12. Carter

TWELVE

"Please,"I whispered, tears blurring my vision.

Dad's red face darkened, his fist trembling as I held on to his forearm. I tugged him back, and he stood up, freeing Nate, who sprawled on the floor and grunted.

I didn't dare let go of Dad's arm, but I had to if I were going to help Nate up. My entire body screamed with the need to go to him. A cut on his cheekbone was bleeding, but not too much. I'd gotten worse from a misplaced stick. Even so, seeing him on the floor broke my heart.

I had no doubt that Nate could have defended himself if he had chosen to. The fact that he hadn't only cemented my feelings for this man. It wasn't something my dad could ever understand.

When Dad pulled a few steps back, I released his arm and hurried to Nate. Helping him up, I wanted to touch his cheek, but he recoiled.

"I could kill you now," Dad growled with so much hatred that it scared me. Part of me believed he was telling the truth, even as I tried to convince myself it was just a hyperbole.

"Stop," I pleaded again. "Can we talk about this like adults?"

Dad's eyes flashed with anger. "We cannot. Carter, go downstairs and wait for me."

"No," I said flatly. That was not an option. I wasn't leaving Nate.

Dad pressed his lips tightly together and glared from me to Nate and back.

My left hand moved slightly through the air, seeking Nate's, but he had pulled himself against the kitchen island and clutched its edge for support. Looking at him hurt me in ways that had nothing to do with cuts and bruises.

"There's no reason for violence," I said tightly.

"You don't get to talk, Carter," Dad snapped. His voice had always had a way to control me. He used that now, taking away my words, tying my tongue with the firmness in his tone. "You," he said to Nate. "I should have known. All those years we played together, lived from one hotel to the next, and you never had a girl over like the rest of us. I should have realized. And now, you're sleeping with my child. You're his coach, you perverted motherfucker." The fact that my father had cheated on my mother didn't fly over my head, but it was also something there had been whispers about for ages. Mom had spent most of Dad's time with the NHL selectively blind, just happy to be the big guy's wife. "Oh, I see," Dad said, nodding to himself. "You're not technically his coach, are you? You got him to drop out so you could f…" He choked on his words, probably remembering he was talking about his own son. "How could you do this?"

"He didn't do anything," I insisted.

"Shut up, Carter. It's not your turn." That tone again, the dominance and the command. But I distracted him, and he looked at me now. Hurt, angry, ready to punish me. He'd already smashed my guitar and beat the man I had given my heart to. He couldn't punish me much more than this. "You're coming home with me, Carter. After flying here to discover what the hell you've been doing in bars like a goddamn clown, I found out that you've walked away from everything we gave you. No team will take you this late, but I'll find you a coach to keep you sharp until next fall."

I shook my head. He was getting it all wrong, but that shouldn't have surprised me. "I'm not going anywhere. I'll study music, and I'll see whoever I want. You can't stop me."

That was a mistake. A childish thing to say. I should have known better.

Dad nodded to himself, lips pursed as his cold glare cut from me to Nate. "Tell him to leave, Partridge."

Nate stood straight, all his muscles bulging with tension.

"I know you can control him," Dad said as if I weren't even here. As if I hadn't heard all the bullshit while I was in the bedroom. How I had wanted to be gay. Why was my heart still breaking over the fact that my father didn't love me? "Tell him to come with me, and he'll listen. Tell him," Dad taunted Nate, but he didn't step any closer. Frankly, few people would have dared to stand in Nate's way now. The darkness that gathered in his eyes and on his face was scary enough without the smeared blood and the spreading bruise. "Tell him you used him, Nate. Tell him it means nothing. Tell him it was a mistake."

I wouldn't believe a word of it. Nate was too noble and too kind to use me. It had taken me weeks of struggle to even get a shot at him. And he knew I wouldn't believe it, his lips tightening.

Dad shrugged. "Alright. If I can't convince you, your ethics board might. Or the press. It can't be that hard to find paparazzi near your building, huh? Think about it, you sick fuck. A washed-up forty-year-old coach seducing a student…" Dad shook his head, and my heart hammered. He wouldn't dare. Not with the amount of whoring around he'd done in his day and was probably still doing on those long trips to resort hotels. Not with his boozing up and all the flirting with cocaine everyone whispered about. He wouldn't talk to those fucking vultures. "I'll tell them everything, Partridge, and you can kiss your clean name goodbye. When will they stop? When they bring you down? Your nephew?" Dad glanced at me. I would be caught in the crossfire. He was threatening with the nuclear option. If he didn't have it his way, we would all suffer the consequences. "Carter, too," Dad said. "You must think it's fun getting exploited by a man in power, just like Bill Clinton's staff. Is that what you want for him?"

"I can take that," I said. He brought up the example of the worst of human impulses. The worst of the exploitation that our media had done for profits. I doubted I would be nearly as strong as Monica Lewinsky if all the world mocked me the way they had bullied her. I doubted I would have her courage, but I wouldn't bow to my dad either. And I would stand with Nate till the end. He wouldn't abandon me to the press like that.

"It's your call, Partridge. Give me the boy, or I'll serve you to the paparazzi on a silver platter. Your job, your reputation, your legacy — all gone. I'll burn you to the ground, fucker." When he spat the last word out, Dad stepped back as if he didn't care either way.

This was no longer about me. This was pure spite.

I looked at Nate, but he didn't look at me. His gaze was on my father, then on the floor. A moment ago, his eyes had been wide open with anger, but his eyelids drooped down as something went out of him. "Carter…"

"No," I protested. "Don't. Don't do this." Panic spiked in me so abruptly that I could almost taste the sudden injection of adrenaline on my tongue. "Nate, don't listen to him."

He shook his head, his downcast gaze hollow, the corners of his lips dragging low. "Carter, he's right."

"You don't mean that," I said, anger concealing the fear.

Nate still didn't look at me.

"You're just saying that to protect me," I accused.

Nate clenched his teeth and lifted his gaze to meet me. He looked scary, for sure, but I wasn't afraid of him. The beastly appearance he and my father had worked together to create on his face couldn't deter me. "It's not just you," he said in a voice so cold that it raptured my chest. "It's Beckett, too. And me." He added the last bit selfishly, lifting his quivering chin up. "I'm nothing without hockey, kid."

I snapped my fists closed and stood my ground. He was just hurting me to make this easy. I didn't believe him. I didn't.

"Hockey's all I have, Carter," he said tightly. "If they take that away from me, I'll be no one."

Could he be serious? I hated that the worm of doubt drilled into my heart.

Nate took a step back, shaking his head regretfully. "I'm sorry, kid. I didn't realize how much I couldn't lose that until now."

"Shut up," I threatened him in an airy tone that wouldn't have scared a kitten.

"We risked too much," he said, almost like it was nothing. It wasn't worth it, he implied.

"You heard the man, Carter," Dad said victoriously. "He used you, son. And he won't trade his fame for you."

I ignored Dad and took a step toward Nate. "You're lying."

"I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm not lying." He swallowed and moved further away from me, searching for the bottle and the glass. When he found them, he poured himself a double shot. "It was fun, Carter, but I wasn't thinking straight. I…" He shrugged again, pressing the glass against his open mouth and taking an unhealthy sip. After swallowing, he exhaled tightly. "I shut it all out for a while, but your father's right, kid. I can't lose all I've worked for."

"He's blackmailing you," I squeezed through clenched teeth.

Nate looked at me blankly as if I had just stated that the sky was blue. Was blackmail and backstabbing so normal among the rich and famous? It seemed they had still protected me from some truths when I was a child. "Checkmate," Nate said. "It's too much to risk, Carter."

Hot, angry tears brimmed in my eyes. "Swear that you mean it."

For the briefest moment, I thought there was a ripple of emotion on his face. It might have been the trick of the light through the tears that made the world smudged and blurry.

I thrust my chin out. "Swear on my rollerblades." He wouldn't. He would never.

He stared at me for the shortest of moments, then put his right hand over his heart. "If that's what you want…I swear on your rollerblades." He said that in a voice as if he wasn't sure what the hell I was talking about.

I could almost hear my heart breaking. It wasn't a shatter of an antique vase on the concrete floor or the smashing of a glass window. The sound that went through my head was that of a deep crack, as if I were standing on the ice in the middle of a bottomless lake, and the only thing keeping me alive had just split. The suspense before the inevitable crash and death should have lasted only an instant, but it went on. I wasn't on the ice. There was no plunging into my cold grave. It was just this. The world lost a hint of its brightness. Life got a little sadder. And I had to go on.

There was no cut-to-black for me. There was no numbing coldness of death or the crushing pressure on my chest that would prevail and make me fill my lungs with water.

There was just Nate, turning a little away from me, swirling the alcohol in his glass, keeping his mouth shut, and wearing a regretful look as if he'd just stepped onto some random child's hamster. He was sorry for politeness' sake, but he couldn't fathom how deep the pain ran.

"Come along, Carter," Dad said, crossing the room and putting an arm around my shoulders. I shrugged him off as if he'd put a snake around my neck and marched toward the hallway. Behind me, Dad's voice was muffled. "The best thing you can do for your career is to die, Nate."

"Get out of my home," Nate replied grimly. I was already at the door, and I knew the way. The last thing I heard from the apartment was Nate opening the bottle.

A chauffeurI didn't know waited in a car I didn't recognize. I was soaked by the time Dad showed me in. He sat next to me in the back, telling the chauffeur to take us back to the airport. "I'll wait in the plane for the approval to take off."

He was silent while the car glided out onto the street, the wipers barely managing to clear the windshield for long enough so the chauffeur could see where we were going.

I didn't care if a train split us in half.

Dad didn't seem to care either. He wanted to get to his jet or die trying, but he wasn't paying attention to anything beyond the tablet in his hands. On the screen, a list of Google alerts regarding his name.

It wasn't until we were inside his jet that he met my look for the first time. I was rubbing my wet hair with a soft towel a flight attendant had handed to me. "You think I'm cruel," Dad said in a voice that was almost offensively soft. Its sweetness made me think of rotting flesh.

I sank deeper into the comfortable seat and looked out the window at the downpour that was keeping us grounded.

My father dabbed his hair with the towel and threw it on the floor for the attendant to pick it up. I sighed as I bent over and lifted the discarded towel, folding it twice before placing it on the small, foldable table near me.

Dad sat on the right side of the cabin, and I had strategically chosen the left. Still, when he turned his head to me, we faced one another. "Think what you want, Carter," he said calmly. "And when you're old enough, you'll thank me."

The flight attendant was a red-haired girl with corkscrew locks falling over her pretty face. She was new. Or, at least, she hadn't worked here when I'd last flown with Dad this summer. I wasn't in the habit of flying to the closest Starbucks and back and only came along when it was absolutely necessary. The woman, whose name I didn't know, was trying to open a new bottle of something light brown with an elaborate black label on it. Dad didn't pick and choose. She was struggling with it in my father's sight.

Dad glanced at her trying. "Of course, you don't believe me now, but you'll understand in time. What I'm doing is for your best, son. Even if… Will you give that to me?" he snapped and yanked the bottle from the woman's hand.

"I apologize, Mr. Prince," she blurted.

Dad was ignoring her already. I looked at her face, but she wouldn't seek comfort in my eyes. Instead, she apologized again and asked if he needed anything else.

"If I need anything, I'll get it myself," he grunted, twisting the bottle open and pouring himself a drink.

The flight attendant reached for the bottle when he was done.

"Leave that here," Dad snapped, and the woman walked away, still apologizing. He turned his forcibly softened gaze to me. "Everything we have will be yours, Carter. And with your talent and name, you'll double it. Triple it."

"So I can bully underpaid flight attendants until my liver is pickled and my nose explodes," I spat.

Dad slammed the glass against the foldable table in front of himself and pointed a threatening finger at me. "I have been more patient with you than any sane person would have been. You betrayed me, you stole from me, and you lied to me. Not only that but you got involved with a man twice your age, a man I used to call my friend, just to hurt me. I'm trying to be a bigger man, Carter, but you're making it very difficult."

"Not everything's always about you, Dad," I said in a voice so hollow and devoid of emotions that I might have been speaking from beyond my grave. "But if you want to talk about the things you've done, be my guest. It's not like I have something to do."

"You are an ungrateful little brat. Do you hear me?" He wagged his finger like a TV housewife. It was better than the alternative, where he was waving his fist. His knuckles were red, and I hoped they hurt. "First, I'm putting a stop to this guitar nonsense. You have the talent you need and the easiest shot at the NHL because of me, so you can say goodbye to being some rich asshole's entertainment."

I wondered if he was aware that he was the definition of a rich asshole. I hadn't allowed myself to see him that way before, but I really had nothing else to do with myself. Recontextualizing my father's image was as fun as eating salted peanuts while the plane was grounded. Not that. I was not doing this on purpose. What was happening here was me becoming aware that my father was not a very good man.

"I'll coach you myself if I have to," he droned on as if I would ever believe he was capable of spending time with me. Even if it was on guard duty with me as his prisoner. He had relegated that task to Nate Partridge throughout my life. When they were off, Dad did whatever the hell he liked, and Nate was the one telling me the stories from the ice, from the trips, and from his vivid imagination.

Nate's big heart had forged me into the person I became. Could I have fallen in love with anyone else? Had I even had a chance?

"…confiscate that piano. You have no need for it. It's a distraction, and your mother never should have encouraged you to have a hobby." He said that with a straight face.

A laugh burst out of me. Only my father could imagine a life without a hobby was the preferable choice. "Dad, you can stop talking," I said. "You're getting tired."

He glared at me.

"If you need to refuel, the bathroom's that way." I pointed to the front part of the plane.

Dad stood up furiously and bent down, bringing his face close to mine. The stench of alcohol was nothing like that faint, sweet aroma I loved on Nate's lips. This one was like the fermenting rot in a tooth cavity. "I'll teach you some fucking manners if I have to beat them into you."

I gazed at him, unimpressed. "It's true, right?"

The anger it dragged out of him was more than enough to confirm even the wildest tales I'd read. "What are you talking about? Shut your mouth, boy."

"I heard you snorted cocaine off a hooker's ass in Belize," I said with a sinister note of amusement.

Dad grabbed my wet shirt and yanked me out of the seat. "I should have left you there so he could do whatever the hell he wants with you."

He should have. I wouldn't have minded being Nate's anything, his everything. "Let go," I said politely, pushing his fists off my shirt. I dropped back in my seat, and Dad fell into his. "Just…leave me alone," I said. The thought of being back with Nate and letting him do whatever he wanted made my throat constrict and my eyes sting. "I'll do what you want. You won, Dad. You threatened him, and he chose himself." My voice quivered slightly, but Dad was too selfish to notice anyone's feelings. "You can tell me what to do, and I'll do it. I don't care. But you can't make me enjoy it."

I closed my eyes and sank lower into my chair. Dad said nothing. It was an agreement we could both respect and hold on to. He would shove me back into the rink, and I would hate my life. He would take away my music, and I would hurt.

Hurting would remind me I was still alive.

And I will be alive, I thought spitefully. I'll be alive when we hear that your heart exploded. And on that day, I'll be free. Without Nate for the rest of my life, yes, but I would eventually be free of the warder of my prison, too.

I shut Nate out of my thoughts. He had tossed me aside, and I couldn't do anything about that. I was on my own. If I wanted to cry, I wouldn't do it in front of Dad. So I bottled it all up. I pressed it down, all my rage and sadness and the dust that remained from my shattered heart, and I pushed it all the way to the pit of my stomach.

I wouldn't let it out even if it killed me.

I wouldn't be weak.

I wouldn't give him the pleasure.