Page 56 of Price of Victory
“If you’re any good, they’ll fight to have you back,” my father assured me.
That’s when the tears started, silent and unstoppable. Because what was hockey compared to everything I’d already lost? What was any achievement, any goal, any dream when measured against the shape of Rhett’s mouth when he smiled?
“What is it?” my mother asked, her voice softer now, worried. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”
I shrugged helplessly, not trusting my voice to remain steady. “What I want is…gone.”
In the silence that followed, I let myself think his name. Rhett. The syllable felt like a prayer and a curse all wrapped together.
“It’s Rhett Morrison,” I said finally, the words feeling strange and vulnerable in my mouth. “He’s who I want. And I…I lost him.”
The admission hung in the air like a confession, and I braced myself for their reaction. Disappointment, anger, lectures about family loyalty and corporate responsibility and the impossibility of mixing business with personal feelings.
Instead, my mother reached across the table and took my hand.
“Oh, sweetheart,” she said gently.
“Have I disappointed you again?” I asked, suddenly feeling twelve years old. “Getting involved with the enemy?”
“The rivalry between our companies should have nothing to do with you boys. If you hold no grudges for the lowly behaviors of their editors, Aiden, why should I?” my father said firmly. “If it’s what you really want.”
“It’s what I want,” I said without hesitation. I didn’t care about the shots that had been fired in the past. “He’s what I want. But I gambled it all away.”
“What happened?”
So I told them. About the morning ten days ago when the news broke, about my panic and defensiveness, about the terrible things I’d said when all he’d wanted was to help me through the crisis. About watching him walk away and knowing I’d destroyed something precious because I’d been too afraid to trust it.
“I accused him of fishing for corporate intelligence,” I said, the shame of it still burning in my chest. “Like he was some kind of spy instead of someone who cared about me.”
“That must have hurt him terribly,” my mother observed.
“It did. And I knew it would, but I said it anyway because I was scared and angry, and I didn’t know how to handle having something that important.”
“Fear makes us do terrible things sometimes,” my father said quietly. “I should know.”
We sat in silence for a while, the three of us processing everything that had been said. Finally, my mother squeezed my hand.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if he’d be willing to listen to an apology. I hurt him pretty badly.”
“But you won’t know unless you try,” she pointed out.
“What if he says no? What if I’ve destroyed it completely?”
“Then at least you’ll know you tried,” my father said. “At least you’ll know you were brave enough to fight for something that mattered to you.”
Brave. When was the last time anyone had accused me of being brave? I’d spent my entire life taking the safe path, the expected path, the one that kept everyone happy and maintained the status quo. But being brave meant risking rejection, facing the possibility that some mistakes couldn’t be fixed.
“I don’t know how to be brave,” I admitted.
“You were brave enough to walk away from everything we offered you tonight,” my mother pointed out. “You were brave enough to choose your own path instead of the one we’d laid out for you.”
“That felt more like desperation than bravery.”
“Sometimes they’re the same thing,” my father said with a wan smile. “The best decisions I ever made were the ones that scared me the most.”
As I sat there in my childhood dining room, surrounded by the trappings of wealth and privilege I’d never asked for, I realized that for the first time in my life, I knew exactly what I wanted. Not the company, not the legacy, not the empire my father had built.
