17. CHAPTER 17
Locke
She’s moved the furniture.
I notice it the second I walk through the door because it’s so obvious that she constructed a scene.
The two chairs that normally sit side by side across her desk are now in the opposite corner facing each other.
Just two chairs and the space between them waiting to be filled.
Her desk is pushed to the side like it doesn’t exist today.
I should be annoyed by this but I’m not. I put myself in this situation because my desire to touch her outweighed my reluctance to open up.
At least about my family. I feel pretty safe talking about that because I don’t think they have a damn thing to do with my… shall we say… reluctance to trust anyone on my team.
Livia may think differently though, and I anticipate she will poke and prod every angle. In the end, she’ll probably be disappointed by my full acceptance of that part of my life.
She’s sitting in one of the chairs already, notepad on her knee, pen in hand.
She’s wearing a pair of workout leggings in jet black that show off her long, toned legs, and a three-quarter-zip hoodie in matching black with the Wildfire logo and orange and green stripes down the sleeves.
Her hair is in a high ponytail and she’s got on a light layer of mascara.
Far different from the way her face was done up at the club, but surely she knows she’s so beautiful she doesn’t really need anything.
She smiles at me when I come in but other than the obvious welcome within it, her expression gives absolutely nothing away.
Livia gestures to the chair. “Good morning.”
“You moved the furniture,” I say.
“I did.”
“So you can stare deep into my eyes to discern if I’m telling you the truth?”
She chuckles. “Oh, I know you’re going to tell me the truth.”
“And how would you know that?”
“Because you’re already honest in your desire to not let anyone in. The fact you’re agreeing to a tiny peek means you’re willing to show me the truth.”
“Hmm.” I take the chair and slouch backward, stretching one leg out to the side.
The chairs are close enough we could touch and I can’t help but think of the fact my hand was between her legs last night and she came on my fingers.
I wonder if she’s thinking about that.
She uncaps her pen. “Let’s get down to business.” Apparently not. “First, I want to thank you for coming.”
“We had a deal.”
“We did.” She looks at me with steady calm. “I want to start somewhere simple. Tell me about where you grew up.”
I look her directly in the eye so she can see I’m engaged. “You already know… Boston.”
“What part?”
“Beacon Hill.”
She scribbles some notes. I have no idea what there is to write about Beacon Hill but what do I know. “Tell me about your family home.”
“Four floors. Brownstone. Been in my father’s family for three generations.”
“So, old money.”
“Yes.”
She nods, makes another note. “Tell me about your father.”
I shift in the chair. “He manages the family holdings. Investments, real estate, a few legacy business interests. He’s good at it.”
“Meaning he devoted a lot of time to it.”
“Meaning it was what he did.” I keep my voice even. “It’s what the men in this family do. You take the helm when it’s passed to you and you run it. That’s the expectation and he met it.”
“Are you going to take the helm one day?” she asks, and that surprises me.
Not one single person has ever asked me that question, not even my father.
“That would be a no,” I say with a caustic laugh.
“Because it doesn’t interest you?” she asks.
“Because I don’t interest my father,” I clarify.
She studies me, tapping her pen on her notebook. “Surely you know my next question… why wasn’t he interested in you?”
“You’d have to ask him that,” I tell her sincerely. “I personally have never had a meaningful conversation with him where I could figure out why he had no interest in his son.”
Livia’s chin pulls inward and I can see the empathy on her face. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I reply, holding her gaze.
“Do you have siblings? Were they more to his interest?”
I shake my head. “Nope. Just me.”
Livia scribbles, forehead scrunched, and I can see she’s perplexed about him.
So am I, Livia. So am I.
She looks back up, her words hopeful, expectation on her face. “What about your mother?”
“I think she likes me even less than my father does,” I say, and Livia’s jaw drops.
“I’m… I’m sorry…” She glances at her notes, as if there’s an answer in there to the million questions I can see flitting across her expression. Her gaze comes back to me. “What’s wrong with her?”
Livia’s gone out of professional mode. I can hear it in her tone, she dislikes my mom and she doesn’t know a thing about her.
I lift a shoulder. “She was twenty-two when she married my dad. He was forty-one. She was a trophy wife, I guess you’d say. I heard them arguing once that the only reason she got pregnant with me was because he needed an heir.”
“But… you said your dad hasn’t shown any interest in you, so did he really want an heir?”
“The irony, right?” I ask and then shake my head. I huff out a breath and spread my arms wide. “My only guess is that my dad will at some point try to draw me into the business side of things. Right now, he thinks I’m pursuing my ‘hobby’ of playing ice hockey.”
Livia’s brow furrows. “Like… he does know you make millions of dollars, right? Or that there’s only like seven hundred professional hockey players in North America? It’s a pretty specialized, elite career.”
I can’t help but smile at her, and yeah… there’s fondness in it for coming to my defense. “Careful, Livia. I might think you like me.”
“I do like you,” she says simply, but so matter-of-fact, I know she’s talking about surface-level stuff. She glances at her notes, taps her pen against her chin. “Okay… let’s get back into home life. What’s your mother like?”
I don’t have to think hard. She doesn’t have many layers, and I don’t say that with any bitterness.
She’s just… not very dimensional. “She likes nice things.” I say it without inflection.
“Charity galas, European travel, shopping. She’s very beautiful, very aware of it and uses it the way some people use a graduate degree. ”
“How did she treat you growing up?”
I consider my childhood. “She wasn’t cruel. She was just… absent. She had her own life and I wasn’t the center of it.”
“Were you close to her at all?”
“No.”
“Did you want to be?”
The question surprisingly pokes at a place in me that I had sealed up long ago when I decided to give up on a traditional family.
I take a breath and let it out slowly. “I was a kid, so of course I wanted my parents to notice me. I wanted to be at the center of their world. But that’s not a big revelation. That’s just biology.”
She holds my gaze. “It’s both.”
I say nothing.
“Tell me about holidays.” I can tell she knows this is a tender spot. Not from anything I’ve said, just from the way I mentioned them at Thanksgiving dinner.
“What about them?”
“What did they look like growing up? Did you have a traditional Thanksgiving dinner like we had at my parents’ house the other night?”
I look down at my hands. “Christmas was usually Aspen or St. Barts. Thanksgiving was wherever my mother decided she wanted to be that year. Sometimes the house in Nantucket, sometimes they went to Europe.” I pause, sifting through memories. “I was usually with a nanny.”
“Usually.”
“When they stayed in Boston, there were dinners. They were formal affairs with business associates, family friends, that kind of thing.” I can see the dining room in my head if I let myself—the long table, the candles, the quiet music in the background.
“I was expected to be present and well-behaved and not require anything from anyone.”
Livia writes a longer note this time. I watch her pen move and wait.
“You said you were with the nanny. Did you have anyone you were close to?”
“If you’re trying to figure out where I got familial love, I can save you time. The nanny was just a hired helper. There were a few over the years, but I never bonded with them.”
“Do you know why?” she asks hesitantly.
I stare at her, then tell her a truth about me she probably won’t like.
I lean forward, elbows on my knees. “Look, Livia… I know you’re hoping to fix me, maybe by bringing me to emotional awareness, but I need you to know…
I’m pretty self-aware. I can tell you exactly the reason I didn’t bond with the nannies, and it’s because I didn’t want to be let down by them the way I was with my parents.
I wouldn’t allow myself to get close to them.
That way, when they inevitably left, like they all do for better money or work conditions, I wouldn’t feel sad.
And I didn’t. Never felt sad about a single one who walked out the door. ”
Her eyes are wide, and I can tell by looking at her this was a level of honesty she wasn’t anticipating. “I can’t even imagine,” she whispers. “And… at the risk of sounding very unprofessional… your parents ought to have their asses kicked. They totally don’t have any business being parents.”
I’m so stunned by her vehement advocacy for my childhood that I bark out a laugh, which winds down into quick chuckles. “You’re probably right.”
She gives me a sheepish smile but then tilts her head as a new question takes up residence. “Surely you had adult figures you could count on? You played hockey, obviously.”
“Yeah,” I say with a nod. “I had some good coaches in my formative years. A middle school science teacher I could talk to.”
“But did you remain close to them?” she asks.
“No, not really.
She holds my gaze, then looks back at her notepad. “When did hockey start?”
My chest tightens, just slightly. “Eight. My father’s idea initially—it was the right sport for a boy in my family. Traditional. Physical. He came to exactly one game.”
“And your mother?”
“Never.”
The word sits there, harshly reverberating.