Sixteen Years Earlier

The curtain finally closed on
the show I’d been on since I was eight years old.

Which meant now I had more
freedom to do movies or whatever the hell else I wanted.

That is, if someone would
fucking hire me.

But since I wasn’t working and
had a nice cash pile to sit on, the last six months without an acting gig was
full of a lot of everything I didn’t know I was missing in young Hollywood
until the velvet rope opened for me.

Maybe a little too much, if my
headache and the fact I was sleeping on my sofa in nothing but my boxers, a
pair of wool socks, and some mystery sticky substance on my chest.

I ran my fingers over it,
sniffed them.

Okay, just chocolate syrup.

How the hell did that get there?

As if the pounding in my head
and sticky chest wasn’t enough, my phone had been ringing nonstop.

With my eyes still closed, I
reached for the cordless on the table next to me, turning it on, only to
realize I hadn’t charged it.

Fuck. The other phone was all
the way in the kitchen.

Dodging empty bottles and
crumpled papers, I made my way through the living room of my L.A. penthouse and
to the large kitchen that wasn’t used for cooking anything unless my mom came
out. Which she hadn’t been since I bought the place as soon as I turned
eighteen.

First and last time she cooked
in it.

I pulled my arms into my chest,
my hands shaking as I thought about her.

Was this a call coming from
Dallas that something was wrong back home?

Glancing at my caller ID, I let
out a small breath when I saw my agent, Steph’s, number flash across the
screen.

Maybe this was finally my call
back on the superhero movie.

Standing up straighter, I
cleared my throat before taking the phone off the receiver and putting it to my
ear. “Hey, Steph, got good news for me?”

“Where the heck have you been?
I’ve been calling all morning,” her thick Southern accent practically spat
through the receiver.

“Uh, you know, slept in a little
and got a workout in. I was in the shower when you called.” The lies slipped quickly
off my tongue. Almost too easily.

I guess that’s what acting since
I was in the womb got me: excellent lying skills.

“Well, get your tail down to my
office. We have some things to discuss. Brent’s already here waiting, and Trish
is on her way.”

I froze, the hair on the back of
my neck standing on end.

Brent was my entertainment
lawyer, and the last time the three of us sat down together was when the
network announced the cancelation of my show.

But that didn’t include Trish,
the woman who played my mom on the sitcom for the last ten years.

The one who I may or may not
have gotten dirty with at the final cast party.

So, she was twenty years older
than me and had played my mom; she was still pretty good-looking. And with all
the booze and whatever else was getting passed around backstage, I’m sure we
weren’t the only ones hooking up.

“Okay,” I said, swallowing hard,
trying to ignore the sickening feeling crawling through my stomach. “I’ll be
there ASAP.”

We hung up, and I quickly
showered whatever sticky substance was off of me before throwing on a T-shirt
and jeans, then jogged down to the parking garage where my Lambo was parked.

God, I hated that thing.

I wasn’t a guy who was really
into the spotlight, but a rapper made a big deal about me needing something
flashy in L.A., so I gave in to the pressure and bought the lime-green
monstrosity, complete with vanity plates reading “HrtThrb.”

What a fucking tool I was.

I could see it in people’s eyes
as I drove down Rodeo Drive and they got a glimpse at the tinted windows. The
curling of their upper lips and muttering the same things I was feeling under
my breath.

As if things couldn’t get any
worse, when I pulled into the gated parking lot, large droplets of rain
smattered my windshield.

If this were a movie, right now
would be the black moment for the hero.

Swallowing hard, I tried not to
think on that as I darted out of my car and made a beeline through the large
glass doors.

Bypassing security with a wave,
I made my way up the elevator to Steph’s office.

She was a formidable woman in
size and voice. I was a decent height at six foot two, but in heels, she could
stare me down at eye level. Which she did as soon as I opened the doors to her
office; those dark green eyes were narrowed right on me.

“Finally.”

“Sorry, traffic was backed up,”
I muttered, not caring if she knew my lies at this point.

I slunk down into one of the
leather wingback chairs, my lawyer, Brent, in the other, his briefcase on his
lap, adjusting his glasses as he kept his gaze on the ground.

Steph sighed, shaking her head
as she sat down then looked up to the ceiling. “Bless your heart, and sometimes
you’re such a good actor that if I didn’t know you were full of crap half the
time, I’d believe you.”

I swallowed hard, a sick dread
rising in my throat.

Brent coughed once then opened
his briefcase, setting a few documents on the desk in front of me.

“Stephanie has already looked
over the documents I received earlier today, and I’ve spoken to Trish’s lawyer.
We think we’ve come to a reasonable agreement, but need to go over the
particulars first.”

I raised an eyebrow, leaning
forward and staring at the black letters on the stark white paper. A heading
for a law firm in Santa Monica stood out in bright gold letters before the next
words.

Blood test.

Paternity.

All of the feeling drained from
my face as a cold chill washed over me.

“Apparently,” Steph’s thick
accent broke through my frozen wall.

But before she could finish her
sentence, the glass door of the office swung open and there stood Trish.

Her eyes were wide and her
pupils so large I could barely see the brown of her eyes. But it wasn’t just
the look on her face.

It was what she had rounding the
front of her skin-tight dress.

“You’re pregnant?”

A memory hit me like a sucker
punch to the gut.

How I didn’t have any protection,
and for the first time I felt a woman without anything between us.

I’d grown up with this woman but
never thought of her as a mother.

More like the hot, unattainable
babysitter.

When she started giggling and
flirting with me backstage, I thought it would be our last time together so why
not try something?

“No shit, pendejo, and we’re going to hope that even though it’s been a long
time since I’ve had any other action, that this very drunken mistake in a back room
with my barely legal costar that created an even bigger mistake.”

Fuck.

How could I be so stupid?

I winced, looking down at the
marks on my arms. The ones I usually covered up with a sweatshirt but ran out
of the house so quickly I didn’t think about it. I’d let sadness take hold of
my thoughts instead of dealing with them.

Now…

“I’ll sign whatever papers I
need to. Own up to my fuckups. I’ll be a dad. I’ll do whatever you need me to
do, Trish.”

I turned toward her as she blinked
slowly then took the empty seat next to me, her hand on her stomach. “Oh,
honey, no. I just want the blood test to know there isn’t anything in your
family history. Other than that, this baby’s mine.”

The hair on the back of my neck
stood on end as I tried to control my emotions. “So that’s it? Just a blood
test?”

“If you stopped using it won’t
show anything you don’t want anyone else to know,” Trish muttered, flipping her
glossy black hair over her shoulder.

“Trish and her lawyers have
agreed to keep this quiet if you just go through with the blood test to find
out if you’re the father,” Steph interrupted.

“That’s it?” I asked, my tongue
numbing in my throat.

“I don’t need your money or your
sympathy, Len. I just want the blood test and the NDA my lawyer prepared,”
Trish said.

“But we can negotiate whatever
you want to add,” Brent added.

I swallowed the bile rising in
my throat. “NDA?”

She smiled, but it didn’t reach
her eyes. “We all want to keep this quiet. Could you imagine if this rocked the
tabloids? TV Mom and son get dirty and have a kid? It would ruin both our
careers.”

This was the moment I could
break down.

I was well off enough from those
ten years of working on the show; I could walk away from Hollywood and fight
for this.

But as I looked down at the
swollen marks on my wrists, I knew I wasn’t in the right place to be a dad. The
right place to be something for anyone.

It was time I finally woke up.

“Just tell me where to sign.”

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