by Leslie Kelly
He looked away, as if ashamed. “Brady was the one who said those awful things about you. I didn’t even find out about Grandfather’s phone call for weeks. I came home as soon as I heard about it, but found out you had already left Florida.”
“And then?”
"I went to Baltimore, tracked down your address, but I couldn’t get past the servants. Finally your mother let me in, saying you were away at school.” He swallowed visibly. “She told me everything."
"Everything."
He nodded. Nicole saw the tightness of his jaw and the white knuckles gripping the top of his dresser, upon which he leaned.
"What, exactly, did she tell you?" she asked, not sure she wanted to know. Because if her mother had kept this secret from her for all these years, had kept Wyatt away from her for a decade, whatever she’d said must have been pretty horrible.
He shook his head, looking as if he regretted starting the conversation. She watched as he fumbled around in his drawer and pulled out a clean tee shirt. Tossing it to her on the bed, he said, "We don't have to get into this right now. I mean, you were practically a kid. I hated you for it back then, but now I recognize what a mess you thought you were in. That controlling mother of yours...you thinking I'd run out on you. I can understand that you felt desperate."
Nicole wrapped her arms around her waist and drew her legs up. She heard the bitterness in his voice but there was something else. A hurt so deep it was painful to listen to. Her stomach churned and she thought she might be sick. But she had to know it all.
"Tell me," she ordered. "Tell me what she told you."
He hesitated one more moment, then finally gave her his full attention, his eyes holding so much emotion it pained her to look at them.
"She told me the truth. That you killed our child."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nicole felt the bile rise in her throat. Her head began spinning and she clutched at the covers to regain her balance.
Wyatt continued, "She explained how she wanted you to have an abortion but you didn't want to because of your beliefs. And she told me you took a mean-spirited horse out for a ride on a stormy afternoon. You rode hard and fast and urged him over fences until he threw you. So you would miscarry."
"Oh, my God," she moaned as sobs tried to burst from her mouth.
"I hated you so much, Nicole. I mean, standing there, listening to your mother tell me how pleased she was that you'd managed to take care of your little problem so neatly, leaving you feeling guiltless and free to go off to college and find someone more suitable. Especially after all the times you and I talked about what my own mother had done to me, and the way you said you couldn't understand how a woman couldn't want her child. I just thought you were the most deceitful person I'd ever met."
"That distinction belongs to someone else," she whispered.
He didn't know. Wyatt had no idea that Justin existed, that he was his son. Nicole couldn't think, could barely breathe. All these years. All the anguish and the anger she had felt that he'd never even tried to contact her fell away as she recognized what her mother had done. Not just to Wyatt, but to Justin. To her.
She’d stolen the life Nicole had wanted more than anything in the world.
And she’d stolen Wyatt’s entire family.
"My God, no wonder you hate me."
Wyatt smiled at her, but the expression looked more like a grimace. She saw the brightness in his own eyes and suspected he'd struggled to hold back tears as he purged his memories.
"You were so young. So scared and confused. And you can't know for sure. If that baby wasn't meant to be born, you could just as easily have miscarried while taking a shower. You can't be certain it was your fault."
He was forgiving her for something she hadn’t done. Something she, herself would have found utterly unforgivable.
She couldn't respond. What could she say? How could she possibly explain? Nicole's body shook. Silent tears continued to slide down her face, across her lips and onto her lap. Wyatt looked away, glancing again out the back doors, as if he couldn't quite trust himself to look at her. She couldn't blame him.
"I think I’ve finally managed to come to terms with it,” he said. “Maybe I've forgiven the past. We both made mistakes. If only I'd never let my grandfather bully me into going off to Europe. If only I'd called you, not been so wrapped up in excitement at finally having my mother pay some attention to me. I was nineteen, but I swear, those first few weeks in Europe, I felt like I was five again, wondering if my mother might actually show up for Christmas and being shocked when she actually got me a present.”
Her heart broke for him on more levels than she could ever have imagined.
“I should have found a way to call you. Should have thought a lot more about what was going on back here than what I was doing.”
She licked her lips, trying to find words. Her vocal cords wouldn't work. Her mouth was empty, she just didn’t know what on earth to say. Nicole reached for the tee shirt and slipped it on, stalling for time while she tried to figure out how to respond to him. She wiped her tear stained face with the back of her hand. As Wyatt stood, so remote, staring out at the afternoon sky, she wondered what words you used to tell someone he had a ten-year-old child.
"Hey, look, this week has done me a world of good," Wyatt said. She heard the strain in his voice as he tried to sound nonchalant. "I've come to terms with the past. You and I have certainly recaptured some of the magic we felt as kids. I feel refreshed, purged almost. It's finally over."
Over? He thought everything was over? She managed to contain a laugh that would probably have made her sound either bitter or utterly unhinged.
"I want to move on with my life. I've let this anger eat at me, and that's no good. So, hey, now when I think about you when you go back to Baltimore, I can remember the amazing sex we had last night and this afternoon instead of what happened when we were kids."
Nicole tried not to feel the sudden flash of hurt. He might call it great sex, but as far as she was concerned, they'd made love. And in her heart, she knew that's exactly what she felt. She loved Wyatt now every bit as much as she had at seventeen...no, more...because now she saw the man who could forgive what he thought she'd done.
“Oh, God, how could everything have gotten so screwed up?" she said.
"Maybe it was for the best. I think, finally, I can let it go. Accept that it wasn't meant to be, that we were too young, too different."
"Accept it?” she whispered, feeling more exhausted than she had in her entire life.
Wyatt didn't seem to hear her. "I mean, imagine if I had come back in time, and we'd ended up getting married. We were kids. By now we'd be divorced, fighting over custody of our child."
"You really believe that?” she asked softly.
He frowned at her as he continued. "Absolutely. Because, I damn sure wouldn't be like your father, letting you keep my child away from me, ten months out of the year, a thousand miles away. Any woman who tried to do that to me would have one hell of a custody fight on her hands."
Though her head still reeled and she couldn’t quite put two thoughts together, his tone and his words did manage to cut through the haze. They echoed in her ears, repeating and repeating.
He'd fight for custody?
She couldn't think. She could hardly breathe. Nicole knew he deserved the truth, right then and there. He had lived with a painful lie for years. But she had to think it through, had to consider all the ramifications. What would this mean to Justin? How would her little boy be able to handle it if a stranger suddenly showed up, proclaimed himself his father, and fought in court for his legal rights?
All this time, she’d thought Wyatt didn’t want their son, or that he didn’t believe he truly had gotten her pregnant. She’d wanted desperately to make Wyatt see Justin for the great, amazing kid he was and to accept that he was his father. She’d hoped for some kind of visitation. She’d even, deep down in her heart of hearts, fantasized that they�
�d somehow make things work, and become some kind of family.
Now though, there was no chance of that. He would be livid. Rightfully so. Her mother—oh God was Nicole dying to confront her—had stolen a decade of his son’s life from this man.
And in his fury, in his anguish and his deep feeling of loss, might he also lash out at Nicole, believing her culpable in the deception? Maybe even lash out at the world that had, once again, deprived him of the normal family he’d always wanted? Wyatt would probably be like a raging bear, perhaps not even thinking about how it would affect the one completely innocent party in this whole situation: their son.
She couldn't tell him the truth yet. She had to figure out when, how, where. Had to desperately search for something—anything—to ease the blow this news was going to cause him. Though she didn’t doubt he would be a wonderful father, who would grow to love Justin as much as Nicole did, at first Wyatt would be devastated. In the short term, this news would rock the very foundations of his life.
Ten years…lost. For all of them.
Her heart was shattering within her chest. Breaking for all the years they should have had together. Exploding in grief for Wyatt. For herself. For their son.
Feeling almost too weak to say another word, she lifted both hands to her face and brushed away her tears.
"Would you please get me my clothes?" she whispered as she turned her back to him and stared at the carpet. She sensed Wyatt move close behind her, and prayed he would not touch her.
It took every ounce of her strength to remain silent. He finally moved away.
After Wyatt retrieved her clothes, Nicole hurried into the bathroom to dress. She washed her face as best she could, staring into her own reflection, wondering if her life would ever be the same again, and suspecting it would not.
When she emerged from the bathroom, Wyatt gave her a gentle smile, as if trying to make up for the conversation they'd just shared. His eyes betrayed his tender feelings toward her. How could he feel tenderly toward her? How could he even stand to look at her, believing she'd purposely set out to lose his baby?
They rode back to her father’s house in thick silence. With every mile that passed, Nicole wracked her brain, trying to choose what to say. Should she ask him to drive them down to the beach? Go to a public restaurant? Sit in the back of the truck behind the Grange hall? Stop right in the middle of the damn road?
No place seemed right, no time seemed appropriate, no words could possibly convey how horrible she felt. So in the end, during the brief drive, she focused only on Justin. On how it would affect him, on doing what was best for him. She and Wyatt—and her deceitful mother—were adults. Justin was a ten year old little boy whose life was about to take a hard-right-turn into soap opera-land.
When they reached her father’s house, Wyatt pulled up out front. Nicole reached for the door handle, but didn’t pull it. “Wyatt, please give me some time,” she told him. “Then I think the two of us need to get together again to talk. It’s…important.”
“Sure, we…” Wyatt’s voice trailed off. Nicole saw a confused expression cross his handsome face. His eyes narrowed as he looked over her shoulder, toward the front porch.
She turned as if in slow motion, somehow knowing in the seconds before she saw the person who’d just exited the front door, who that person would be.
And she was right.
Coming outside with a huge, crooked grin on his adorable face, was Justin. Her son. His son. Their Justin.
Wyatt saw the boy walking out the front door of the house. A normal looking kid, probably about nine or ten. He wore black dress slacks and a white button down shirt and Wyatt saw him tug at the collar as if he couldn't wait to get it off. Poor kid. Someone had set him up for sheer misery putting him in a monkey suit in the middle of a hot Florida day. Wyatt wondered who he was.
About to ask Nicole, he saw her hand turn white as she gripped at the handle on the door. Her shoulders were shaking. Before he could comment, she turned back to look at him over her shoulder. Her face reflected absolute agony. Wyatt reached toward her, concerned, asking, "Nicole, what's wrong?"
Nicole just shook her head and twisted the handle to jump out of the truck. She left the door open and stood next to it. The boy who'd walked out of Josh's house flew down the outside stairs and launched himself at Nicole, giving her a bone crushing hug. Wyatt watched silently from within. Nicole's back was to him. But he could still see her whole body shaking.
Wyatt opened his own door and stepped out onto the gravel driveway. Turning toward the house, he paused and looked over the top of the pickup at the woman and the boy, still wrapped in each other's arms, just a few feet away.
Finally the hug ended, and the boy stepped away, allowing Wyatt to get a good look at him for the first time. The kid was smiling exuberantly, like someone who's planned and executed a marvelous joke to perfection.
That smile…that crooked grin.
Recognition washed over him, but it still took a second for him to figure out why. Then he noticed the eyes.
It was like looking into a mirror.
"Mom! Are you surprised? I couldn't wait until next week, so I got grandmother to change the reservations to today!”
"Justin, sweetheart, I'm so happy to see you," Nicole murmured as she clung to him.
Wyatt staggered back, one step, then another, nearly tripping on his own feet. Collapsing back against the side of the truck, he felt like someone had suddenly pushed him right into the middle of a nightmare. He felt dizzy, he felt sick. He wanted someone to wake him up. Justin was her son?
The age was right. The smile was the same one Wyatt had worn all his life. And the laughing green eyes, they were a dead giveaway.
Just wasn’t just Nicole’s son.
He was also Wyatt’s son.
The ground seemed to quake beneath him and his head kept spinning. It was too cruel. Too unbearable, too unbelievable. Eleven years of cursing her. Years of wondering how she could have left him, how she could have thrown away what they had, how she could have purposely lost their child.
Now here that child stood. Tall, handsome with hair the sable color of his mother's, and Wyatt’s own strong features. Part mischievous little boy, but with glints of the teenager already visible in the face. He looked content, good-natured and happy, as if he’d never experienced anything truly bad in his young life.
And Wyatt hadn't been there to witness one day of that life. Not a single one.
He wanted to howl at the injustice.
"So are you surprised?”
Nicole lifted a hand and put it on her son’s shoulder, but not before Wyatt saw the way it was shaking. When she turned toward him, he saw the brightness of tears in her eyes.
“Oh, yes. Very surprised.” Squaring her shoulders, she managed a forced-looking smile. "I've missed you, little man."
"Why're you crying?" Justin asked.
Wyatt saw Justin staring suspiciously at him but couldn’t say a word. He could only continue to lean back against the truck, needing its support. He honestly didn’t trust himself to say a word.
"I’m just happy to see you. Happy tears," Nicole insisted as she slid her arm around his shoulders and led him up the stairs to the front door. "Have you seen Grandpa?"
"Yep. He's asleep now, though.”
Wyatt watched them, but didn’t allow his shock to keep him frozen any longer. Forcing the shock away from his bleary brain, he followed them up the steps, not willing to let this miracle child out of his sight.
Justin glanced toward the door as Wyatt came through it, then looked quickly back at Nicole. He seemed to be waiting for something. Finally he prodded, "Mom? You gonna introduce me to your friend?"
Nicole reached for the back of the nearest chair. Her chin went up and he saw the way her throat worked as she swallowed hard. "Justin, this is Wyatt. A very old friend of mine. Wyatt, this is my son, Justin.
Wyatt nodded toward the boy who stood sizing him up as if evaluati
ng whether he would be good or bad for his mother. He couldn't form words, his mouth felt like someone had shoved it full of cotton balls. Then Justin extended his hand. Wyatt stared at it for a second, then reached out and clasped it in his own.
"Pleased to meet you, sir," the boy said, his voice respectful.
Nicole had taught him well. Wyatt felt a surge of pride in his chest. He felt the firmness of the boy's grip and was loathe to let go of the smaller hand. "It's good to meet you, Justin. I'm sure your grandfather is pleased that you finally came down for a visit."
"I've been bugging Mom to bring me down here for years, but she could never get away," Justin explained.
Wyatt didn't quite know how to talk to a kid, he'd been around so few. He latched onto the traditional bribe and said, "Well, now that you're here, maybe your Mom will get a chance to take you to Disney World."
Justin rolled his eyes. "If I had to listen to that Small World song five million times I'd barf up a frog."
"Justin!" Nicole scolded.
"Sorry," he said with an engaging grin.
"Universal Studios has some pretty intense roller coasters,” Wyatt said, remembering how much he’d loved those kinds of rides as a kid.
Justin's eyes widened in excitement for a moment. Then he straightened his back, cleared his throat and replied, “That sounds great, but I think I'll be spending most of the time working with Mom, helping Grandpa out."
"You like horses?"
"Yep. I'm going to be a vet, just like them."
Wyatt didn't doubt him for an instant. The boy spoke with complete confidence.
Nicole finally let go of the chair she'd been holding. Wyatt watched her take a few shaky steps to the couch and slide down to sit on the padded arm. She stared at them in silence. He could see the tears in her eyes and the whiteness of the knuckles she kept tightly clenched.
At first he’d been too shocked to do much more than stumble through a brief conversation with her…his…their son. Now the questions started hammering his brain. One in particular.
