Page 121 of Lucky Shot

There’s no way he just said that. “What do you mean?”

“I’m pretty proud of myself for this one. Retention is key, right? Having the parents who can pay be happy with what they are paying for and the ones who can’t, feel like their kids are getting a special experience. So Martin and I worked through some ideas on how to do it, decided on one, and then I got the guys, my teammates, to commit to being there. If we all split it up and share the rest of the year, it’s not much at all.”

“Hardy? You’re actually serious.”

“I never joke about football,” he says and winks. “Ever.”

As if he hasn’t already knocked it out of the park, then he goes and thinks of my business how I would. How to sustain the growth. How to keep people happy. How to keep the money coming in.

I study him and shake my head. “There is so much more to you than you let people see, Alexander Hardy. You should let them see more of you.”

He rolls his eyes and nudges me with his shoulder. “The more you let people see, the more they have to use against you.”

“I don’t buy that.” I shift to face him, crossing my legs as I do. “Tell me something about you.”

“I hate peas,” he deadpans.

“Oh whatever.” I go to hit him with the pillow and realize my mistake as my muscles pull, and I wince.

“Whit? You okay?”

“Yes. Fine. But I’m serious. Tell me something more about you. Something real. I look around this penthouse, and it’s gorgeous, but I don’t see you.”

His sigh is heavy, and I wait for a smart-ass answer so I’m shocked when he actually gives me something. And it’s a doozie.

“I was nine years old when a drunk driver hit my dad. That’s the last time I was in a hospital before this week. Before you.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t—”

“Don’t be sorry. It was a long time ago, and it is what it is.” He looks down to where his fingertip is tracing the stripes on my pajama pants. “My mum remarried some rich guy who loved the idea of her and hated the thought of there being a me. So I was sent off to boarding school—silver spoon and all.”

“Hardy.” Compassion is woven into every ounce of my tone. To lose your dad and then your mom.

He shrugs. “It’s been a battle my whole life—my whole career really. People assume that a silver spoon was all I needed to get where I am today—that and a little talent. What they don’t realize is everything I lost and had to give up in order to get it. Was it a fair trade? I don’t know, you tell me? But it sucked being eleven years old and on my own in a sense while still grieving the loss of my father.”

“Jesus,” I mutter as my head swims with the unexpected cruelty of that statement. I had a mom who chose drugs over me. He had a mom who chose money and social standing over him.

I’m not sure which one is worse.

Actually, I know which one is. Addiction makes you lose your ability to choose. Money makes you believe there actually is a choice in the first place.

“You can be rich in a lot of things—and I am way more than many—but if your mum chooses that wealth over you, then the silver spoon and the privileges it gave you hold a soured weight. And that weight helps form who you are. It . . . kind of forms who you become.”

“I don’t even know what to say other than I understand what it’s like to lose a mom in a sense.”

“Nothing needs to be said.”

“Is she still in your life?”

He emits a self-deprecating chuckle and rests his head back against the headboard, eyes toward the ceiling. “She shouldn’t be. I should have cut her off long ago and see if that fixes the unresolved shit for me. You know, the crap you refuse to acknowledge most days until it’s thrown in your face one way or another, and you can’t avoid it?”

“Boy, do I know it.” And there’s something so right about having a shared commonality with someone over something that no one else can understand or process that makes me more willing to open up to him.

He sighs. “Right or wrong, it’s like I keep holding on to the hope that she’s going to wake up one day and see what she’s done. That she’s going to come to her senses and apologize for abandoning me after my dad died. Sure it would have been tough for us with one income, but that wouldn’t have mattered.”

She still loves you. I stop myself from uttering the words on my tongue, the same ones that feel like a reflexive response that I hate when other people say to me. Instead I just nod. It’s all I can do.

“It’s a catch-22 though because would I be where I am today without it? Probably not. All that money did net me more chances so . . . I don’t fucking know.” He scrubs a hand over his face and shakes his head as he looks out the window to the city below. “Makes me sound like a prat. I know—”