Ego Maniac

by Vi Keeland

  I took his hand and stepped out of the tub. “You look like you could film a shaving cream commercial right now, and I probably look like a wet rat.” My hair was stuck to my face, and I was glad the mirror was fogged with steam so I couldn’t get a good look at my reflection.

  Drew reached around me with a plush bath towel and began to dry me off.

  “You provide nice primping services,” I teased as he reached down to dry one leg and then the other.

  He winked. “It goes with my prodding service.”

  “Your prodding was pretty damn spectacular, too.”

  “I’m a full-service type of guy.”

  When he was all done drying my body (my boobs and between my legs were extra dry from all the time he spent there), Drew wrapped the towel around my chest and tucked it in at the corner. His sweet side was still on display when he tangled our fingers together for the walk from the bathroom.

  In the kitchen, he pulled a stool out from under the granite island and patted the top. “Have a seat.”

  I swiveled around on it a few times as Drew pulled things out of the cabinets and refrigerator. Remembering what we’d done up against the glass a few hours ago, I stopped twirling and looked at the window. It was dark outside now, and I could see the lights from the city illuminated so clearly.

  “Can people…can they really see inside?” A mixture of panic and embarrassment crept up my cheeks as I remembered how my breasts had been pushed up against the glass. In the moment, it had seemed exciting that someone could possibly see—added to the eroticism. But I definitely didn’t want to wind up on YouTube because some creeper had filmed us through a telescope.

  Drew chuckled. “No. It’s one-way glass. I wouldn’t put you at risk like that.” He reached over my head to grab a pan and kissed my forehead on his way down with it. “Plus, I don’t share things that are mine.”

  The first part of his response made the rational part of me breathe a sigh of relief, but the latter gave me warm fuzzies inside.

  Drew was also still wearing just a towel, his wrapped around his narrow waist, and I was enjoying the view of his back muscles flexing as he chopped an onion, when I noticed a scar. It ran diagonally along the side of his torso, extending from the front to the back. The mark was faded to a lighter shade of tan than the rest of his skin—definitely not new, but something serious had happened.

  “Did you have surgery?” I asked.

  “Hmmm?” Drew dropped some butter into the frying pan and turned with brows drawn.

  I pointed. “Your scar.”

  A flicker of something passed over his face. Sadness, I thought. He turned back around as he responded. “Yeah. Surgery a few years back.”

  Maybe I was looking too much into things, scrutinizing everything he did, but I couldn’t help it. My mind was trying to put together a puzzle without knowing what the picture looked like.

  Drew chopped up a bunch of other things, refusing to let me help. When he plated two gorgeous Western omelets, they looked like they could have been made at one of Baldwin’s fancy restaurants.

  Baldwin.

  I couldn’t waste another three years pining for a man who was never going to return my feelings. I needed to remember that Drew wasn’t interested in more than sex. Getting attached and growing feelings for this man was not an option.

  Yet…I couldn’t help feeling some sort of connection to Drew. Like there was a reason I got ripped off and wound up sitting in his office on New Year’s Eve. Stupid, I know. I had no idea what the connection between us was just yet, but I was determined to find out.

  We made small talk throughout our meal, and then I cleaned up. There weren’t enough dishes to run the dishwasher, so I washed while Drew dried. The two of us worked well together, and I found myself thinking it was interesting how in the office our opinions and counsel were so opposite, yet physically we were so in sync.

  “You want a drink? Glass of wine or something?” he asked when the kitchen was put back together neatly.

  “No, thanks. I’m too full.”

  He nodded. “Come on, let’s go sit in the living room.”

  Drew moved the pillows on the couch around, putting one at the end for my head, then pointed. “Lie down.”

  He stood until I got myself comfortable. Then he lifted my legs and set my feet across his lap. “You ticklish?”

  “Are you going to make it a challenge if I tell you I’m not?”

  He flashed me a crooked smile. “No. I was going to rub your feet.”

  I smiled and lifted one of my feet in the air, offering it to him. “I’m not ticklish. But when you admit that to people, they find it necessary to dig their fingers into your ribs until you bruise trying to prove you’re wrong.”

  Drew took my foot and began to rub. His fingers were strong, and when he took his thumbs and deftly rubbed at a spot on the ball of my foot—the spot where my heels placed most of my body weight—I let out a little mewl.

  “Good?”

  “Better than good,” I sighed.

  After a few minutes of his rubbing, my entire body relaxed, and Drew started to speak in a low voice. “Beck was five years old when he got into an accident with my ex-wife.”

  Oh, God.

  “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  Drew’s brow furrowed, and then he quickly seemed to realize what I thought. “Oh, shit. No. I didn’t mean to make you think…he’s fine. Beck’s fine.”

  My hand went to my chest. “Jesus. You scared the crap out of me. I thought…”

  “Yeah. I realize that now. Sorry. He’s fine. It was scary for a while after the accident, but now you wouldn’t even know he went through three surgeries.”

  “Three surgeries? What happened to him?”

  “A delivery van creamed Alexa’s car, and it crumpled into a V around the van.”

  “That’s horrible.”

  “Beck’s booster seat and part of the car door cut into his side, lacerating his kidney. Surgeons tried to repair it, but because of the location and size of the tear, they had to remove part of it. The day of his accident he had a partial nephrectomy on his left kidney.”

  “Wow. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you.” He took a minute and then continued. “While he was in surgery, the nurses offered to have us donate blood. I felt helpless, and I wanted to do whatever I could.”

  “Of course.”

  “Anyway, they ran a type and cross match blood test on both me and Alexa to see if we were a match to donate and store blood for Beck. Turned out neither of us was.”

  “I didn’t realize two parents could have a child they couldn’t donate blood to?”

  Drew leveled me with a look. “They can’t.”

  It took a few heartbeats for me to realize what he was saying. “You found out Beck isn’t your son.”

  He nodded. “I was there for the delivery, so I was damn sure he was Alexa’s biological child.”

  “I don’t know what to say. That’s awful. Did she know you weren’t the father?”

  “She knew. She won’t admit it. But she knew from the start. Beck was born a few weeks early. I didn’t think anything of it.” He shook his head. “If it wasn’t for the surgery, I might never have found out.”

  “God, Drew. You found out while he was in surgery. Talk about stress on top of stress.”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t a good day. Turned out, it was one of many not-so-good days to come. The next few weeks got even worse.”

  “What happened?”

  “Alexa and I were over before I even left the hospital that night. The truth is, we were over a long time before the accident. But Beck and I…”

  Drew turned his head for a few seconds, and I watched as he swallowed. I knew he was fighting back tears. He still had my feet in his hands, but he had stopped moving. I had no idea what I was supposed to say or do, but I wanted to offer what comfort I could. So I sat up and crawled into his lap. Wrapping myself around his body, I gave him the biggest hu
g I could possibly give.

  After a few minutes, I pulled back and spoke quietly. “You don’t have to tell me any more. Another time, maybe?”

  Drew gave me a small smile. “That day changed the way I felt about Alexa, but it didn’t change anything I felt about Beck. He was still my son.”

  “Of course.”

  “Anyway, a few days after Beck’s surgery, he sprang a fever. His wound was healing, but he seemed to be getting sicker again. They put him on IV antibiotics to treat a possible surgery-related infection, but they didn’t help. The doctors ended up having to open him back up and remove the portion of the kidney they’d left in. And in the meantime, the other kidney had started to show signs of having trouble functioning. It’s actually not uncommon after one kidney is removed, or partially removed, for the other to have difficulty working properly for a while.”

  “The poor baby. He must have been in so much pain. A car accident, surgery, starting to heal, and then more surgery.”

  Drew blew out a deep breath. “The days where he would get upset were actually more comforting than the days he was too weak to do anything. Looking at your child lying there and not being able to help is the worst feeling in the world.”

  “I can’t even imagine it.”

  “After another week, things weren’t getting much better. The infection had cleared, but the other kidney still wasn’t functioning great. They started him on dialysis, which made him feel better and he got healthier, but they also started to talk about putting him on a donor list if his function testing got any lower.

  “People spend years on that list waiting. And taking a five year old who feels otherwise healthy for hours of dialysis every other day was tough. So I had them test me for a match. And amazingly enough, even though I wasn’t his biological father, my kidney was a good match. When he was healthy enough for more surgery, I donated one of my kidneys, which they transplanted to the left side where they’d removed the damaged kidney. That way he’d have two full kidneys, and if his other one didn’t ever fully kick back in, he had double the chance of one of them working at least.”

  I remembered Drew’s back. “That’s what the scar is from?”

  He nodded. “To make an already long story a little less long, the transplant was a success, and his other kidney kicked in and started functioning again a few weeks later. He’s as healthy as a horse now. But it was scary as hell at the time.”

  The entire story was so much to take in. I had so many thoughts, but one of them was more prominent than the others.

  “You’re a beautiful man, Drew Jagger. And I don’t mean on the outside.” I leaned down and trailed a line of kisses from one end of his scar to the other.

  “You only think that because I skipped the part where I packed up Alexa’s shit and moved it while she wasn’t home,” he teased, although I could tell he wasn’t joking.

  “She deserved it. I would have cut holes in the crotches of all her pants, the stupid bitch.”

  Drew pulled his head back, his face amused. “Is that the relationship advice you would have given me if I’d shown up at your office seeking counseling?”

  I thought for a minute. What would I have done? “I only work with couples that genuinely want to make it work. If I’d heard your story, saw the look in your eyes, I wouldn’t have taken you as a client. Because I’d basically be giving the party who wanted to make it work false hope in that case. Not to mention, it would be wrong to take money to do something I knew was never going to happen.”

  “Has that happened to you before? Have you had clients where one wants it to work and not the other?”

  “It has. It’s not uncommon, actually. I have separate sessions in the beginning so the parties can say things freely without worrying about hurting the other person’s feelings. I find I get more truth in those sessions than anything else. When I first started, I had a couple that had been married for twenty-seven years—a wealthy, very social couple with two grown daughters. The man was gay and living a life he felt he was supposed to live after growing up with ultra-conservative, religious parents. It took him until he was fifty-two, but he came out of the closet to his wife and told her they should separate. He felt terrible and had been staying because he loved her, just not in the way a husband should love his wife. I wound up counseling them to separate and helping her get through it.”

  “Shit. Wish we’d been sharing space back then. I could have gotten her a nice settlement,” Drew joked.

  I shoved at his chest. “Thought you only represented men.”

  “How rich were they? I might have made an exception.”

  I laughed. “Why do you only represent men? Because of what your ex-wife did to you?”

  Drew shook his head. “Nah. Just do better with men.”

  His answer was vague, and I had the feeling he was reluctant to answer.

  I squinted. “Give me the real reason, Jagger.”

  He searched my eyes. “You might not want to hear it.”

  “Well, now I’m curious, so whether I want to hear it or not, you have to tell me.”

  Drew’s jaw flexed. “Angry fucking.”

  “Pardon?”

  “When I represented women who were pissed off and angry, they wanted to get even.”

  “So…they were bitter. That’s normal in a divorce.”

  Drew looked embarrassed. “They wanted to get even with their husbands with me.”

  “You slept with your clients?”

  “I’m not proud of it now, but yes. I was recently divorced and angry myself. Angry fucking can do a lot to help you temporarily release that rage.”

  “Isn’t having sex with your clients against some lawyer rules or something?”

  “Like I said, they weren’t my finest moments.”

  I could tell Drew wasn’t just saying he was embarrassed. He really regretted the way he’d acted, and he’d been truthful with me when he could have lied. It wasn’t my place to judge his past. I’d rather judge him for the honesty he was showing me today.

  “Angry sex, huh?” I tried to hide my smile.

  He gave a slight nod and watched me cautiously.

  “Well, I think you’re a womanizing, egotistical, self-centered jerk.”

  Drew pulled his head back. “What the fuck? You wanted me to be honest.”

  “I didn’t think you would honestly be an asshole.”

  He was just about to respond again when I leaned close to him and cracked a sneaky smile. “Did I make you angry?”

  “Are you trying to make me angry?”

  “I’ve heard angry fucking can do a lot to help you temporarily release that rage.”

  Before I knew what was happening, Drew had lifted me into the air and flipped me flat on my back on the couch.

  He hovered over me. “Nice. Then I’m glad I piss you off daily. We’ll need a lot of work on our anger issues.”

  Drew, New Year’s Eve, Two years ago

  Judges hate hearing cases on New Year’s Eve. But I knew what my ex-wife was up to. She thought dragging me into court on our anniversary with some vague emergency motion was going to upset me. Was she really that fucking clueless? Did she think I was sitting home pining for her three months after our divorce was finalized? I’d gotten what I wanted from her out of our divorce: my freedom and liberal shared custody of our son. Whether or not he was my biological child didn’t change the way I felt about him. He was my son. No paternity test was going to tell me otherwise.

  The smartest thing Alexa had ever done was not fight me on shared custody. After I offered to pay a hefty monthly child support—even though technically I could have probably paid nothing—she was suddenly amicable to sharing custody. Money was all my ex-wife was ever interested in. Even while I was married to her, I think I knew the truth down deep.

  I’d called her to find out what the fuck she was up to half a dozen times, but of course she didn’t answer. The manipulative side of her had reared its ugly head in the days since I�
��d packed her bags and had them moved to a rental a few blocks away—a rental I still footed the bill for. If it weren’t for Beck, I would have tossed her shit out the window when I changed the locks. But I wanted my son close to me, and he didn’t deserve to live in a tenement Alexa could barely afford.

  “New Year’s Eve. What poor schlep are you beating up and leaving miserable to start a new year?” George, the court officer at the entrance to the family court joked as he scanned my ID. He did side work for Roman, covering surveillance stakeouts at night, and we’d become friends over the last year.

  “This poor schlep. Ex-wife’s still a bitch.”

  He nodded, having heard all about my fucked-up situation over beers with Roman one night. Handing back my ID, he asked, “You going to Roman’s party tonight?”

  “Looking forward to it.”

  “See you there. Good luck today.”

  Alexa and her dirtbag lawyer, Wade Garrison, were already sitting in the courtroom when I walked in. It was difficult not to laugh at her knee-length skirt and neckline that looked like it might choke her. Especially since I had a thousand photos of her out partying on weekends wearing skin-tight skirts that barely covered her ass and displaying enough cleavage to be mistaken for a hooker. They were compliments of Roman after she and I had split up—in case I needed them someday.

  My ex-wife kept her face straight ahead, refusing to look at me. If there was one thing I knew about Alexa, it was that she avoided my eyes when she was being over-the-top cuntly.

  The court officer called our docket number, and I made sure to go ahead of them, so I could open the gate and force eye contact with Alexa.

  “You wearing that to the frat party you’re going to tonight?” I whispered. “Might want to put on a better bra. Your tits are looking saggy. Probably from breastfeeding.”

  She glared at me. I smiled wide.

  “What do we have here, folks? I read the motion and have no idea why you are standing before me today wasting my precious time,” Judge Hixton said.

  “I’d like to know why we’re here, as well,” I added.

  Judge Hixton turned his attention to the other side of his courtroom. “Why don’t you enlighten both of us, counselor?”