Chapter 23
Hot water beat down on her, soothing tired muscles that hadn’t moved in too long, while her outrage ramped up to boiling proportions.
How dare Kyle treat her in such a way? Who did he think he was?
He wasn’t her boss. He wasn’t her mom. He had no rights over her.
And yet he obviously thought his contribution to Bella’s DNA allowed him to speak for her.
How dare he come in and act like an autocrat, and tell her what to do?
Even if she had been, okay, a bit of a slug and hadn’t got around to cleaning up like she should have.
Like Mom had demanded. After the death blow to her career two days ago, she hadn’t had the energy, let alone the will to do much more than breathe.
So the fact he’d seen her like that, even made a comment about her smell—how humiliating.
She lifted an arm to rub shampoo in her hair and nearly gagged at the smell. Okay, so maybe he had a point. She was gross. Pathetic. Smelly. Giving up like that, even for just two days, made for a nasty Gen. In all senses of the word.
But she still couldn’t believe he had the nerve to threaten to drag her out of bed. Threaten to put her in the shower. How rude!
And yet as she remembered more of his words, her ire slowly subsided. He’d done this for Bella’s sake. Bella, who had been worried about her, who had crept in numerous times in the last couple of days, asking if Gen was sick, if she needed anything, wanted food, a cup of tea.
Mom had barely been home, too busy with work to notice much beyond complaining loudly that not everybody got days off and the chance to have a break, and somebody still needed to bring in an income.
Mom had been as outraged as Gen was regarding the interview with the hospital committee, and the fact Gen was being forced to take leave while they waited for the outcome of the board’s internal investigation.
“It’s not fair!” Mom had whisper-screamed, when Gen had finally told her, after Bella had gone to bed.
“Of course it’s not, but since when do the little people in this world ever get treated fairly?” And in the eyes of some of those private school, Ivy League-educated board members, she would always be a little person. A mere tiny cog in the giant wheel of hospital administration.
“Is there nobody you can speak to?” Mom had persisted.
“If I do, I run the risk of jeopardizing things, so I’m just going to wait it out.”
“But you might lose it all.”
Her chest tensed afresh at the thought. She might just lose it all, and the overwhelm of that combined with all her other pressures had been enough to make her snap and huddle in bed these last two days, trying to escape it all.
Trying to pretend it wasn’t real. Trying to sleep and dream of being a Disney princess who could sleep for a thousand years and wake up and discover everything was magically wonderful.
Trying to avoid all her worries and stresses and questions about her career and finances and Kyle and Bella and God and her future and Mom and money and all these bills she still had to somehow pay.
Until Kyle had shown up.
She leaned her forehead against the shower tiles and tried to stir up fresh anger, but maybe she had already used up too much energy and anger because she had none now. Instead, she could only feel the slightest mite of gratitude that he had bothered to come and force her to live again.
She took her time rinsing then toweling dry her hair, before using the hair dryer.
She rarely blow-dried her hair but she needed to feel as strong as possible before facing him again.
And if he was going to insist on cleaning then she wouldn’t stop him.
She barely had energy enough to hold up the hair dryer, let alone give the house the clean it desperately needed.
She wondered what he’d do if she didn’t come out, whether he’d insist on barging in here, too.
Eventually, though, she knew she would have to go and face the music, so she got changed then did some light makeup—not to make it look like she tried, just so she didn’t look so tired—and finally unlatched the bathroom door and exited to the hall.
Her heart caught at her bedroom. The bed linen had been stripped and replaced, and the pile of bills she’d been too stressed over to deal with had been cleared away. Oh, she hoped it didn’t mean he—
She hurried to the living area, found it had been straightened, too.
“Mommy!” Bella rushed over, wrapped her arms around Gen, nearly toppling her over in the process.
Kyle looked up from where he sat at the dining table. She ducked her head. She couldn’t look at him.
“Bella, honey, are you responsible for cleaning all this up?”
She nodded. “Me and Kyle. Well, he did most of it, and I helped. We had a race to see how much we could get done, and we did a lot, didn’t we?”
“You did amazingly well. Thank you.” She kissed her head. Peeked up. “Thanks,” she muttered to Kyle.
“You’re welcome.”
Bella squeezed tighter. “You smell better now.”
Kyle coughed, and she glared at him, catching him smoothing away a smile.
Then she realized what he was doing. “Excuse me, Bella.” She stomped over to where he had the envelopes open and from what it looked like, with his phone open, was paying the bills.
She snatched them away. “Don’t you know it’s a crime to look at somebody else’s mail?”
“Hey, they were open, lying on the floor in a huge pile. I didn’t think you cared.”
“Well, I do.” She held them to her chest. “What do you think you are doing?”
“Paying for things I would’ve done if I’d known I had a daughter.”
He’d said it evenly, with no heat, but she felt the sting all the same.
“I don’t want you to,” she insisted.
“Well, that’s a shame. At the risk of incurring more Wrath of Gen, I’ve already sorted out your electricity and rent for the year.”
“What?” How dare he? “Why?”
“Because I haven’t had the opportunity to do this for the past ten years, that’s why. If we’d been a family I would have been paying the bills, but I haven’t, so this is my way of trying to make up for things.”
“But you don’t have to. I didn’t tell you. That makes it my fault, my responsibility.”
He pointed to Bella. “And she is my child, and my responsibility.” His face, his voice softened. “Let me pay it, Gen. Let me help you.”
She shook her head as years of her mother’s lectures rolled through her head.
We Rivas women don’t need help. If we say yes to help now then we’re always in someone else’s debt.
The only reason they had accepted Gen’s scholarships was because there had literally been no other way she would be able to study medicine.
But even that had a catch, the mentoring she was obliged to do as part of her “giving back.” Which was why being barred from it as part of a suspension from practicing medicine for two weeks had cut her to the core.
She wasn’t meeting her obligations. She’d failed on this front too.
“Gen.”
His voice was soft, slicing under her protests. “What?”
“I’m sorry if you feel like I have overstepped, but I’m not sorry for stepping in to help. I know you want to be independent, but I want to contribute and help make things easier for the sake of our daughter, if nothing else.”
She battled with his logic. She could see why he might feel it was fair. Except it wasn’t fair. She didn’t deserve fair. Especially when she had kept Bella a secret from him.
“If it makes it any easier, you can consider this a down payment on any alimony you might be expected to receive.”
“Alimony? We were never married.”
“Child support is still a thing, regardless of whose name is on the birth certificate. Or should be, in any case.” He looked at Bella, held out his arm, and she snuggled in.
Oh, her girl was so hungry for her father’s affection.
Gen’s eyes watered. Affection from a father was something she had never known, her father disappearing before she was born.
But if her own dad had stayed, if he had contributed to Gen’s upbringing as Kyle seemed insistent on doing for Bella, how different would Gen’s life have been?
How different would Gen’s own mother’s life have been?
It would’ve meant Mom not having to work like a slave for ridiculous hours every day.
Mom, not living in a tight knot of narrowed expectations.
Mom, not distrusting and self-reliant and independent, and raising her daughter to be the same. Life could’ve been so different.
And yet here was Kyle, stepping in when he’d been deliberately excluded, wanting to help her, help them. It didn’t make sense.
“Why are you being so nice to me? Especially after all I did?”
He studied her for a long moment. “It’s called grace, Gen. Undeserved favor. It’s what I’ve received from God, with His incredible forgiveness for my sins. And it’s what I want to extend to others.” He pressed his lips together. “And all the more to those I deeply care about.”
Deeply care about? Her heart skittered. Did he mean love?
But the expression in his eyes held sincerity and, yes, warmth, but not the kind that had flamed between them before. Instead of heat, this warmth spoke of an earnest desire to help her, to bless her, just like he’d talked about before.
Moisture lined her eyes and she blinked it away.
“Mommy, don’t cry.”
She shook her head, but the tears that she’d stored up for so long seemed to have lost all sense that they were supposed to be controlled, and finally released.
“Mommy?”
She could hear the fear in Bella’s voice as she hugged her. Bella had never seen her lose control to this degree. She sucked in a breath but still the tears kept coming. “I’m sorry.”
She pressed her face against Bella’s hair, hating that Kyle was seeing her crumple like this, but still the wretched weeping continued.
Then he shifted, drawing near, and wrapped his arms around them both.
She closed her eyes, and again savored his warmth, savored his nearness. He was saying something, but she couldn’t quite hear it, her ears wedged between Bella’s hair and Kyle’s chest.