Tomboy

His dad kept his hands shoved in his pockets, so they exchanged a barely tepid chin nod. Fine with him. Better that way, really.

Zach stayed close, not because he wanted to be near them but because he didn’t want anyone to overhear. “What do you want?”

“Why, to see our darling boy,” his mom said. “It’s been too long.”

He used to believe her. Hell, part of him still wanted to. That’s what pissed him off more than the money or the potential for public humiliation hanging over his head like an anvil. Sure, he’d been stupid, naive, and trusting, but he’d fought his way free of that, and he wasn’t going back to being that guy who believed.

“I’ll only ask one more time.” He kept his voice low, even though he wanted to roar the words at them. “What do you want?”

“What do you think?” his dad asked, the words coming out like a punch.

He had to clamp his mouth shut and count to ten before he could answer. “There’s no more money.”

“Zachary, there’s always more,” his mom said, her tone as warm as her eyes were not. “Sometimes you just have to get creative.”

Yeah. That’s how they saw what they’d done to him. They’d gotten creative. He had no clue how in the hell they’d managed to go through everything they’d creatively skimmed off of him and then his shut-up-and-go money already. It made sense, though. With the Ice Knights winning and the sports talking heads no longer saying his name with an edge of what-the-fuck, his star was back on the rise, and that meant one thing to his parents. Money.

“Understand me,” he said, fighting to keep the emotion out of his voice. “There is no more money. None. It’s gone, and I still owe millions. Every dollar I earn goes to paying down the debt you created, so I can avoid bankruptcy and keep all of our names out of the news.”

His mom brushed the platinum-blond hair off her shoulder. “All publicity is good publicity, son.”

“No. It’s not.” He took a step back, willed himself not to yell out the rest of what needed to be said. “Go back to wherever it is that you’ve come from and leave me the hell alone.”

He started to turn away, to go join his teammates, but his dad’s voice stopped him.

“You don’t want to turn your back on us, son.”

Zach knew that to be the truth, but he’d had more than enough interaction with his parents for one night. Hell, he’d had enough for a lifetime. They’d given him life. They’d turned him into one of the top-rated draft picks in the league. Then they’d taken what they saw as their just reward.

“Trust me, I learned that lesson the hard way, Dad,” Zach said, embedding as much disgust as possible into that last word before turning and striding to the exit, hoping like hell the snarl on his face would keep the rest of the world the fuck away from him.

…

Keeping his head down and his snarl in place, Zach was one of the first players on the plane. He walked all the way down to the last row by the bathroom, the one spot no one ever wanted, and sat down, tossing his backpack on the empty seat next to him.

“Dude,” Stuckey said, stopping in the aisle beside Zach’s row. “Move your shit.”

“Seat’s taken,” he said.

Stuckey chuckled. “By your backpack?”

“Yeah.”

Stuckey let his head fall back and let out a deep breath as if he was barely holding on to his California surfer boy patience. “Well, fuck you, too.”

Then he muttered “asshole” under his breath as he pivoted and strode back up to the front of the plane where the rest of their line was sitting. Zach watched him go, ignoring the little voice in his head confirming that he was, indeed, an asshole.

Good. It was about time he returned to form. He may not have wanted to see his parents, but it was a good reminder of how the world really was. It wasn’t just sexy nurses and blocked goals. It was disappointment and a constant slog. And if the reality of that put him in a bad mood, made people hate him on sight? Excellent. Then that would be one less user to deal with.

His phone vibrated as a text message came in.

LL: Great game tonight.

He stared at the message from Fallon for a full thirty seconds, fighting off the urge to enjoy the interaction before he could shoot back the bare minimum.

Zach: Tks

Her answer popped up almost immediately.