White Space Season 1

and my child.”
    “I’m surprised you didn’t kill him.”
    Jon almost laughed. “I wanted to. For a minute I thought I might. I don’t think I’ve ever been angrier. He was taunting me, too.”
    “Why didn’t you?” Cassidy said, her voice suddenly teasing. “You didn’t want to be another Hollywood bad boy who had to buy his way out of a murder charge?”
    Jon laughed, finding odd comfort in the womb of Cassidy’s barb. “I don’t know if I ever would have had the balls to do it, but when I was seconds from something, the asshole gutted me to nothing.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Warren said Dad was the one who orchestrated it all, made everything happen.” Jon’s voice cracked. “He said Dad was behind it all.”
    Between chewing his lip and imagining Houser making fun of him, Jon managed to keep the tears from falling. And for a second, he actually managed to smile, thinking it was easier to lose it for a scene than hold it together in real life.
    “What’s the surprise?” Cassidy said “You didn’t know your dad was capable of that? Do you not know your own father?”
    Jon admired how Cassidy could stare into the center of his pain and twist the knife anyway. He nodded his head. “Sure, I knew he was capable. But that didn’t mean I thought he was capable when it came to me. ”
    If Cassidy wanted to say anything, she kept her mouth shut.
    Jon looked into her eyes, and asked, “Why would you do it?” he asked. “Why would you make a deal with my family if you hate us all so much?”
    Cassidy was quiet. She was fighting to stave off tears of her own.
    “I didn’t know all the details about the deal until I came back from rehab. Warren went straight to Sarah with the deal. God only knows what he said to convince her. She wouldn’t ever tell me. I guess she didn’t want me to feel any guiltier than I already did, but I’m guessing he bullied her, told her all sorts of shit about you.”
    “Why do you think that?”
    “Just things she said, indirectly, but never fully,” Cassidy said, losing her own battle against tears. “Sarah wanted so much for me to be off the pills. Hell, she wanted it for me, more than I did — more than she wanted you for Emma Ryan.”
    “Emma Ryan?”
    Cassidy wiped her eye. “Yeah, Emma Ryan. That’s what Sarah called the baby until she knew for sure it was a girl. If it had been a boy, he would’ve been named Ryan.”
    He shook his head. “I don’t know what to say. I wish I’d known.”
    “Don’t say anything,” she said, nuzzling into Jon and laying her head on his chest. “I’ll be sorry enough for the both of us.”
    Jon started stroking her hair, so much like Sarah’s. Within two minutes, his lips were again on hers as his hands rubbed her breasts through her shirt.
    “No,” she moaned, squirming against him.
    “Do you want me to stop?”
    “No,” she whispered, rubbing her body against him.
    Cassidy pulled herself from Jon, tore the boxers from his body, then rubbed her half-naked self against him.
    Fourteen minutes later, Jon was ready to start snoring again. Cassidy lay breathing beside him, her inner thighs, now sticky, braided in between his as she grazed her nails along the length of his chest.
    Jon drifted off, thinking of the life that could have been with Sarah, a life all the more painfully evident as he lay entwined with her doppelgänger.

    * * * *

CHAPTER 8 — Milo Anderson

    Saturday morning…

    Milo was reading Imajica on his Kindle, trying to ignore the itching beneath the bandages on his arms, when the nurse came into his room.
    “You have a visitor.”
    Milo looked up smiling, hopeful for a moment that his dad had returned.
    It was Alex, not his father
    Alex had a backpack slung across his shoulder, his face was bruised like he’d been in a fight. The nurse left the room and closed the door behind her, leaving Milo to face Alex alone.
    “Hey,” Alex said awkwardly. “I heard about the accident. Sorry to hear about Beatrice.”
    Milo said nothing, keeping his eyes on his Kindle, pretending to read the words on the screen.
    “Are you okay?”
    Milo said nothing, unable to release the anger and rage he felt for what Alex’s dad had done.
    Alex stayed rooted between the foot of the bed and the door, as though afraid to come closer uninvited.
    “I just want to say I’m sorry about what my dad did. I know that no amount of words will ever make up for it. And I know you must hate me. But I don’t want