Chapter 2
Mo woke up on the shop creeper, half under his Jeep, with the harsh fluorescent lights of his garage stabbing directly into his brainstem. He felt like one of his grease rags. His mouth tasted like one too.
Fuck my life, he thought as he wheeled himself out from under the vehicle. Then, when his head spun, Fuck my liver.
It wasn’t until he’d managed to scrounge up water, ginger ale, Advil, and a shower that the implications of where he’d found himself last night hit him.
Fuck. He leaned against the marble wall of his shower and took a deep breath.
Totally shitfaced, Mo had decided to do some work on the undercarriage of his off-road Jeep.
Fuckity fuck on a pogo stick. He’d better do a full safety inspection before he drove it anywhere.
Also maybe he should check the security footage to make sure he hadn’t done impromptu work on any of his other babies.
Since that was better done sooner rather than later, he shoved his face back under the showerhead to finish up.
He was pulling one of his favorite lazy-day henleys over his head when a sudden memory of last night assaulted him.
Adam Murphy exiting the back seat of a taxi, then helping Mo stumble out the other side and up to his front door.
Oh God.
Mo closed his eyes. Please, please, please, let that be a dream. A false memory. A drunken delusion brought on by events early in the evening.
Mo ran into Murphy about once or twice a year now that he didn’t have to attend every Canyons function his parents deemed public enough to warrant their child’s presence. Once he’d left college, he’d managed to barter them down to only a few franchise events a season.
They hadn’t put up too much of a fuss, but he often wondered if that had more to do with their ever-longer and more frequent trips to Switzerland.
Although Mo no longer had to suffer through regular meetings full of boring, condescending conversation, every encounter with Murphy went much like the first—his handsome face looking down on Mo (literally and metaphorically) and judging him for being the messiest bitch alive.
At least Mo was more interesting than cardboard and not afraid to be gay.
The thought of stuck-up, nose-clean Mr. Perfect Murphy having to escort him home?
Mo might have to exile himself to the Bahamas.
Murphy would probably be extra judgmental the next time they met.
Maybe the hockey gods would smile on Mo for once and Murphy would be snapped up by Seattle once the NHL announced the creation of a new team and the expansion draft finally happened.
At least Drunk Mo had the good sense to opt out of the club fiasco-in-waiting.
He was on thin enough ice with his parents after his attendance at the Antifa rally last month.
“It’s time you learned that everything you do reflects on us.
You need to take that responsibility seriously if you want to continue being a part of this family. ”
With years of practice, Mo had bitten back a reply asking how being against fascism could reflect poorly on anyone.
Now, Mo settled at his kitchen island with a bottled smoothie and his tablet, and opened the security feed for his garage.
Unsurprisingly, it was not invigorating to watch his drunk-ass self stumble around the garage, but at least he could breathe a sigh of relief over Past Mo’s decision to ignore all the other cars.
“Note to self: do not drive the Jeep until you’re sure you didn’t accidentally cut the brake lines,” he muttered to his smoothie.
He should probably also figure out a way to keep this from happening again.
Maybe he could install some sort of breathalyzer lock.
He’d never forgive himself if he ruined any of his restoration and maintenance work because he couldn’t think of a better way to pass the time between the bar and his bed.
Not that he’d made it to bed either.
Platonic Life Partner calling.
Mo blinked at the FaceTime request. They never called without texting first. Unless they had texted?
“Hey, did I forget about a call?” Mo greeted.
Sage lifted a judgmental eyebrow. “Just how hungover are you?”
Mo groaned. “So hungover. Last thing I remember clearly is taking pity shots after we ran into the Canyons and I was thrown over for straight jocks. The indignity.” He refrained from whining about being left alone without his emotional support bestie on his birthday.
He knew Sage hadn’t wanted to flake. Could it be called flaking when you got a once-in-a-lifetime job opportunity on another continent?
“I heard.” Sage smirked. Their green eyes sparkled as they rested their chin on one slim hand. Mo couldn’t see much in the frame, but wherever Sage was must be casual, judging by the hoodie pulled over their short brown hair.
“Huh?”
“The Internet has been gossiping this morning.”
Fuck! He’d gone home by himself and still managed to be a topic of gossip? That didn’t bode well. His parents were still pissed about his twenty-first-birthday rant about the homophobia and sexism rampant in the NHL.
“What now?”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were secretly entangled with Phoenix’s most eligible gay bachelor?”
“What?” Mo tried to parse those words. Surely he’d heard wrong. Of Mo’s many and varied romantic, or at least sexual, activities of late, none involved sustained commitment to any noteworthy bachelors.
“Well, the prevailing theory seems to be that you’ve been secretly dating for ages, proving all the Internet gossips correct about your youthful passion and longing looks,” Sage explained with an unbecoming amount of relish.
Oh.
Oh no.
“A few think it was the first time—that you succumbed to your lust at last for one wild night. But pretty much everyone agrees that was a passionate embrace on the sidewalk last night.” They paused. “Well, that or they think you were about to put your fist in his mouth in, like, the non-sexy way.”
“Sage,” Mo said desperately, “please tell me the Internet doesn’t think I’m dating—”
“Adam Murphy? The one and only!”
Mo let out a noise like a dying rhino and plunked his head onto the counter.
Phoenix was not a hockey hotbed. Even if it had been, only small subsections of the Internet cared about the sport beyond game outcomes.
Unfortunately, Mo had been born into the Kardashians of the Phoenix real estate world—famous for being rich.
The first openly gay draftee and the son of the people who drafted him—the one who stood there and smiled and handed over the jersey and posed for photos?
It was the start of a romance novel. The fact that Mo had barely been fifteen and Adam eighteen hadn’t deterred speculation, much to baby Mo’s chagrin.
“Why did it have to be him?”
“Just to clarify, this is you squashing the rumors of a torrid love affair and/or bar fight.”
Mo tipped his head so he could see Sage’s smug face—and more importantly, they could see his—and glared. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask such a horrible, gut-churning question. Because thinking about it might actually make me puke.”
“I think that might be the hangover, sweetie.”
“Ughhhh.” He turned his face so that his whole cheek smushed the counter. The cool stone felt nice on his overheated skin. “Did you call me just to gloat about this?”
“Oh, honey. I’m not going to waste my gloating while you’re like this. What kind of friend would I be? This is a warning shot.”
Ugh, Mo thought again, without moving his face.
“Because if I was getting screenshots of your mug on TikTok this morning, you know the Du Ponts are already on the warpath.”
Mo let out a pathetic mewl and peeled himself upright. Sage was totally correct. Mo needed to sober up more before Orson and Claire Du Pont sicced the PR firm on him. “This is the worst birthday present ever.”
“Up and at ’em,” Sage said sympathetically. “I’ll pray for you or whatever.”
Mo hung up without saying goodbye and headed for the coffee maker.
He was just smearing concealer on the bags under his eyes when his phone played the opening nine notes of “The Imperial March”: the ringtone he’d assigned to messages from the Du Ponts’ PR attack dog.
Joy.
Sending a car for you at ten. Please be ready.
Mo muttered direly and reached for his toothbrush.
All things considered, he’d pulled himself together remarkably well with caffeine and cosmetics by the time he stepped out of the car at Du Pont Property and Holdings.
Plus, they lived in Arizona; no one could blame him for wearing sunglasses.
He wouldn’t have said he was ready for anything, but he had experience disappointing his parents.
He hadn’t become a professional athlete, hadn’t gone to law school after business school, hadn’t gone to work for the company.
But on the other hand, his parents felt such distaste for his undergraduate thesis that they put him on an allowance to be a professional socialite and slacker, so now he got paid not to work.
One more year, he reminded himself. One more year and then he’d turn twenty-five and they’d fork over his trust fund and he could bid them goodbye forever and do whatever he wanted with the rest of his life.
Provided they didn’t disown him today, of course.
In the meantime—
“Hi, Miss Daisy,” he said politely to Orson’s receptionist, a woman who seemed to have been in her sixties for her entire life. She used to give him lemon candy while he waited for Orson to be done in the office.
Miss Daisy turned her face up for a kiss on the cheek, which Mo delivered.
“How much trouble am I in?”
She pursed her lips around a smile and shook her head slightly. “You’d know better than me.” But then she opened her desk drawer and produced a candy, so he figured it was pretty bad.
He pocketed it for later. Orson would disapprove of Mo having anything but apologies in his mouth for this meeting.