Page 112 of Perfect Pitch

Well, not thinking too much.

I carelessly toss the pile on top of all the other information she meticulously laid out. “Well, he always has been a photogenic bastard, hasn’t he?”

She reached for me, pleading, “Austyn.”

“Beckett Miller is my biological father.” My voice was devoid of emotion.

“Beau Beckett Miller is, yes,” she confirmed before her head dropped in defeat.

There’s an eerie silence in the room. My feet are planted firmly in place, arms akimbo, her jaw tight. “I can’t believe you kept this from me.”

“There were reasons...”

“None of them are good enough right now! How could you not tell me sooner?” I shout.

She visibly recoils at the lash of my anger but kept her own temper in check. “Did you really want this burden while you were growing into the woman you are now, Austyn?”

“It would have been better than answering ‘I don’t know’ all the fucking time to my friends when I was asked if I knew who my father was. It would have been better than the fake support I endured. Knowing would have been better than not.”

“Would it? Would it really? Would it have been better when you confided in just one of your friends, and every time they saw his face on a tabloid they gave you such a pathetic look of sympathy you wanted to curl up and die? Or maybe when he was on the cover of StellaNova as the Sexiest Man Alive? Or maybe walking down the red carpet with a different beautiful woman? Because trust me, baby girl, that’s exactly what I’ve endured from your uncles for years.”

I fell back a step. “Uncle Jess and Uncle E know?”

“Yes. And you want to talk about feelings, Austyn? Deal with those,” she yells.

I nod as I stepped further away from the damning evidence. “At least you had them to confide in. Who the hell did I have?”

I pour all my heartache into eighty-eight keys as snippets of my childhood where Fallon, Mercy, and even Sybil all drooled over Beckett Miller. What would I have given to have been able to have pointed at a magazine and then said, “Hey, that’s my dad.”

Then my fingers slow when I recall how some elderly people at our local supermarket would glance at the tabloids and then at my mother’s stoic face. “I always assumed it was because she was a single mother.” My hands come crashing down. “No. It was because they suspected who!”

“Who what, Austyn?” Trevor yawns. In one hand, he’s holding out a cup of coffee, which I take gratefully. In the other is his cell phone. “Mitch has been blowing up my phone. Says you’re not responding to texts, and it’s imperative he speak with you.”

Mitch! Instinctively, I reach for mine to respond to him but then slow my movements when the events of the last four hours catch up with my brain.

Did he know? I want to slap myself in the head. Of course he must have. After our time in Connecticut, Mitch told me about Hudson Investigations and the resources they throw behind each of their cases. I’m absolutely certain they’d do at least that to protect a man of billionaire rockstar Beckett Miller’s caliber. I’m certain he did. That’s why I pick up my phone and text him.

Austyn:

There was something you forgot to tell me about your employer. If you had suspicions about who I am, you should have shared them with ME, not let me walk into that conversation with my mother blind.

Mitch:

Beats...

Even as the blue dots fly, I shove it in my pocket. I can’t be objective. Not right now. Not about this. “Thanks for the coffee, but I need some time alone. This is family stuff.”

Then I leave Trevor standing stunned next to the baby grand.

* * *

Sleep doesn’t come easily as I wrestle with the number of people who have betrayed me on some level, starting with my mother and ending with my lover. But one thing sticks out after I do a web search on Beckett Miller—my mother’s reasons for keeping this from me were legitimate. “Sure, I could have been bragging to my friends that my daddy was Beckett Miller and they’d have been asking who he was sleeping with this week. All Mama was trying to do was spare me never ending humiliation instead the occasional taunt.” Flipping to my web browser, I grunt, “How many threesomes can a man have in one night?”

And worse yet, was Mitch privy to them?

My fingers flip through article after article—every blip and byte about his life I can get my hands on. And the agony in my chest is enormous.

Not only just for me.

---