Chapter 13
Maddox
“Look, there you go. Your very first contact,” Ellie proclaims as she hands me my new phone and points proudly to the screen.
Her name is right there, black on white. Except instead of just plain Ellie, it says Ellie the Magnificent and Awesome. Which is what I get for letting her type it in, I guess. I can’t take my eyes off of it, feeling like my life is about to change, and not necessarily in a good way.
It’s taken her a while to wear me down on this, but eventually I realized she was right. If I’m serious about starting my own business, I need a phone. I also need Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook apparently, but that feels like way too much right now. Baby steps.
“This is amazing. I feel like I actually exist now,” Ellie says, obviously thrilled at having dragged me into the twenty-first century kicking and screaming. “Go on, call me.”
“Why? You’re standing right next to me.”
She pouts like a sullen teenager, and it’s almost unbearably cute. “Please?” she pleads.
Jesus. How could I resist that? I press the contact, and her phone rings. She hits answer, and for some reason starts speaking in a drawling English accent like she’s in some kind of Agatha Christie drama. “Good aaaaafternoon, this is Eleanor Madison. To whom am I speaking?”
“It’s me, asshole.”
She scuffs me across the head, not too lightly, reminding me that she has three younger siblings and doesn’t take shit.
“You, Maddox James, are no fun at all. Okay, okay, that’s enough phone 101 for now.
Make sure you charge it properly, okay? Unless you charge it and actually keep it with you, it’s just a useless hunk of metal and plastic, and we don’t like waste, do we? ”
“No ma’am,” I reply. I kind of like it when she’s bossy. It makes me want to show her who’s really the boss. Maybe I could take her over my knee and spank the sass out of her.
Fuck! Mind out of the gutter, you perv.
She gazes up at me, standing there in her gym gear, hands on those lush hips of hers.
She has an hourglass figure, all curves and valleys, and the stuff she wears for her Pilates class leaves little to the imagination.
Not that my imagination needs any help when it comes to this woman.
She has been the biggest challenge to celibacy that I’ve ever faced, but she’s worth every frustrating moment of it.
Being around her is a blessing. She lifts my soul, breathes joy into my day, and makes my heart sing.
“You wanna come to Pilates and I’ll kick your big butt at it?” she says, glaring up at me with a challenge in her exquisite blue eyes.
She also makes me laugh more than anyone else, even Mason. “Is the class a phone-free zone?”
She nods. “It sure is.”
“Then I’ll come along. I’m fairly sure my perfectly sized butt is safe from your foot though. I’m in shape.” I flex my shoulders to prove my point.
Her eyes run over my body, and I swear to God she lingers on the waistband of my sweats. She jerks her head upwards, cheeks red, and gives me a killer smile. “Oh, my poor sweet baby boy, you have no clue what you’re about to let yourself in for.”
Less than an hour later, I realize she was right. What kind of sick twisted fuck invented this bullshit? We all have these weird beds that look like medieval torture devices, with springs and pulleys and a footboard. My first thought when I saw them was that they’d be interesting to have sex on.
I don’t think that now. In fact, I think I’ve found the cure for my libido, and it’s called dynamic reformer Pilates.
Shit, this stuff is hard. Some woman called Cynthia is at the front, and she could teach Stephen King a thing or two about how to strike terror into the hearts of the masses.
She’s part sergeant major, part guru, and the soft chill music playing in the background that tries to convince us all this is relaxing practically mocks me as she leads us in the most grueling workout I think I’ve ever had.
I wasn’t lying about being in shape. I run.
A lot. I cycle and swim. I lift weights at the community center.
I’m a big guy, naturally athletic. A former quarterback who’s always enjoyed exercise.
And yet here I am, getting my ass handed to me on a plate by a group of women half my size.
Women with incredible balance, core strength, and muscle tone.
Women who are absolutely one hundred percent whooping my ass.
Not that I’m a sexist douchebag, I know women are strong and tough and capable, but fuck me.
Ellie the Magnificent and Awesome is on the machine next to me and actually has the spare energy to laugh at my misfortune.
There’s a fine sheen of perspiration coating her body, and I try very hard not to stare at her ass while she contorts her supple form into positions that mine simply isn’t capable of.
“How’s your butt feeling?” she asks when class is mercifully almost done. I grimace at a sharp twang in my hamstrings.
“Like it’s been well and truly kicked. Then kicked some more, and maybe stabbed, then set on fire.”
“Told you so.” She smirks and sticks her tongue out at me, and I bark out a laugh. No man in the history of men has ever been as relieved as me when class ends.
I spend a solid five minutes slumped in the corner, wondering if I’ll ever walk again. Ellie saunters around like she’s done nothing more strenuous than a mild stretch, then holds out her hands to help me to my feet.
“It doesn’t mean you’re not fit,” she says as we leave the studio. She’s taking pity on me, it seems. “Because obviously, my friend, you are pretty fit. It’s just a different type of fitness, a different type of strength. Tell me you enjoyed it though, didn’t you?”
“No, because I don’t like lying. I hated every goddamn second of it.” I lie, because I didn’t hate everything about it.
I very much enjoyed the parts where I was staring at her ass, of course, but it would spoil the vibe if I said that. Not to mention make me sound like a creep.
We stroll together through the evening streets. It’s pleasant, the sun still shining, people sitting out at tables on the sidewalk for drinks and dinner. We pass a busy wine bar, and she looks a little wistfully through the window.
“You wanna go in? Grab a drink? You could even let me buy them, so I recover a little of my macho pride.”
“No, it’s okay,” she says, shaking her head. Her curls spill loose, and I shove my hand in my pants pocket so I don’t reach out and run my fingers through them. “I usually go here with Katy.”
Katy is, what they call in the trade, her BFF.
She’s the pocket-sized blonde I almost punched in the face when I took Ellie that Yankees cap.
We’ve met a few times since, and she seems great.
Though she always gives me a weird look when she thinks I’m not paying attention.
Like she’s maybe sizing me up for a casket.
At a guess, she’s protective of Ellie, and for that she has my approval.
I know Ellie has been through a few bad relationships and dated a string of assholes.
I have no intention of hurting her that way, and I’m right there with Katy.
If any man does hurt her again, he’ll have me to deal with.
Unless I’ve just been to a reformer Pilates class, in which case it will take me a full six business hours to be able to feel my arms and legs.
“We can go in, you know, Ellie. I’m fine with bars,” I assure her.
She nods but doesn’t look convinced.
“I mean, I would usually go to places that do food as well. And that Irish pub my brothers love, which is an experience all its own with the sawdust on the floor. But still, I’m okay with a bar.”
“This place is more a cocktails and wine kind of vibe. It can get a little lively,” she says, eyelashes fluttering seductively against her cheeks.
“Hey, if you want to get shitfaced and go full-on Coyote Ugly on the bar, that is one hundred percent good by me. I don’t feel uncomfortable being around people who drink.
Shit, my brothers might as well buy their own distillery, the amount they put away on Sunday brunch alone.
Just because I’m sober doesn’t mean I expect everybody else to be. ”
She grins up at me, looking ever so cocky. “Does the same apply to your celibacy? Because Katy has been trying to persuade me to go on a double date with her, Josh, and one of his work buddies.”
I have a flash of pure rage at the idea of Ellie being on a date with any man, especially some douche-bucket, called...
Okay, so I don’t know his name, but I’m guessing it sucks. It’s probably Chad or Trevor, or something similarly ass-like.
I don’t let her see that I’m thinking or feeling any of that, though.
I have no right to police Ellie’s love life, and if I’m not willing to give her what she needs, then how could I possibly object to her getting it elsewhere?
“Of course it does. I’m aware that other people have sex,” I say.
Though not you, Ellie, please God, not you.
“Shall we go in?” I’m relieved to sound so much calmer than I feel.
The place is pretty crammed, but we find a quiet corner table.
I order a mocktail that comes with a pink umbrella and all kinds of other paraphernalia, and Ellie gets a margarita.
I can’t lie, it smells amazing. But it also smells like failure, and a loss of control, and going back to my dark place.
Where my monsters still lie in wait. I sip my much-too sugary drink and grimace.
“Wow. I didn’t know it was possible for my teeth to rot within seconds. ”
She smirks. “It does have a fun umbrella and a paper flamingo, though. Looks good on you. It’s definitely restored some of your macho pride.”
She sips her own drink, and maybe that’s what makes her bold. Because she reaches out and strokes the scar on my knuckles. It’s faded and pale, and most people don’t even notice it.
“This wasn’t really from a football accident, was it?”
A flashback. Me smashing a face into a mirror. Glass shattering. Blood everywhere. It sends a shudder racing up my spine.
“No,” I say. I leave it at that, and thankfully so does she.
We both remain silent. We’re comfortable with silence, the two of us.
It’s one of the things I like most about spending time with her.
We do things, we go places, we have fun.
We’ve done a shit-ton of work together on my business proposal.
But sometimes, we just chill. Her place or mine.
One of us will cook, we’ll maybe watch TV.
Sometimes we both crash out and read together.
It sounds so fucking boring, but it’s one of my favorite things in the world—her at one end of the couch, me at the other, heads buried in our books.
I want Ellie Madison in so many ways. She’s sexy and gorgeous, and she gives me so many hard-ons I’ve taken to wearing cycling shorts beneath my pants to hide the evidence. But that aspect of things is off-limits, and maybe that makes everything else we share that much more special. More precious.
“I have some scars,” she finally says, breaking the silence. I’m guessing from her tone that they’re not straightforward. Nobody falls off their bike as a kid and speaks about the scars like that.
“You want to talk about them?” I ask. I tread softly, not one to push when it’s unwanted.
She shrugs and stares off into the distance. Her eyes glaze a little, and she doesn’t meet my look. I guess this is difficult for her.
“I used to harm myself,” she says. Her voice a whisper, a confession almost drowned out by the music. That old song “Show Me Love” is playing.
“You did?” I speak even more softly now. I’m no stranger to self-harm, even if mine didn’t involve razors and sharp edges. It left the kind of scars that don’t show on the outside.
“Yes. I was having a, uh, difficult time when I was a teenager. I didn’t know how to cope with what was happening in my life, and I started cutting.
” She scrubs at her eyes, like she’s angry for showing emotion.
“The scars are still there. I don’t feel ashamed of them.
They remind me of who I was, and what I came through. ”
“And what you became,” I add. “That’s what matters. Our past helps shape who we are, but it doesn’t define us. The bad things we deal with and how we deal with them is how we figure out who we are, or who we want to be.”
She nods, and shakily smiles. It’s a fucking beautiful thing, her smile.
I would pluck down the moon from the sky if she asked me to right now.
I would do a lot of things for Ellie Madison.
I wonder if she offered herself to me now, the way she did back in Marrakech, if I’d have the strength to say no.
“A wise woman once told me that warriors don’t escape fear. They conquer it.”
“Was it Cynthia?” I ask, lightening the mood.
Ellie laughs, full and free, throwing her head back, her smooth throat exposed and vulnerable. How would she react if I leaned forward and kissed that gorgeous soft skin? My dick is getting harder just thinking about it, so I stop.
“No, it was my mom actually. Well, not my actual mom, but the lady who adopted my little brother and sisters. They call her mom, not me. Even though both she and I think of her that way. She’s a woman not to be messed with. She’d eat Cynthia for breakfast.”
I shudder slightly. Reminder: never meet Ellie’s not-mom.
I don’t mean that actually. I’d love to meet her, and her younger siblings. I want to know every part of Ellie’s life—at least every part that I can allow myself to right now.
“Thank you for sharing that with me” I tell her, raising my glass to clink against hers. “And one day, I promise I’ll tell you how I got my scar.”
She nods. “I’ll hold you to that, Maddox.”
I sure fucking hope so, because one day there is nothing I’d love more than to share everything with her. My darkness. My secrets. My whole life.