As her words sank in, Tristan snatched his hand away and ran ahead of her. A dad. His dad! Billy had a dad. Tom had a dad too. Even that stupid Charlie Kane had a dad. A dad. He had a real dad. And maybe his dad would fix whatever was wrong with his mom, too!
Tristan banged on the front door.
“Tris—” his mother admonished, but a terrible coughing fit interrupted anything else she intended to say.
The door opened, revealing a man on the other side.
He wasn’t very tall, but he looked…nice. He didn’t look like Tristan—everyone said Tristan looked like his mother—but he had eyes just like him.
The man—his dad—stared at him in confusion, a polite smile on his lips.
Tristan heart thumped in his chest. He smiled. “Hello.”
“Hello,” his dad said gently. “Can I help you, young man?”
Tristan beamed at him. “I’m Tristan.”
Looking puzzled, his dad glanced over Tristan’s shoulder.
Behind Tristan, his mother finally stopped coughing.
“Hello, Arthur,” she said, her voice still terrible from coughing.
His dad stared at her, his face…empty.
As the silence stretched on, Tristan got a funny feeling in his stomach.
“I’m sorry, sir, I didn’t hear the knocking,” an apologetic male voice said suddenly. “You shouldn’t be answering the door.”
“That’s all right, Barnes,” his dad said after a moment. “It’s no one important. You may go.”
Tristan frowned. Maybe he just hadn’t recognized her? She looked so different now that she was…sick.
“I’m your son, Tristan,” he tried again, trying to give the man his nicest smile. Billy’s mother always said he was “a pretty child” and “irresistible” when he was nice.
His dad gave him a very strange look.
Before he could say anything, there was the sound of someone running, and then, a blond boy, about Tristan’s age, came crashing into Tristan’s dad’s legs. “Daddy, we didn’t finish playing!” he said, grabbing the man’s hand and tugging.
“Wait for me in the living room, James.”
The boy glanced at Tristan and made a face. “Give the beggars something and let’s go!”
Tristan glared at the boy, suddenly painfully aware that he did look like a beggar compared to the boy, who was wearing neat and clean clothes. Tristan had never even seen clothes like that. “Take it back!” he said, lunging forward and pushing the boy. “I’m not a beggar!”
“Tristan—” his mother started, but another coughing fit interrupted her halfway through.
“Dad!” the boy cried out, trying to push Tristan away.
Hands grabbed Tristan’s collar and pushed him away from the boy.
Looking up, Tristan met his dad’s angry eyes. He got that funny feeling in his stomach again.
“Tell him I’m not a beggar,” he whispered. “Tell him I’m your son.”
Something flickered in his dad’s eyes, something like hesitation. He looked over Tristan’s shoulder at his mother.
“Arthur, please,” she said, her voice breaking. “He has no one. When I go, he…”
“Daddy, who are these people?” the boy whined.
“Arthur?” a cultured female voice called out. There was the sound of approaching footsteps. “Who is it?”
Swallowing, his father let go of Tristan’s collar.
“No one,” he said and shut the door in Tristan’s face.
Memory was a fickle thing. Tristan didn’t remember what he told his mother afterward or what she said to him. He had only a vague memory of his mother’s death a few months later. But he remembered with perfect clarity what he felt as he stared at that pristine white door sixteen years ago: the feeling of inadequacy and utter humiliation and hurt. And anger. Lots and lots of anger.
Tristan shook his head with a crooked smile. God, this was so pathetic. He was perfectly aware what a textbook case he was. Freud would have had a field day with him. He knew that one of the reasons he couldn’t stand Gabriel was because he projected his hatred for the boy—his real brother—onto him, though it didn’t help that Gabriel often made him feel inferior, too.
Gabriel often accused him of being a two-faced, manipulative shit. He wasn’t wrong. But he wasn’t right, either. Tristan would have liked to be as devious as Gabe imagined him to be, but the truth was simpler and far more demeaning: Tristan made so much effort to be liked by other people because he needed it.
But being aware of his problems and actually doing something about them were two different things. It had been sixteen years and he still couldn’t deal with rejection any better than he had when he was a child. He hated feeling inadequate. Inferior. Unwanted and humiliated.
He’d never hated Zach Hardaway more.
Tristan closed his eyes, trying to clear his mind, but he couldn’t erase the memory of his own shaky, needy voice begging Zach and the slap of rejection. Of course Zach had rejected him—he might have wanted Tristan physically, but he had a perfect little girlfriend he was marrying.
Tristan’s father would have approved.
A laugh bubbled up his throat and Tristan shook his head. No. He wouldn’t let Zach reduce him to this. He wasn’t going to wallow in self-pity. So Zach rejected him; so what? It was a good thing. It didn’t matter how humiliating it was—it was a good thing that Zach had stopped before they could go too far. If he had slept with Zach, he would have regretted it, anyway. A fuck wasn’t worth his self-esteem. He would never be the “other woman,” as his mother had been. So screw Zach. Tristan didn’t give a damn about him. He was Tristan DuVal, a world-class football star and millionaire, and he was awesome. Millions of people wanted to be him. Millions wanted him. Zach was nothing. Zach was no one to him. Zach didn’t deserve to kiss his boots. And Zach sure as hell didn’t deserve an easy way out.