With Zoe, it was never enough. Now, we were just fooling around, that was how it started. She’d barged into my life, insistent on getting me to join her team. I’d resisted, even though I didn’t have any other offers, not because I didn’t like the idea, but because I wanted her to keep coming to look for me. It only started out as a game. She was pretty, and I didn’t know she’d keep coming back, but then the more I saw her, the more I wanted from her, the more I wanted her, and one day, I just took what I wanted, and Zoe didn’t push me away. In fact, she fell into it with such enthusiasm.
Six weeks later, and my fascination with her was only growing.
“Come out with me.”
She shot a frown at me. “What?”
“You don’t have anything else to do today, right? Then come out with me. Besides, you still have something you want to talk to me about, right?”
“Like what?”
I shrugged. “I want a second chance. With the team, that is. I’m not sure your dad will see me or talk to me, and it’s a bit of a problem.”
She sighed, then crumpled the tissue and pulled her panties on right before going to toss the tissue in the bin. “Honestly, you and me both, but Dad’s hard to talk to sometimes, so I’m not sure how useful it will be even if you do get to see him. He still won’t take my application as General Manager seriously, so I don’t know what to do about him. I want to work with the team, too.”
Zoe fixed up the rest of her clothes, her mood growing dark.
That was one thing I’d come to learn about Zoe since I met her. The one thing she seemed to love more than anything was the sport. The reason she approached me at all was because she knew I used to play football and I was good at it. It was my ticket out of this tiny town back when I graduated high school, but I came back in the end and mostly in disgrace. I had a reputation, a bad one, and it had surprised me when Zoe approached me even after she’d heard the stories about me, which was another reason I didn’t take her seriously at first.
Somehow, word got around that I was a player. It wasn’t made public so I wouldn’t ruin my former team’s reputation, but it wasn’t exactly a lie, either. There were too many women I either dated or slept with since I left for college, some one night stands, and others I’d been with for maybe a couple weeks. Then there was the booze, and the drugs. The latter might be the biggest mistake I ever made in my life, but it wasn’t as if it was a conscious decision I made.
I’d been too full of myself back then. I was an idiot, and when I went to a party this one time and someone gave me something, I took it without knowing or questioning what it was, because I was usually drunk off my ass at those parties, anyway. He kept giving, and I didn’t refuse. I didn’t even realize it was messing with me until it was far too late.
The only good thing about me was that I could run, and I was the best running back in my high school and on my college team, and even when I joined the pro league, my level didn’t drop. Because of everything else, though, after my last team dropped me to cut their losses, getting signed into another team was difficult. I did eventually agree to Zoe’s insistence that I join the team, but now...
I wanted to join the Southern Eagles, for more reasons than one. Namely, her sweet ass and the way she moaned my name.
“Did you talk to him about me signing on at the meeting today?” I asked. “How did it go?”
“I tried to bring it up, but he wouldn’t even let me talk about it. I’d threaten to apply to another team, but I don’t want to go to another team. I want to work for this team, because I’ve been on their side from the beginning. But Dad thinks of it as his team instead of our team, so...”
She didn’t even try to hide her bitterness. This war between Zoe and her dad had been going on longer than I’d known either of them, but I’d already figured out for myself that her dad was a stubborn bastard.
Zoe worked as a sports agent, but even I could see her devotion to the Southern Eagles. It would make just about any team jealous to miss out on someone so passionate about the game, determined to help the players and grow the team. From what she’d told me, she grew up with the team and knew all the guys on it, even the newer recruits, who’d still been on the team longer than a year.