He stuck his hands in his clammy pockets then pulled them out again. “These pregnancy tests people buy…You have to—Maybe you already know this. You have to wait three minutes to get the results.”

“Okay.”

“The thing is…That three minutes while I was waiting…I had—I had all these thoughts running through my head.”

“I guess that’s understandable.”

The steps creaked as Dean came up onto the edge of the porch. “Things like how I’d go about setting up medical care for Blue. Whether I trusted my attorney to handle child support or if I should have my agent do it. How to keep it out of the papers. You know the drill.”

Jack rose and leaned the guitar against the chair. “A panic reaction. I remember the symptoms.”

“Yeah, well, when you had your panic reaction, you were—what?—twenty-four? I’m thirty-one.”

“I was twenty-three, but the bottom line’s the same. If you weren’t planning to marry Blue, you had to come up with a plan.”

“It’s not the same thing. April was crazy. Blue’s not. She’s one of the sanest people I know.” He meant to stop there but couldn’t. “She said I’ve turned her into another one of my dirty little secrets.”

“People who haven’t lived in the spotlight don’t understand.”

“That’s what I told her.” He rubbed his stomach where it was burning. “But those three minutes…Everything I was thinking. The plan I was coming up with…The lawyer, the child support—”

“All kinds of shit runs through your head at a time like that. Forget about it.”

“How am I supposed to do that? Like father, like son, right?”

Dean felt as though he’d ripped himself open, but Jack sneered. “Don’t bring yourself down to my level. I’ve seen you with Riley. If Blue had been pregnant, there’s no way you’d have turned your back on your kid. You’d have been right there for him while he was growing up.”

Dean should have let it go, but his knees bent, and he found himself sitting on the step. “Why did you do it, Jack?”

“Why the hell do you think?” Jack bristled with derision. “I could candy coat it for you, but the bottom line is that I didn’t know how to deal with April, and I didn’t want to be bothered with you. I was a rock star, baby. An American icon. Too busy giving interviews and letting everybody kiss my ass. I’d have had to grow up to be a father, and where was the fun in that?”

Dean dropped his hands between his knees and picked at the paint flaking on the step. “But it changed, didn’t it?”

“Never.”