Page 43 of Coaching Prince Charming

“You heard the man, Carter,” Dad said victoriously. “He used you, son. And he won’t trade his fame for you.”

I ignored Dad and took a step toward Nate. “You’re lying.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m not lying.” He swallowed and moved further away from me, searching for the bottle and the glass. When he found them, he poured himself a double shot. “It was fun, Carter, but I wasn’t thinking straight. I…” He shrugged again, pressing the glass against his open mouth and taking an unhealthy sip. After swallowing, he exhaled tightly. “I shut it all out for a while, but your father’s right, kid. I can’t lose all I’ve worked for.”

“He’s blackmailing you,” I squeezed through clenched teeth.

Nate looked at me blankly as if I had just stated that the sky was blue. Was blackmail and backstabbing so normal among the rich and famous? It seemed they had still protected me from some truths when I was a child. “Checkmate,” Nate said. “It’s too much to risk, Carter.”

Hot, angry tears brimmed in my eyes. “Swear that you mean it.”

For the briefest moment, I thought there was a ripple of emotion on his face. It might have been the trick of the light through the tears that made the world smudged and blurry.

I thrust my chin out. “Swear on my rollerblades.” He wouldn’t. He would never.

He stared at me for the shortest of moments, then put his right hand over his heart. “If that’s what you want…I swear on your rollerblades.” He said that in a voice as if he wasn’t sure what the hell I was talking about.

I could almost hear my heart breaking. It wasn’t a shatter of an antique vase on the concrete floor or the smashing of a glass window. The sound that went through my head was that of a deep crack, as if I were standing on the ice in the middle of a bottomless lake, and the only thing keeping me alive had just split. The suspense before the inevitable crash and death should have lasted only an instant, but it went on. I wasn’t on the ice. There was no plunging into my cold grave. It was just this. The world lost a hint of its brightness. Life got a little sadder. And I had to go on.

There was no cut-to-black for me. There was no numbing coldness of death or the crushing pressure on my chest that would prevail and make me fill my lungs with water.

There was just Nate, turning a little away from me, swirling the alcohol in his glass, keeping his mouth shut, and wearing a regretful look as if he’d just stepped onto some random child’s hamster. He was sorry for politeness’ sake, but he couldn’t fathom how deep the pain ran.

“Come along, Carter,” Dad said, crossing the room and putting an arm around my shoulders. I shrugged him off as if he’d put a snake around my neck and marched toward the hallway. Behind me, Dad’s voice was muffled. “The best thing you can do for your career is to die, Nate.”

“Get out of my home,” Nate replied grimly. I was already at the door, and I knew the way. The last thing I heard from the apartment was Nate opening the bottle.

A chauffeur I didn’t know waited in a car I didn’t recognize. I was soaked by the time Dad showed me in. He sat next to me in the back, telling the chauffeur to take us back to the airport. “I’ll wait in the plane for the approval to take off.”

He was silent while the car glided out onto the street, the wipers barely managing to clear the windshield for long enough so the chauffeur could see where we were going.

I didn’t care if a train split us in half.

Dad didn’t seem to care either. He wanted to get to his jet or die trying, but he wasn’t paying attention to anything beyond the tablet in his hands. On the screen, a list of Google alerts regarding his name.

It wasn’t until we were inside his jet that he met my look for the first time. I was rubbing my wet hair with a soft towel a flight attendant had handed to me. “You think I’m cruel,” Dad said in a voice that was almost offensively soft. Its sweetness made me think of rotting flesh.

I sank deeper into the comfortable seat and looked out the window at the downpour that was keeping us grounded.

My father dabbed his hair with the towel and threw it on the floor for the attendant to pick it up. I sighed as I bent over and lifted the discarded towel, folding it twice before placing it on the small, foldable table near me.

Dad sat on the right side of the cabin, and I had strategically chosen the left. Still, when he turned his head to me, we faced one another. “Think what you want, Carter,” he said calmly. “And when you’re old enough, you’ll thank me.”

The flight attendant was a red-haired girl with corkscrew locks falling over her pretty face. She was new. Or, at least, she hadn’t worked here when I’d last flown with Dad this summer. I wasn’t in the habit of flying to the closest Starbucks and back and only came along when it was absolutely necessary. The woman, whose name I didn’t know, was trying to open a new bottle of something light brown with an elaborate black label on it. Dad didn’t pick and choose. She was struggling with it in my father’s sight.

Dad glanced at her trying. “Of course, you don’t believe me now, but you’ll understand in time. What I’m doing is for your best, son. Even if… Will you give that to me?” he snapped and yanked the bottle from the woman’s hand.

“I apologize, Mr. Prince,” she blurted.

Dad was ignoring her already. I looked at her face, but she wouldn’t seek comfort in my eyes. Instead, she apologized again and asked if he needed anything else.

“If I need anything, I’ll get it myself,” he grunted, twisting the bottle open and pouring himself a drink.

The flight attendant reached for the bottle when he was done.

“Leave that here,” Dad snapped, and the woman walked away, still apologizing. He turned his forcibly softened gaze to me. “Everything we have will be yours, Carter. And with your talent and name, you’ll double it. Triple it.”

“So I can bully underpaid flight attendants until my liver is pickled and my nose explodes,” I spat.

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