Page 116 of Perfect Pitch

We’ll talk when you get back home.

Her response, when she finally does, does nothing to reassure me.

Austyn:

Oh, you bet we’ll talk when I get back to the city.

It’s not lost on me she doesn’t call New York home, despite her doing so just a few days ago while wrapped in my arms.

* * *

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

There’s a universal pressure to be jubilant around the holidays.

—The Fireside Psychologist

Mama flew back with me to New York when my tour was over. On the flight, I told her everything—including about Mitch and how he works for my father. Suffocating with guilt that I’ve brought her a single moment of pain, I bared my deepest feelings, “I’ve been falling in love with him.”

“And what does he feel about you?”

“I don’t know.” Twisting my head away, I focus on a cluster of clouds in the distance. I turn back and meet her eyes so she knows the depth of my honesty. “I had no idea who he worked for until the other night.”

My mother cups my cheek and smooths her thumb against my skin. “Austyn, you don’t have to convince me. You didn’t know who your father was.”

“Shouldn’t I? Shouldn’t I have?” That’s the question nagging at me.

My mother stares at me before her lips curve into a reluctant smile. “If I didn’t have those photos, would you have believed me?”

I stare at her a moment before grinning. “Okay, so it may have been farfetched.”

Both our lips quirk in identical smiles. Then she probes, “Do you think Trevor knows?”

I release a heartfelt sigh. “I don’t think so.” After the last show, my friend flew back to New York understanding I wouldn’t be returning for a few more days. “I don’t think Mitch shared this with his brother. I’ll be devastated if he did.”

“Of course you would.”

I hold a fist up to my lips to keep back a cry of frustration. Everything about my life has turned upside down in a matter of days. Just a week before, I felt surefooted. Now every step I take forward in my life is through a pool of quicksand. I can’t even begin to imagine how my mother feels. Her expression is stark, her skin translucent. I spy bluish circles beneath her eyes. It’s a look I used to attribute to her spending too much time working. Now, I wonder, was she overtaken by the emotion of what she could have had with my father?

It makes me resent both my biological father and the man I’m falling for all the more.

I reach for her hand. “I don’t know how you kept this to yourself for so long.”

She glances around the first-class cabin before lowering her voice even more. “Austyn, you’re the daughter of the most famous man on the planet. Some days I don’t even believe he was the same boy who...” Abruptly, she stops speaking.

With my own heartache lodged just beneath my breastbone, I understand. It’s not that she doesn’t want to continue. It’s that she can’t. Giving her a moment to compose herself, I think about the texts I’ve received from Mitch in the last week.

It’s the last one I can’t quite get out of my mind.

Mitch:

Beats, there’s so much for us to discuss. Please, give me a chance.

There, right there, is where redemption intersects. It’s at the crossroad of hurt and love where humans are most vulnerable. How could Mitch tell me he’s falling for me and lie with every breath he takes?

I guess it’s easy to do; Beckett did it to my mother.

“Bastards. All men are just bastards,” I mutter grimly.

---