One Hot Secret (Love on Fire)

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.”

Chapter 35

Grace

I look from Kyle to his mother, and I’m at a loss for words. My heart goes out to Kyle. I want to gather him in my arms and hold him tight. I can’t imagine how painful it must be to be told that the man you thought was your father all your life is, in fact, not your father.

Kyle covers his face with his hands and then drops them. He stares at his mother as if trying to understand her. She doesn’t seem to realize the magnitude of what she has dumped on her son in the space of fewer than five minutes.

Adrian Martin. Everyone knows him, even I, who doesn’t follow celebrity news. The more I think about it, the more I see the resemblance between Mr. Martin and Kyle before his accident.

I move from my position on the couch to where Kyle is seated and sit down next to him.

“He never knew that he had a son?” Kyle asks his mother.

“The only person who could have told him was me, and I didn’t,” his mother says casually as though it’s totally reasonable not to inform a man that he has sired a child.

My heart expands painfully at the expression of loneliness and confusion on Kyle’s face.

Kyle stands up abruptly. “We have to go.”

His mother looks momentarily confused. “So soon? I was hoping we could have dinner together and catch up.”

I’m stunned at the complete lack of comprehension on her part.

“Another time, Mom. I have a lot to process today. You just turned my whole world upside down, and I need time to deal with it.”

She stands up with a look of concern. “I’d always promised myself that I would tell you the truth if your father died before me. I know he was mean to you, and it wasn’t fair for you to keep wondering why your own father would behave that way toward his only son. I hope I made the right decision.” She twists her hands together and looks at Kyle pleadingly. Whatever she did in the past, the one clear thing is that she loves Kyle. She just loved her husband a little bit more.

“It’s fine, Mom,” Kyle says, sounding tired and defeated.

We don’t speak all the way home, and when we enter the house and shut the door behind us, he pulls me into his arms and cries on my shoulder. My heart breaks into a million pieces as I hold him tight. There’s absolutely nothing I can do to take the pain away. He slowly gets his emotions under control, and I take his hand and lead him to the living room.