15. My Hidden Past
MY HIDDEN PAST
Trevor
The North Side Country Club has always reminded me of a mausoleum for rich men’s bad decisions.
It’s nothing but stone and glass, massive windows framing the golf course and city lights, chandeliers like inverted candelabras dripping from twenty-foot ceilings.
Tonight the place is packed—auction night, one of those obscene society events where people donate to charity by purchasing humans, and everyone acts like that’s not the most on-brand thing for old Minneapolis money to do.
Even more unfortunate, I’m the product tonight, and it fucking sucks to be me.
Inside, it’s all color and heat. The bar at the entrance is five deep with cocktail dresses—plum, turquoise, wine red, every color calibrated to catch the eye in a sea of black.
Most of the men are clumped together like cattle before a slaughter, tuxedos and pinched faces, a few recognizable assholes from the local startup world who look everywhere but at each other.
The women are different: they glide, they cut, they move in packs or on the hunt, heads turning like sunflowers toward any source of heady cologne.
Oh yeah, they’re on the hunt tonight, and the periodic squeals of joy make my heart sink.
But I keep my hands in my pockets, move through the crowd with a smile that feels exactly like the one I wore at my father’s third wedding.
Women brush against me, hands on my arm or the small of my back, all of them with the same look: Is this the asshole from the magazine?
Is he actually single? Is he worth the price?
One of them—blonde, somewhere between forty and ageless—catches my eye and holds it.
“Trevor, right?” she coos, putting a hand on my forearm. Her nails are immaculate, the color of dried blood.
“That’s me,” I say, giving her the full wattage of my business smile.
She leans in, lowering her voice like we’re sharing a secret. “I’m so glad you agreed to be auctioned. Half the ladies here were threatening to riot if you dropped out. Some of us have bets going.”
“I’d hate to disappoint,” I say. I can’t even remember her name, but I know her type. Married, probably has kids at Breck, hasn’t come in ten years except by accident. She’s beautiful, but brittle.
She smiles, letting her teeth show just enough to hint at something feral. “See you up there,” she says, and floats away, trailing a scent of Chanel and gin.
I snag a scotch from a passing tray, drain half of it, and scan the room.
If Kayleigh’s here tonight, she’ll be at the edge, probably chewing her lip and trying to avoid the scene.
She’s not the type to squeal and embarrass herself—more likely she’s elegant, in something sexy but demure, hair in loose golden waves, makeup subtle, with high, high heels.
The thought of it makes my cock stir. I force the image of the gorgeous girl away, but my body doesn’t listen.
I’m half hard, and the room is a heat map of potential humiliation.
The auction stage is at the far end of the room, lit like a prizefight.
Someone’s already up there doing a sound check, and the crowd is starting to drift toward the rows of gold chairs set in front.
My father is nowhere in sight, but that’s fine—Henry will make his entrance sooner or later.
I move through the throng, nodding at people I only vaguely know, smiling and nodding mechanically.
Every time I let myself look around, I think I see her—Kayleigh, head thrown back, laughing at something outrageous; or Kayleigh with her arms crossed, biting her lip, eyes scanning the ceiling for a way out. But she isn’t here. Not yet.
A thin, sour note rises in my chest, and I kill it with another swallow of scotch.
I tell myself this is good. I’m here to prove a point, to show that I can be in the same room as my beautiful stepsister and not lose my fucking mind.
That I can play the part my family expects, that I can survive an hour of being sold off before a roomful of strangers without throwing up on the podium or texting her at midnight.
But I feel her everywhere. Like a phantom. Like a stain on my heart.
God, what the fuck is wrong with me? I’ve become so fucking soft.
A familiar voice jolts me from my self-disgust.
“Trevor?” says Victoria, her tone bright but wary. She’s in a navy sheath dress, pearls, hair up, the very picture of Minneapolis Upper Middle. She holds a flute of champagne like it’s a shield.
“Victoria,” I say, and kiss her cheek. She smells like verbena and dry cleaning.
“You look tired,” she says, and I smile at the understatement.
“It’s been a week.”
She glances at the crowd, as if to see whether anyone is listening. “I’m glad you came. I know this isn’t your scene.”
“It’s my father’s scene,” I say, letting just enough edge show. “I’m here for him. And for the children, of course.”
She half-laughs, then glances away. “Kayleigh might be coming later. Just so you’re aware.”
I keep my face still. “Why wouldn’t she?”
Victoria studies me for a second. “No reason,” she says, then changes the subject to Henry, and whether I’ve seen him yet.
I tell her I haven’t, and she says he’s probably near the stage, glad-handing the other donors.
She touches my arm, says, “Just do your best tonight. It’s not that hard to be sold to a beautiful woman!
” and then floats away, lost in the crowd.
I drain my drink, set the empty on a side table, and tell myself I’m fine.
But I’m not fine.
I’m the least fine I’ve ever been.
And if Kayleigh does walk through that door, I don’t know if I’ll be able to look at her and not want to ruin her all over again.
Victoria’s exit leaves a vacuum at my side, a little void of ozone and vanilla and nervous energy.
The club is noisier now, the bar a hum of voices just below the level of actual conversation.
I lean against a high-top and let the scotch warm me from the inside out.
My eyes roam the crowd, but I’m not really seeing anything.
What I’m doing is counting the seconds until I have to walk up on that stage and play the perfect, unblemished bachelor, smiling and waving with a thousand watt grin.
I replay the exchange with Victoria. She said, “Kayleigh might be coming later. Just so you’re aware.” Like she thought it would matter. Like she thought I might need warning.
She’s not wrong.
Victoria’s my father’s third wife. Not that anyone in this city keeps score, but I do.
First there was Mom—who left Minnesota and her two sons as soon as she could clear the runway.
Then there was Supriya, and that was supposed to be the one.
The real one, the storybook love, the best friend and partner.
I was in high school when Henry and Supriya married, old enough to know what was going on, but young enough to not understand how quickly things could rot.
But Supriya didn’t come alone when she moved in.
She had a daughter, Aleatha, who was fifteen at the time.
I was sixteen, and we both had the brittle, exposed nerves of kids who’d suffered through our parents’ divorces, and never fit in anywhere.
We fell for each other like it was a bad dare—hard, fast, secret.
I thought I was going to marry her. I told her that, on the roof of the house in late summer, with the stars close enough to catch if you tried.
We made out in my bedroom, in the unfinished basement, in her mom’s Lexus, and once, for a full hour, in a guest bedroom during Thanksgiving while the adults argued about zoning laws and campaign finance downstairs.
It was the kind of fever that burns so hot, you’re certain it’ll never cool off.
But it did because we were just kids. We went to different colleges—she to Wisconsin, me to Northwestern.
I started drinking, started doing the whole frat boy thing, started becoming the asshole I am now.
I slept with another woman, and the first time, guilt almost consumed me.
But then I did it again. And again. And after the third hook-up, I didn’t feel bad anymore.
Clearly, my connection to Aleatha had withered to nothing, and the young woman was history.
In fact, I was so over her that I didn’t even wait to break it off in a respectful way.
Instead, I dumped her during a five minute conversation when I was home over winter break, in the driveway, with the engine running because I didn’t want to be cold while I told her I was done.
I thought that made it less cruel, or at least more civilized.
Aleatha didn’t cry. She just looked at me, then looked at her hands, and said, “Oh.” Like it was a test result, or a news bulletin. Like maybe she’d known all along.
I thought about her less and less. I fucked my way through college, never called, never even responded to her texts after that night.
Eventually, Supriya left my father, citing “irreconcilable differences,” which is Minneapolis code for “he drinks too much and sleeps with everything that moves.” I heard that Aleatha left too.
Evidently, Aleatha even dropped out of school, and moved in with her mom somewhere across town.
She got a job at a garden supply store, of all places, and it was pretty much out of sight, out of mind.
So the news about her death a year later was a total surprise.
Evidently, Aleatha had been suffering from severe depression combined with social isolation, and took her own life.
She’d sealed herself in the garage with a garden hose and a car with a full tank.
The story was that her mother found her the next morning, not even cold yet.
I don’t talk about this with anyone. Not my father, not my brother, not the trail of women who think I might someday reform.
But it’s there, always: the memory of my former stepsister’s face, the way she said “Oh,” the way she looked so calm and composed even when her heart was breaking.
I think about her a lot more than I should.
I think about what kind of person it makes me, to walk away from someone in such a cruel fashion, and never look back.
I think about how maybe I’m wired to hurt people, and how maybe I do it on purpose.
Dad told me, more than once, that I wasn’t to blame. “There’s no logic to it, Trev,” he’d say, sitting on the porch with a fresh bourbon. “That kind of sadness, it’s like a current. It drags you under. You can’t save someone if they don’t want to swim.”
I believed him, mostly. But I also knew that I could have at least tossed a life ring. I could have done better.
Now, I’m thirty-five, and I can see every step I took to get here.
I can see the pattern, like DNA. Meet a girl, get her hopes up, then be a total asshole and walk away after using her body.
Hell, it doesn’t even happen in that order sometimes.
Sometimes, I’m an asshole the whole way through, and yet the women don’t seem to care.
The only difference is that now I’m a legit billionaire, and it greases the wheels, if anything.
The pace has picked up, and I’ve dated a fuck ton in the last decade.
The pussy comes so fast and furious now that I’ve literally lost count.
But then there’s Kayleigh.
She’s twenty-one, impossibly young, and she’s my stepsister.
She took naked photos of herself—sexy ones, lush ones, not those awkward, blurry shots you expect from a girl her age, but honest-to-god art slash porn—and she sent them to me.
I fucked her with my hands and mouth, made her come so hard she blacked out, then sent her away like I was doing her a favor.
I said all the right things: You’ll regret this.
You’re too young. You need someone better than me.
But the truth is, I sent her away because I was scared. Not for her, but for myself. For what she made me feel, and what I knew I’d do to her if she stayed.
I drain my drink and consider ordering another, but I know that’s not a good idea. The next time I see Kayleigh, I want to be sharp. I want to see the look on her face when we talk. I can’t be a drunk when I hurt her so badly.
Suddenly, a commotion by the entrance signals that the auction is about to start.
People are gathering near the stage, filling in the rows of chairs, finding their seats like it’s opening night at the Guthrie.
I spot Dad—his hair silver, his suit a perfect navy, his smile dazzling in a way that’s always just a little bit cruel.
He’s talking to a blonde in a red dress, one hand on her arm, his head tipped just close enough to make her feel important.
I catch his eye. He gives me a nod, like: Ready for the show, son?
I nod back.
But before I join the rest, I look around one more time for Kayleigh. I don’t see her. The only young blondes here are clinging to the arms of donors, or drifting in clusters at the edge of the room, drinking in the action. Maybe she stayed away. Smart girl.
Or maybe she’s just waiting for the right moment to make her entrance.
I set my empty glass down, roll the stem between my fingers, and feel the ghost of Aleatha’s voice in my ear: “You’re going to regret this, Trevor.”
I already do.
But I straighten my lapels, smooth my jacket, and walk toward the stage.
It’s auction time.