Page 3 of Price of Victory
“No pressure,” I said dryly.
“Exactly.” He slung the backpack over his shoulder and paused at the door. “Hey, Rhett?”
“Yeah?”
“What I said earlier, about putting yourself out there? I meant it. You’re one of the best people I know. Don’t let fear keep you from finding the right person.”
After he left, I sat on my bed and stared out the window at the campus below. Students were still moving around, carrying boxes and laughing with friends, everyone excited about the semester ahead.
Lennox was right. I was afraid. I was afraid of people wanting me for the wrong reasons, afraid of not being good enough onmy own, afraid of caring about someone and having it blow up in my face. But maybe that was exactly why I needed to take some risks.
Starting Monday, everything would get serious again. Practices, games, scouts, the constant pressure of knowing this was my last shot at making it to the next level. But maybe there was room for something else, too. Someone else.
I pulled out my phone and scrolled through my contacts, looking at names of guys I’d hooked up with over the years. Casual stuff, nothing serious, nothing that required me to be vulnerable or open or anything more than just Rhett from the hockey team.
The guys had been fun. We’d had our fair share of wild memories. Except when I scratched the surface, none made me want to stick around. None made me want to stand tall, come out for real, and hold their hand for good. Maybe great sex wasn’t all it took.
And maybe it was time to change that.
I closed the phone and got ready for bed. Monday was coming whether I was ready or not, and senior year was going to be everything I’d worked for since I was a kid dreaming of playing in the NHL.
But first, I had to figure out who I wanted to be when I got there.
TWO
AIDEN
The apartment wasperfect in the way that expensive things always were. Beautiful, impersonal, and completely lacking in soul. Something like me.
I dropped my towel on the bathroom floor and pulled on a pair of shorts, not bothering with a shirt or underwear. The place was climate-controlled to exactly seventy-two degrees, but I could still feel the humidity from my shower clinging to my skin. My hair was still wet, a black lock falling across my left eye and making everything look slightly blurred.
I walked to the massive floor-to-ceiling windows that dominated the living room and stared out at the city spread below me. Chicago looked different from the fortieth floor—cleaner, more manageable, like a toy city where tiny people scurried around playing at being important. I could see the Westmont campus in the distance, lit up and buzzing with activity as students moved back in for the semester.
All those bodies, all those possibilities. I could be down there in an hour, could find some eager sophomore who’d worship my body and make me forget why I was back in this fucking city. God knew I had a reputation to maintain. Three years at Michigan had been good to me in that department. Turnsout being openly gay, devastatingly handsome, and completely shameless was a winning combination.
I pressed my palm against the cool glass and let myself imagine it for a moment. Some random hookup in a dorm room that smelled like pizza and desperation, hands everywhere, someone moaning my name. I was good at that. I was good at being exactly what people wanted, at making them feel like they were the only person in the world, at least for a few hours. And that wasn’t an exaggeration. It went on for hours.
Everyone wanted me. It was a simple fact, like gravity or the way water always found the lowest point. I’d learned early how to use my looks, my charm, and my lack of shame about what I wanted. Why pretend to be something I wasn’t?
But the fantasy dissolved as quickly as it had formed, replaced by the bitter taste of reality. I wasn’t here to fuck college boys. I was here because my father had collapsed in a board meeting six months ago, his heart finally rebelling against decades of eighteen-hour days and stress that could kill a smaller man.
I pushed away from the window and walked to the kitchen, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge. The apartment was ridiculous. Three bedrooms I’d never use, a kitchen designed for entertaining I’d never do, art that had come with the place and meant absolutely nothing to me. The only personal touches were my hockey trophies, lined up on a shelf like soldiers waiting for orders.
The trophies looked pathetic here, surrounded by all this expensive emptiness. But they were mine, earned through blood and sweat and countless hours on ice that felt more like home than this place ever would.
My phone sat on the marble countertop, mocking me. I’d been staring at it for three days, working up the courage to make a call I should have made months ago. But every time Ipicked it up, I saw my father’s face—not the way it probably was these days, pale and diminished in a padded bed, but the way it had always been. Commanding. Disappointed. Completely convinced that hockey was a waste of time for someone who could be running a media empire.
Richard Whitmore didn’t understand failure, which made my passion for a sport that could end with a single bad hit completely incomprehensible to him. He’d built Whitmore Entertainment from nothing, turning a small radio station into one of the most powerful media companies in the Midwest. He bought and sold stories, shaped narratives, and decided what people cared about this week. Not having such a sway over his only child was a novelty to him. And an annoyance, let us not be misunderstood.
Some of those stories weren’t entirely true. Our online magazines had a flexible relationship with facts, especially when the truth was boring and lies got better click-through rates. Our entertainment channels pushed gossip disguised as news, and our streaming services promoted content that was more spectacle than substance.
It didn’t bother me. If we weren’t doing it, someone else would be. People wanted to be lied to, wanted their reality served up with extra drama and artificial flavoring. My father was just giving them what they craved.
What bothered me was that he expected me to want it, too.
I’d been avoiding the family business for three years, hiding out at Michigan and pretending I could build a life that had nothing to do with Whitmore Entertainment. But the heart attack had changed everything. Suddenly, my mother was calling every week with updates on board meetings and acquisition opportunities, dropping hints about how much the company needed fresh blood, how perfect I’d be at modernizing their digital strategy.
“Your father’s been thinking,” she’d said during our last conversation. “You could finish your degree while working part-time with us. Get your feet wet, learn the business from the ground up.”
