Chapter 7
HARRISON
Ice scraped under my blades as I shot forward, my stick low as I chased the puck. Callum beat me to it, sweeping it out of reach with that easy grace he’d always possessed on the ice.
Asshole.
“Face it, baby brother,” he called with a huge grin on his face, skating backward like it was nothing. “You’re never catching me.”
“Keep talking,” I grunted, leaning in harder and driving him toward the boards. I zeroed in on him, the second youngest of the Westwoods, but still five years older than me, and slammed my shoulder into his.
Not full force, but enough to rattle him, and I also managed to steal the puck. He laughed. “That was a cheap shot.”
“It was still effective,” I countered over my shoulder, then I faced forward again, my wrist snapping as I sent the puck flying through the air toward the goalpost. It clanged against the metal, ricocheting further away than it had been when I’d stolen it.
I groaned. “Almost effective, anyway.”
Callum skated up to me, his breath clouding in the chilly air and his cheeks flushed. I had to admit, the dude looked happy. Happier than he’d probably ever been. His blue eyes were brighter than ever these days and I swore, they even sparkled sometimes.
Like right now.
He cocked his head as he looked at me. “You’d think that after all the years we’ve been playing pick-up hockey, you’d be better at it by now.”
I scoffed. “Please. I can play. Just not against you.”
Shit, even my trash-talk game is off.
Callum laughed, but his eyes narrowed and he looked at me again, closer this time. “Thank you for acknowledging the fact that I’m the best hockey player who has ever played hockey, but what’s going on with you today? Even Brody would’ve been able to beat you.”
Brody. The seven-year-old son he’s only known about for approximately one month. Maybe a little more.
The kid was just like him. From the first moment I’d met him and then learned that Callum and Brody’s mom, Maisie, had hooked up back at college, I’d had my suspicions. Everyone had.
Everyone except Callum.
It had probably just been one of those things he’d been too close to to see it clearly. I was wondering if I had the same problem now.
“Brody would be able to beat me any day,” I finally conceded as Callum and I started circling each other. Pickup hockey had always been our thing, but I hadn’t really come here today to play. “How’s he doing, anyway? I haven’t seen him for a couple weeks.”
It was like just asking about him tripped a switch in Callum’s brain. Suddenly, my mischievous jock of a brother who’d sworn he’d never settle down and had been most likely to join a traveling circus or something similar, was a beacon of marital and parental bliss. It was ridiculous.
“He’s good, man.” Callum’s chest puffed out as he beamed at me, all pride and smug fucking joy. “Best thing that ever happened to me. After Maisie, of course. Or maybe even better than her. I don’t know. Those two both make the top of my list.”
“If there was a bucket on this ice, I’d barf into it right about now.”
He smirked. “We’ll talk about in a few years, when you’re happily married and you’ve got a kid of your own. You’ll see. I’m right.”
“Why do I get the feeling you’ve had this same conversation with Brody recently?”
“Because I have.” He pumped his eyebrows at me, but straightened up and leaned on his stick instead of continuing the game. “Okay, seriously. What’s going on with you? You love Brody, and Maisie.”
“I know.” I sighed and swiped a palm over my face. “I do love them. I guess it’s just kind of hard to hear that your brother is having the same kind of conversations about settling down with his seven-year-old son as his twenty-four-year-old brother. Am I really such a baby to you?”
He held my gaze for a long beat before he shot me a teasing grin. “Of course, little bro. When I was your age, I wasn’t thinking about getting married or settling down either.”
“What if I am?” I asked, the question out before I could reconsider talking to him about this.
Callum’s head jerked and he frowned, then he burst out laughing. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No, I, uh…” I trailed off and swiped my tongue across my ice cold lips. “Have you ever wondered why Dad hasn’t started in on me yet? About marriage, I mean.”
“Nope. Just consider yourself lucky and move on with your life.” He moved like he was about to get into position again, but when his gaze came back to mine, he paused.
“Wait, are you not feeling lucky? Because I distinctly remember you saying, not so long ago, that you were absolutely sure you weren’t next and that you had more time.
You seemed pretty fucking happy about it. ”
“Yeah, well, happy isn’t what I feel,” I admitted. “For what it’s worth, I’m not feeling lucky, either.”
“What are you feeling?” He unclipped his helmet and pulled it off, swiping a hand through his sweaty hair as he slowly started gliding to the door. “Come on, man. Talk to me. This is clearly eating at you. You haven’t scored a single goal all damn day.”
“I don’t know.” I followed him off the ice, unsnapping my own helmet and tossing it into my open bag next to the benches. “Maybe I’m just feeling left out.”
Callum looked at me like I had a gyrating unicorn horn growing out of my head. “Are you really complaining that Dad isn’t breathing down your neck about settling down?”
I shrugged, bending over to tug at the laces of my skates. “It’s not that. I just feel like it’s because he doesn’t think I’m capable. Of running the company. Of starting a family. Any of it.”
Callum pulled his skates off, head shaking before he looked up at me from underneath the messy, sweat-slick hair falling across his forehead. “Sure, okay, but marriage isn’t a game. It’s not a competition about who gets there first, either.”
“Yeah, I know, but—”
“No, Harrison. With all due respect, I don’t think you do know. You were on a yacht off the Amalfi Coast or somewhere when Sterling found out Dad expected him to get married and have a baby before next summer.”
“Yeah, but then he found Laney and look at him now. He’s never been this happy.”
Callum scoffed quietly. “Sure. I agree with that, but do you really think it was easy for the rest of us? Because it wasn’t. Dad pushed, sure, but there was a lot of other stuff. Stuff we had to figure out on our own, the hard way. It was a shit show.”
I looked back at him for a long minute, seeing the sincerity and even the hurt in those traditional Westwood blues. He, Sterling, and Dad shared those. Jameson had Mom’s hazels almost exactly, but me?
Once again, I was the odd one out, even my eye-color a weird mesh between Mom and Dad. Some people saw the Westwood blue, others Mom’s interesting hazel. Very few realized that it was a little bit of both.
“Okay, I hear you,” I said after thinking it over for a beat.
“Maybe I’m oversimplifying things. I know it was a shit show.
I know that there was a lot of hurt and a lot of stuff you all had to work out, but it just feels like, by not including me in the ultimatum, Dad still sees me as a kid. The baby who’ll never grow up.”
“You are the baby, bro,” Callum said, grinning. “Embrace the Peter Pan of it all and never grow up.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the baby.”
“Hey, man. I’m the true middle child. I’ve got my own issues to deal with. Besides, whatever he thinks, you can still prove him wrong.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course.” His expression finally softened. “You’ve just got to stop trying to be one of us and figure out what it means to be you.”
With those sage words of non-advice, or perhaps just super cryptic, but good advice, he pulled his sneakers back on and slung his bag over his shoulder, already starting to back away from me.
“Trust me, Harrison. Take it slow. I’ve got to run to meet Brody, but I’m here if you want to keep talking. ”
He spun around and jogged to the main doors, quickly disappearing through them just as a swarm of kids came in. Obviously, the school day was over, which meant I had to get out of here fast unless I wanted to risk getting trampled.
I left the rink with sweat freezing at my temples and my chest tight in a way that had nothing to do with cardio. My problem with Callum’s advice wasn’t necessarily that it was cryptic as fuck, but because contrary to what they all believed, I was capable.
It really just felt like I needed to do something big to prove them all wrong—once and for all. Like get married. It shouldn’t be too difficult.
Each one of my brothers had gotten married within this last year, and they were all disgustingly happy. Marriage wasn’t some impossible hill to climb. Not in our case, anyway.
It was a business deal, a merger of lives. All I needed was the right partner.
By the time I got home, my mind was racing. I dropped my gear bag, tugged off my jacket, and fired up my laptop on the sleek dining table I’d never used for anything but work.
One new email blinked at me that actually seemed important. It was from the broke heir’s attorneys and I clicked into it immediately, my pulse spiking. After skimming through the “Dear Mr Westwood” crap, I finally got to the meat of it.
He wasn’t turning down my offer, but he wanted a meeting. Not with me, though. With Mr Harlan Westwood and the new investor.
Damn.
Harlan would bulldoze a meeting like that, and I saw a definite problem with it. I sat back, running a hand through my damp hair and weighing my options. Eventually, I realized I only had one so I picked up the phone and hit dial when I reached Aurelia’s name.
She picked up on the third ring, her voice cool and professional. “Westwood?”
“Yeah, it’s me. I think we’ve graduated to first names, though, Aurelia.”
I heard her let out a soft sigh. “Fine, Harrison. What’s going on?”
“We’ve got a situation,” I said. “Come over so we can strategize. We should get back to them sooner rather than later. We don’t know if they’ve got another line in the water.”
“When you say come over…”
“I mean, come to my place. Now would be good. We need to work this out or we might just be dead in the water.”