Chapter 14
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CAM
Me
Hey, Wildcat.
Maddy
Who is this?
Me
Are there a lot of men in your life who call you Wildcat?
Maddy
You know, who could even say?
Me
And here I thought I was one of a kind.
Maddy
Trust me, you are definitely one of a kind.
Me
I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.
Maddy
I didn’t say that was a good thing.
Me
Being one of a kind means you think of me, and if you’re thinking of me, it’s always a good thing.
Maddy
You’re really easy to please, you know that?
Me
When it comes to you? All you have to do is exist and I’m pleased.
Maddy
Jesus, Cam, I’m going to expire from that level of swoon.
How did you get my number anyway?
Me
Stick with me, baby. It’s swoon city up in here.
I got your number from Tyler. It seemed criminal that I know what you look like naked and I know what your favorite snacks are, but I didn’t even have your phone number.
Maddy
Why did you tell him you needed it?
Me
Was I supposed to give him a reason?
Maddy
I mean, kind of?
My family is like a giant game of telephone. First Tyler is telling his mom that you asked for my phone number, and twenty minutes later I’m getting a call from my grandma asking me why I never told her I was getting married.
Me
Wow, way to jump the gun, Wildcat, but I like how you’re thinking.
I think you would look gorgeous in white.
Maddy
I look gorgeous in everything.
Me
You look especially gorgeous in nothing at all.
Maddy
Okay, so I guess I walked right into that one.
Me
You sure did. I’ll bring you extra M&M’s tomorrow to thank you for that visual image.
Maddy
You shouldn’t be thinking about me naked.
Me
Too late, Maddy. Way, way too late.
Maddy
You’re thinking of me naked right now, aren’t you?
Me
There hasn’t been a single day in the last six weeks that I haven’t thought about you naked.
But especially right now.
Maddy
Why especially now?
Me
I’m at the Fairmont.
Maddy
Another mom-funded hotel sojourn?
Me
Once a month, like clockwork. She’s good that way.
Maddy
You going to meet a girl in a bar this time and take her back to your room for a night of unhinged debauchery?
Me
Definitely not. I’m a one-woman kind of guy when it comes to my unhinged hotel room debauchery.
Maddy
And I assume I’m the woman?
Me
Fucking right you are. And tonight, my memories of that night are…particularly vivid.
Maddy
Well, they should be. I am very, very good at sex.
Me
Wildcat, you rocked my whole entire world, in more ways than one. But that’s not the only reason for my vivid memories.
Maddy
What’s the other one?
Me
That I happen to be lying on the very same bed where you moaned into my ear to fuck you harder and clawed at my back so hard you left marks that didn’t fade for days so…that’s what I’m thinking about right now.
Maddy
Well, shit. Now that’s what I’m thinking about, too.
Oh, holy hell.
I squeeze my phone tightly as all the blood in my body rushes to my cock so fast I get lightheaded.
In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to request the same room as I had last month when I met Maddy, but when I was standing at the check-in desk, I got…
sentimental? Horny? Maybe both. Probably both.
But whatever it was, I found myself asking if room twenty-two-ten was available, and when it was, I knew there was no way I could spend an entire night there without talking to her.
Hence my impromptu text to Tyler for Maddy’s number for an undefined “work thing.”
He’s too much of a puppy dog to wonder too hard about why I needed her number, but if Drew finds out, I’ll literally never hear the end of it. He may be an irreverent playboy, but I also know he has a latent romantic streak a mile wide, and he is solidly team Cam and Maddy.
And honestly? Same.
I should have known this is where I would end up when this night started.
Alone at ten p.m. in the hotel room that was the scene of one of the hottest nights of my entire life, cock hard as a rock, and the girl I can’t get out of my goddamn head all the way on the other side of town.
Especially since running into her at the rink last week.
The way she played hockey with Ethan and talked Riley through some serious mean girl shit at school.
Neither of my kids have stopped talking about her since, and so she’s burrowed even deeper into my head. Into my heart.
Before my brain even engages, I hit the video call icon.
“Are you some kind of psychopath or something?”
I smile at my phone when Maddy answers, and as she comes into view, my heart stutters in my chest. Her face is bare, and her skin has that dewy, just washed look to it, her freckled cheeks flushed the prettiest pink.
Her hair is damp, like she just got out of the shower, and it’s piled up on top of her head, held back from her face with a neon-yellow headband.
Her eyes shine with amusement and fun, as if she’s happy to hear from me, and I think that maybe nothing could ever go wrong as long as she’s looking at me like this.
For someone who has experienced the wrongest of wrongs life has to offer, that is a wild, wild thought to be having about a girl I can’t even call mine.
Yet.
“I mean, I guess I could be. I’ve never really been sure.”
“You definitely are. Who just calls someone without giving them a warning first?”
I snort out a laugh, leaning back against the headboard and getting comfortable. “You sound like Riley. Every time I call her, she takes it as a personal insult. She’s all, Why didn’t you just text me? Since when is texting the default form of communication?”
Maddy rolls her eyes, leaning back against what looks like ten thousand pillows in various shades of blue and purple.
“Since always, Grandpa. When you text, the person you’re texting can decide when or whether to text you back at their leisure.
A phone call forces an instantaneous decision that no one wants to make. ”
“And yet you made the decision to answer my phone call just now.”
Maddy grins and it makes my chest feel light as air. “Riddle me that, Cameron. Riddle me that.”
I grin right back at her, loving the way she calls me by my full name. It feels deliciously forbidden to be talking to her like this, but also like the only thing I want to be doing right now. “I think you like me. I think you really, really like me.”
She shrugs. “I think we’re past the point of me pretending I don’t, don’t you?”
My heart thuds like she just stripped naked and confessed her undying love for me. I open my suddenly dry mouth to respond then close it, her admission having stripped my brain of anything resembling words. Suddenly, I’m a teenage boy with no idea how to talk to the prettiest girl at the dance.
She bursts out laughing, and it’s the best sound in the world. “Did I break you?”
I blow out a breath, trying to get my shit together. “I guess I just wasn’t expecting you to admit it so easily.”
Maddy gives me a lazy smile. “That’s me. When you think I’ll zig, I zag. And when you’re sure I’ll zag, I actually do zag again. I’m unpredictable and occasionally impulsive. Or maybe it’s just the late-night phone call. There’s something kind of cozy about it, don’t you think?”
She reaches out of view of the camera, and I get a quick glimpse of the Renegades logo on her gray hoodie. Her wearing my team logo makes my chest feel funny, and I get a brief mental image of the way she might look in my jersey, my name and number on her back, and I like it so much.
Too much, probably.
But before I can think too hard about it, Maddy’s end of the phone goes dark, and a second later, a soft light that must come from a bedside lamp clicks on.
Settling back against her pillows, she rolls to her side and props the phone up so only her face is in view, bathed in the dim glow of the lamp.
“It makes me want to tell you all my secrets.”
Pushing up and off the bed, I shut off the overhead light in the room, then click on my own lamp before getting back into bed and lying against the pillows.
When I look back at the phone, my heart squeezes at the view of Maddy cuddled up in her bed, blanket pulled up to her chin.
I slide down, rolling to my side and holding the phone up in front of me in a mirror of her pose.
It’s almost like we’re sharing a bed, instead of being separated by seven miles and a highway, and I really, really like the thought of that.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve shared secrets with a girl in a late-night phone call. ”
“Lainey?” she asks. And something about the way she says Lainey’s name in that casual, curious tone has me opening up in a way I rarely ever think to do.
I want her to know me, dented parts and all.
Somehow, I already know she’ll hold those pieces of me gently, just like she did when I opened up to her that night on the roof of our hotel in Tampa.
I nod. “Yeah. Between college football and then my first years in the NFL, I was away a lot, so we spent many a late night on the phone, just like this.”
“Was it hard? Being away so much, I mean.”
I rub a hand over my jaw, letting my mind travel back to those early days.
“It wasn’t at first. Lainey was dedicated to her career, and she had a lot of friends, so she always had a support system around her when I was traveling.
And since Drew and I were drafted to the Renegades together, I had my best friend on the road with me.
Lainey would come to away games when she could make it work, and she never missed a home game. ”