Page 9 of Price of Victory
I studied his face, looking for some hint that he was joking. But he was completely serious, which was almost funny. “You think you’re that important to me? That I’d uproot my entire life just to mess with you?”
“Your family’s tried it before.”
“That’s business, Morrison. This is…” I gestured between us, trying to find the right words. “This is something else entirely.”
The drinks arrived, and Rhett grabbed his beers like they were lifelines. But before he could escape back to the safety of his friends, I caught his wrist, just for a second, just long enough tofeel the warmth of his skin and the way his pulse jumped under my fingers. Well, I might have imagined the latter. Or it might have been my pulse.
“You know what I think?” I said quietly, close enough that only he could hear me over the bar noise. “I think you’re afraid that if you let yourself want something, or someone, you might actually get it. And that terrifies you more than anything else.”
He jerked his wrist free like I’d burned him. It was a wonder he didn’t spill a drop of beer. “You don’t know anything about what I want.”
“Don’t I?” Knowing what people wanted was something of a superpower of mine. Rather, people were easy to read and lacked the imagination to want much beyond a nice snack and a good fuck.
For a moment, we just stared at each other, and the air between us felt charged with something dangerous. His pupils were dilated, his breathing shallow, and when his tongue darted out to lick his lips, I had to resist the urge to lean forward and see if he tasted as good as he looked.
Then he was walking away, carrying his beers back to the table like nothing had happened. But I could see the flush creeping up the back of his neck, could see the tension in his shoulders that hadn’t been there before.
I leaned against the bar and sipped my whiskey, watching him settle back into his seat and pretend to listen to whatever story Lennox was telling. But his attention kept drifting back to me, quick glances that he probably thought I wasn’t catching.
The whole incident came flooding back as I stood there, and it was not the sanitized version that had made it into the gossip rags, but what had actually happened. I’d been on a hookup app, like half the gay men in Chicago, looking for someone to help me forget about the pressure from my family and the constant feeling that I was disappointing everyone just by existing.
The guy had seemed normal enough. Cute, mid-twenties, said he worked in media but was vague about the details. We’d exchanged messages for a few days. They were flirty, sure, but nothing explicit until he’d asked for photos. And yeah, I’d sent them. Not in the first message, whatever the collective memory of Chicago’s gay community might think, but after we’d been talking for a while.
It hadn’t been a dick pic that started the conversation, but good luck proving that to anyone who’d already made up their minds about what kind of person I was.
The photos had ended up inZing!two days later, along with a breathless exposé about the “wild lifestyle” of Chicago’s young elite. They’d pixelated just enough to maintain plausible deniability, but anyone who knew me would have recognized my body, my apartment, the distinctive scar on my hip from where I’d torn my ACL junior year of high school.
My father’s media empire had unleashed a storm of denials, lawsuits, and legal threats after the incident. The official story was that the photos were deepfakes, sophisticated but fake nonetheless. Most people had believed it, or at least pretended to, because calling Richard Whitmore’s son a liar and a boy whore to his face was bad for business.
But the gay community in Chicago was small enough that rumors spread like wildfire, and the collective memory had settled on the idea that Aiden Whitmore liked to flaunt his impressive size to anyone who showed interest.
It was bullshit, but it was the kind of bullshit that stuck.
I finished my whiskey and signaled for another, watching Rhett laugh at something Patrick had said. The flush hadn’t faded from his face, and when he reached for his beer, I noticed his hand wasn’t entirely steady.
That wasn’t a terrible outcome, all things considered. I’d gotten under his skin, made him think about things he wastrying very hard not to think about. And he really did have a nice ass. It looked like it would fit perfectly in my hands, would look incredible in a pair of jeans or, better yet, out of them entirely.
In fact, he was the only guy with a really nice ass who wasn’t bending over for me at the first hint of possibility. Which should have been frustrating, but somehow just made me want him more.
My second whiskey arrived, but the taste was all wrong, bitter and harsh like disappointment mixed with regret. I threw cash on the bar, probably twice what I owed, and headed for the door without looking back at the table.
The night air was cooler than I’d expected, and I stood on the sidewalk for a moment, trying to decide if I wanted to go back to my empty apartment or find somewhere else to drink away the taste of rejection.
My lust was far from quenched, but it felt like a burden tonight. It felt heavy and unsatisfying, like hunger that couldn’t be filled, no matter how much you ate. I’d spent three years in Michigan perfecting the art of getting what I wanted, and now I was back to being seventeen years old and wanting something I couldn’t have.
It was pathetic, really. I was Aiden fucking Whitmore. I could have anyone I wanted, anytime I wanted them. So why was I standing outside a college bar, feeling sorry for myself because one uptight hockey player couldn’t see past a family feud that had nothing to do with either of us?
But even as I told myself that, I knew it wasn’t true. This wasn’t about the family business or old grudges or corporate warfare. This was about the way my pulse had jumped when I’d touched his wrist, the way he’d looked at me in the locker room when he thought I wasn’t paying attention.
This was about wanting something I’d never had to work for before.
I walked back to my car, fishing my keys out of my pocket and trying not to think about the way Rhett’s eyes had darkened when I’d leaned close to him at the bar. Trying not to wonder what would have happened if we’d been somewhere private, somewhere he couldn’t hide behind his teammates and his moral superiority.
But as I drove through the empty streets back to my apartment, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something important, some key piece of information that would unlock whatever wall Rhett had built between us.
Because one way or another, I was going to figure out what it would take to make him stop running from what we both knew was there.
FIVE
