Birthright (16 page)

Had her mother tried? Anti-aging cream was a start, but if her father was bored, the condition of his wife’s skin wasn’t going to make a difference. “If Dad means enough to you, you’ve got to fight,” she repeated, no longer thinking of Tyler. Not thinking only of her parents.

She was thinking of Aaron.

She tried to convince herself she didn’t love him. He’d rejected her last night, after all. How could she love a man who had pushed her away so emphatically?

But he meant so much to her. He meant enough that she was willing to fight. Before he’d said no, his mouth and hands and body had said yes.

She wasn’t willing to give up on him. Not yet.

“S
O
, S
AM’S DOING OKAY
?”
Mitch asked.

Aaron stood in the open gym doorway overlooking the parking lot. The other kids had already left, and Jeff was collecting the balls and pinnies in the gym. Jeff was a guard on the high-school team, the kid Aaron had convinced to quit his summer job at the grocery store so he could work in the basketball program. Especially this session, with Sam Sterling participating, Aaron needed an assistant. He was grateful to have Jeff, grateful for the money that had enabled Aaron to hire him.

Grateful. That was the only positive sentiment he’d let himself feel for Lily. Grateful and nothing more.

It took all his willpower to shove her out of his mind and focus fully on Mitch. Sam stood beside his father’s car, waiting for Mitch and Aaron to finish talking. The rest of the kids had left already.

“He’s doing great,” Aaron said.

“I know it’s a challenge working with him—”

“Hey, no. We’re doing fine. He’s having lots of fun.” Then, because Mitch seemed to need more assurance, Aaron added, “The other kids aren’t having any problems, either. They’re all getting along, mak
ing themselves understood. Really, Mitch. Relax. Sam’s great.”

Mitch smiled, obviously relieved. “He likes you, Aaron. He was excited that you watched the parade with him yesterday.”

Aaron didn’t want to remember anything about yesterday, but he gamely returned Mitch’s smile and signaled Sam with a wave. As for the parade, well, it had been kind of fun to watch it with someone who’d actually wanted to be with him.

He heard the drone of a car cruising around the side of the building—maybe Jeff was expecting a ride home. He turned back toward the open gym door. “Guess I’d better help Jeff get everything put away. See you tomorrow.”

“See you,” Mitch said. “Thanks.”

Aaron abandoned the muggy heat of the parking lot for the cooler indoor air. In the past few hours the sky had changed from summer blue to heavy gray. The air felt oppressive—thick and sticky. Any minute now the clouds would open up and douse the earth. The sooner the better, Aaron thought. The humid warmth was so dense he was practically choking on it.

From behind him he heard the click of a car door being opened and then Mitch’s voice: “Lily! Hi!” Aaron’s step faltered, as if someone had just delivered a hard blow between his shoulder blades.

Damn it. Damn
her.
Why was she here? Certainly not to offer Jeff a ride home. Aaron wished he could believe she’d come looking for Mitch. He was her friend, one of her River Rat buddies.

But Aaron knew she’d come for him. She wanted
him to be her friend, too. And he would gladly have been her friend, if it was at all possible.

After last night, he knew it wasn’t.

He sucked in a breath and continued farther into the gym, scooping up a stray basketball and carrying it toward the mesh sack Jeff was filling with balls. Jeff grinned at him, then glanced past him toward the door. “Hey, Coach Maz, would you mind if I left now? I gotta bike home, and it looks like it’s gonna rain.”

“Go ahead.”

“Thanks!” The boy passed him the sack and headed for the door in a loose, long-limbed jog. Aaron kept his back to the door, as if by not seeing Lily he could pretend she wasn’t there.

“Aaron.”

So much for pretending. Her voice traveled through the vaulted room, echoing off the metal rafters of the high ceiling, the cinder-block walls, the folded wooden bleachers. Even without turning he could see her, slim and blond and trusting. Across the vastness of the gym, he felt her presence. Through the protective layers he’d tried to wrap around himself since he’d left her house last night, he responded to her. His throat tightened, his head throbbed. Electricity crackled through him, as threatening as the lightning he knew would soon shear through the late-afternoon heat outside.

He gathered the last basketball, shoved it into the sack and tugged the drawstring. If he kept his back to her, would she walk away?

No. He could hear her footsteps, a light tapping sound on the painted hardwood, approaching him. He
swallowed, but his throat was definitely tensing shut. If he didn’t choke on the weather, he’d choke on the dread of knowing Lily was only a few yards from him, closing in, demanding a confrontation.

You don’t want this,
he almost shouted at her.
You don’t want to come any closer.

But she came closer, too close. He felt her hand on his shoulder and labored not to flinch. “Aaron, we have to talk.”

“No.”
You don’t want to hear what I have to say.

“Please.”

Oh, God. With one word she could melt a polar ice cap and raise the ocean high enough to turn Pittsburgh into prime oceanfront real estate. One simple syllable.
Please.

He turned around.

He saw no supplication in her gaze. Her eyes were clear and steady, her chin raised in determination, her shoulders squared. He hadn’t noticed the breadth of her shoulders before. He should have; last night he’d run his hands over them. They were strong and stubborn, like her.

He wanted to kiss her. The way he had last night. Deeper. He wanted to kiss her shoulders, shove down the narrow sleeves of the sundress she wore and kiss her bare skin, her collarbones, her breasts. His throat slammed completely shut and he closed his eyes. He was a sick son of a bitch, and if she insisted on talking to him, she was going to hear about just how sick the whole thing was.

“Please, Aaron,” she said, the firmness of her tone at odds with the gentleness of her request.

“All right.” If talking to her would keep her away
from him, he’d do it. She’d be horrified by the truth. Her life might crumble just as she’d begun rebuilding it, the foundations turning to rubble beneath her. But at least she would understand why he’d run from her last night, and why he would keep running until the day he died.

He heaved the ball sack over his shoulder and motioned with his head toward his office. He wasn’t going to have this conversation in the middle of the gym.

She followed him to the far end of the room, waited while he deposited the balls in an equipment closet, and then entered his office ahead of him. He gestured toward a chair and she sat, her eyes wide and wary, her lips pursed. He closed the door, then sank into his own chair, wishing the desk between them were about two miles wider.

She drew in a deep breath, and he realized she was not quite as calm as she was trying to project. Her fingers fluttered against her knees and she clasped her hands to still them. Her chin quivered slightly and she lifted it again, as if seeking confidence in the pose. “Something’s going on between us,” she said, “and I don’t understand it.”

“Lily—”

“We’re both adults.” He heard a tremor in her voice, so faint no one else would have detected it. But he was acutely aware of everything about her. The strand of hair that had wandered to the wrong side of her part. The beauty mark on her neck below her right ear. The braidlike pattern in the gold band of the watch circling her wrist. The ovals of her knees beneath the loose beige linen of her dress. The
movement of her throat as she swallowed. “We’re attracted to each other. When we kissed yesterday—”

“Lily.” He heard dread in his voice.

“I’m not very experienced, Aaron, but I was married for ten years. I know when a man is turned on.”

He closed his eyes, as if it would help not to have to view her and remember just how turned on he’d been.

“Until last night,” she went on, “I felt I could trust you. I also felt I could trust my own instincts. Now…I’m completely lost. Explain it to me, Aaron, okay? Tell me where I misread the signs. I know you want me to leave you alone, and I promise I will, if you’ll just set me straight.”

“You don’t want to know,” he warned.

“If I didn’t want to know, I wouldn’t have asked.”

“I’m your brother.”

Silence billowed around them, filling the room like toxic fumes. He opened his eyes to see her staring at him, eyes round, mouth agape, cheeks ashen as the blood drained from her face. After a long moment she shut her mouth. Her eyes remained wide with shock.

When he couldn’t bear the silence anymore, he said, “Your father is my father.”

“No.” The word had as much impact as her first “please” had had, only in reverse. Her “no” could freeze the planet, the entire galaxy. Her voice plummeted to absolute zero.

But she had asked him to talk, and now that he’d started, he wasn’t going to stop. “Your father used to visit my mother and me every month when I was
a kid. He’d come to our apartment and spend a half hour or so. He’d ask me how I was doing and he’d give my mother money. Child support.”

“No.” Her voice was a bare whisper now.

“He’d ask what I was learning in school and whether I was reading any good books. Then he’d ask my mother about my health and my diet. He’d hand her an envelope of cash and say, ‘Make sure he takes a multivitamin every day,’ or ‘I think he needs new sneakers.’ Every month without fail.”

Lily shook her head. Her eyes remained on him, glittering with something that looked like fear. “My father wouldn’t do that.”

“Do you think I’m making this up?” His quiet tone undercut the accusation in his question. He could tell her heart was splintering, and his anger and resentment vanished, replaced by sympathy. “Lily, you’re right, I’m attracted to you. It kills me to admit it, but I am. If I could do anything about it, I would.”

“Do anything?”

“Act on that attraction. Or stop being attracted. God knows, I’ve tried to stop wanting you.”

She shook her head again, her gaze on her hands in her lap. They were clenched so hard he could see the contours of her bones and veins through the skin. “My father wouldn’t have an affair. I know he wouldn’t.”

“My mother was gorgeous when she was young. She could take a man’s breath away.”

“I don’t doubt that, but—”

“And there she was every day at the Sunnyside, flirting with all the men who came in. What makes you think your father was immune? Lots of men in
this town weren’t. She had plenty of boyfriends, even after I was born. But only one of them came to our home every month to give her money and ask me about my schoolwork.”

“He wouldn’t have done it. He wouldn’t have fathered a child that way.”

“Being a medical man and all, he probably would have asked her to get an abortion. But my mother would never have agreed to that.”

“Has she…” Lily flicked her tongue over her lips, as if moisture would help the words slide out more easily. “Has your mother told you this? About my father?”

He felt another sharp pain, his own pain at his mother’s refusal to grant him the truth. “No. She won’t tell me who my father is. She never will. She’ll protect him to the grave, and beyond. I think she’s still in love with him.”

Lily winced. A shiver racked her, as if something clammy had brushed against the back of her neck. “I saw them talking the other day,” she whispered, looking stricken. “Their heads were bowed close together, so intimately, and—” She broke off, tears shimmering in her eyes.

He searched his office with his gaze, seeking a box of tissues. He saw the file cabinets, the clipboards, the schedules and the photos, team after team after team, three of them featuring a young, defiant Aaron, a kid with a chip on his shoulder and a rage burning inside him—and one of them, last year’s photo, featuring an older, supposedly wiser Aaron, Coach Maz, a man who had come home changed, a man who cared more about other people’s pain than his own.

Lily’s pain was so great now it beat like a second pulse inside him. If she hadn’t forced this conversation, he never would have told her. He would have kept his knowledge to himself, just to spare her the agony of it.

“I’m sorry,” he said. A couple of clean towels sat on a shelf, and he got up and pulled one down for her. Only a few tears had filtered past her lashes to streak down her cheeks, but the towel was all he had to give her.

She looked at it, bewildered, and placed it in her lap. Then she reached into her purse, pulled out a tissue and dabbed her eyes. “We spend too much time apologizing, Aaron,” she murmured.

“I’m not apologizing. I’m sorry I can’t—” He cut himself off.

“Can’t what?”

“Can’t love you.” His stomach clutched, that now familiar queasiness momentarily overtaking him. He stared past her at the photo on the wall behind her, his first year on the team. So much of the anger in him then had been based on his life, his circumstances, his status or lack of it, but some of it had arisen from his desire for a magnificent blond classmate, a golden girl who had cast an unbreakable spell on him. “I wanted you in high school,” he confessed, studying his younger self, the cocky angle of his head, the resentment burning in his eyes. “I was crazy about you. And when I found out you were Dr. Bennett’s daughter, it destroyed me.”

“You wanted me in high school?”

“Like a junkie wants his drug.” He let out a long
sigh. “I couldn’t—I can’t—ever let myself want you, Lily. You understand, don’t you?”

“I understand,” she said, her words softer than a sigh. She lifted the towel from her knees, set it on his desk and stood up. “I understand.” She walked out of his office, her head once again high, her shoulders thrown back, her bearing regal. He watched through the open door as she crossed the gym in slow, measured steps.

He would never forget the pride in her, the strength, the grace. He would never forget how much he wanted her, even now. He was still a junkie craving her. Like a junkie he would stay clean because to survive he had to.

But he knew the craving would never go away.

I
T WAS RAINING
when she stepped outside. She’d left the top of her car down, and the seats were wet.

As if she cared.

She slumped against the damp leather, turned on the engine and raised the convertible roof. Then she sat, listening to the rain pelt the canvas above her head as shudders ripped through her. She heard a low keening sound and realized it was her own voice, seeping out of her like blood, as if she’d been sliced open, right through her gut, through her soul.