The First Part

Chapter 1

Cause all I ever wanted was to be enough for you

When Aaron Cardoner was 4, he learned that money can't buy everything.

Money can get him toys, desserts, and clothes, but it can't bring his father back to life. He had suffered a heart attack at work, there was nothing anyone could do.

They used money to throw him a funeral. Aaron remembers it, the silence, the tears, it was suffocating.

But there wasn't much else money could do. Money couldn't make his mother stop hating him. His aunt told him it was because he acted too much like his late father. He didn't understand how that was his fault, all he knew was that it made his mother upset.

Money can't make his uncle less confrontational and violent. Aaron's father was always the one who kept his brother in check, made sure he didn't go too far. But now that he was gone, his uncle hated everything, thought everything was too this and too that. He threatened to throw Aaron in a boarding school just cause he accidentally spilled water on him.

Money can't make his cousin stop berating him. 'You're so short! I bet you don't have any friends at school!' All his remarks were accompanied by a snarky laugh. His father used to yell back at Alex for him, but now he was left to fend for his own.

Money can't restore his family to what it used to be.

But then his mother had a friend who put an idea in her head. She brought Aaron to an audition, he was told to read off a piece of paper and smile as much as he can while eating a bowl of cereal. Then his mother got a call, and suddenly he had to do it every day for a week. Then his mother got a lot of money, and he saw himself on TV.

And then there was a party. For him. There was chocolate cake and ice cream. There were presents and hugs and kisses. His mother said she was so proud of him. His aunt and uncle bought him new shoes. His cousin told him that he was the coolest person he's ever met.

Suddenly, he went from being discarded to being showered with love. His family was proud of him.

So he asked his mother to take him to more auditions. He did more TV advertisements: one for a backpack, one for some type of hand soap, and another one for school supplies. He got scouted to play a kid called Winston in a show called 1989. And he got another role as Nicholas in the movie Sour.

And every time he announced that he got a new role, everyone would smile, and say that he was so talented, that he was so smart and so hardworking. And his mother would show him off to her co-workers. Alex would tell his classmates that his cousin was an actor!

It makes them proud, he thinks, it makes them love me.

So now he had more money than he can spend. More attention from the media than he wanted, but more love than he could've ever dreamed of getting when he was 4.

And when he was 13, he decided to audition for Jackson in an up-and-coming show called Maroon. He did well in the first round of auditions, and then he was told he'd be partnered up with some actors that played Jackson's love interest, Aidan, in the show.

That's when he met the boy that changed his life forever.