Free Real Time by Jeanine Binder

well as my first tour in Britain. I was home maybe two weeks in a nine-month span. But at Christmas, I got to be home with her for two straight weeks and I think all we did was stay in bed. After the first of the year, I was off on a new tour, starting to hit some of the other European countries, France, Germany, Italy, and I got a call from her one night, excited to tell me she was pregnant with our child. It was a huge shock because I hadn’t been thinking about having kids, at least not yet - I was totally wrapped up in my music. But we both knew I wouldn’t let her abort it, so, in late August, Arianna Marie was born. And she was the image of her mother – brown hair, brown eyes.”
    Nick paused. He took the last drag off of the cigarette before stubbing it into the ashtray. “One of the rare times I was able to spend at home, we were watching television. Arianna, who was almost two, came running into the room, tripped, and fell into the glass coffee table, shattering it. She got a cut on her arm which wouldn’t stop bleeding – it was really deep, so we rushed her to the hospital to have it stitched up. In the process, because she had lost a lot of blood, the doctors were talking about possibly doing a blood transfusion. They had her blood typed just in case. Out of curiosity, I asked one of the nurses what it was. I’m A-positive and Sharon was O-positive. The nurse looked at the chart and told me O-negative.”
    “Arianna wasn’t your daughter,” Kate whispered. She watched him light another cigarette.
    “I didn’t say anything to Sharon at first; I was trying to digest what I had heard. Because if she wasn’t my daughter, then whose daughter was she? I stayed calm until we got Arianna back home and in bed before I confronted Sharon. After about an hour of lies, denials, and excuses, she finally owned up she had been sleeping with someone while I was gone. She tried to blame it on me for not being around but I was too angry to hear it. I didn’t contain my temper then as well as I do now – I yelled and ranted at her for a good hour. I packed a bag, left in the middle of the night, and filed the divorce papers the next day. I gave her the house and her lawyers managed to get a stake of the money I had made while we were first married, but it was a one-time settlement and she had no claim over anything I did after. And, because she didn’t want people to know we divorced due to her being unfaithful, Sharon didn’t say anything to the press when they came knocking. She just cited irreconcilable differences, same as what I had been saying. She married Arianna’s father shortly after the divorce was final and had a couple more kids, the last I knew.”
    “I’m sorry, Nick,” she said softly, drawing light circles on his back with her fingers. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
    “It doesn’t hurt as much as it used to,” he said. Putting out the cigarette, he slid back into bed and pulled Kate back to his chest. “With the other failed relationships, knowing they were all after my name and not me, I decided when the right woman came around, I would know. And you came walking into the studio set with Mickey and I knew. I wasn’t going to act on it, but I knew.”
    “You never let on,” Kate answered. “You were as cool as they come.”
    “I was frustrated out of my bloody mind is what I was. I was on day three of the auditions and there was nothing out there. I’d honestly thought I would have found my replacement the first afternoon.”
    “I walked out of the waiting room three times,” she admitted to him. “I have never been scared to play in front of anyone, but my nerves kept telling me to leave.”
    “I probably wouldn’t have auditioned you on the first day,” he said honestly. “I didn’t like to screen women for the simple reason I don’t like the press which seems to go with it. I try very hard to keep a low profile so the tabloids have nothing to report about. “
    “I can