“If it makes you feel any better, my parents named us Colin, Christine, and Cassidy. The triple C’s are about as nineties as you can get.”
He laughs wryly. “Since you’ve googled me,” he says, making it sound like a dirty word, “then I’m sure you’ve read about my dad. He’s obsessed with money: making it, spending it. He also uses it as a weapon by withholding it when he sees fit. He’s ruthless and manipulative, and once I was old enough to figure that out, I did whatever I could to stay out of his way. He enjoys wielding his power and influence over everyone, including his family. Especially his family.” He pauses. “He’s also a serial philanderer, which you probably didn’t read about.”
My jaw drops. “Oh, geez. Jack, I’m sorry. You know what? Forget I asked about this. It’s none of my business.”
He waves away my objections. “No, you should know what you’re getting yourself into. My family is . . . not the Cleavers. More like the Bluths. Only more dysfunctional.”
“Is your mom—I mean, how does she . . .”
“How does she feel about being repeatedly cheated on?” He lets out a humorless laugh. “When we were young, they would get into these crazy fights. Screaming matches and blowups, and then she’d give him the silent treatment for a few days. Eventually things would go back to normal, and then the cycle would repeat itself. By the time I was a teenager, she was self-medicating as a way to deal with it.” He looks pained. “I know she did the best she could for us under the circumstances, and she didn’t deserve the way my dad treated her, but she also refused to leave him, which never made sense to me. It’s like she made a decision that she was going to look the other way, that she’d rather live a lie than blow up her life, and it didn’t matter if we were all miserable as a result.” He blows out a breath. “It’s taken me a long time to stop resenting her for it.”
Whoa. He takes a heavy swallow of his drink and I see now why he wanted the extra fortification. “What about your brother?”
He makes a low noise in the back of his throat. “Our relationship is . . . complicated. My dad would pit us against each other, encourage us to be competitive. You don’t always understand that when you’re young, and by the time we caught on to it, the die had been cast. And then when Brawler started taking off, I thought it would be a great idea to bring him into the fold. It seemed like a perfect solution—I could surround myself with people I trusted and fix our relationship. What could go wrong?”
This story is starting to make me sick to my stomach. “Oh no.”
“Exactly. Here’s a tip if you ever start your own business: Don’t hire your friends and family. It will blow up in your face.”
“Wow.” I shake my head, at a loss for words. “Jack, that’s a lot. That’s really tough.”
“It wasn’t great.” He exhales. “Years of therapy so I could learn to say ‘It wasn’t great.’？”
I cough a laugh. “Well, I’ll tell you what—despite all that, you seem pretty darn put together. From where I’m sitting, at least.”
“Thanks. I suppose we have the therapist to thank for that, too.”
We both chuckle this time, and I’m quiet for a moment as I consider how best to approach this next part. Time for the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.
Nothing left to do but rip off the Band-Aid. “Since you brought it up, how exactly does Brawler fit into all this?”
“Like the early years? How we started?”
“Sure, yeah.”
He shifts on the couch, stretching his legs out in front of him. “Well, initially it was purely a sports betting operation. Tom and I both needed the cash, and the Penn dorms were the perfect place to find a bunch of guys with money burning a hole in their pockets.”
“Wait, I don’t understand. Why did you need money? I thought . . .”
He shakes his head. “When I left for college, I promised myself I’d never take another dime from my father. I told him so, too, so I’d be forced to stick to it. And that really pissed him off, since money was his only leverage over me at that point.”
I’m still confused. “But I thought your dad provided the seed money for Brawler?”
His brows pull together and he frowns. “You read that stupid profile.” He curses under his breath. “I swear, that thing will never stop following me.”
“It’s the only interview I could find,” I admit.
“That’s because I haven’t done a single one since.” He violently rakes a hand through his hair, clearly agitated. “That asshole writer completely misrepresented everything about us. At the time, Tom and I thought a big, splashy profile would help legitimize the business, but they framed the whole thing like it was some pet project of my dad’s. He never had a thing to do with Brawler. In fact, he’s embarrassed by it. He thinks it’s beneath me.”
He’s not the only one. I practically draw blood biting my tongue on that one. “So I’m going to guess that making it successful became even more attractive to you.”
“Bingo. It was a giant fuck you.”
All the puzzle pieces are starting to fit together. “I think I’m starting to better understand your relationship with Tom. If you don’t mind me saying so, I haven’t really understood why . . .” . . . you’d be friends with such a crass misogynist. “I mean, he’s so . . .” . . . offensive in every way. I collect my thoughts and try again. “You seem very respectful of women in general, and my boundaries specifically. Tom’s whole persona is . . . basically the opposite of that.” There. That’s about as diplomatic as I can put it.
“Tom’s not who people think he is.”
I scoff. “Come on.”
“Fine, he’s not only who people think he is. He knows his role in the business is to be the outrageous one who says shocking things, and I can’t exactly complain about that when it’s allowed me to fly under the radar.”
“And made you a lot of money,” I add pointedly.
He slides me a sideways glance but lets that one go by. “We’ve been through a lot together. I’m closer to him than my own brother. He’s taken a lot of bullets for me.”
I make a face, still unconvinced.
“You know the Brawler fund, where we raise money for veterans and first responders? And how we expanded it to help keep restaurants open during the pandemic?”
Of course I do; it’s one of the few truly decent endeavors Brawler’s spearheaded. They rallied their audience for donations and persuaded their network of professional athletes to match them, eventually raising more than forty million dollars and saving hundreds of restaurants from permanent closure. “Yeah?”
“I wish I could say that was my idea, but it was all Tom. He’s got a big mouth, sure, but he’s got an even bigger heart.”
Hmph. “Guess I’ll have to take your word for it.” I’m not buying that Tom’s some sort of misunderstood do-gooder no matter what Jack says, but there’s no use debating the point with someone who’s so obviously determined to view him through rose-colored glasses. “Anyway, I guess I thought you were this ‘Mr. Popular, everyone’s best friend’ type, but I’m sensing that your life is . . . simpler than I thought.” Lonelier.