Page 29 of Blindsided

Lingerie had never been my thing before, but the look on Easton’s face was making me seriously consider it. At least until my brain fully kicked into gear and I remembered where we were. Easton was not going to see me in panties, nor would he be fucking me against a wall or spanking my ass. “What are you doing here?” My tone was harsher than I’d intended, but it served to snap us out of the weird place we’d found ourselves in.

Easton strode over to my desk and sat down in the chair across from me. He kept his legs separated slightly, unashamed of the bulge still visible in his shorts. “Truthfully? I came to see how you were. I was worried about you after you disappeared yesterday. I’ve been worried about how little I see you around. From everything I hear, you stick to yourself, don’t go out, and haven’t made friends with anyone. I was glad to see you at the party. Then you just vanished into thin air.”

The burning hot embarrassment I’d been experiencing faded as he spoke. Now I was flushed and likely pinker than normal but no longer worried sweat would begin dripping down my forehead at any second. It wasn’t fair that Easton was being nice. Not after I’d walked out on him in college or after I’d shut him out of my room in May, and not after I’d disappeared the day before. When it came to Easton Lafferty, I had mastered disappearing acts, yet he kept finding his way to me.

“You don’t need to worry about me. I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

Easton raised an eyebrow at me, his voice dropping low and dangerously close to the no-nonsense Dom I had fallen in love with. “Did I ever say you couldn’t?”

I shook my head. “No, Sir.”

The slight twitch at the corner of his lip was the only indication I’d said something I shouldn’t have.

Easton inclined his head and raised an eyebrow, silently telling me I told you so. “I never said you couldn’t take care of yourself. You are fully capable of that, even if you don’t always want to.” He leveled me with a stare that brought back every scene and conversation we’d ever had. I had to fight not to whimper and beg for everything I couldn’t have and didn’t deserve even if I could.

When he stopped talking, the silence became too much for me and words flowed like someone had turned on a faucet. I needed to fill the silence, needed to keep talking. I needed him to know why I left all those years ago.

“Exactly. But I come with baggage named after my family.” Yes, I was being sarcastic but also truthful. Barrington Luggage was one of the most expensive consumer brands on the shelf of department stores. I’d often found it ironic that a family with so much drama and dysfunction had a luggage brand.

“We’ve got money that most people can’t comprehend. I come with people breathing down my back and looking over my shoulder and no say in where I am—hell, what I’m doing with my life—from one moment to the next. It doesn’t matter what I want. It matters what is best for the family. For the name. For the brand. I am nothing more than a yes-man for my mom and grandfather. They say jump, I say how high? The baggage I come with is not something others sign up for. It’s not a lifestyle anyone who doesn’t have a family empire going back two hundred plus years understands.”

“Have you ever given someone a chance to understand?” He didn’t have to ask if I’d given him a chance. His question was clear. As was the hurt he still felt over my disappearance.

My shoulders slumped and I hung my head. “I’ve wanted to. Once.” I blinked up at him, praying he understood. “There was this guy. He was perfect. But his life and mine were headed in opposite directions. I knew that being associated with me had the very real possibility of fucking up everything he’d worked his entire life for.”

Easton knew I was talking about us and when he scoffed, I wished I hadn’t opened up like I had. “Wait, wait. I think I know how this story ends. You made the choice for him, without talking to him—me—about it. But really, you never gave me a chance. You were never as invested in us as I was. You didn’t even give me your real name.”

“Easton, I—” My words cut off in my throat. Anything I said to refute his statement would be an excuse, and I changed what I was going to say. “You’re right. I didn’t give you my full legal name. What I gave you is something I have never given anyone else—me. You are the only person who has ever known the person I am outside of the royally fucked-up Barrington family. You’re the only person who has ever known the real me, the me I am when I’m not Francis Lincoln Lewis-Barrington, second in line for Barrington Holdings, intended for a line of work from conception, groomed and tailored for the job since birth.”

The chair bounced across the low-pile carpet as Easton stood abruptly and leaned over the desk, his hands resting on a stack of papers I’d left for today. “First off, your family doesn’t define you, Lincoln Lewis.” The browns of my office reflected in the blues of his eyes and turned them the color of a stormy ocean tide as he nearly spit the words.

I’d wanted to argue with him that my family did define me, but when he said my name, the argument escaped me.

“Second,” he said, no less angry than he’d been when he shot up out of his chair. “You control your life. I know you have an opinion about your life! You always had them in college. From where we were going to eat lunch to floggings, you had an opinion about it all. I know you know what you want now, just like you did then. It hurt when you walked away from me. Hell, Link, you walked away from us. But this”—he gestured at me—“this version of you that just gives up and lets someone else make the decisions for him? This is so much worse than that. You're not the person who laid over my lap and begged me for more and harder. You’re definitely not the same person who pushed me in the gym and wouldn’t let me give up when I fucked up my knee sophomore year. Where is he? Where is that man? He certainly knew what he wanted. Hell, that person knew what I wanted better than I did.”

Easton stood and turned his back, raking his hands through his hair in frustration. His next words were delivered to my wall, resignation and disappointment just as clear as the anger in his voice. “You are strong enough to know that your family can’t control you. If they’re trying, man, that isn’t a real family.” When he turned to face me again, the anger had been replaced with sadness. “If you’re letting someone else dictate your happiness, you’re not the same man I once knew.”

He headed for my door before I could think of a response. One second I was sitting there dumbstruck by the hard truth he’d delivered, and the next I was on my feet as my chair hit the small table behind me and the few things I’d placed on it clattered to the ground. I didn’t bother looking behind me as I leaned over and slapped my hands against the wooden desktop so hard they stung.

Words came without me knowing what I was going to say, just knowing I needed to say something. “You don’t get to say all that and walk out of here! I already told you I fucked up. And I did, I fucked up so many times. I didn’t tell you my story. I didn’t give you the chance to fight for us. College was the first—the only—time I could be me. My entire fucking life, I was Francis Barrington. It didn’t matter that I hated it. I grew up in the Hamptons. Went to the most expensive private schools. Had a personal driver, you know, because my mom couldn’t be bothered to take time off work for anything. Got shipped to boarding school in seventh grade. Private tutors and my family’s money made sure I got into Yale because that was the only option for college.”

Easton turned, his eyes wide with dawning realization. “Yeah, Barrington Hall,” I said before he could ask. I was already exhausted and the conversation that we should have had a decade earlier was just beginning. “My great-great-grandfather was the first Barrington to attend when his family moved here from England. Even back in the eighteen hundreds, the Barrington family was loaded.” I rolled my eyes.

“See, Easton, it’s not as easy as wanting to do something different for my life. I couldn’t have dreams or aspirations of my own because they were given to me as a child. Aston was—is—supposed to lead the family when my mom finally retires. Except the only things Aston’s ever led have been parties, a police chase, and to rehab more than once.”

Easton’s mouth opened to say something but I held my hand up to stop him. “That sounds terrible. I know it does. I have nothing against rehab. Hell, I hoped it would work the first few times he was there. Aston, even when sober and clearheaded, doesn’t want help. My mom, as cutthroat and brutal of a businesswoman as she is, refuses to believe it. But she also doesn’t want to really deal with him either. So she keeps throwing money at the problem, hoping it will fix him. And when she can’t throw money at it, she throws me at it. I honestly don’t know if she wants to help him or just forget he exists.”

The shock on Easton’s face would have been funny if it weren’t because I’d just given him the story of my life. “Welcome to life in the Barrington family. Be seen, not heard. And don’t you dare be seen in a negative way. Always put your best foot forward. With Aston always in trouble and demanding so much of my parents’ time, I kept my nose in the books. Got into Yale, though I’m guessing my mom had something to do with it because my grades weren’t that great despite always studying.”

I took a deep breath, knowing the next part of this conversation would be the most difficult. “Then I met this guy who was everything. Bright red hair, big blue eyes, confidence for days. Sexy, funny, self-deprecating at times, and the more I got to know him, the more drawn I was to him. Turns out, he wasn’t just an amazing person. He was an amazing partner and eventually became an amazing Dom too. He pulled me up when I was certain I would sink. He held me close when I thought I’d blow away. He would send me flying sky-high but never once let the string go.” I closed my eyes, fighting back the tears threatening to spill over at any second.

“And when he finally saw his dream coming true, my reality was just starting. There were already rumblings of my mom planning to send me to Europe after graduation because Aston had made a mess of a deal there. I knew then, like I know now, the Barrington family is toxic and would only bring negativity to you. Negativity you didn’t need.

“You’d told me that the hockey world was homophobic. There was one out hockey player when you entered the draft. You said his sexuality was always the first thing people talked about. My family doesn’t care that I’m gay. Had you been any other college student, all they would have cared about was which family you came from.

“Even back then, Aston was flitting from one place and party to another, making a mockery of himself and my mom would have latched onto your career in a heartbeat just to take the attention off the chosen child. She then would have manipulated the story to the point no one knew up from down or right from left. Knowing her as well as I do, she would have found any and every way to make sure we weren’t in the same city at the same time. Because my mom was and still is selfish and only cares about the business. She is my grandfather’s protégé through and through.”

Easton took a few steps closer. I had his entire attention focused right on me. Inwardly I cringed because I knew what I was about to say wouldn’t be any easier than anything I’d said to this point. “And to top off the entire shit show of our senior year, Aston had gotten into legal trouble in New York and there were questions swirling about how the charges were magically dropped. Most people assumed my family paid off the judge or the DA. I never asked what happened, and to be honest I don’t want to know, but what I did know was that my family and our drama did not need to distract you from your dream. You worked your entire life for hockey. I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. If the media came at me, I’d still be a Barrington and still have money, and at the end of the day, I would still have a job. If that same media and drama came at you, it could have cost you everything you’d spent your entire life earning.

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