Page 25 of Price of Victory (The Saints of Westmont U #5)
SEVENTEEN
AIDEN
The first time Rhett came to my apartment, he’d stood in the doorway for a full minute, taking in the floor-to-ceiling windows and marble countertops with something between awe and discomfort.
“This place is bigger than my entire dorm floor,” he’d said, and I’d felt that familiar stab of guilt about the privilege I’d never questioned.
But by the third visit, he was making himself coffee in my kitchen like he belonged there.
By the fifth, he’d claimed the left side of my massive bed and started leaving a toothbrush on the bathroom counter.
By November, when the leaves outside my windows had turned brilliant shades of gold and crimson, it had become routine.
Sunday mornings were ours. He’d show up at my door with coffee and whatever pastries he’d grabbed from a café along the way, his skin still flushed from the shower and his eyes bright with the kind of happiness I’d never seen him wear around anyone else.
We’d spend hours talking about everything and nothing, our conversations meandering from hockey strategy to books he was reading for his literature classes to my half-formed thoughts about what I actually wanted to do with my life.
Those weeks felt like falling into something deeper than I’d ever imagined possible.
It wasn’t just the sex, though that continued to be revelation after revelation of how perfectly we fit together.
It was the way he challenged me when I was being arrogant, called me out when I was performing instead of being genuine.
It was the way he listened when I talked about the pressure from my family, really listened, without judgment or advice unless I asked for it.
And it was the way I found myself holding him up when the weight of his own expectations became too much.
The night before scouts were coming to watch a game, when he’d been wound so tight I thought he might snap, I’d spent hours just stroking his head and telling him stories about the stupidest mistakes I’d made on ice until he finally relaxed enough to fall asleep.
We were good together. Better than good.
We challenged each other to be more honest, more vulnerable, more real than either of us had ever been with anyone else.
When we were together, the corporate rivalry between our families felt like ancient history, something that belonged to a different world entirely.
Practice was going better than it ever had.
Whatever chemistry we’d developed off the ice translated into an almost telepathic understanding during games.
I could anticipate his moves before he made them, could set up plays that he’d execute with precision that made our coaches shake their heads in amazement.
The rest of the team had stopped looking surprised when we’d arrive and leave together, had accepted our partnership as just another aspect of our dynamic on ice.
The away games were the best. Different cities meant hotel rooms and the luxury of waking up next to each other without having to sneak around.
We’d discovered that Rhett had strong opinions about room service menus and that I was surprisingly good at finding the best coffee shops in whatever city we were visiting.
In Detroit, we’d spent the morning before the game walking along the waterfront, and he’d told me about the first time he’d ever seen professional hockey played.
In Minnesota, I’d convinced him to try the breakfast place I’d found online, and we’d laughed until we cried over his reaction to the portion sizes.
Those trips felt like glimpses of what a real relationship could look like, free from the complications of family history and campus dynamics. Just us, figuring out how to be together, learning each other’s habits and preferences and the thousand small intimacies that built something lasting.
By late November, I was in love with him.
Completely, hopelessly, terrifyingly in love in a way that made me understand why people wrote songs about it.
I hadn’t said it yet, hadn’t found the courage to put words to something that felt so huge and fragile, but I thought about it every morning when I woke up next to him and every night when he fell asleep in my arms.
I thought he might be falling, too. There were moments when he’d look at me with such tenderness that it took my breath away, when he’d touch me like I was something precious he was afraid of breaking.
He’d started keeping spare clothes at my place, had gradually migrated most of his textbooks to my dining table because he liked the natural light better than his dorm room.
It felt like we were building something real, something that could survive whatever complications the outside world wanted to throw at us.
For the first time in my life, I was planning a future that didn’t revolve around family expectations or business obligations, but around the person I wanted to share it with.
Which made Sunday morning’s news alerts feel like a bomb going off in my carefully constructed happiness.
I woke up to my phone buzzing incessantly on the nightstand, the kind of urgent notification pattern that usually meant either a family emergency or some kind of media crisis.
For a moment, I considered ignoring it entirely.
Sunday mornings were sacred, and Rhett would be arriving with coffee in less than an hour.
But the buzzing continued, insistent and ominous, until I finally grabbed the phone and squinted at the screen.
Seventeen missed calls from my mother. Forty-three unread text messages. And a flood of news alerts that made my blood run cold.
MEDIA MOGUL’S SECRET HEALTH CRISIS EXPOSED
WHITMORE ENTERTAINMENT STOCK PLUMMETS AMID SCANDAL
RICHARD WHITMORE’S MONTHS-LONG COVER-UP SPARKS INVESTOR FURY
My hands were shaking as I scrolled through headline after headline, each one worse than the last. Someone had leaked the story about my father’s heart attack, about the months of secrecy and careful manipulation that had kept it out of the public eye.
The business press was having a field day, painting it as corporate deception on a massive scale.
The articles were brutal in their assessment.
Shareholders had been kept in the dark about the health of the company’s founder and CEO.
Stock prices had been artificially maintained through careful information control.
Other executives had been making major decisions while pretending my father was still fully in charge.
And now, it was all falling apart in spectacular fashion.
I read through the coverage with growing horror, watching our family’s carefully constructed facade crumble in real time.
The headlines didn’t mention that my father was recovering, that he’d been gradually resuming his duties over the past few months.
They focused on the deception, the cover-up, the betrayal of investor trust.
Worse were the opinion pieces already starting to appear, the ones that painted this as typical behavior for a company known for its “aggressive acquisition strategies” and “ruthless business practices.” Competitors who’d been on the receiving end of my father’s corporate warfare were being quoted extensively, and their barely concealed glee was obvious even in print.
Morrison Media Group was mentioned specifically in three different articles, with reporters reaching out for comment on how this news might affect the “ongoing rivalry” between our companies. The implication was clear: our enemies were circling, ready to take advantage of our moment of weakness.
My mother’s text messages were increasingly frantic, a mixture of media strategy and maternal concern that made my chest tight with guilt. The latest one was marked urgent: Family meeting at 11 AM. We need to present a united front. Your presence is essential.
I knew exactly what that meant. They wanted me there for the cameras, the concerned son showing family solidarity in the face of crisis.
I’d be expected to charm reporters and reassure investors, to project confidence and competence and all the qualities that would convince people our family’s empire wasn’t about to collapse.
I’d been saddled with such jobs in my teens, low on actual input but essential in cultivating an image.
The performance they wanted from me was as predictable as it was nauseating.
Stand beside my father, speak about his strength and recovery, and field questions about my own future role in the company.
Show the world that the next generation was ready to step up, that Whitmore Entertainment would emerge from this stronger than ever.
I deleted the message without responding.
Instead, I sat on the edge of my bed, staring out at the Chicago skyline and trying to process what this meant for everything I’d been building.
The life I’d been constructing, piece by careful piece, suddenly felt as fragile as spun glass.
The distance I’d maintained from my family’s business dealings, the independence I’d been trying to declare, all of it could disappear in an instant if this crisis deepened.
My phone rang again. My mother’s ringtone, urgent and demanding.
I turned the phone face down and walked to the kitchen to make coffee, my hands still trembling slightly as I went through the familiar motions. The routine was soothing, something normal and controllable in a morning that felt like it was spinning away from me entirely.
By the time Rhett knocked on my door, I’d managed to shower and get dressed, but I hadn’t managed to find any equilibrium. The news was still dominating my thoughts, creating a constant undercurrent of anxiety that I couldn’t shake.