One Hot Secret (Love on Fire)

“Good morning and sorry to barge in on you guys like this,” he says. “I won’t be long.” He pours himself some coffee and sits down. Sebastian never comes without warning, so something must be up. We make small talk, but I’m too wound up with tension to continue.

“What’s going on?” I ask him.

“Can I see you privately?” he says, throwing a discreet glance at Grace.

“I can leave, no problem,” Grace says.

I place a restraining hand on her knee. “No, please stay. It’s okay, Sebastian. You can tell me when she’s here.” I don’t have any secrets from Grace, and I trust her implicitly.

“Okay,” Sebastian says. “Your mother called this morning. Your dad had a stroke, and he’s in the hospital.”

A sudden coldness hits my core. I ask Sebastian all the right questions, is it serious, when did it happen, but inside, I’m conflicted. The one thing I worried would happen has come to pass. Since cutting my parents out of my life all those years ago, I’ve asked myself several times what would happen if one of them got sick. I never came up with an answer, and now I don’t know what to do. I try to imagine my father sick and frail in a hospital bed and fail.

Grace takes my hand and squeezes it.

“He’s at the New Life Hospital. I’ve written down all the details here. If you decide to go, I’ve already informed the hospital.” Sebastian slides a sheet of paper across the island.

“Thank you.”

He leaves shortly after leaving me and Grace alone.

“Are you going to go?” Grace says.

“I don’t know to be honest. It seems hypocritical to go now when we haven’t spoken in years.” That’s not the only reason I don’t want to go. It’s selfish of me, but I don’t want my parents back in my life, and by going to see my father, it will be a signal that I do.

“You won’t forgive yourself if you don’t go and something happens to him,” Grace says. “He’s your father, after all.”

“He never behaved like my father, Grace,” I tell her. It’s difficult for another person to understand the betrayal that you feel when your loved ones treat you like a money-making machine. I know my mother felt guilty whenever a story they had sold to the press about me appeared in the tabloids. She would attempt to pass it off as no big deal, and when it didn’t work, she would apologize and promise it wouldn’t happen again. But my father held no remorse. He would stare at me defiantly, daring me to do something. I don’t want to go back to that way of life. It was toxic, and it affected my work and my general happiness.

I meet Grace’s gaze. “Okay, I’ll go.” I’m only doing it for Grace. My conscience will be clear even if something does happen to my father, but I don’t tell Grace that. She’s a good, loving person, and voicing something like that about my own father would horrify her.

“I can come with you if you like,” she says.

“I’ll be fine. I need to do this one on my own.” I slide off the stool. “So much for a fun Saturday.”

“We’ll have many more weekends,” Grace says.

Upstairs, I text Ethan to get ready for the drive to the hospital. I try to coax Grace into the shower with me, but it’s a firm no.

“You don’t have time to waste,” she says.

“Showering with you is not wasting time,” I mumble as I enter the shower.

Thoughts of my parents fill my brain as I shower. I always felt like an outsider in my own family. Even growing up, I felt different from them. I loved reading while neither of my parents did. My father liked to make fun of my nerdiness, and when I had to switch to home tutoring because of my work, he pushed up the teasing a notch. My mom would glare at him when he went too far. I didn’t understand why he saw my education as a threat until later. I’d become the breadwinner of our household at a young age, and he’d come to see my education as a threat to that income.

It was silly to think that way because I loved acting, and if he knew me at all, he would have known that. I never did establish a good relationship with him, and that saddened me. I’d paid a high price for my career, but now that I had Grace in my life, it didn’t matter. You don’t need a lot of people in your life to feel loved. Just one person who loves you for yourself and not for what you have is enough.

I finish getting ready, and Grace walks me to the door. “Call me if you need me,” she says, creases of worry on her forehead.