“Make sure what?”
“Make sure I make my grandfather happy.” He frowns again. Does he hate the idea of needing to lean on someone?
“I understand. You have a lot of pressure riding on this project.”
“You have no idea,” he grumbles under his breath.
“Why didn’t you hire someone else to help me?”
“I thought of it but didn’t want to.”
“Why?”
“Because my common sense escaped me.”
“Or you liked me.” I try my hardest not to smile but fail miserably.
“Definitely not. I found you oddly annoying and way too nice at the time.”
I lean over the coffee table and give his shoulder a shove. “Hey! There’s no such thing as being too nice.”
“There is where I come from.”
“And that is?”
His eyes reflect enough disgust to nauseate me. “A place where people smile too brightly or talk too sweetly because they have every intention of using it against me. It’s the whole damn reason I’m cynical in the first place.”
“That sounds awful.”
“I’m sure you would be horrified to know what kind of people are lurking beyond the park’s pearly gates. Dreamland really is some fantasy. It’s like this whole damn place is untouched by the real world.”
“Tell me about what you had to deal with then. Help me understand why you are the way you are.”
His fists clench against the coffee table. “You really want to know?”
I nod.
“Fine. But it’s not pretty.”
“The truth usually isn’t.”
He blinks at me. His eyes drag from my face to his clenched fists, where he opens and closes them repeatedly.
He sighs after what feels like a minute of silence. “My first real taste of the scum of the Earth started in college when a random girl invited me back to her dorm after a party.”
My appetite shifts to nausea at the mention of him being with someone else.
“Before, I had only dealt with the typical stupid teen stuff—like people using me for a private jet or a trip to Cabo.”
“Oh yeah, the typical stuff.”
He cracks the saddest smile before it falls flat. “Well, where I came from, people have used me throughout my life, but it had never taken a turn toward anything illegal until I became an adult. College was eye-opening. I lost my virginity while unknowingly being filmed with a hidden camera. It cost my father a lot of money to sweep that issue under the rug before she went to the media with the tape.”
The food I ate doesn’t sit well with his admission. “Are you serious? That’s disgusting! Why would you pay her off? She’s the one in the wrong.”
“Because I wasn’t going to risk it. A tape like that could be devastating if it got out, so we paid her to stay quiet and turn it over.”
I can’t do anything but stare at him.
He lets out a bitter laugh. I’ve never heard it before, and I hope I don’t listen to it again because it makes my entire body chilled to the bone. “That was only my first experience. College was full of shit but even that was tame compared to adulthood.”
“Oh God. There are things worse than blackmail?” Seriously, I thought money meant security, but realistically, it only further complicates life.
He nods. “I’ve dealt with it all. Women stabbing sealed condoms with safety pins when they thought I wasn’t looking. Someone trying to drug my drink at a bar. There was this one ti—”