10. Aiden #2
“It’s strange you keep an eye on our net worth.” Rhett’s expression tightened slightly, and he set down the bag of snacks. “Why would I need more? I live with my friends, I study the same as they do, and I don’t have to worry about my next meal. Is that so bad?”
“Never said it was bad,” I replied, leaning back in the chair. “But there aren’t many people out there as lucky as you, and you’re letting it go to waste.”
“You’re using enough privileges for a whole lot of us,” he shot back, but there was curiosity in his voice rather than accusation.
I laughed, because he wasn’t wrong. “Touché. But don’t you ever want more? Don’t you ever think about what you could do with those kinds of resources?”
“Like what? Buy a penthouse apartment I’d never use? A car that costs more than most people make in a year?” He shook his head. “I don’t see the point.”
“The point is freedom. The point is having options.” I tried to find a way to explain it that wouldn’t sound completely shallow. “When you have money, you don’t have to worry about whether you can afford to take risks. You can pursue opportunities that other people can’t.”
“But I don’t want those opportunities. I want to play hockey and get my degree and figure out what comes next. I don’t need a trust fund to do that.”
There was something admirable about his conviction, even if I didn’t entirely understand it. I’d grown up with money as a tool, something to be leveraged and used strategically. The idea of deliberately living without it seemed almost incomprehensible to me.
“You really don’t get it, do you?” Rhett continued, studying my face. “Money changes things. It changes how people look at you, how they treat you, what they expect from you. When I’m here, living like this, I’m just another student. Nobody cares who my father is or how much my family is worth.”
“But they’d care if they knew.”
“Exactly. So why would I want them to know?”
I considered this, turning it over in my mind.
There was a logic to it that I’d never really thought about before.
I’d always seen wealth as an advantage, something that opened doors and created opportunities.
The idea that someone might view it as a burden, something to be hidden rather than flaunted, was foreign to me.
“Don’t you ever feel like you’re lying to them? Your friends, your teammates?”
“I’m not lying. I’m just not telling them everything.” He pulled his knees up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them in a gesture that made him look younger than his twenty-two years. “There’s a difference.”
We talked for a while about wealth and privilege, about the different ways we’d grown up and the different perspectives that had shaped us.
He told me about his parents and grandparents, how they’d built their business from nothing and still remembered what it was like to struggle.
I found myself sharing more than I’d intended about the pressure that came with being Richard Whitmore’s son, the expectations and the weight of family legacy.
“Your apartment,” Rhett said at one point. “The one you’re living in now. Is it actually yours?”
“Technically, it belongs to a subsidiary of my father’s company. But for all practical purposes, yes.”
“And you don’t feel weird about living in a place you didn’t pay for?”
I shrugged. “Should I? It’s not like I had much choice in where I was born or who my parents are.”
“But you could choose to live differently.”
“I could. But why would I want to make things harder for myself just to prove a point?”
He was quiet for a moment, considering this. “I guess I’ve never thought about it that way. For me, living like this isn’t making things harder. It’s making them simpler.”
There was something in his voice, a contentment that I envied despite myself. I’d spent my entire life accumulating advantages, using every resource available to me, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt the kind of peace that seemed to radiate from him when he talked about his simple life.
“What about parties?” I asked, changing the subject slightly. “Don’t you ever want to experience the kind of events your family could get you into?”
“You mean like charity galas where everyone spends the evening trying to network their way into better business deals?” He made a face. “I’ve been to enough of those to last a lifetime.”
“Not all of them are like that.”
“No? What are they like?”
I tried to think of a way to describe the world I’d grown up in, the exclusive events and private clubs and gatherings where fortunes were made and lost over cocktails. “They’re…educational. You learn how the world really works, how decisions get made, who has power and how they use it.”
“That sounds terrifying.”
“It can be. But it’s also exhilarating. There’s something addictive about being in a room where everyone understands that everything is a game and the stakes are higher than most people can imagine.”
Rhett was looking at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read, something that might have been curiosity mixed with concern. “Is that what you want? To be part of that game?”