Chapter 1
Cat
All night long
Dark
Lying in bed
Dreams
Bombarding my mind
Awake or asleep, does not matter
All night
The dreams come either way
They show me a world
Place and time
Too perfect for words
Where nothing is as real as him
Time drifts on, an endless cloud of bliss
He holds me and I kiss him
Space expands, an endless stream of joy
Paradise
Heaven
Rapturous
Forever bliss, forever joy
Forever us
Cat Nichols, Age 18
“What?” My voice sounded small, mousy, and muted to my ears.
I felt like the wind had been knocked out of me. There was a hollowness in my gut and a buzzing in my head as I struggled to form a coherent thought. Fragments bounced around my mind like shards of glass, but getting any one of them to stay still long enough for me to get ahold of it seemed to be a challenge that was beyond my abilities. To say I was stunned would be an understatement.
“Cat dear, why do you always make me repeat myself?” My mother had a way of saying the most innocuous thing but making it clear by the almost imperceptible edge in her voice that she was actually highly displeased. “This is Jace’s son. Gavin.”
It can’t be true. Could it?
Part of me wanted to believe that Ashton Kutcher was going to jump through the door and tell me that I was being Punk’d. But I knew that this was really happening. Natalya, Jace’s ex and possibly the mother of his child, was standing in front of me with a boy who looked like he could be Jace at three or four. Gavin was basically Jace’s mini-me.
This was real. Natalya was here. In my home. At Thanksgiving. With a boy my mother was claiming to be Jace’s son.
Suddenly, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Pain twisted in my chest like a wet towel being wrung out. My vision blurred and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the tears forming in my eyes or the searing discomfort from the constriction of my shortness of breath. My head felt so full that I was afraid it was going to burst like a balloon filled up with too much helium.
Unexpectedly, a bright flash blinded me. I blinked, and like a rubber band, it snapped me out of my mini panic attack. On pure instinct, when my eyes opened, they sliced to the direction where the sudden glare had come from. I saw that Peter, the photographer who had been documenting ‘Angelica James’ Thanksgiving Dinner’—which had quickly disintegrated into an episode of Maury Povich—was holding his camera to his face and snapping pictures, one right after the other. Next to him, Johanna, the reporter, was frantically scribbling down notes, her head bobbing up and down as she scoped out the room then returned to her notebook. They both seemed to be devouring this all and documenting it all for posterity.
The only benefit to those two being here was that the flash from the photog’s camera had served to jolt me out of the nervous breakdown that I’d been teetering dangerously close to the edge of. Now that I felt my senses returning, my eyes quickly scanned the rest of the room—once I realized that I had momentarily checked out—to see if anyone had noticed.
Jerry, my mother’s assistant, was standing with his arms crossed, wearing a smug expression on his face. I wasn’t even sure when he’d shown up, but he was here now. His eyes met mine in a look that clearly communicated, “Checkmate,” like he’d finally won. Why he’d always hated me, I had no idea, but he seemed very pleased with himself for having dropped this bombshell.
Not wanting him to see that his action had affected me and I was on the verge of tears, I looked towards the side of my room that held people who actually cared about me. My three college roommates and best friends—who, ironically, had driven down to support me through my last crisis (which, with what I was facing now, my unwanted YouTube fame seemed laughable!)—were all staring at Gavin and Natalya with their jaws hanging open.
Jace, who was standing beside me, went white as a sheet as if he’d seen a ghost as he gazed at Gavin. And maybe that was what it felt like. He’d seen a ghost of his life’s past, present, and future all in one little package—a package in the form of a small boy with his bright-blue eyes and jet-black hair.
Across the room, Natalya stood tall, appearing more than a little happy about being the center of attention. She was alternating between preening like a peacock and glancing at my mother with stars in her eyes. Apparently, Natalya was an Angelica James fan.
As my eyes finally dropped to the little boy who was in the middle of all this, I sensed in him a kindred spirit. I recognized the same feeling that I had experienced so many times in my life was also inside him—the overwhelming desire to make yourself small, unnoticeable, invisible, if possible. It was coming off him in waves.