by JJ Knight
He laughs. “Absolutely.”
I head to the corner where I’ve stashed my coat and a bag with normal shoes.
He heads for the sound equipment. “Make sure you save room for dinner, though. Mom will expect you to eat!”
My stomach flutters. Tonight I’ll be meeting Blitz’s parents for the first time. We would have done it before now, but they spent Christmas and early January in Colorado, so they’ve just now gotten back and settled down enough to have visitors.
Blitz shuts down the music as Aurora arrives to set up for her toddler class. She has a little girl with her, Cassandra, her boyfriend’s daughter.
“You have a helper!” I say to Aurora.
“No school today,” Aurora says. “I’m watching her while Samuel works.” Her eyes flit over to Blitz. Even though he volunteered here for a few weeks around Thanksgiving last year, everyone is still a little starstruck when they see him.
It’s been worse since the live finale of his show, which went completely viral and has been the highest-rated reality show episode of all time. My face still flushes when I think of how bold I was to march on that stage and demand he dance with me instead of the contestants.
Sometimes my friend Mindy sends me memes of a screenshot from the broadcast. It shows me crossing in front of the three finalists in their sparkly dresses. I look grim and determined. The captions are always changing.
What a hostile takeover looks like.
When you ain’t gonna let no ho dance with your man.
I try to ignore all the fuss. Blitz and I want to live as quietly as we can for as long as possible, at least until we can figure out what’s next. I know the finalists from his show feel robbed and angry. One of them, Mariah, has sued the producers, since she was supposedly slated to be the actual winner. She lost out on a lot of publicity and fame because of me.
It’s a mess.
Blitz takes my hand as I stand up from putting on my shoes. We head down the hall of Dreamcatcher Dance Academy, which is filling with moms and little girls for their classes. There’s more kids here today with school out, siblings of the tiny ones who usually attend alone. The mothers seem more harried than usual.
We cross the foyer, waving at Suze, who sits at the front desk. A few moms stop talking to point at Blitz. He smiles and is friendly, but doesn’t pause, his hand on my back as we head for the doors.
I’m on the steps when my brain stutters. My attention fixes on a man on the sidewalk, looking up, his cheeks ruddy from the cold as if he’s stood there a while.
My body gets some message from my brain before I can comprehend exactly what is happening, why I’m feeling a threat. My feet are rooted to the concrete, my chest buzzing with alarm.
Blitz stops with me. “You okay, Livia?” he asks.
His words are what bring the moment into focus. This man in front of me wears a black leather jacket, his layered brown hair flying in the wind.
It’s him.
God.
It’s him.
Denham Young.
Kicked out of my life when I was fifteen. Gone for good. Lost to me.
My great love. My shame.
Gabriella’s father.
He’s found me.
Chapter 2
Denham takes a step toward me, then sees Blitz and stops. “Livia, it’s really you.”
I want to shrink into the ground, let it swallow me up. I can’t let Blitz meet him. I can’t let Denham say who he is. If Blitz knew, that would be it. He would be horrified. He wouldn’t want me anymore. And the press. I’m famous now. If they knew. God. Everyone would know. It would be huge news.
And Denham…he doesn’t know about Gabriella. At least I don’t think so. My father kicked him out before I found out I was pregnant. We didn’t see him again.
I look wildly across the parking lot. Thankfully Gwen has already gone.
Why is this happening?
“Livia?” Denham says.
“Go away!” I cry out. “Stay back!”
With that, Blitz pulls me close to him. “Who is this guy, Livia? You want me to take his ass out?”
“No!” I say. “Just get me out of here.”
“Livia, please, there is something I have to tell you!” Denham says. He holds his arms out in a pleading gesture. His face, God, that face, one I knew as well as my own, is contorted in anguish.
“No!” I say. “I don’t want to hear it! Please, stay away!”
Blitz hurries us toward his car on the far side of the building.
But Denham follows. “I couldn’t find you, Livia, or I would have told you sooner. I looked everywhere! I didn’t know where you had gone until I saw you on television!”
Blitz stops beside his car and whirls around, pushing me behind him. “Look, pal, get out of here before your face is part of the pavement. Livia doesn’t want to talk to you. Just because she was on the show doesn’t mean you have the right to stalk her.”
Blitz jerks his keys from his pocket and unlocks the door. “Get in, Livia,” he says.
But my feet are stuck. Denham looks so stricken. He’s older now, and so am I. We’re grown. He isn’t that fresh-faced sixteen-year-old. But his eyes are the same. I’d been lost in them once. Lost enough to forget to be careful. I didn’t guard myself.
But he lied. He led me to my shame.
This gets me.
I manage to turn away and jerk open the door to Blitz’s red Ferrari. The wind tears at my coat and my hair swirls around my face.
“Livia,” Denham says. “Just let me say one thing.”
I pause by the door and look back. Blitz is still next to him, looking threatening and angry. I’ve seen Blitz take down a stranger with a single punch. I have no doubt he’d do it again.
“Please,” I say. “Please don’t come into my life now. I can’t bear it.”
Denham’s face is contorted with emotion. “I won’t. I see you’ve got a good thing going.” He glances at Blitz. “I wouldn’t mess that up. I promise. I would never hurt you. I loved you more than anyone else in the world. More than I will ever love anybody again.”
This makes Blitz relax his stance. He looks back at me. “Livia, who is this?” he asks.
My panic rises. “I’ll tell you in the car,” I say. But I don’t get in. I can’t leave Denham and Blitz alone, even for a second. In fact, I need Blitz away from this situation, as fast as possible, before Denham can say anything more.
“Can we go now?” I ask him, my voice quavering.
If Denham says who he is, this is over. My life is over. I will tell Blitz that Denham is Gabriella’s father. I don’t care about that.
It’s the rest. Who he is to me. To my family.
But Blitz waits, looking back and forth between me and Denham.
I close my eyes to the wind, trying to stay calm, not to scream and run. This is it. This is where my past catches up to me.
“I’m leaving,” I say to Denham one last time. “Blitz, please, let’s drive away.”
This time, Blitz moves. He comes around to the driver’s side of the car and opens the door, his eyes still on Denham.
But Denham is determined to say something. And so he does. And the words are something I never thought I’d hear.
“Livia, I’m not your brother. I never was.”
Chapter 3
I clutch the top of Blitz’s car. The wind is fierce. Surely I didn’t hear that right.
“What?” Blitz says. “You’re her brother?”
Denham steps closer. “No, I said I’m not her brother. She thought I was. Hell, I thought I was. I lived with her family. But I’m not part of it.”
I can’t look at him. My world is spinning, black spots in my vision.
He takes yet another step. He’s only a couple feet away now. My head is down because I can’t look anybody in the eye right now. His boots are scuffed and worn, a chain across the side. He still dresses with an attitude, now the same as then.
“Livia?
” Blitz’s voice is laced with concern. He comes back around the car. “You lived with this guy?”
“Not here in San Antonio,” Denham says. “Back in Houston. I didn’t know she was here. I had no idea where she was until the show.”
Blitz’s arms come around me. His voice is gentle. “Hey, what’s getting you? Did this guy do something to you when you lived with him?”
I shake my head no, then yes, then no again. Blitz’s arms are like a tether to the world. I finally lift my face.
Denham’s arms are out again, like he’s begging. His eyes are soft. “I’m not your brother,” he says again. “After your father kicked me out, I went into foster care. I ran away, but they had already DNA-swabbed me to hand me over to some other guy they found. I never went back, so I didn’t see the results. I saw the papers a year ago, when Aunt Didi died. Your dad isn’t my dad. But I couldn’t find you to tell you. That we were okay. That it wasn’t anything horrible after all.”
Now I’m feeling faint. He has to stop. “Please take me home,” I say to Blitz. “Now.”
Blitz nods and steps between me and Denham, blocking his view of me as I sit on the seat. I’ve heard all I need to know. I just need to think. And I need to get away before the last piece of the story falls into place for both of them.
But this isn’t my scene. It’s Denham’s. And he is going to say what he wants.
“I always loved you, Livia,” Denham goes on. “And I never regretted what happened between us. I wanted you to be able to stop regretting it too.”
Blitz still stands by my open door. His face is lowered, but I can see him thinking. “Is this the guy?” he asks me. “The one who got you pregnant?”
My head snaps around to look at Denham.
His eyes get wide. “What?” Denham asks. “What is he saying?”
Blitz realizes the situation and tries to close the door.
But Denham steps forward and grabs it. “Livia? Did you get pregnant?”
I want the car to collapse around me, crush me into a cube to be tossed into a pit. This moment must end. It’s all come together. Blitz. Denham. Gabriella. My brother who isn’t my brother after all.
“Let me get this straight,” Blitz says. “You,” he says, pointing at Denham, “were her brother but now you’re not.”
“Half-brother,” Denham says. He’s still trying to get past Blitz to me. “And she didn’t know. I moved in when I was sixteen.”
Blitz’s voice is low and menacing. “She knew at some point, or you wouldn’t be telling her the truth now.”
Denham looks at Blitz. “Her dad made me keep the secret or I couldn’t move in. If I told, then Livia’s mother would know he had been unfaithful.”
Blitz lets out a rush of air. “So Livia, MY Livia, was seduced by you, when you were living there as her brother.”
Denham tries to look around Blitz again. “When I thought I was. But I’m not. Livia, tell me about the baby.”
Blitz won’t let it go. “And you didn’t think to tell her that little detail? When you were sleeping with her?” He looks like he might punch Denham after all.
Denham gets increasingly agitated. “I loved her. I just wanted to protect her from what people would think.”
Blitz grips the door frame so hard his knuckles are white.
“I think,” Blitz says, then pauses. “No, I know, that you seduced a very young girl living in your house, by all accounts your half-sister. And you didn’t even prevent her from getting pregnant.”
“That is past,” Denham says. He’s done with Blitz. I can hear it in his voice. He tries to shoulder Blitz out of the way.
“Where is our baby, Livia?” Denham asks. “You’re Catholic, so I know you had it.” He leans down to get closer to my face. “WHERE IS OUR BABY?”
And that’s when Blitz slams his elbow against the back of Denham’s neck.
Denham crumples to the ground.
Chapter 4
“Blitz!” I cry. But I don’t try to get out of the car or help Denham. I can’t do that. My allegiance is with Blitz. It has to be.
My mind is a whirl. Denham isn’t my brother. My father was lied to. We all were.
It’s too much. I take great gulps of air while Blitz nudges Denham with his foot, waiting for him to come around. He’s out cold on the pavement by the door. Thankfully no one’s in the parking lot of the academy right now to see.
“How did you know where to hit him?” I ask Blitz.
Blitz barks out a sardonic laugh. “That’s what you’re thinking about right now?”
I look down at Denham. The space over his eye is swelling a little where he hit the door of the car on the way down.
“The rest is too much for me right now,” I say. I’m barely holding it together. I have to get past this moment with Denham on the ground, and Blitz in an angry posture over him. I have to get away so I can sort all this out.
“I was supposed to be on some action TV show,” Blitz says. “Artists and Outlaws. We were dancers who fought crime. Dumbest premise on the face of the earth. We shot a pilot but nobody took it. I had to train in combat for it.”
This random conversation helps my mind settle. “I’m sorry the show didn’t happen.”
“I’m not,” Blitz says. “Probably would have destroyed my career.”
Denham shifts his arm and groans.
“Lover boy is back,” Blitz says. “What do you want me to do with him?”
“Move him out of the way so we can leave?” I say, more of a question than a suggestion.
“All right,” Blitz says. He bends down to drag Denham away from the car, but Denham shakes his head and rolls over.
He presses his hand to his forehead. “Damn, dance boy,” he says. “I didn’t figure on you being a heavy.”
“I figured on you being an asshole,” Blitz says. “I should have done it sooner.”
Denham struggles to his feet, his hand on the back of his neck. He takes a step toward me, but Blitz moves in again.
Denham holds up his hands. “All right, all right. Simmer down.” He tilts his head so he can see me around Blitz’s body. “This isn’t over, Livia. I’m going to find that baby.”
He glances up at the giant letters of Dreamcatcher Dance Academy. “And I know where to find y’all.”
Denham turns and stumbles off. He opens the door to a beat-up dark green pickup truck and sits down.
Blitz closes my door and walks around. We wait a moment until Denham starts his truck and screeches off down the street.
“You okay?” Blitz asks. He reaches for my hand and lifts my fingers to his lips.
I manage to nod. I’m so scared he will be freaked out by what he’s learned about me. Nobody’s ever known who Gabriella’s father is, except my parents. They wouldn’t even tell the doctor, and I knew from eighth-grade science that a baby from related people could have problems.
But we weren’t related. It had all been a lie.
I shake my head. So much to sort out. I want to talk to my parents, but they aren’t speaking to me right now.
And…as for parents, I am supposed to meet Blitz’s in a few hours.
Is that still on?
Is he still on?
His warm lips against my fingers seem to indicate we are fine. I glance over at him. He watches me with concern. “You want to talk about it now?” he asks.
I don’t, but I know I have to.
“Denham showed up one summer, a couple months before my fifteenth birthday,” I say. “His aunt brought him. Didi. She was old and pretty sick. And Denham was wild. His mother had not been very involved in his life and had overdosed on something. Her heart stopped, I think.”
My grip on Blitz’s hand is like a lifeline. “The aunt met with Dad privately, and then left Denham with us.”
“Your mother let that happen?” Blitz asks.
“She wasn’t happy about it, but Dad said he was homeless, that he was a distant cousin’s kid. We only had to have him
two years, until he graduated.”
“Was he an all-right kid?”
Remembering Denham the way he was then softens me. I can breathe again. “He was larger than life. Wild, for sure. He came in with his big black boots and silver chains and a tattoo even though he was underage. But he was a charmer, you know?” I realize I’m gushing a little and add, “Even though he’d been kicked out of two schools.”
“So obviously something happened between the two of you.”
My body goes cold. I can’t talk about that with Blitz. They are my most private memories.
I decide to keep it simple. “Yes. It went on for a couple months and then one day Denham just couldn’t take it anymore. He told me my dad was his father too.”
“God,” Blitz says. “I can’t even imagine what that felt like.”
“I ran straight to them. Dad exploded and kicked Denham out. He drove him back to the aunt’s. I didn’t see him again.”
“So you didn’t know you were pregnant then?”
“Not for another several weeks. I was upset, not eating, pretty distraught. Anything that would have been a pregnancy symptom was just mixed up in my distress.”
“And then you moved.”
“Dad brought us here so no one would know about the baby. He was so shamed. So angry. No one would talk to me. I was hidden from everyone.”
Blitz leans over the center console and takes me in his arms. “That must have been incredibly lonely.”
I shake my head against his shoulder. “But it wasn’t. I wasn’t alone, you know? I had the baby with me. I could feel her moving. It was like a miracle. I would talk to her and sing.”
“Then you gave her up.”
I pull away just enough to look into Blitz’s face. “I did not want to. But I had no choice. My parents just did it. I had no way to take care of her. I didn’t know anything. If I could do it all over again, I would have refused. Run away. Found a shelter. At least tried. But I didn’t then. I was too scared.”
“I told you, I can call my lawyer. You were underage. Coerced.”
“No,” I say. “I could never do that to Gwen. She already lost her husband. I couldn’t take Gabriella from her.”
