Hothead by Stella Rhys

19

EVIE

Even after a busyday of meetings all over the city, followed by cooking myself dinner, followed by dealing with the aftermath on Facebook, which included a long, private message from Mike that included the line “I won’t stoop to public immaturity and hope you’ll join me in acting like an adult the next time we see each other” – ugh, retch – I was still very much focused on one thing, and one thing only.

And that, of course, was Drew.

I found myself actually tuning into the Empires game while eating dinner, even though Drew wasn’t starting, and I didn’t know what was happening anyway. I was just waiting for the occasional shots of Drew leaning against the dugout railing with Ty, his green eyes looking so deliciously intense as he scrutinized the game from under the bill of his cap.

Just a two-second flash of him on the big screen made my heart thump.

That, Evie, I kept telling myself. That beautiful hunk of man was in your bed last night. Putting his mouth in places where a mouth hadn’t been in years. That man – that insanely hot man in that ridiculously sexy uniform – blew your fucking mind last night.

It was hard to process.

At one point, when the commentators mentioned Drew’s name, I had to do my best not to squeal.

What the fuck? Easy, woman. He’s not really yours, I scolded myself, though I almost did it again when the screen flashed a graphic of the league’s ERA leaders, and I saw Drew’s name at number two.

Crap.

I could feel it. I was getting a little crazy. And ahead of myself. I was slowly starting to sip the Drew Maddox Kool-Aid despite the fact that, just a few weeks ago, I was convinced he was typical athlete playboy who would never in his life care about anything but himself.

So before I knew it, I was grabbing my laptop and Googling him to help myself pump the brakes on the butterflies.

I went straight to searching “Drew Maddox womanizer,” and while I did get tons of pictures of Drew stumbling out of clubs with insanely leggy, short-skirted women, I didn’t see anything that scandalous. There was a story about one of his flings storming the field during Spring Training because he gave her a fake number, but that was more funny than anything.

“Okay,” I said aloud, opting next for the keywords “Drew Maddox infamy.” Alright, I nodded at the tons of results for that search, clicking through as many as I could.

There was a story about him trying to sue his own team when he played in Los Angeles. There were stories about him butting heads with teammates. Cursing off reporters. Smashing a paparazzo’s camera. There were multiple articles about bench-clearing brawls that broke out during games because of him.

There was also, for some reason, a video in the results labeled “THE INFAMOUS INTERVIEW.”

I clicked on it immediately, prepared to see another video of a shirtless Drew in the clubhouse, looking insanely hot while sounding deeply uninterested in all the post-game interview questions he was being hit with.

But instead, it was an actual sit-down interview from seven years ago.

“Oh my God,” I murmured, biting the slow grin that drifted onto my lips, because the Drew I was watching was happy, bright-eyed and only twenty-three years old. His dark blond hair was cropped short and his face was completely clean-shaven. He was still beautiful as ever, but his look was far less rugged, and both his voice and his smile were boyish in a way that I had never thought possible.

In the video, he was absolutely glowing about the mother of his best friend, a woman named Pattie Lillard.

Yeah, because this will really help you not fall completely in love with him, I thought as young Drew raved on about how Pattie had raised him for chunks of his life, and how her son Tim was like a brother to him. He had served as best man at Tim’s wedding, was at the hospital for the birth of Tim’s son, and called the Lillards “the most important people” in his life.

“Yeah, this is really not helping,” I muttered aloud to myself.

Because somehow, knowing that Drew was human at some point in his life simply fanned the fire of my infatuation. It made my heart soften for him, and it made me wonder where Pattie and Tim Lillard were today.

“Oh. Fuck,” I mumbled as the interview took a turn, and Drew began talking about his efforts to raise money for treatment after the return of Pattie’s cancer.

Right away, I paused the interview and Googled the name Pattie Lillard, and my heart instantly dropped at the first headline I saw.

PATTIE LILLARD LOSES BATTLE WITH CANCER AT AGE 58.

The headline was from two years ago.

“Geez,” I breathed, holding a hand to my cheek as I clicked back to the interview of young Drew, tormenting myself by hitting play again and listening to him talk hopefully about all the fundraisers he was putting up for Pattie’s treatment.

“She’s going to make it. She means too much to too many people. I know she’ll beat it.”

God.

No wonder Drew was cold and hard now. He’d gone on national television, poured his heart out and still watched Pattie die a few years later. It made my heart ache for him. It made me wish I could just be near him right now and wrap my arms around him.

Basically, it was the exact opposite of what I had hoped to accomplish with this Googling session.

As the video ended with old photos of Drew, Tim and Pattie, I stupidly scrolled into the comments.

“What the fuck is wrong with people?” I whispered to myself as I skimmed the section. Considering the vulnerability and the outpouring of emotion I just saw, it was not at all what I expected.

DREW MADDOX IS A HYPOCRITE.

This dude is a fucking sociopath!!!

Can’t believe he’d do that to his best friend whose mother RAISED him. SMH.

“What the…”

Without thinking, I clicked on the link that was posted with the last comment and suddenly I was on a YouTube video labeled “TIM LILLARD KNOCKED OUT – ORIGINAL.”

I watched about two seconds before slamming my laptop shut.

No.

No, no, no, no.

I already knew I didn’t need to watch that. First of all, Drew wasn’t in the video and all I could see was a shaky, blurry image as the cameraperson ran to a body lying bloodied at the foot of a suburban driveway.

It could be fake.

It could be real.

You don’t know the whole story. Just don’t.

The last thing I needed was more questions, especially at a time when Drew didn’t necessarily owe me the answers. So walking my laptop upstairs, I placed it on my desk in my room, leaving it there before going back down to wait for Drew on the couch.

I still felt a weirdness hanging over me as I lay there, dozing in and out of sleep. It prickled over my skin and kept jolting me awake.

But at some point, I remembered seeing Drew’s face on the screen again – still leaning on that dugout railing, still standing next to Ty. They were laughing big about something or another, and just the sight of that smile was enough to curve the ends of my lips before I drifted off to sleep.