by Stella Rhys
Our frenzied kiss stayed locked as he lowered his hand down from my belly, reaching between my legs and smiling against my gasping mouth as he played with my clit. With two fingers, he rubbed it at the same harsh pace that he fucked me, rapidly tightening every muscle inside me.
“Oh God, Drew…”
At some point I was on all fours but now my breasts were pressed flat on Drew’s bed, my pussy contracting around his girth as I moved my hips to grind against his fingers.
“Damn, baby, look at you,” Drew rasped in awe as I grasped handfuls of the sheets for leverage, my muscles burning as I swiveled back against him, controlling the pace under the full weight of his body. “Christ, you make it so hard not to come right away. I just wanna fill you with my cum, Evie. I want to bend you over this fucking bed and watch it drip from your pussy while I spank your ass. All. Fucking. Night,” he muttered, thrusting deeper, harder with every word he muttered.
Holy God.
I never knew that was something I wanted till the image Drew painted had me so hot I was cursing the condom between us.
“Drew, I’m going to come...” I panted as he pulled my hair.
“Do it, baby, come all over my cock.”
As I did, he groaned and muttered in my ear, reminding me through every second of my vicious orgasm that I was his.
“Do you hear me, Evie? No one’s but mine,” he hissed as I moaned and fell limp underneath him, though a sharp gasp choked from my lips when he pulled out, leaving me with a void that I loathed for the two seconds it took for him to turn me onto my back and position between my legs.
DREW
Gripping her knees, I held her thighs apart, no hands needed as I slid my cock back inside her wet heat.
Every thrust gave me a bounce of her tits that tempted my eyes away, but I didn’t cave. I refused to break away from the way she gazed at me now, because it was everything I had ached for in the past week-and-a-half. It was all the warmth I missed. It was that look of content and the way she raked that sleepy smile between her teeth in a way I could admit I fucking loved.
Everything about her just felt so damned good.
“Come here, baby,” Evie murmured, making my eyebrows pull together for a moment. I realized at a delay that she’d never called me that before, and the second I saw her hold her arms out, reaching for me, I let myself fall into her. I groaned against her lips as I allowed myself to succumb to her sweetness. I let her comb her fingers through my hair as my lips moved from her mouth to her neck to her breasts, kissing every inch of her I could reach till I burst off inside her.
“Fuck, Evie,” I groaned as she held my face and kissed me, her pussy gently coaxing out every last drop of my cum.
A part of me expected to feel regret for everything I’d promised her the second after I came. It was just the way I was.
But to my own surprise, I didn’t feel an ounce of that. Still buried in her, all I felt a sense of calm and ease – like I’d misplaced something before, but now everything was right back in place.
“You feel so fucking incredible,” I exhaled as I lay on top of her, our limbs entwined and all my senses drinking her in. Her touch, her scent – all the breathy little sounds she made as I went back to kissing her all over. The way she seeped into my skin and got into my head was everything I never wanted, but at this point I was too lost in her to stop it.
She just felt too damned good.
29
EVIE
I woke up first the next morning and upon opening my eyes, felt myself immediately hit with an emotional hangover from the drama of last night.
The tabloid. My fight with Drew in the kitchen.
The mind-blowing sex that followed.
Biting my lip, I lifted my cheek off Drew’s bare chest and looked up at him, soaking in the view. God, this man. He was still asleep, and he looked so peaceful and handsome I couldn’t bear to wake him up, so slipping out of bed, I hopped into the shower, taking my time to rinse off the stress of last night.
I must’ve taken awhile because by the time I got out of the bathroom, I noticed the bottom drawer on the dresser was open. Drew was up and sitting shirtless at the edge of his bed, the width of his muscled shoulders on display as he leaned forward on his knees.
There was a letter in his hand, and judging from his rigid body language, it wasn’t one he was particularly fond of.
“Hey,” I frowned when he looked up at me. “What’s that?”
He didn’t answer immediately, instead waiting for me to go over to him. Once I was close enough, he pulled me onto his lap, immediately kissing me deeply, as if needing to draw strength or patience or something from my lips.
“Are you okay?” I asked softly when I pulled away.
He ignored the question to answer the one I’d asked before.
“A stranger sent this to me four years ago,” he murmured, picking up the letter again. “Right before everything that went down with Tim.”
“Oh.” Hugging the towel to my chest, I blinked down at it in his hands. “Why are you looking at it?” I asked gently.
“It’s been four years since I touched it. But it’s what I showed Iain. To explain why I did what I did to Tim.”
Oh. Shit.
My eyes widened as I stared at the thing. Suddenly, it went from a normal letter to a map into the mind of Drew Maddox, which was precisely why I expected Drew to just read me bits and pieces.
But to my surprise, he handed the whole thing over.
“If there’s anything I’m not good at it’s talking about this subject,” he said, his voice softer than I’d ever heard it. “So just read that first.”
I looked at him – at the pain storming behind his green eyes as he held out the piece of paper. But I noticed that his broad shoulders relaxed as soon as I took it from him – as if I’d just taken an actual burden off his hands.
“Okay,” I murmured as his arms circled around my waist, holding me still on his lap. My heart was already beating fast before I started reading.
But once I did, my heartbeat only quickened.
Hello Mr. Maddox,
I am writing to you as both a longtime fan (North Florida native here!) and a mother of a child undergoing cancer treatment. I watched your ESPN interview four years ago, in which you opened up about Pattie Lillard, her extraordinary impact on your childhood, and finally, her cancer diagnosis. I am aware of the significant financial help you have contributed to Ms. Lillard’s treatments over the years, and even donated to her GoFundMe when you first publicized her story.
I have long felt connected to both your story and Ms. Lillard’s, so it was deeply saddening for me to hear about the return of her cancer. I have followed both your stories for years, so safe to say it was of great surprise for me to spot Ms. Lillard at the same hospital in which my daughter has been receiving treatment.
I want to inform you that every Tuesday for the past month, I have watched her enter the building and appear nowhere near the infusion center. Admittedly, I have on two occasions watched her arrive at the hospital and spend approximately two hours in the cafeteria before exiting the building and being picked up to go home. I am holding out hope that there are explanations to these incidents, but I am writing to simply urge you to keep a closer eye on Ms. Lillard’s story.
Wishing all the best for you.
Sincerely,
Jill Marino
My stomach twisted furiously by the last word of the letter, and for some reason, I held out hope that I’d read this wrong – that this didn’t mean what I thought.
But when I brought my wide eyes up to Drew, he confirmed my suspicions.
“She didn’t have cancer,” he said. “The first time or the second time.”
My heart dropped into my stomach.
“What… what was she sick with then?”
“Nothing. She wanted money,” Drew said, his Adam’s apple moving as he swallowed hard.
I shook my head, already having troubl
e processing.
“But…” I remembered the images they showed during that interview in which Drew talked about how much he loved her. “There were pictures of her in the hospital bed. She didn’t have her hair anymore. She looked so sick.”
“That was Tim’s doing. He did a fucking stellar job keeping up the act,” Drew muttered, shaking his head in disgust.
The look of revulsion continued to twist his features as he told me everything – about how he’d gotten the letter and immediately called Tim to make sure it was a lie. But Tim wavered, found an excuse to hang up fast and ignored Drew’s texts and calls for the next day.
Five hours before the first pitch of the game he was due to start that night Drew booked a flight from L.A to Florida. On the plane, he tried to remind himself about how Tim had looked out for him as a kid – how he kept him out of fights in school or on the field, and how he tutored Drew on all tests and homework so he wouldn’t flunk himself off the team.
He thought about that and then the years of lies Tim fed him as an adult – about how sick his mom was feeling, and how hard she’d vomited all night. He thought about the detailed stories of the pain that came with chemo, and how Pattie was no longer able to eat.
“He made me feel all those years of gut-wrenching pain for something that wasn’t even real,” Drew said, his brittle voice barely above a whisper. “Fucking hell. I spent so many nights just sitting up in bed and hating the world for how cruel it was to good people. Especially when the cancer came back. I’d been so high off her beating it, and when they told me it was back, I felt fucking broken. I lost my mind a little because I felt like I had personally failed her – that I didn’t do enough and I could’ve paid for even better doctors.” His eyes were lost in memory as I held his jaw in my hands. “For Christ’s sake, he kept me on this crazy hell of an emotional roller coaster for four years. Just so he could cash checks from me whenever he wanted.”
“God, Drew,” I whispered, my forehead touching his as I shook my head in stunned shock. “I’m so, so sorry. That is evil what they did to you. I can’t even fathom how they could stomach that kind of lie for so many years. I can’t even begin to understand how they could betray your trust like that.”
“His justification was that they didn’t realize till too late,” Drew said. “They didn’t realize how much they were owed for what they did for me growing up. He said at the time, they did it out of love and the kindness of their hearts. But years later, when they saw what everyone else was getting from me, they realized they deserved some kind of cut. And probably a big one considering they did so much more for me than any of the other assholes from home that I was writing checks to.”
“That’s horrible. That’s not an excuse for what they put you through,” I said furiously. “What they lied about is despicable. The world needs to know the truth about them, Drew. Why did you never tell?”
“The same reason you still help your mom out,” Drew murmured, looking me in the eye. “Because I couldn’t help but care about her still. I thought about all the good memories when the love was real because there was no money in the picture yet. And as much as I hated her, I couldn’t sic the media on her either.”
“Especially now that she’s gone,” I said softly, to which Drew nodded. “How… did she pass?” I asked warily.
“I heard a heart attack, but I don’t even know for sure, which fucking kills me.” Drew closed his eyes, breathing in deep as I gently rubbed the back of his neck. “After I found out the truth about her cancer, I ignored every time she reached out. I tossed all the letters she wrote me without ever opening them. And now that she’s gone, I somehow feel like shit about that. About the fact that I’ll never know what she wrote in those letters.” The breath he exhaled as he opened his eyes was shaky, and a sharp pain twisted in my chest when I noticed his eyes were glassy, wet with tears he still refused to let spill.
“Drew. It’s okay to feel regret about that. You’re allowed to.”
“You sure about that?” he laughed bitterly. “She stole a quarter of a million dollars from me and put me through a living hell, but I still miss her sometimes. It doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
“Of course it does,” I said gently. “She played a huge role in your life. She was genuinely good to you at some point. She did love you. But as much as it hurts to say, good people don’t always stay that way. Sometimes something happens and they turn. But we’re human, Drew, and some days we’ll miss the good times we had with those people. That’s just how it is.”
Drew nodded, quiet as he looked into my eyes, as if he knew I was thinking of Kaylie. I was remembering when I was nine or ten, and how she taught me to stand up for myself against the bullies at school. I thought of Mike, and how I only ever dared to dream of a better life because of him. Both of them were instrumental in carving out a lot of the good qualities I still had today.
But the people they were when they helped me do that were gone.
“I always thought as a kid that life would get easier as I got older,” Drew said with almost a laugh.
“No. It gets harder,” I said quietly. “We meet more people, we love more people. Sometimes they leave and disappoint you. Or they pass and we miss them forever.”
“So why care about anyone?”
His question surprised me – not in the words he said, but the tone he spoke in. It wasn’t cynical – it was honest. Genuinely curious. It made me search hard and fast within myself for a good answer, because I knew Drew needed to hear one.
“We care because love is stronger than hate, and it’s worth the risk,” I finally said. “Even if it doesn’t pan out, it turns you a little closer in the right direction. Every time.”
“You believe that?” Drew asked. Like his last question, it was an honest one. I bit my lip as I thought about it.
“I do,” I said, feeling a little smile drift slowly onto my lips as Drew simply held me and gazed at me. He was quiet for a bit before finally nodding and returning my faint smile.
“Well, if you believe it, then I guess I can give it a try.”
30
DREW
Against Iain’s wishes, Evie decided to fly in for the L.A leg of my west coast road trip.
“She does realize how much L.A hates you, right?” Iain asked, having called me the second I told him of our plans. “She’s not going to have fun in the stands by herself. The fans are going to heckle her just for being your girlfriend. You have to realize that.”
“I do, but she’ll be sitting with the rest of the WAGs, including Diaz’s wife so she’ll be in good hands,” I said as my car crossed the bridge into Brooklyn to get to the stadium. “Trust me, I’d rather her avoid LA too but she wanted to go. She said she’s never been to California before and this is her shot,” I lied.
That wasn’t the reason. It was more so the fact that Evie now knew why L.A hated me so goddamned much.
I had missed five weeks of games after putting Tim in the hospital. I had been forced to go to anger counseling and when I returned to L.A, I was broken down enough to let a former fling become something more. I needed the emotional support.
But I wound up discovering that she was emailing the team daily updates on me – when I got home, who I spoke to on the phone, and any info she could get out of me regarding Tim.
I was an expensive investment for them, and they didn’t trust me to stay out of trouble, so they paid someone in my life to spy on me - to monitor my day-to-day behavior.
It was why I demanded a trade from L.A the same year they traded three key players to acquire me. It was why their manager, current roster and front office hated me, and why the fans went out of their way to heckle me when I visited. It was never a particularly enjoyable city to play in. In fact, I hated being there. Four years later, and I’d yet to touch down in L.A without thinking about all the drama that went down when I was on that team – especially since the fans loved to use the Lillards against me while heckling.
“Would it make your stay a little easier if I came?” Evie had asked yesterday morning, after our long talk in bed.
It took a good minute for me to answer because on instinct, my tongue refused to admit that I needed anyone for anything. Even after I’d proven to myself that I was no good without Evie – that my body physically ached when it wasn’t near hers – I refused to just flat-out say that I wanted her to come.
That I would be happier if she did.
But eventually, I fought myself for long enough to utter the words, “I’d like if you did.”
“Cool. Then I will,” Evie had smiled breezily, completely unaware of the fact that my body had just gone to war with itself to give her that five-word response. It was honestly ridiculous, and I recognized that. For so long, I’d trained myself to function just fine without relying on anyone but myself.
But now that I’d had a taste of Evie’s brand of warmth and comfort, there was no going back.
“Maddox. You know they’re going to go harder than usual, considering this is your first time back since you punched their captain in the face,” Iain said, reminding me of that home game a few months ago.
Cody Bryce had said something about how Pattie was rolling in her grave over what a piece of shit I was. I responded by throwing a fastball high and inside, damned near skimming his fat mouth. He stormed the mound, I clocked him in the jaw and a few days later, I was covering my bruised ankle with Keira’s makeup, in a car that would eventually take me to meet Evie.
That night had been only months ago but it felt like well over a year at this point, because I could barely remember what my life was like before this contract –before knowing Evie.
