Hothead (Irresistible 4)

So the Lillards were a breath of fresh air. They were my only sense of comfort.

I wound up staying with them a lot over the years. Definitely that week that my mom moved out, and any other time she threatened to move out for good. I bounced back and forth between the Lillards and my house so much it was confusing, and by the time I was in high school, I just lived there some weeks, whether Mom was home or not.

Baseball was becoming a bigger responsibility in my life – I was getting enough serious attention now that Dad came to all my games and bragged about the cars he’d buy with my first paycheck – and I needed a break from the craziness. Dad could get intense about my career, even when I was just trying to relax at home, and I needed a quiet place I liked being at with people I enjoyed being around when I wasn’t playing or practicing.

And that was the Lillard house with its fresh buttermilk fried chicken every Thursday.

“Hey. You good?” Diaz frowned when I got up abruptly to leave the room. I gave him a thumbs on my way to the lounge, where I could hopefully get away from the smell of Brewer’s food. I did, but at this point, I couldn’t get out of my head.

Something had tipped the scale, and I’d gone from focused to overwhelmed in just a matter of seconds. I was thinking about things I didn’t normally think about. I had a constant barrier up to keep these particular memories out, but now they were seeping through, and the idea that there were actual cracks in my mental game drove me fucking nuts.

I wasn’t myself right now, and I blamed it all on Evie.

Irrational, probably, but oh well. I needed to blame someone and she made it easy, especially with the text she’d just sent after successfully leaving me alone for almost a full week.

EVIE: Hey welcome home.

EVIE: So I just wanted to say that you were right to send me home alone the other night. It’s probably best if we keep the show simple from here on out. Hand holding and pecks while we’re out in public. Nothing behind closed doors. We’re both bound to this contract for awhile so we might as well be responsible and keep our boundaries clear.

I clenched my jaw as I read it then tossed my phone aside.

Jesus.

This was becoming much more of an effort than I’d imagined, and if I had my choice, I would’ve already gott

en rid of Evie by now. She was too much of a distraction. But I couldn’t just ghost her. She was throwing me off my game, yet she was apparently necessary for my career.

She was both my problem and my solution, and I was pretty sure I hated her for it.

I was also sure that I was either going to pitch a great game today or a fucking disaster – I wasn’t sure which. All I knew was that no matter what happened, I’d be going home livid because I could already feel that I needed to be alone tonight.

But tonight was the night she was moving in.

15

EVIE

So, move-in was a total disaster.

And he wasn’t even home yet.

But within the first two hours of arriving, I’d broken the fridge, tripped up the alarm and failed to tell the alarm company the right password when they called, so the police wound up coming. They took one look at me in my panicked state, wearing twelve-dollar bottled kale juice from the fridge that I’d spilled down my shirt when the alarm sounded, and laughed their asses off for a solid minute.

And for some reason, as they laughed, I thought it an appropriate time to ask whether they knew what the heck I’d just done to the refrigerator, and why was it beeping like that? Was it broken?

“I’ve never seen a fridge like that, that looks like a time machine,” the lady said.

“You might want to fix it before Mr. Maddox gets home,” her partner chuckled. “I don’t think he needs anything else to deal with after tonight’s game.”

Shit.

“Why? What happened?” I asked before they basically laughed some more, reminded me to get the password for the alarm company, and left.

A quick search of “Empires score” on my laptop showed me that they lost tonight, 17-4. Holy God. I didn’t know much about baseball, but I knew that was bad. MADDOX STUMBLES IN DISASTROUS FIFTH INNING was the only headline I saw before clicking the hell out.

Of course, clicking out brought me to my open Facebook tab, and a reminder that I should probably unfriend Mike.

He rarely posted anything unrelated to work, but twenty minutes ago he’d posted a status that read: Baltimore SPANKED NY tonight! There goes your big win streak Empires #sorrynotsorry #someoneisoverpaid #damyoureallyblewit