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Nick sat on the edge of the couch. "Yeah, I guess I just never imagined how much we were talking about. Maybe a hundred thousand isn't much to you. I only expected a couple of hundred at the most. After all, I didn't do much to earn it."
Kelsey shook her head. "Oh, but you did Nick. You earned it. I couldn't have a child without your help. And I suspect from your reaction tonight that it's hard for you that you can't have an active part in her life. But it's your sense of responsibility that drew me to you in the first place. One doesn't seem to compliment the other, though, does it? I guess it's ironic that I should choose a man that wants and likes children, against a man who is indifferent to them. Perhaps that might have been easier."
Nick felt the pangs of guilt inside him rise and choke him. Knowing him, had she said knowing him? Did she know him? Did she realize what she was doing to him, making him give up perhaps the only child he might ever have?
Still, he couldn't lay all the blame on her. He had agreed. Agreed? Hell, he signed a damned contract. Where had his mind gone? He should have thought this through instead of rushing into this agreement? He knew the consequences. Perhaps the clinical part of it had blinded his reasoning.
"Yeah, well I guess this arrangement bothers me more than I thought it would."
Kelsey placed her hand over his, feeling the current running between them like a live wire. "I didn't realize just how seriously you were taking this until tonight, Nick. I really didn't know you that well. I thought the less we knew about each other the better. Like you suggested. I thought by the time you agreed to do this, you had come to grips with the reality of it all."
Nick glanced down at her hand on his. She quickly moved it. He stretched, then stood and paced the room. He wished the room would swallow him. He wished the whole thing could be swallowed up and he and Kelsey could start fresh. "Yeah well, I thought, because it was so clinical, it would be easier to walk away from it. I thought I could just ignore the fact that we're talking about a real life here. But I can't. There are too many things to consider, Kelsey. This is a real baby we are talking about. My baby!"
He stopped pacing and met her gaze. "You want no involvement, from me. I understand, I think. It's not like you didn't tell me up front. But it still doesn't sit any better, knowing it. There isn't a day goes by I don't think about it."
Kelsey extended a hand towards him, and Nick felt jolted by her compassion. Every touch sent him careening down a new path of awareness? He wanted so badly to know more about this woman, to probe deeper into the real person. He should be giving her what for. Instead her heart wrenching story had only drawn him to her more.
"Nick, I never meant to hurt you. Never meant to confound your morals. That is part of the reason I insisted this be done in a clinic. My intention isn't to hurt anyone. I simply want a child. And I can't do that by myself."
Nick let go of her hand.
"You know, it's funny. I took that check thinking I could save it as a memento." He smiled sadly at her. "But dammit, it rubs me the wrong way. My dad left us. Left my mother right after Tony was born, after he beat her. He came home drunk once too many. I never forgave him. Not for that. Never. And I swore I'd never do that to my kid."
Kelsey's eyes shone with sympathy. "Nick, please, don't be upset about this. Don't make it something, it isn't. You aren't your father."
"Yeah, I know. At least I never thought I'd be." He muttered miserably. He wanted her to understand what this child meant to him, that he didn't take creating life so nonchalantly. That no man should. "But it hits close to home, regardless. Too close. I swore I'd never leave a kid of mine. Never walk out on it. And look at me. I'm no better than my own father. It doesn't matter how much you white coat it, it's still the same."
"You loved him very much, didn't you?"
"I hated him."
"Yes, I know," her voice softened, "but you also loved him, didn't you?"
Nick glanced out the big picture window toward the park and river, wishing she wasn't quite so understanding. Wishing he could hate her for what she was doing to him.
"Yeah," he admitted with a grit of his teeth. "I loved him."
He thought these emotions were buried. He was wrong. They were gripping his heart and ripping it into shreds. He felt a moisture sting his eye. God, a tear? After all these years? He blinked it back. The first and last tear he'd cry over his father, he vowed silently. How had she managed to dredge all this up?
Instead he hardened himself, the way he always had when anything got too close to hurting.
"He used to beat the tar out of me." Nick tried to smile. "Whipped me with a belt. I remember once, I stole something from a drug store. He found out, and marched me into that store, made me admit what I had done, and give the toothbrush back."
Kelsey's eyes rounded with surprise. "You stole a—toothbrush?"
"I guess that sounds pretty stupid to someone like you, doesn't it? But we didn't have toothbrushes," He saw the look of shock on her face. "Hell, we didn't know any better, we used a washrag. I thought everyone did. Ignorant, huh?"
Kelsey's expression softened, and this time she couldn't stop a tear from rolling down one cheek. Her compassion unnerved him. He wanted no pity; he wasn't ashamed of being poor.
"No. I don't think so. Go on, tell me what happened?"
Nick shrugged, "Never bothered me that we were poor until I went to school and found out everyone had a toothbrush but me. Hell, until then, I thought we were rich. We had what a lot of kids didn't. We had each other. And that was a lot. So anyway, to make a long story short, I stole one. It seemed simple enough; a lot of kids stole things in my neck of the woods. I figured a toothbrush was pretty harmless. My dad was half drunk, unemployed, and madder than a hornet when he found out what I did. 'The Leonetti's weren't thieves,' he had said."
"How'd he find out?"
"I was stupid, I told my older brother. My brother was as upset as my dad. Dad whipped the fire out of me, for that. But I never stole again. Funny, I guess he was the one that instilled all these guilt trips of mine."
Silence filled the room, and then Nick admitted, looking at her with new understanding of his own feelings. "It wasn't the whipping that was so bad. I got my fair share of them. I could take that. I deserved most of them. It was admitting to that manager what I'd done, that hurt. Dad made me do it. I had to work for that man for two weeks, and still didn't get the toothbrush. He thought I was just another hoodlum."
