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I’m on the board of my father’s company, a chairman, and I do a lot of the legwork. My father doesn’t like to leave his home office, which makes it my job so he doesn’t have to leave it very often.
I focus on work and work alone, which explains why Loxton clowns me for not picking up women. But I learned a while ago that women are a waste of time. They’re just distractions, and I don’t need to be distracted. I have a plan, and that plan is what’s most important to me in life. It may not have always been that way, but that’s how I feel now. Once upon a time, I thought my life would be different. Fuller, happier, a loving one. But then…
Well, the past is in the past and I refuse to think about it.
It doesn’t matter, anyway. Now I’m focused on getting out of my father’s company. I want to be successful in my own right, without the nepotism of having the last name Whitlock. I’m tired of people thinking I get by without working hard.
I’m smart and I’ve worked my whole life to earn the position I was supposedly born into.
Unlike my best friend, I actually care about the image I present to the world. And though Lox is my best friend, that doesn’t mean I want to be lumped in with him and what he does, so I hate seeing the scrolling words beneath our pictures in the news stating:multi-millionaire playboys Grayson Whitlock and Loxton Breckwood partying the night away at Hollywood Hills.Especially, since most of the times, he is the one partying, and I’m just there occasionally , and even then, I only stay for a bit.
The two of us couldn’t be more different. Lox and I both grew up with money, but he chooses to float along in life without pressing forward and having ambition. I don’t want to just slide by in life because I grew up rich, and I want to make my own way in life, outside of my last name.
Being Grayson Whitlock isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. It’s a lot of work, despite the lazy playboy fame attached to my name.
I look around the airport, barely remembering the name of the town I’m in. It’s somewhere in upstate New York, thousands of miles away from Los Angeles where I live. My parents settled in Hollywood, but I didn’t want to settle down in a gated community. Instead, I live downtown, and I love it. I like the city sounds late at night, the trains. They lull me to sleep. I don’t mind the constant background noise. It’s the silence I can’t bear. The thought of having to listen to myself think when I’m alone.
Upstate New York is a lot quieter than my city, or New York City, for that matter. It’s snowing and I sure hope that the rental car I’ve reserved has snow chains. I’m not used to snow, living in balmy California, so I hope the car does most of the work traveling on the ice. Luckily for me, the snow isn’t too bad, and I’m able to navigate to a nearby diner because my stomach is rumbling something fierce. I haven’t eaten before boarding the plane, and I’m paying for it now.
Despite all the money I grew up with, I’m not a picky eater. In fact, I prefer eating simpler, homemade cooked meals. Sometimes, little gems are hidden in the form of diners in a world of fancy restaurants that overcharge you to keep you hungry. There’s something about the authenticity of diners and smaller local restaurants that appeals to me. And not having grown up with home-cooked meals, I learned to love them. I’m not a fan of caviar and whole-grain pita chips, like my mother. She embraces being a billionaire’s wife more than she’s ever embraced being a mother.
As I wait in line, I look around, and it’s a charming little place. There’s a woman standing behind the counter, pleading with what appears to be the owner.
“I just need to work this shift, Barry,please. He’ll be good. Max always sits quietly and colors in his book. Felicia always lets him stay—”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what Felicia does, you can’t have a kid here!” the man snarls, and I raise an eyebrow. It’s none of my business but I think he’s being kind of a dick.
The woman has a nice curve to her ass, I can tell that much. I don’t notice much, not anymore, when it comes to women, but I can appreciate a nice form. It reminds me of someone, but I don’t want to think about it. I suppose if I let myself, any woman’s figure would remind me ofher.
Her voice adds to the illusion too, but that has to be just because it’s a bit high-pitched with panic. Her hair is dark, much longer thanhershad been, after all.
The little boy grabs my attention as he’s looking up at his mother with wide eyes.
He turns my way, but he isn’t looking at me, just staring into space, and I’m staring at him, at eyes that are the same color as mine. So odd, but cute.
The woman turns around, her bust much smaller than the curve of her ass, and my eyes slowly pan up to her face. I would know those warm brown eyes, her upturned nose framed by her auburn hair, anywhere. If I was blind, I feel like I could sense her, smell her perfume. She always smells like lilacs, and that hasn’t changed in the past five years. It’sher.
Somehow, I’ve stumbled across Lillian Brooks. How is this possible?
My eyes go to the boy again, as if some force is pulling me there, and he is still looking past me. He is holding her hand. And his eyes catch my attention as I once again notice he has the exact same blue eyes that I do. Not just the color. Now that I look at him, there is something familiar about him. Something that reminds me of…
All the air seems to go out of the room and my throat feels tight and small, like a pinhole. I can’t breathe, and I think about turning and getting the hell out of there. I’m wrong. I have to be wrong. Lots of kids have blue eyes, and just because his happens to be the exact shape and shade of almost violet blue that runs in the Whitlock family…
Fuck.
“Grayson?” she whispers, and I feel like I’m going to pass out, but instead I set my jaw, keeping my eyes on the child next to her.
“Who’s this young man?” I ask her, my voice booming in the small diner, and people turn to look at me. I don’t care.
“Max. Maximillian,” the boy says, sticking out his hand to shake mine. I shake his hand, my fingers shaking, but the boy has a firm grip. Mysonhas a firm grip. Because there is no question in my mind who this little boy is.
Lillian stares at me, her full mouth open in shock, and something rolls in my stomach, making me nauseous. It’s familiar, more welcome than the ache in my throat and chest when I’d first recognized my own eyes in her son’s face.Myson’s face.
Anger. Rage, even, boils up inside of me, and I feel like I’m going to scream. Not only has Lillian left me heartbroken, disappeared like a ghost, she’d beenpregnant. She’s hidden it from me, and my head is spinning from the insanity of all of it.
The fact that I bumped into her here, of all places, on the last leg of my business trip, hours before I need to meet with a man who will put enough money into our company to line my father’s wallet for years, seems surreal. I have a son. I have ason, a young man who seems polite as he smiles up at me, and God, he even shares the dimple I have in my left cheek, mirrored in his right.
“Lillian,” I say firmly. “I think we need to talk.”
