Chapter 9 Nicholas
“Wake up, asshole.”
With a groan, Nicholas drags his pillow over his head to drown out the yelling. Unfortunately, someone very annoying yanks the pillow off his face before she continues to shout.
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Amanda’s voice is far too loud given his sleepy state. “You’ve made a mess of things, again, Nicholas.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Nicholas asks, sitting up with a groan. He turns to look at the clock on his night table, frowning when he notices it’s not even nine in the morning. “You know what, never mind. I don’t care.”
“Of course you don’t care. You never care about anyone but yourself, Nicholas.”
“If you just want to yell at me, you can leave and come back during regular business hours. I gave you my house key for emergencies.”
“This is an emergency, you fucker.”
“Am I being traded?”
“No.”
“Is my house on fire?”
“Obviously not.”
“Did someone die?”
“Not yet, but the day is young.”
“The only emergency I’m seeing is that you are clearly too high strung. Maybe you should go home and relax, Amanda.”
“I can't go home and relax. My phone has been ringing off the hook since three in the morning, Nicholas.”
“That sounds like a you problem,” Nicholas grumbles, laying back down.
His entire body is sore, and all he wants to do is go back to sleep.
He got pummeled last night and not in a fun way.
His jaw still aches from the fist he took to the face, and his team didn’t even win to make the fight feel worth it.
“I’d ask why you’re so grumpy, but I think at this point we both know this is just your general disposition.”
“Fuck off, I hurt.”
“Which is your own fault for getting in the goalie’s crease.”
“Whose fucking side are you on?” Nicholas demands, crankiness immediately replaced by anger.
“Not yours right now, that’s for sure. I’m pissed off.”
“No fucking shit.”
“I don’t know why I put up with you.”
“Because you like the money.”
“There isn’t enough fucking money in the world to put up with your shit, Nicholas.”
“Then why do you?” Nicholas demands, heart pounding like he just got off the ice. Something is simmering beneath the surface, her words too close to the ones his father has spoken a dozen times.
You’re a disappointment, Nicholas.
You embarrass the family, Nicholas.
Not even all the money in this family was enough to make you respectable, Nicholas.
“Because you’re my family and I love you, you asshole,” Amanda answers.
“No one fucking asked you to, so fuck off.”
Throwing himself down, he reaches for the blankets, almost screaming when Amanda yanks them clear off his bed.
“You’re getting up, and you’re going to deal with this shit storm you’ve created.”
“I hardly think getting in a fight over getting too close to the other team's goalie is a shit storm. That’s like hockey 101 or some shit.”
“I’m not talking about hockey, Nicholas. I’m talking about Andrew.”
“What about Andrew?” Nicholas asks, sitting up so swiftly his head swims.
Yesterday before his game, he’d been filled with unusual pregame nerves, and for reasons unknown to him, the only thing that was remotely appealing had been the prospect of seeing Andrew.
Showing up at his job uninvited or unannounced was maybe not the smartest move, but he’d hoped riling Andrew up would calm him down.
Instead, he found some stupid fuck of a coworker touching Andrew and saw red.
The fucking audacity of that bland as fuck coworker laughing and flirting with his boyfriend. In that moment, it hadn’t mattered that the relationship wasn’t real, Nicholas doesn’t fucking share.
Maybe they agreed to keep it quiet and maybe it isn’t real, but no one touches what belongs to Nicholas, and Andrew King is his.
Despite the public claiming, he was out of sorts all night.
It’d meant his game was off, so he’d picked an exceptionally stupid fight and done something even he usually avoids.
He’d antagonized the opposing team’s goalie, knowing it was going to get him body-checked, at the very least. He knew he was going to get into a fight, because the biggest unspoken rule in hockey is ‘don’t touch the goalie.
’ A fight was exactly what he’d needed—or so he thought.
He didn’t feel better after last night, and he doesn’t feel better now, which just pisses him off.
Stupid fucking fake boyfriend shit is messing with his head.
“Nicholas, pay attention when I speak.” Amanda snaps in front of his face like he’s a goddamn dog. “We need to discuss Andrew.”
“If we’re doing this, I need coffee,” Nicholas gripes, forcing himself out of bed and ignoring Amanda’s mumbling as she follows behind him. She remains thankfully quiet while he jabs at his coffee machine until it starts making him a latte.
“You know that coffee machine probably costs as much as some people make in a year.”
“I am unsure how that knowledge affects me,” Nicholas replies, inordinately attached to his coffee machine. She’s not wrong, it was stupidly expensive, but it also makes him any coffee he wants when his housekeeper and personal chef aren’t here.
“You’re unbelievable,” Amanda sighs against the counter, digging through her purse on the kitchen island until she’s taken out a cell phone and an actual newspaper. He didn’t even know people actually read those anymore.
She scrolls through the phone until she’s found what she wants, then slides it across the counter in front of Nicholas along with the paper. He nearly chokes on his coffee when his eyes dart between the headline on her phone and that in the Santa Leon Star.
‘Bad boy of hockey playing it safe with accountant’ is in bold font on the phone, and a quick scroll reveals nothing more than a smattering of paparazzi photos of Nicholas from a drunken club encounter last year to one of his hockey fights and postulates about his new relationship with Andrew.
The headline in the newspaper is less sensational—Hockey Star Dating One of Santa Leon’s Own—but it’s infinitely more incriminating because right there on the front page is a grainy cell phone photo clearly taken from the day before when he went to see Andrew at work.
Even in black and white, it’s easy to make out Nicholas standing beside Andrew, a hand at the back of his neck.
“Photo is shit,” Nicholas says after prolonged silence, taking a drink of his latte and wishing he’d made it a double. “Also Andrew says he’s a financial advisor not an accountant.”
“Is that all you have to say?” Amanda demands. “Andrew is everywhere.”
“Probably not everywhere.”
“Yet,” Amanda all but screeches. “You showed up at his office, Nicholas. How did you even know how to find him?”
“It’s not exactly hard to find an office building that has our logo out front. Besides, people just tell me what I want to know.”
“Of course they do,” Amanda sighs. “You have no idea what you’ve done.”
“What’s the big deal? It’s not a secret we’re boyfriends.”
“Fake boyfriends,” Amanda corrects, setting Nicholas’s teeth on edge.
“Fake boyfriends who made a deal. Andrew told me you wanted to keep it quiet, that it was just going to be something to do with your parents. He isn’t prepared for this shit storm you’ve unleashed.
If I’d known you wanted to go public, I would’ve briefed him.
Me and your publicist could’ve prepared him. ”
“It’s just a stupid article in a local paper.”
“No, Nicholas. It’s much bigger. This stupid article,” she says, picking the newspaper up and waving it at him, “is being picked up by every gossip site and news agency across the country. Me and your publicist have been fielding questions and demands for interviews since the middle of the night when the story broke. Even Tony has been calling me because he said you’re not answering his texts, and he’s worried this might affect your game since you know—he doesn’t know it’s fake. ”
“It’s not going to affect my game,” Nicholas grunts. “Besides, who the fuck cares who I date? I’m just a hockey player.”
“Don’t play stupid with me. We both know you’re not just a hockey player, and you’re not an idiot.
You go out of your way to demand attention on social media, you have a huge online following and, oh, did I forget the part where your parents are one of the wealthiest families in the United States?
What you do matters. It always has, regardless of how hard you try to pretend it doesn’t. ”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Nicholas snaps.
“It means you run away, and you fight, and you want to pretend you’re no one, and that’s not true now nor has it ever been true.
You are Nicholas Whitmore, heir to the Whitmore fortune.
You are a verifiable social media star and one of the top players in the NHL.
You can’t do anything without a media circus so you knew.
You knew if you went and made a public claiming on Andrew like this, it would make a stir, and you didn’t fucking care. ”
“That’s not true,” Nicholas protests, yet her words hit uncomfortably close to home.
He had known, hadn't he? He’d wondered if it was a bad idea to show up at Andrew’s job yesterday, but he did it anyway because he needed to see him.
There was a brief thought about texting Andrew a heads up, but Andrew would tell him not to come.
Nicholas knew he was a selfish fuck. He just wanted to do what he wanted and go see Andrew, but then he’d seen that boring ass fucker touching Andrew and snapped.
“Has Andrew seen this?” Nicholas questions.