Images of her.
Some innocent. Some less so.
Either way, they had no fucking business in my subconscious let alone the active thoughts I had while going about my day, so when my assistant interrupted a staff meeting to inform me that Drew Maddox had “an urgent issue to discuss,” I gladly cleared the next two hours of my schedule and hopped in a car to Empire Stadium in Brooklyn.
ME: Care to tell me what this is about?
I sent the text to Drew just as my car turned onto the Queensboro Bridge, and within seconds, got his characteristically prickish reply.
DREW: Nah I’m in the training room deal with me when you get here
Asshole, I thought, though I couldn’t help but smirk as I put my phone away, because I wouldn’t expect anything less from him.
Of all my clients, there was no one person with more cocky asshole tendencies than Drew Maddox.
Before we met, he had been a hotheaded trainwreck who brawled with teammates, partied till 6AM on game days and got himself blacklisted from the league after a major run-in with the law. It wasn’t till after I
signed him that he transitioned into the role of reborn superstar—a fan favorite whose new team and agent helped him hide the fact that he was still a walking disaster whose career remained at the mercy of his violent temper.
Beyond the surface, there was no real change in Drew until I put Evie in his life a few years ago—until she worked whatever miracle she did and turned him into the man he was now: the most sought-after pitcher in the league, the reigning World Series MVP, and a thoroughly rehabilitated man who still managed to require the most of my time, energy and patience.
Because wifed or not, Drew was the truest asshole I knew.
That said he was also the one client I considered a close personal friend, and today I was grateful for his never-ending ability to derail my day—even when that meant, in today’s particular episode of Complete Bullshit with Drew Maddox, that he intended to break a million-dollar contractual obligation on Tuesday.
“Maddox, you have got to be shitting me,” I said, standing beside him at the pull-up bar in the New York Empires gleaming new weight room. At 1PM, there was a small handful of players locked into game day training, lifting and squatting and forcing me to tune out the deafening sounds of their slamming weights and throaty grunts.
Drew laughed as he added another forty-five pound plate to his belt.
“I’m not shitting anyone. I’ll go to the All-Star game since I’m starting, but all the bullshit festivities after that, count me out. I get one off day a month. If I have a break, I’m spending it with my family,” he said, giving me his tough shit shrug that was once reserved for telling me that he wouldn’t quit the post-game raging till dawn if it didn’t affect his performance on the mound.
I watched as he jumped up to grab the bar, allowing him do a few pull-ups before I gave him shit.
“Look, I find it ironic and… pretty fucking adorable that you’re now begging me to let you not go to a party,” I said, pausing to smirk at the kiss my ass look he shot me through the mirror. “But you agreed in ink to show up at this one, so the best I can do is arrange your appearance down to just the meet-and-greet.”
I had to wait out his set before I got his response.
“How long?” he panted as he let himself down from the bar.
“An hour.”
“Thirty minutes.”
“What? Hate your fans?”
“Love my fans,” he corrected vehemently. “Dickhead. I just love my wife and kid more because, you know, they’re everything I fuckin’ live for. But I get how that concept might be foreign to a very single man like yourself.”
“Oof. Low blow, Maddox.” I put a hand to my chest. “I should remind you the breakup was barely a month ago.”
“Yeah, and I should remind you that you don’t have to do that shit with me.”
“What shit?”
Drew rolled his eyes. “The act,” he scoffed. “I’m not one of those uptight suits you have to fake normal for. You’re not heartbroken over Keira. You guys weren’t even a real couple.”
I raised my eyebrows at his assertion. “I was with her for five years.”
“Yeah, well, I got Emmett pretty drunk like, six months back, and he might’ve let the cat out of the bag about the little arrangement you had with her.”