Blitzed (Rules of Possession Book 3), page 5
“What about Camp Bluegrass?” I asked even as I perused the list.
He was already shaking his head before I even finished the question. “I love Blue’s charity. But you can’t do your service hours there. It would look like your buddy is doing you a solid.”
“Blue is not my buddy.”
We had too many strikes against us to be anything but surface friends. My very purpose in being drafted to the Aventura Outlaws had been to take his spot. Cozying up to the guy waiting for you to fuck up or break something vital wasn’t easy, an irony that karma was now beating me over the head with. Add that to the fact that I’d once slept with his then best friend/now husband, and…well, as I said, we had a lot of strikes against us.
“He was a teammate,” Ari said patiently. “So Camp Bluegrass is out.”
I was about to complain some more when I spotted a familiar name on the list under contact information. Jesse Fox.
Suddenly, the proposition of community service didn’t seem quite so troublesome.
I grinned. “I know exactly where I want to do my time.”
“Maybe you could stop talking about it like doing a stretch in Alcatraz,” Ari said sourly. “Which one do you like?”
“Rainbow Harbor.”
“I’ve heard of it. They run a nice operation. Small, but nice enough.” He eyed me speculatively. “Are you sure that’s a good idea right now?”
I grunted as I finally pressed the e-stop button. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
I pulled the treadmill waste valve and let it drain, which usually only took a few minutes. When the water was low enough, I opened the glass door and came out of the machine carefully. The ground always felt strange after the spongy texture of the treadmill.
My gym shorts clung to my everything and I pulled on them a few times to no avail before kicking off my soggy sneakers. I grabbed the towel I’d hung over the machine and ran it over my face and chest. I didn’t bother to do more than a cursory dry job. My legs were still thrumming with energy, and I knew the workout wasn’t enough. I’d probably hit the pool and get some laps in to burn off the rest.
“With everything else going on, I’m just not sure it’s the right time to throw your sexuality in management’s collective faces,” Ari mused.
“Throw my… are you even serious right now?” I gaped. “Jason Lewis was just brought up on domestic charges by his wife, Gigi, and they’re working overtime to make that shit go away. But my sexuality is a problem?”
He didn’t deny the hypocrisy. “Yes.”
“Well, I’m not okay with that.”
“You think I am?” He demanded. “I know it’s not fair, trust me. But for all their progressive bullshit, there are still some dinosaurs in the higher echelon of the organization. I want them to be thinking about only one thing—how much they need you on the offensive line. When it comes to you returning to the field, I want them to start using the word when. Not if.”
“Well, maybe I don’t fucking care what they think,” I snarled.
Despite all my bravado, I wasn’t ready to be a free agent. I was an Aventura Outlaw. This was my home. My city. My fucking team. Hell, my knees had been knocking together when I had “the talk” with management in the first place and confirmed the rumors that had been flying around. Coach Warner had been baffled but supportive.
“You were married,” he said slowly. “To a woman.”
“I said bisexual, did I not?”
“Forgive me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that mean you still dig chicks?”
“Yes,” I said with an arched brow. “It’s right in the brochure of How To Be A Good Bisexual. Our motto is, I dig chicks but I also ride dicks.”
His eyes bulged as he tried to look anywhere but at me, and I wondered how long it would take him to get that image out of his mind. Probably a good, long time. I hoped when he closed his eyes for the final time on his deathbed, it flashed across his mind and he yelled, “No, please, make it stop!”
“You know what the fuck I mean,” he finally managed.
“No, why don’t you spell it out for me?”
He glanced at our GM, Tim Barnes. Barnes rolled his shoulders uncomfortably, making it clear that he wouldn’t be venturing an opinion either way. Thanks to Blue, the organization had a road map for handling a bisexual player. No head-scratching necessary.
Coach shifted in his seat, rubbing the back of his sunburned neck. “I just think it would be…easier if you stuck with women.”
I stared at him for a few moments. When I finally spoke, my voice was deadly quiet. “Easier for whom?”
“For you, of course,” he snapped. “And…us, I guess. The team. Everyone.”
My jaw worked for a few minutes as I tried to keep my cool. “It doesn’t work that way,” I finally gritted out.
I was generally a laid-back person. But if I had to hear that logic in my life ever again, I was going to lose it. It wasn’t about what was easier. It was about being authentic, and that meant acknowledging both parts of me.
Even the parts management could do without.
“I can see you’re in no mood to be reasonable.” Ari sighed. “Look at the papers and sign off on the deal, so we can get things going on our end. Frost is giving you until the end of the day to think about it.”
“Frost should feel free to go fuck himself with an icicle.”
“It’s a good deal,” he said quietly. “You know I wouldn’t let them screw you over.”
It was a strange time to realize how much I valued our friendship. I wasn’t exactly lacking friends in my life, but they were surface friends at best. People gravitated toward me because I was Andrew McAdams of the Aventura Outlaws. To them, I was just an NFL player that they saw on highlight reels. I hadn’t heard from those people as of late, which told me all I needed to know about those relationships.
“I’ll let you know,” I finally said. “Thanks.”
He gave me one last long look before he sighed and left.
I stood there for a few moments, waiting until the security system chimed, signaling the front door closing. Even taking door codes away from these people wasn’t working. Maybe I should just weld the damn thing shut. Stacia, my sunny housekeeper, would probably open a window and beckon everyone in with a smile and a plate of fresh-baked cookies.
I stopped by the kitchen to grab the rest of my morning protein shake and polished it off as I headed for the deck. I stared at the pool for a moment, just enjoying the sight of the glittering turquoise water. The color was even more intense due to the custom blue tiles on the bottom. After a beat, I dove in, submerging myself until nothing could reach me, not even the relentless Miami sun.
Real life and all its problems would just have to wait.
6
JESSE
My potential donor meeting was a bust.
I parked my car as close to the wall of the building as possible—that way, I only had to worry about one person’s parking on the other side. My Plymouth, Nina, was a looker, but admittedly a pain in the ass to maintain. She was also missing all of the safety features that made a car…well, drivable. Like seat belts and pesky airbags. Unimportant shit like that.
She’d stalled on my commute—the first time on the bridge and the second on the railroad tracks, right as the lights started flashing. I was starting to think that witch was trying to kill us both. But she had sentimental value, so she lived to stall another day.
I headed into Rainbow Harbor, a small gray building that looked better suited to a penitentiary than a community center. A small painted rainbow hung above the door. One of the kids had made it in arts and crafts. There was a small plant in the window and…yeah, that was about it for our décor.
The inside of the building wasn’t nearly as depressing. It was painted in primary colors and motivational posters speckled the wall. The kids had painted a rainbow with anime eyes across the waiting room wall that never failed to make me smile. The only furniture in the room was a few chairs past their prime that we’d patched up with tape and Molly’s desk, which wasn’t much better.
Molly was a petite woman in her sixties with a Dolly Parton-sized bosom and the same taste in makeup. She wasn’t strictly a receptionist—hell, no one in the building was “strictly” anything. There was too much to do and very little money to go around. Everyone was used to rolling up their sleeves and pitching in on whatever needed to be done. In Molly’s case, that meant overseeing everything from fielding calls to making sure that the employees took care of themselves. She was an expert at bossing us around mercilessly and saw most of the staff as her stand-in kids.
I headed for the breakroom. I needed caffeine and there wasn’t a force on Earth that could stop me. Not even gravitational pull could keep me off that coffee machine.
Molly bounced out of her chair as I walked past her desk. She puffed as she tried to keep up with my long strides. “Where’s the fire?”
“I need coffee.”
“You just left a café,” she informed me. “I don’t know if you know this, but sometimes you can buy coffee there. How did your meeting go?”
There was a dull ache at my temples that I could no longer ignore. “Flip open a thesaurus to the word bad and go down the row with your finger.”
Yvette Woodward had been a donor prospect of significant means. I’d met her at a work function, and we’d exchanged information over pretentious little plates that seemed to indicate that the chef hated food. I hadn’t expected much to come of it. Networking had been part of my fiber for so long, that I didn’t even really realize when I was doing it. But then she’d actually called. She’d seen a documentary about homeless LGBTQ+ youth and got inspired to do something about it.
I want to put my money where my mouth is, she’d told me on the phone.
I want to put your money where my bank account is, I bit my tongue to keep from saying.
Despite my general pessimistic nature, I’d started to get excited. Joshua Knox, our director and CEO, could do a lot with the funds she’d hinted at donating. All of those things were on my mind as I tried to liberate her money from her blue-veined hands.
Joshua was behind in taxes on the building—he wouldn’t tell me how much, but I knew it had to be substantial. The roof needed fixing. The electric bill was several months in arrears. The staff could use a pay increase. The computer lab—a pretty lofty term for two dinosaur computers on a table in a small room—needed an upgrade. A lot of the kids who came to the center didn’t have access to much in the way of technology at home, and it would be nice to offer them more than a computer that woke up each day and strived to be a typewriter.
So yeah, Rainbow Harbor needed quite a bit. And I’d seen that need met by the suddenly civic-minded Yvette. She seemed interested in our programs, our mission statement, our center and potential…and then she wasn’t. If I had to guess, that was probably from the text that winged in from her husband, the politician, halfway through our meeting.
Despite my growing unease, I’d made the ask, and she’d declined politely. I sagged in my chair a bit, realizing I was going to leave empty-handed after a good two weeks of establishing a rapport with the lovely Yvette. Not to mention all the legwork I’d done on the phone.
“My husband,” she said hesitantly. “He just doesn’t think it would look good.”
I took an obligatory moment to listen to my proverbial balloon get popped and wheeze as it deflated. “Helping people?”
“Helping…certain types of people.” Her face flamed with color as I stared at her. “I’m sorry, dear.”
“That makes it all better,” I murmured, and she beamed because she was an idiot who hadn’t quite managed to master the art of understanding sarcasm.
Try explaining that to the always optimistic Molly. She assured me that she had two donors on the hook—better donors than the flighty Yvette—and something would turn up. That was her favorite Pollyanna phrase. Something would turn up. I didn’t bother to tell her that bad shit could turn up, too. Like a city employee to turn our electricity off. Or an inspector to tell us our sagging roof better get repaired before they red tag it.
Molly sighed. “I guess I should call the city and beg for another extension on the electricity.”
“Do you think they’ll go for it?”
“Let’s just say I’m not looking forward to that conversation.” She grimaced. “Yes, hello? Remember how I told you that we would absolutely positively have the money by this week? Well, none of that happened and I need another extension.”
I bit my lip as I did a little calculating in my mind. “I think I might be able to swing it.”
She was already shaking her head before I even finished speaking. “Joshua doesn’t want you to use your own money, Jess. You know that.”
“I do, and what he doesn’t know isn’t going to hurt him,” I said decidedly. “Send me the payment information.”
“Jess—”
“I’ll make it work.” I squeezed her hand as she gave me a look that managed to be both disapproving and fond. It wasn’t the first time I’d put my own money into the center, and we both knew it wouldn’t be the last. And yeah, sometimes it felt like I was paying it forward, backward, and sideways, but it was a good cause.
“Well, now that we’ve got the pleasantries out of the way, we can move on to more important matters.” Molly stretched her eyes at me and whispered, “He’s here.”
“Who?” I asked irritably as my gaze landed on the empty coffee pot. I spared a moment to wonder who hadn’t bothered to make fresh coffee before I started making a pot myself. I mean, I’d put up a sign and everything. If you take the last cup, make a fresh pot. Maybe I should add a freaking diagram.
“The VIP I sent to your office.”
Well, that certainly explained the Lambo in the parking lot. “Where’s Joshua? Shouldn’t he be handling this? He’s the director, is he not?”
“He’s in the bathroom fixing the sink…or trying to, anyway. And you’re better at this type of thing anyway.”
Didn’t mean I enjoyed it, though. I sighed. “So what does this VIP want? Is he thinking about donating?”
Normally, that would be good news. But I wasn’t sure I had another bend over, grab your ankles and beg session in me today.
“Our VIP is an athlete, and it’s court-ordered volunteer work. Joshua should have the details.”
Court-ordered? Ugh. He wasn’t our first. Quite frankly, I found them hard to deal with. Either they slacked off to the point it was more work to have them here, or they jumped in with both eager feet and left before they finished a goddamned thing.
Molly could read the discontent on my face as she chirped, “A volunteer is a volunteer.”
I hit the brew button on the ancient coffeemaker. I wasn’t exactly pleased about being saddled with some rich guy who was using the center to get a get-out-of-jail-free card. But if it brought some good promotion to Rainbow Harbor, so be it. The kids were worth it. The cause was worth it. For that, I could put up with anything.
But I wouldn’t coddle his ass. So I hope he wasn’t expecting special treatment…like waiting in my office. “You let someone in my office? Unsupervised?”
“Sorry,” she said not sounding very sorry at all. “But it’s not like I could keep him out front.”
“It’s called a waiting room,” I muttered. “The concept is pretty much built-in, even for His Highness.”
“He was causing a bit of a pileup. The kids were in there asking him questions—”
“God forbid.”
“A couple of guys saw him come in and followed him in off the street to ask for autographs and pictures. And then Camilla got wind of things. I had to hustle him out of there before she threw her panties at him.”
Camilla, one of the therapists on staff, believed in embracing your sexuality thoroughly and often. She could be…aggressive. She’d tried her wiles on me until I’d told her that couldn’t be less possible. I only swung one way—no give on that pendulum.
I hid a smile. “She’s not that bad.”
“She asked him how much he could comfortably lift.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I shrugged. “You said he’s an athlete. He probably gets that kind of question all the time.”
“And hold,” she said pointedly. “Against a wall.”
Oh. Even I blushed a little at that one as I conceded, “Okay, I see your point.”
I could see Camilla’s, too, even if I wasn’t about to admit it. Last I checked, no one was giving awards for being virtuous and lonely. If you saw something you wanted, sometimes you had to cast caution to the wind and go for it.
Finally, the coffee pot started spitting out the devil’s brew and I got ready to worship with my ginormous mug that was at least the size of two regular cups. One of the kids had made it for me in ceramics class. I refused to knock her talent. Instead, I loyally believed that she’d probably never seen a mug before.
“Okay, so tell me. How is he?” I filled my franken-mug to the brim, which was almost the entire pot. I reset it again for the next person because I’m polite and I know how to read a fucking sign.
“He’s fucking incredible. Six four or so. Wide shoulders. An ass you could bounce a quarter off of, and trust me I looked for a quarter but I couldn’t find one—”
“I meant his personality,” I said, biting my lip to hide a smile. “Is he nice?”
“Honey if I was a little younger….” She fanned herself. “And now, because of his apparent inability to hold his liquor, we get to ogle his fine ass for the next three months. I’d say that worked out quite nicely.”
“Hold his liquor?” I asked slowly. I was getting a bad feeling and that feeling smelled like Outlaw. “What did you say his name was again?”
