Chapter One: The Secrets End
Greg Castle tried to relax in his elevated hospital bed. Chasez was on his way up. Somehow Greg had to find the strength to heal old rifts. The boy who had once betrayed him was now a man – and Lisa would need a man to help her through what was to come. His children would need, at the very least, a father figure. JC Chasez wouldn’t have even been in the running if there hadn’t been a history between them. Greg had heard the younger man loved kids. And JC had once loved Lisa wildly. As hard as it was Greg was about to hand over the care of his cherished loved ones over to JC Chasez.
JC exited the floor Greg had indicated, the oncology unit. He still didn’t have a clue why he had been summoned. The only ‘unfinished business’ he could possibly have with Greg Castle was Lisa. She had been engaged to Greg when she and JC had fallen in love. She had lost her virginity to JC, not her fiancé. Surely after nine years Greg wasn’t going to exhort his pound of flesh. As he remembered, Greg Castle had been an athlete as well as a scholar, solid and muscular. At the time, he had been fairly intimidating to JC who’d been a slight teenager.
Room 519
JC stood at the door, taking a deep breath and collecting himself. He wasn’t that teenager anymore; he could handle this. Okay, time to get the unpleasantness over, he thought. The sooner he confronted Greg Castle, the sooner he could leave. Hospitals were not his favorite place – there were a lot of needles in hospitals.
He pushed the door open.
Greg Castle looked up to see the shaggy-haired, rumpled man. JC Chasez didn’t look like a successful entertainer at the moment, but his face had a maturity, a world-weariness gave Greg hope. “Come in, JC,” Greg said calmly. “Pull up a chair.”
The older man’s voice was even more authoritative then JC remembered. A teacher’s voice.
“Am I gonna be here long enough to sit down?” JC asked.
“I believe so.”
JC took the straight-backed chair on the right side of the bed. Covertly he studied the older man. Except for the pallor foreign to Greg in the early years, he hadn’t changed much. He was still broad-shouldered and classically handsome. He wore glasses now. They seem to make him look more intelligent and more intimidating; despite the fact he was in a hospital bed.
“I can’t offer much in the way of refreshments,” Greg stated. “Ice chips and water.”
“I’m cool.”
Greg smiled slightly. JC still sounded young. Greg had never been young.
“I – umm – how’s Lisa?” She was the only thing the two men had in common.
“She’s good. Beautiful as ever. Motherhood agrees with her.” Greg waved at a framed picture on the bedside stand. Two older darker haired children and two younger ones with Greg’s lighter sandy hair.
“That’s quite a family.” JC responded, noncommittal.
“Scott is eight. Krista is almost seven. The twin’s are Bess and Digger. They are in their twos and let me tell you, they are terrible.” Greg looked at the photo with a father’s love and pride. “Scott is his mother’s boy. Krista is Daddy’s princess.”
“The twins?”
“Bess is quiet and more shy. Digger puts it all out there.”
“Digger?”
Greg smiled. “Gregory James Castle, Junior. He got his nickname when he decided Shasta was his real mother.”
JC remembered Lisa’s little terrier’s penchant for creating craters in the back yard. “Cute. That dog was old when I knew her.”
“Shasta died when the twins were one. She was sixteen.” Greg turned the conversation back to Digger. “Don’t let those angelic curls and big blue eyes fool you. Digger is purely mischief.”
Why in the world was Greg telling him all about his kids? JC wondered. It wasn’t as if he was a long lost buddy or something. He had no intention of getting involved with the Castle children.
Sensing the younger man’s impatience, Greg was blunt. “ I have pancreatic cancer, JC. The chance I’ll beat it is like 5% or less. I have a couple of months tops.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Greg.” And JC honestly was. Four young kids would lose their loving father and Lisa would no longer have her rock-steady husband.
“I can’t say I’m happy about it. Every father wants to see his children grow into adulthood. I was looking forward to Lisa being a spectacular old lady.” Greg’s smile became wistful and sad. “But I’ve had a good life. Fantastic wife. Great kids. Rewarding work…”
Again, JC wondered why he had been summoned to Greg’s bedside. “I’m sorry, Greg. I really am, dude, but why does it matter to me? What unfinished business do we have?”
“You broke Lisa’s heart when you left her behind.”
“I see she got over it okay.” JC waved at the children’s picture. The oldest boy was probably conceived fairly quickly after JC’s departure. Lisa hadn’t mourned him long.
“Not for some time. Do you know what its like to be second best? Lisa settled for me when she wanted to be with you.”
JC shook his head. “I was the first runner-up. You were Lisa’s first choice always.”
“No, not always.”
Hearing the door swing in, the two men turned their head towards it.
“Greg, I –“ Lisa stopped just inside the room, sensing someone else in the room.
“Come on in, Lisa,” Greg called softly. “Left side.”
JC was transfixed. Lisa was still lovely. Her long dark brown hair flowed over her shoulders. She still had a sweet, petite body, but she had filled out some curves. He watches as she moved to the opposite side of Greg’s bed. She approached cautiously. Well, wasn’t that a blissful reunion? She wouldn’t even look at him. She didn’t seem at ease until Greg had her hand. When she gave her husband a brief kiss, JC was revisited by teenage jealousy. Somewhere in the deep recesses of his brain, Lisa should still belong to him. It was ridiculous, of course, Lisa had always been Greg’s; she had merely been on loan to JC.
“Lisa, we have a visitor,” Greg told her.
Lisa smiled, “I know that silly.”
JC frowned. What was wrong with this picture? Lisa didn’t recognize him? Surely he hadn’t changed that much! Greg had known who he was.
Greg merely chuckled at his wife’s statement. “Smart mouth,” he teased, drawing a grin from her. “Sweetheart, I know it has been a long time…” He grew solemn. “It’s JC Chasez.”
Lisa’s eyes flew in the direction of the visitor. She blanched briefly then looked disgusted. “What’s he doing here?”
Well, hello to you too, JC thought grimly. “Hello, Lisa.”
“JC,” she said curtly.
“I am here at Greg’s request,” he told her.
Lisa’s eyes went to her husband. “Why?…”
It was then JC realized something was different about Lisa. Those dark eyes he’d fallen into seemed unfocused. Wait… Greg had directed her to the side of the bed to approach… she hadn’t known who the visitor was. Was Lisa Williams Castle blind? The idea made JC incredibly sad.
Lisa felt her world spin dizzily for a moment, Greg had brought JC back into their lives? She didn’t want him here. JC was a reminder of how weak and faithless she had been. Greg had trusted her to wait for him to return from his year abroad. But JC had been there. He’d seemed much more exciting and romantic to the starry-eyed teenager. Lisa had fallen in love with JC, because he was everything her older, serious fiancé was not.
JC was still everything Greg was not, but now in the comparison she found him lacking. Her husband was understanding, reliable and loving. JC was a pop singer who traveled from place to place singing his smutty songs to libidinous teenies and their equally salacious mothers. He was known to party in expensive private clubs.
Her husband had been relieved when JC hadn’t returned to claim Lisa’s heart. Why bring him back after so much time had passed? “Greg?”
“I asked him to come,” Greg admitted. “Lisa, he needs to know.”
“No.”
“Somebody needs to be here for you and the kids.”
“Not him,” she argued.
“Lisa, please…”
Tears formed in her eyes. “Please, don’t,” she whispered.
JC had no idea what they were talking about. And why would Greg think JC would champion the Castle family. Surely after nine years, his guilt for making love to Lisa would be absolved.
“Greg, don’t.”
Taking a deep breath then clearing his throat, Greg looked JC squarely in the eye. “There is something you need to know,” Greg announced. “Actually a couple of things.”
JC had a sick feeling there were a couple of things he didn’t want to know.
Lisa made one last plea. “Greg, please…”
“When you left Lisa to go to Europe with *NSYNC, she did wait for you. She tried every way she knew to contact you. That Pearlman bastard made certain she was unsuccessful.”
This was news to JC. He’d always believed Lisa’s promise to wait had been a lie.
“But in her condition she couldn’t afford to wait long,” Greg added.
Condition? JC latched onto that word, his stomach sinking.
“When I returned to Orlando, Lisa was pregnant and since she was a virgin when I left, it wasn’t a stretch to figure out whose baby she carried. She did want to wait for you because she was having your child, JC.”
Somehow, JC managed to remain upright. He didn’t know exactly when it felt like the floor dropped from beneath his feet. “And the baby?” he managed to barely whisper.
“Your son Scott is eight years old going on nine,” Greg said. His words were followed by a sob from Lisa.
A son. He had a son. He’d had a son for eight years and no one had bothered to tell him! JC could barely comprehend the news. He reached back in his memory, trying to understand how he could have impregnated Lisa. He’d always used protection; she had insisted. Then he recalled a night of blazing passion. He’d forgotten condoms and too far into the moment to want to stop. He had cajoled, coaxed, begged and seduced Lisa into taking a risk ‘just this one time.’ What did it matter, he’d asked. They were going to married anyway. Lisa had relented. They hadn’t married and he had left a vulnerable eighteen year old girl to face the consequences alone. Suddenly he felt sick. “Lisa…”
“I have to thank you for leaving Lisa and making no attempt to contact her,” Greg told JC. “I didn’t want to lose Lisa.”
As if Greg hadn’t spoken, JC looked at Lisa. “Lisa, I didn’t know. I would have come back for you; I swear. But I was told you married Greg immediately.”
She hadn’t had a lot of options at the time, she thought bitterly. Go through her pregnancy alone and broke, or bask in Greg’s forgiving love. “I didn’t want you to come back,” Lisa stated coldly. “My child and I needed a stable loving home. I needed a man, not a boy. Greg loved me enough to marry me anyway, even though I had betrayed him.”
“Lisa,” Greg scolded her gently. He’d forgiven her for his own selfish reasons.
But she had loved him, JC reminded himself. She’d given him the gift of her virginity, not Greg Castle. Suddenly JC was eighteen again with all the frustration, longing and love for an unattainable girl. When Greg had left for a year of studies abroad, he left Lisa lonely and vulnerable. JC offered his friendship then his love. She held out but after a while his attentions were accepted. Love blossomed, hot, passionate, and reckless as only young love can be. Nothing else mattered; no one else mattered. The way they felt had to be forever. Nothing lasts forever they discovered.
“Why are you telling me this now?” JC demanded. “I’ll gladly pay child support if that’s what you want.”
“I’m not asking you to throw money our way. I’ve always loved Scott as my own.”
Lisa also wondered why her husband had called in someone who had inflicted such pain on them; JC Chasez had been the biggest mistake of her life.
“And I repeat – why?” JC asked.
“Because I am dying. My wife is blind. She’s a wonderful mother, but she’ll need help raising the children. Who is better qualified than the ‘other father’ in the mix? I raised your son for his first eight years. It’s your turn to step up to the plate.”
“You want me to take Scott?” JC was incredulous.
“No. I want you to be a father for all four of them. And I mean more than financial support. I need you to be a hands-on father.”
Father? To a brood of four? He wasn't even twenty-eight!
Greg Castle glanced at his pale wife then back at JC. “I also expect you to marry Lisa as you promised nine years ago.”
Lisa’s horrified gasp drew JC’s eyes back to her beautiful face. It seemed they had come full circle.