Her Secret, His Child

His eyes were piercing as she tried to meet his gaze. "Why didn't you like him?"

She wasn't lying as she answered him. She gave him the truth the way everyone had seen it then. "Because I was jealous. Before he came along, it had just been my mother and me. I even slept in her bed with her. Once John was there, I had to sleep alone, had to share the rest of my mother's time."

HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

"So you went to your 'room.'"

Jamie nodded. The rest just hung there, unsaid.

"Desperate people do desperate things," he said, almost to himself as he sipped at the small amount of amber liquid in his glass. "When did you start feeling desperate?"

She shrugged. "I couldn't name a particular time." She could name several of them.

"What made you desperate?"

Jamie wanted so badly to tell him the whole sordid story. But she couldn't give him that much of herself. She wasn't ready…

She had to be sure he was in for the long haul first.

"No one thing," she said, shrugging.

After finishing off the liquor, Kyle set the glass down hard. "I'm trying to understand here, Jamie. Because understanding brings forgiveness."

"Understanding doesn't change the facts," she told him, somehow finding the strength to look him in the eye. "And I don't need your forgiveness, Kyle. I need your acceptance."

For a long moment he stared across at her. And he nodded. "You're right. I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

"So we're friends—and heading beyond friendship?" He grinned at her.

Jamie nodded. And smiled. The first real smile she'd felt that week. She held no firm hope for the future, but she'd learned a long time ago to take life one small step at a time.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Brad didn't show up for tutoring the first Monday in April. His coach did.

"What's with you, Radcliff?" The coach stormed through the empty classroom, approaching Kyle's podium. "Your degree go to your head, make you think you're God?"

Glad he was standing—and with a podium between him and the irate gorilla—Kyle didn't bother to answer the question. "Where's Brad?" he asked, instead. "He missed his tutoring session."

"From what I heard, there's not much point in him being here. He's going to flunk anyway."

"That's possible." Kyle nodded. "Almost a certainty if he doesn't come to tutoring."

"You're something else, man, you know that?" Coach Lippert leaned over the podium, his big ugly nose in Kyle's face. "That kid's been trying. Really trying. He's missed conditioning sessions—sessions he needs if he intends to have a body that's still in decent shape ten years from now—to come to your damn tutoring sessions. And for what?''

The guy had some ugly teeth.

"I'll tell you for what," he continued without

HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

giving Kyle time to reply even if he'd wanted to— which he hadn't. "For a great big nothing.?'

"We don't know that yet."

Lippert shoved the podium hard enough to move it. "I saw his last exam, Radcliff. The kid doesn't have a chance. Not unless you bend a little."