Hung (12 page)

"Clay," Alicia sputtered, "this is crazy. I'm not some kind of escort."

"Oh my God, Alicia, that's the last thing I think about you. The money can go into a trust fund, so it's just for the kid."

"Can't you just," Alicia continued in shock, "prove yourself to me like a normal guy? That's what relationships are for, isn't it?"

"I could," I agreed, "but can you wait?" I knew that this could be the only chance Alicia and I would ever have to have a child of our own, and I wanted it more than anything in the world. Alicia fell silent, considering the meaning behind my words. I saw her face fall as, yet again, she was forced to confront the truth of her own infertility, and the ticking clock the Clomid had forced upon her.

"Clay, I dunno, this isn't just crazy, it's nuts!"

"Would you have a child with me if you knew that I'd truly put my past behind me?" I asked, placing my hand on her chocolate cheek and stroking her soft skin.

"Of course…" she whispered, and I knew it was the truth.

"Then give me the chance, Liss. What's the worst that can happen – you get the kid you've always wanted and he's set for life?"

"You keep saying
he
." Alicia whispered. "How do you know it'll be a boy?"

"My kid?" I grinned. "Of course it'll be a boy. And my God, that kid's going to be the pick of the playground."

I could see the war going on in Alicia's brain written on her face between her desperate desire to have a kid before it was too late, and her distrust that I had really changed. I wanted to try and convince her, to say one last thing that might swing the balance in my favor – but knew that I'd spoken my piece. There was nothing more I could do to convince Alicia to carry my child. She would have the final say.

"Clay, I need some time to think."

"However long you need," I agreed without missing a beat. This was great – she hadn't shot me down immediately. Then again, she hadn't agreed either… "I'll get the papers drawn up just in case."

M
y finger hovered
over Mike's name on the screen of my iPhone as I deliberated whether or not I should call him. I knew that in a sense this was going behind Clay's back – but I also knew that if I was going to agree to Clay's mad plan, then I needed to be absolutely sure I was doing the right thing.

Decision made, I stabbed my finger downwards onto the screen.

"Alicia?" Mike said upon picking up, a note of mild surprise in his voice. "It's not often I get a call from you. Everything okay?"

"Yeah," I agreed, injecting a note of false cheeriness into my voice, "everything's fine."

A pause hung on the line between us for a few seconds. Mike finally broke it. "Can I, I dunno, help you with something?"

I agonized over how to begin, but finally realized I just needed to throw myself into what would, no doubt, be a very awkward conversation.

"I need to ask you something, Mike."

"Shoot," he agreed over the sound of papers rustling in the background.

"You've known Clay for a long time, right?"

"Since before he got famous," Mike confirmed. "Why'd you ask?"

"I need to know – does he seem
different
recently?"

Mike suddenly sounded more engaged, as though I now deserved more of his attention. "Since when exactly?" Before I had a chance to answer, he asked another question. "Does this have something to do with Clay calling his lawyer?"

"You know about that?" I asked, mortified. I knew that Clay and Mike were close – but manager or not, I was seriously unsure about whether I wanted to have a relationship, hell – raise a child, with a man who shared so much with anyone other than me…

"I know that he called his lawyer, nothing else," Mike amended, sending my heart rate racing back down from the red zone. "I take it that it has everything to do with that."

I confirmed as much with my silence.

"To answer your other question," Mike continued, "am I right in assuming you want to know if he's been different since he met you?"

"I guess…" I murmured. This conversation was a hell of a lot harder than it had sounded when I'd played it out in the privacy of my own head, and that had been hard enough.

"In short – yes," Mike agreed with a sigh. "He sort of reminds me of the old Clay, before…" He tailed off sharply, like he was aware that he was treading on uncertain ground.

"Before what?" I asked with interest. "What do you mean,
the old Clay
? Did he used to be different?"

"Alicia, it's really not my place to say…" Mike said uncomfortably.

There was something here, I knew there was – and for the sake of my child, or at least my theoretical child, I knew I had to get to the bottom of it. Even if that involved a little bit more sharing than I was comfortable with.

"You want to know why I'm calling, Mike?" I said, baiting the hook.

"It'd be nice," he replied with a chuckle. Underneath his humor, though, I could sense a keen interest in the direction I was taking this conversation. After all, Mike and Clay had been a team for so long that I was without a doubt the intruder, and Mike had every reason to distrust me. Especially after Clay had torpedoed his career on my behalf the day before.

"Clay wants to have a kid. With me," I hastened to add. "I need to know if he's capable of raising a child. Mike – anything you know, I need you to share it with me."

There was a long silence over the phone, and then an aggrieved sigh. Finally, just as I was beginning to wonder whether I should prompt Mike for an answer, he started talking. It was slow at first, tentative, as though he was spilling secrets that had remained long buried.

"Alright, I'll tell you what I know," he sighed. "But, Alicia, you need to keep this to yourself. If Clay knew that I'd ever spoken to you about this, I don't know how he'd respond, but I can't imagine it'd be well. You promise?" Mike had an odd note in his voice, like he was dredging up a difficult memory, but it felt like more than that. Whatever he was about to talk about wasn’t just a story about Clay, but him, too.

"Promise," I agreed.

"Clay had a sister. A twin sister."

"He what?" I asked in shock.

Mike waited until I was silent again before continuing. "This was before he ever got famous. He was just doing what you did – singing in bars and clubs across town, always with her. They were beautiful together; they sang like I couldn't believe. That's when I met Clay."

Again Mike lapsed into a pained silence, but this time, I held myself back from jumping in. Mike was clearly reliving an agonizing memory, and I had no intention of causing him any more pain.

"You've never seen a man more excited than when Sarah found out she was pregnant. I think Clay was even happier than I was."

"Sarah is his sister?" I asked quietly, the shock of the revelation obscuring the greater depth hidden in Mike’s words.

"Was," Mike said sadly, confirming what I'd feared. "Sarah
was
Clay's sister. She was six months pregnant when she fell ill. She never went to the doctor, not at first, anyway – neither she nor Clay had health insurance at the time, and she thought it was just a fever. By the time she went to the hospital, it was too late."

"What happened to her?" I breathed.

"Septicemia. Blood poisoning. She wasted away in a matter," he paused, his voice breaking with the pain of remembering, "of days. They tried everything in that hospital, but nothing worked. It was antibiotic resistant; she didn't stand a chance."

"Poor Clay," I whispered, my heart rending just at the thought of what he'd suffered through. I'd never had a sibling, so I could barely imagine the pain of losing not just a sister, but a twin sister. I wanted to hold Clay, wished I been there at the time to comfort him.

"Poor Clay," Mike agreed.

"What happened to the baby?" I asked, fearing I knew the answer already.

"They couldn't save it," Mike said with a sense of overwhelming sadness. "I think that's what changed Clay. The death of his sister was bad enough, but he'd promised her when she went into hospital that if anything ever happened to her, he'd take care of her kid. When he couldn't, he took it hard."

"But there was nothing he could have done…" I said sadly.

"I told him the same," Mike agreed, "but grief isn't linear, it's not logical, and it affects everyone differently. For Clay, that meant getting into drinking, drugs,
women
…"

"And that's when his career took off?" I asked, surprised. I couldn't figure out how Clay had managed to build a hugely successful music brand for himself in the midst of such sorrow.

"He didn't get famous for his singing." Mike laughed sadly. "He got famous for the fact that he could stand up on stage in the first place. Clay was one of the first Internet stars. Every scrap of gossip about his wild lifestyle fed into his legend and made him the global star he is today. Clay didn't care about any of it. At least I was there to pick up the pieces, hold things together as best I could and squeeze enough money out of his antics that if he ever healed, he wouldn't be flat broke."

"You've done a stand-up job," I said into the handset pressed to my ear. "I never knew any of this."

"You wouldn't," Mike said. "In the brief moments when he was lucid after her death, and not strung out on whatever cocktail of booze and pills he’d taken the night before, Clay was clear about one thing – he never wanted to exploit the memory of his sister."

"You said that you thought Clay might be going back to his old self," I said hopefully. "Did you mean that?"

Mike sighed. "I don't want to give you false hope, Alicia – and I'd feel terrible if I gave you advice that later turned out to be wildly incorrect."

"I can take it, Mike. I'm a big girl – in more ways than one." I chuckled.

"The answer is yes. He seems more grounded, more caring. I've not seen him look at a woman before in the way he looks at you – not even before Sarah died. He’s cut back his drinking, I haven't seen him smoke a cigarette in weeks," that gave me a slight shock – because the more I thought about it, the more I realized that nor had I, "and he's managed not to get himself in a fight since he met you."

"That's what I hoped you'd say," I said, a smile dancing on my lips. But Mike wasn't finished.

"But, Alicia, it's been years since Sarah died. Can I honestly put my hand on my heart and promise you that he's changed for good? No."

I groaned. "Mike, you had to go and make it difficult, didn't you?"

"I had to say it—"

I cut him off. "I know. I'm glad you did."

"You'll keep all this to yourself, won't you?" Mike asked seriously.

"Of course. Thank you, Mike. I know reliving all that can't have been easy."

"No problem."

I put the phone down, head spinning from the dump of information I'd just received. This put Clay into an entirely new perspective. He wasn't a liability – he was just damaged. Still, I had no idea whether that changed my stance on whether or not to try for a kid with him. Clay was right about one thing, though – if we were going to attempt it at all, I needed to make my mind up fast.

I walked to the kitchen, eyes fixed on the floor as I considered my options. I needed a cup of coffee, and preferably one with a stiff shot of rum in it to steady my nerves. The one thing I didn't need, though, was to run into Clay. But of course, it was bound to happen.

"Hey, Liss," he said solicitously, "how you doing?" I saw his eyes searching me, probing my expression to try and determine whether I'd made up my mind or not. They flicked away, disappointed. He leaned in for a kiss, and I gripped his hips, holding them for support. He smelled clean, fresh, and there was a hint of aftershave – sandalwood and pine needles. It was spicy and autumnal, and I could have breathed it in all day.

"All the better for seeing you," I replied, looking up at him and seeing him in a new light. And in that moment, looking at him and seeing nothing but interest in my well-being in his eyes, I made my mind up. "I'll do it."

"Do what?" Clay asked absentmindedly. "Wait, are you talking about the baby? Are you serious?" He grabbed my hips and spun me round in elation.

"Whoa, boy," I giggled, "slow down. First things first, you've got to stop calling it the baby, okay?"

He put me down, face still wreathed in delight. "You got it, boss. Why?"

"Because we have to face up to the truth – either way I'm probably not getting pregnant."

"Trust me," he replied with a grin, "with swimmers like mine, that won't be a problem."

I liked his confidence, and getting to sleep with him without a condom again would be amazing, but I had to set him to rights. "It's not your swimmers I'm worried about."

"You worry too much, Liss. You've never had an unquenchable stream of semen at your disposal. We'll put the hose on this fire until we put it out. Or start it back up, whatever metaphor you like. Now, find me a pen; we aren't leaving this room until you've signed on the dotted line." He kissed me hard and ran a finger down to my plump ass. "Because I can't wait to get you into bed."

"I'm not signing it," I said. "I don't want you to think I'm doing this for your money. I’m doing it because I think you
have
changed. And I'm doing it because I trust you."

Clay smiled broadly, like I'd made his day, but he shook his head regardless. "You're signing them, Liss. I know you aren't out for my money, but this is the best way. If we get into a legal battle with Atlantic and I lose, I might lose everything. If we put it in a trust fund for our kid, you'll both be set for life, and I won't lose sleep worrying about you."

He looked down at me with a dead certainty in his eyes that he had the right course of action. "Are you sure?" I asked earnestly. "Are you sure there isn't another way? Seriously, Clay – I don't want your money."

"And I don't care," he said easily. “You're getting it either way."

He opened a drawer in the kitchen, pulled out a thin sheaf of legal papers and set them down on the granite kitchen island.

"You got them done already?" I asked, eyes widening with surprise.

"You better believe I did," he replied. "I called a lawyer the moment we got home yesterday. He couriered them over within a couple of hours."

"Efficient," I commented, smiling. I bent my head to look at the contract and almost got whiplash as I flicked it back up to stare at Clay in abject shock. I hadn't even made it past the first section. "Twenty million dollars, Clay – have you lost your mind?"

"Is it not enough?" he replied, looking worried and reaching into his pocket for his phone. "I can call up the law firm now and have them draw up a new one…"

He flinched as I flung a pen at him, but caught it effortlessly. "No, you idiot – it's far too much! What the hell is a baby going to do with that much money?"

Clay closed the distance between us in a heartbeat, swaddling me in his giant, muscular arms. "It's not the baby I'm worried about, Liss. It's making sure he never wants for anything his whole life. I can give him that, so I'm going to. Trust me, I won't miss it."

"This is crazy," I muttered to myself as I buried my head in his broad chest, settling myself by taking a deep draw of his aftershave through my nostrils. He relinquished the hug slightly, loosening the grip of his arms, and waved something in front of my eyes. It was too close, they couldn't focus. "What's that?"

"The pen, Liss. Sign the damn contract, because I want to tear these clothes off you and you're making it difficult." He was still hugging me against his body hard enough for me to feel the truth of that statement pressed up against my stomach…

"Fine," I grumbled, snatching the pen from his hand and wriggling free of his grasp. I scribbled my signature on the last page, noticing he'd already signed in black ink, and initialed where Clay had.

"Happy?" I pouted.

"You have no idea. Now, about that baby…"