the window to see what could have made my normally calm driver and body guard let out a curse. I see it then. The paparazzi are already there, gathered at the entrance of the hospital like sharks circling their prey.

Dismay settles in me, and I want to punch someone.

“Maybe there’s another celebrity in the hospital,” Grace says, her voice shaky.

A quick tap of my phone confirms that my father is the big story. Ethan talks on his phone and drives the car to the hospital’s rear, where a guard opens a gate to let us in.

I’m glad there’s another way into the hospital, but my relief is short-lived. As we walk to the lifts, a man lifts a camera and takes a picture of me and Grace. Before we can react, he turns and walks away. I feel violated, especially at a time like this.

“It doesn’t matter,” Grace says when we’re in the lift.

I squeeze her hand gratefully. She’s right. A picture doesn’t matter. What matters is the reason why we’re here. To give my mother some support. I won’t pretend that my father is the reason why I’m here.

We step out of the elevator, and immediately hear loud sobs coming from the waiting room on the right. The voice sounds familiar. My mother. I walk fast into the waiting room and see her then with two nurses on either side of the couch trying to comfort her.

“I’ve got her,” I tell them.

When Mom sees me, her sobs grow louder, and I pull her into my arms.

“He’s gone, Kyle. He’s gone. How am I going to do this alone?”

My father is dead. I search myself, but I feel nothing. No sadness, just pangs of regret for what might have been.

***

“He was a good father to you, wasn’t he?” my mother asks me.

We’re in her home, and it’s almost seven. They still live in the same home I bought for them all those years ago, and I’m pleased to see that they’ve kept up with repairs, and it’s in pretty good shape.

It’s in a nice, gated community with good security, which has worked out well because the paparazzi cannot camp outside her house. We are in the living room, which is decorated with so many photographs of me that it’s embarrassing. When all this is over, I’ll have to ask my mother to pull some of them down. It looks like a shrine.

Grace is seated next to my mother, holding her hand, and she raises an eyebrow at me when I don’t answer. If my mother wasn’t so distraught, she wouldn’t ask me that question. She knows as well as I do that he wasn’t a good father.

“He had a lot of pressure, you know,” she continues. “He wanted so much to prove himself, but how could he when he couldn’t father a child.”

I freeze. I’m sure my ears are deceiving me. I inch closer to the edge of the chair. “What do you mean, he couldn’t father a child?”

My mother looks up, startled. “Did I say that? That’s not what I meant.”

I see the fear in her eyes, and I know then what I’ve probably known deep down but did not want to acknowledge. “Was he my biological father?”

The air is thick with tension. Mom looks like a squirrel that’s been cornered. I want to let it go, but I have to know.

“It doesn’t matter now; he’s gone,” she says, her voice trembling.

“It matters to me.” My stomach quivers as I await her confirmation.

She takes a deep breath as if she’s about to jump off a ledge into a body of water. “No.” She looks away. “I never told him, but he suspected it. You were so different from us. So special.”

“Who was my father?”

She twists her hands on her lap and continues speaking without looking at me. “Your father was growing increasingly frustrated when we couldn’t get pregnant. I’d been checked, and everything was fine with me, but he refused to get checked. So, I did the only thing I could to save my marriage and family. I slept with another man when I thought the time was right.”

My jaw drops open. “Who was he?”

A smile comes over her face. “We had worked together in a restaurant here in LA before I met your father. He too had hopes of making it onto the big screen.”

It wasn’t something my mother had liked to talk about, especially in my father’s presence, but when we were alone, she’d often told me that she had had dreams of being on screen. She’d come to California to become an actress, but it hadn’t worked out for her. She had met my father and devoted her life to him.

“It was easy to find Adrian. He was still working in the same restaurant, and he still had somewhat of a crush on me. It worked as I’d hoped, and when I got pregnant, your father and I joyfully welcomed you into the world.”

My heart pounds crazily in my chest. “Did he continue trying to become an actor?” I ask my mother.

A soft smile comes to her face. “Oh yes. I had no doubt that Adrian would make it. He had a single-mindedness that I only ever saw in one other person. You.”

I know one actor called Adrian. My hands become clammy as it dawns on me that he could be my father. I do resemble him, I think. I know now that he’s retired and lives somewhere on a ranch.

“Is it Adrian Martin?” I ask her.

She nods.

“And you never told him that he had a son?” I ask her.

She looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. “Of course not! I wasn’t doing it for him. I was doing it for your father and me.”