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Tom barely took a breath before he went on.
“You’ve then forced them to go green and establish strategies to be carbon neutral within a decade. You then significantly cut or even eliminated executive bonuses, which has lost you a lot of talent, I’ll add.”
“Not one company has suffered from that. We’ve replaced them with fresh talent who have a vision of the future. Not everyone with a head for business is a greedy fuck,” Hale got in.
“Maybe so. But it’s pissing off your shareholders.”
“They have the means to get rid of me.”
“And court that public relations disaster?” Tom demanded. “Ousting the man who’s leveling the playing field? Another thing that pisses off the alt-right, you’re the human equivalent of woke, and even though the vast majority of them don’t even know what woke means, they hate you for it.”
“If you think I haven’t played that trump for all it’s worth and will continue to do so until I have no cards left, you’re crazy.”
“What I think is that you’ve done a lot of good work in a short period of time, so you can take a break. But you don’t. You buy up things like Core Point, a massive multi-national athletic company, then dive in to make it a social for-profit. This is a corporation with six headquarters on six continents and nearly eighty thousand employees, every one of them felt you rattle their cages, and you’re going for a run without a bodyguard.”
“Core Point stumbled after their bullshit was exposed, but we’re poised to distribute ten billion in profits from last year to charities and social investment organizations.”
“I’m not saying what you’re doing is wrong, son,” Tom noted. “Far from it. I admire you and what you’re trying to do. I’m proud as hell of you. I’m saying you’re thirty and you should enjoy your life andlive it. And working is not living.”
“You watched Elsa’s interview,” Hale deduced.
“Of course I did. You know that,” Tom replied.
“And you heard me say I don’t intend to get married and have a family, and that tweaked you.”
Tom drew breath into his nose.
It tweaked him.
Tom then said, “I was concerned before I heard you say that in your interview.”
“What I wasn’t going to tell Elsa’s millions of viewers is that it isn’t entirely about that.”
“It’s about what your dad did to Sam, to you, and you don’t want to repeat your father’s sins.”
Hale kept his gaze steady on Tom because he didn’t want to get into this.
Ever.
But definitely not with an audience.
“Everyone here cares about you,” Tom pointed out after reading his mind.
“That doesn’t mean you aren’t ganging up on me,” Hale retorted.
“I’m gonna go help with the nachos,” Judge declared, folding out of the couch.
“Me too,” Rix said, following.
“I’m not moving because Tom needs someone to back him up on this,” Jamie said when they heard the men’s treads on the stairs. “He’s speaking truth, it’s from the heart, it’s from fatherly concern, but it’s still truth. And Hale, you need to listen.”
“I’ve never wanted kids,” Hale semi-lied.
And it was semi because he never really thought about it, but when he did, he thought of life with his mother, life with his father, and thought better of it.
“You don’t have to have kids. But you do have to have a life,” Tom stated.
“I’m happy.” Another semi lie.
