When we get to the hotel, I stand in the shower spray for a long, long time. I have to get ready for this dinner with Blitz’s parents, but I’m totally knotted up over Denham.
I remember the day he arrived. Mom and Dad obviously knew about it ahead of time, as they weren’t caught off guard when the car pulled up in front of our house in Houston.
It was the summer before I would start high school, and life was still pretty normal for us. My friends from middle school were like me, giggly and obsessed with boys and fingernail polish and whether or not our mothers would ever let us wear makeup.
I knew all the singers on the new show The Voice and had a super-serious crush on Adam Levine. If he was behind a singer, so was I.
Then came that knock at the door. I remember sitting in Dad’s ratty navy blue recliner, pretending to read the book on my summer list for freshman English class.
The woman came in first. They introduced her as Aunt Didi, but I had certainly never met her and she wasn’t a sister of either Mom or Dad. She looked to be in a lot of pain, walking with a cane and taking small mincing steps in her creased old-lady shoes. Her white hair was thin and lay flat against her head.
My little brother Andy was only three and seemed scared of her, hiding behind Mom’s leg. Mom seemed to be taking a lot of deep breaths as the woman came in, and had on her biggest, fakest smile.
Then came Denham.
He looked like a young rock god. His jeans were ripped, and he had on a black jacket over a charcoal shirt, even though it was ninety degrees.
He had his hair gelled so it shot off to one side, like he’d just flipped it. He saw me and lifted his eyebrows, then shook his head and looked away, like I was something he shouldn’t gawk at.
We were introduced and Aunt Didi stayed around for dinner. Then she left, leaving a beat-up suitcase and a couple duffel bags on the porch. I was shocked but Dad just said Denham had no place to live and would be crashing with us for a while.
Dad didn’t seem to know quite what to do with this rebellious-looking teen. He slept in Andy’s room on a mattress on the floor. Andy was instantly starstruck and could be found most mornings curled up next to the mattress. The two bonded pretty fast, and it’s probably the way Denham treated Andy that made me like him.
Because otherwise, he was kind of a jerk.
Our first conversation came on his second day. Dad was at work. Mom was inside with Andy. She had me outside pulling weeds around the rosebushes. Denham stepped out the back door and lit up a cigarette.
“You can’t do that,” I told him. “Dad will kill you.”
Denham shrugged and blew smoke my direction. “He ain’t exactly here. You gonna narc on me?”
He was wearing the same clothes as yesterday, right down to the charcoal shirt. I’d never met anybody like him.
“How did you end up here?” I asked. “Who are you really?”
“Nobody important,” he said. “And I’ll probably just run off.”
My eyes got wide at that. “Where would you go?”
“I got friends on the East Side,” he said. He looked up at the canopy of trees that shaded our backyard and kicked at an old plastic teeter-totter. “Somebody will hook me up with a place to crash.”
“Dad won’t like that,” I said.
He took a step closer to me then, and when his sky blue eyes penetrated mine, I felt a little quivery inside. “You sure worry a lot about what your father thinks.”
“Don’t you have a dad somewhere? Don’t you care what he thinks?”
Denham drew in a long pull on the cigarette, his blue eyes fixed on me. “Been me and my mom all my life,” he said. “She died two months ago.”
“Oh my God,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
He shrugged, shoving a hand in his jeans pocket. “She wasn’t around all that much. I don’t really need nobody.”
He blew smoke in the air, and I knew I’d rather not be around when he got caught. But I decided something that day. Denham was going to be part of a family once and for all. And I was going to make it happen.
At the hotel, I turn off the shower, instantly shivering even though the bathroom is warm with steam. How could he be back now? When I’d impulsively gone onstage for the finale of Dance Blitz, it hadn’t even occurred to me that he would see me. Mom and Dad, maybe, if Mindy saw it and her parents caught her and they called mine. I was fine with that. They can’t do anything to me. I’m nineteen.
But Denham? He hadn’t even crossed my mind.
I wrap myself in a towel and sit on the cushioned stool in front of the long marble counter. The top of the mirror is fogged, but the bottom is clear. I look at myself, remembering the younger version of me. I had confidence then. But the years in between were laden with self-doubt and shame.
Shame I hadn’t needed to feel.
He wasn’t my brother at all.
Denham had kept the ruse, calling Dad “Mr. Mason” although Mom had him call her Dot, a shortened form of Dorothy that felt more like a nickname for him to use.
Mom liked Denham, quietly bringing him into the family, keeping the smoking away from her home and encouraging him to come along on outings to movies and dinners, even though he tried to stay behind.
That summer had a record-breaking heat wave, and Mom set up a sprinkler in the backyard for Andy.
One day, my friend Paula and I went to the backyard to get some sun and watch Andy for Mom, who had gone to the store.
I wasn’t allowed bikinis, even back then, but I wore a tankini where the top was long enough to meet the bottom. Paula’s mom was less strict, so she had a ruffled bikini, but it was still pretty tame.
After fifteen minutes of Andy splashing around, and Paula and me chatting about high school starting in a few weeks, Denham came out on the back porch.
He had wisely shucked the leather jacket, since it was pushing one hundred degrees, and had on a tight white T-shirt and jeans. His eyes roamed over me and Paula as he lit a cigarette.
Paula nudged me and asked, “Who is THAT?”
I wasn’t sure what to call him. He wasn’t related, not a cousin or anything. “That’s Denham,” I said. “He’s living with us.” I leaned in to whisper. “His mom died.”
“Oh,” Paula said. She flicked her long blond hair behind her shoulder and squeezed her arms together to make it look like she had more cleavage than she did.
Denham noticed, his eyebrow quirking as he blew smoke out over the yard. Then his gaze rested on me lightly, like a caress.
“He’s into you,” Paula whispered. “It must be pretty crazy, having a hot guy like that living in your own house.”
My gaze snapped back to Denham. He wasn’t trying to hide his interest. My skin tingled where he looked, along my legs, up my belly, and across my chest.
“Have you kissed him yet?” Paula asked.
I nudged her hard. “No way!” I said.
But as Denham kept staring, his gaze constantly dropping to my thighs, I started feeling like maybe I wanted to.
A tap at the bathroom door startles me.
“You okay in there?” Blitz asks.
I stand up quickly, pushing my wet hair back, and open the door.
Blitz waits outside, holding up two shirts.
“Which says, ‘I’ve brought the crazy hottie who disrupted my TV show home to Mama’?”
This makes me laugh. “Go with the blue,” I say, tapping the chambray one. “Purple makes it seem like you’ve been tamed by a woman already.”
“Ah, but I have!” Blitz says, leaning forward to press a light kiss on my mouth. “How are you doing?”
I open my mouth to say, “Fine,” but the words freeze. I’m not fine. I’m terrified.
Blitz sees it. He hangs the two shirts on a hook over the door and leads me by the elbow into the bedroom. He picks up a white robe on the way and wraps it around my shoulders.
“Come here,” he says, settling on a bench at the end of the bed. He pulls me down close to him, his arms around me. “Tell Dr. Blitz all about it.”
I laugh again. Blitz is good for serious situations. Of course he is. He entertained millions of viewers every week for two seasons.
My head rests on his shoulder. “I didn’t think I’d ever see him again,” I say. “Do you think he’ll go after Gabriella?”
“He might,” Blitz says. “But judging by his broken-down truck, my lawyers probably charge more than his lawyers.”
I sigh. “But what’s the right thing to do?”
He squeezes me. “I guess it goes back to what happened back then. You want to talk about it?”
I close my eyes to the beautiful hotel room, the luxury around me, and the sight of Blitz, who has been completely understanding of every step of my withdrawal of my family.
“It’s complicated,” I say. “All the shame for all those years. Being hidden away like a monster. Having my baby taken away. All for nothing. He was just some kid. His aunt must have convinced my dad he was his.”
“Obviously your dad was playing around,” Blitz says. “It had to be a credible threat.”
That is true. For the first time, I have the moral high ground over my father.
“Denham was almost two years older than me. If you add in nine months for the pregnancy, Dad would have been with that woman early in his relationship with Mom. They weren’t married yet.”
“But she could do the math,” Blitz says. “And your dad must have been pretty anxious to make his own son keep quiet in order to live there.”
“Not-son,” I correct. What a relief it is to say that.
“I guess he did do right by you in tracking you down to tell you that,” Blitz says, kissing the top of my head. “I suppose I shouldn’t have knocked him unconscious.”
“You were defending my honor,” I say. “Again.” I remember his flattening a guy on our very first date, a man who insulted me outside a Mexican restaurant.
“Is this too much? You want to cancel the dinner tonight?” Blitz asks.
“No, no,” I say. “I’ve already waited a month to meet them.”
Blitz gives me one more squeeze and stands. “We’ll get past this, Livia. That guy will be nothing more than a blip in our very long lives.”
I head back to the bathroom to get ready for dinner. I want Blitz to be right. But I knew Denham very well. And I can still hear his threat.
I’m going to find that baby.