Chapter 9
Blaise
Tilly.
She was Trixie in my mind for months. Trixie the bitch.
Trixie the con artist. Trixie the whore.
Trixie the woman who is ruining my life.
Who’s going to leave me destitute, a fucking joke, one of those guys who had a phenomenal NFL career only for their rep to get completely tanked because of something not even football related.
I’m gonna be a Michael Vick. An OJ Simpson.
Except I never hurt anyone or anything. All I ever did wrong was fall for a damsel in distress and then play a stupid game with her.
I now have seventeen thousand dollars in the bank.
I made over thirty million dollars last year.
After taxes, the new car, my agent’s cut, the attorney I have on retainer, the accountant, the household expenses, and everything else, about six million got banked.
All told, between my bank account and all my investments, which I don’t really understand and just let my money manager — my former money manager now — handle, I was looking at nearly twenty million banked up by the end of last season.
I’ve drained down to seventeen thousand dollars. No investments, no portfolio. I liquidated everything.
Because she’s taken it all.
So when Andy says, “I got you a gig. Two, in fact,” as I’m raiding the fridge a week after the hot tub party, my thank fuck is sincere.
There’s a relief in knowing her real name.
Tilly. A dumb fucking name for an evil fucking woman.
Knowing her name makes her more real in a way I needed.
She was always real, of course. I didn’t stick my dick into a fantasy.
I stuck it into a real woman with a real cunt who really came harder and harder with every increasingly depraved act we did that night.
But there was that catfishing vibe to it because I had no idea what was real and what was fake about her story.
Well, I know at least one thing that was fake about her story. Obviously, she could get pregnant.
And fuck me, she’s beautiful pregnant. She was captivating before.
I could never have called her beautiful.
That’s not what held my attention at Ani-Con.
But now, she’s got that pregnant woman glow to her skin and a light in her eyes that wasn’t there before.
Gone is the looseness, her body now filling out to what it’s meant to be, and so much more.
And so fucking ripe with my baby — my baby — that I had this flicker in me of something I’ve never been before, this drive to knock Briggs and Allore and Foster away and drag her out of the hot tub and to my room, caveman-style.
What’s even crazier is I was actually able to keep myself from doing it.
I should have. I should have just held her prisoner there until she confessed to blackmailing me and gave all my money back, every fucking penny she’s collected from me in the past seven months, so I could build a giant house for my family with a cage around it to keep her there because that’s what she deserves. What I deserve.
Gabe and Joss are on a babymoon this weekend.
The rest of the guys are in a cabin in the Rockies.
Merrick wanted to go skiing and everyone else wanted to chop wood or some shit.
Man stuff. It wasn’t my thing anyway, and then with the latest round of extortion from Tilly, I didn’t have the money to chip in without stressing.
Seventeen thousand seemed like an okay amount of money until I worked out how long that was going to last. I don’t get a weekly paycheck.
Andy went through my expenses, crunched some numbers.
I’m not going to make it four months with what’s coming in, even if Tilly doesn’t try for yet another money grab.
She’s about to have a baby. She’s going to.
I’ve been waiting for it all week.
I grab a steak and a bagged salad, figuring neither of them will make it another three days so I’m doing their rightful owners a favor, and slam the door shut.
“But you gotta get to Tokyo.”
“Sounds good.” Not really. As much as I love the stuff that comes out of Japan, I’m not a fan of big flights. I’ve only ever flown across the ocean twice, to Europe for games. That’s the Atlantic. The Pacific is a lot more. But if it’ll get me money, I’ll do it.
“It’s for—”
“How much will they pay?” I’ve already told him I’ll do a tampon ad if they pay me well. Hell, I don’t even think I put that caveat on it. I will do a tampon ad, full stop.
“It’s going to be a total of one-point-two.”
“Million?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, great.”
“But there’s a problem.”
I pause in the middle of reaching for one of the frying pans hanging above the island.
Not even because I’m stunned by his words.
His words just have me wondering if I’m going to want to fire up a grill or fucking skewer this steak and cook it over the firepit.
Throw a bunch of kerosene on it, burn it to a char. Sacrifice to the gods. Destruction.
“One of them is a live event. A ribbon cutting. It’s on June 27th.”
That doesn’t mean anything to me. June. Cool.
Three months out, so hopefully Andy negotiated for a decent deposit because that’s cutting it close, but Andy’s usually good about this stuff.
He likes me, and even if he didn’t, I’m his meal ticket.
If I get kicked off the team and my deals dry up, he’ll lose half his income.
He’s going through a divorce, so now’s a really bad time for shit like that to happen.
“You’ve got a mandatory training camp that week.”
“Fuck.” Mandatory isn’t a word casually tossed around.
They take almost no excuses. This is probably the one Gabe’s already notified them that Joss’s due date falls in the middle of, and even with that, he’s expected to be at camp until Joss is in active labor and will need to return two days after she has that baby.
But ribbon-cutting is definitely not an excuse.
“What’s the company?” I ask.
“It’s a stadium. One of their baseball teams is getting a new stadium, but they’re designing it to be mixed-use in the hopes they can attract the NFL to have some international games there, like in Germany and the UK.”
“Fuck,” I groan again, this time lower and dragged out.
I don’t know how my reaction would have been different if it had been a tampon factory, I just know this sounds like a big deal.
This would make me a representative of the NFL.
And yeah, anyone could theoretically build a stadium with these hopes, but if they’re at the point where it’s for baseball, Japan’s most popular sport, but they want a football player at the ribbon cutting, that tells me they’re pushing hard for this.
They’ve already got a foot in somewhere.
I’d fucking love this opportunity. I’d love to see Tokyo, honestly, but I don’t think I’d do the flight without the encouragement. And this would make me look good. Professional. Serious. These are the kind of ads that make you the face of a brand, and the face of the NFL in Japan?
“Shit.”
“I’m going to reach out to your GM,” Andy promises. “I can’t make any guarantees, but I’m going to do everything I can.”
“I want this,” I tell him. “I don’t even care what the other thing is, I want—”
“It’s a Japanese sakura-flavored whiskey that’s got glitter in it.”
I clear my throat. “Ok, yes, I did want to know that, actually.” I’ve been drinking too much the last few months, trying to take the edge off but losing track too many times, so I really need to stop cold, but that just sounds fun.
Andy chuckles. “Yeah, I thought you’d like that. They don’t have a big budget for you, but they had some really wild ideas of the kind of ad campaign they want to do, sounded like right up your alley.”
“Will there be glitter?”
“And a pink boa, yes.”
“Yusss,” I hiss with a clench of my fist. I’m super down for that.
“And listen, Blaise?”
I pull the frying pan down. Even if I can’t get that stadium — but I was a good boy last season, I deserve it — the Sakura whiskey money will dig me out of the hole for a good chunk of time.
“Yep?”
“It’s probably not your baby. I’ve got my team looking into this Tilly bitch, and they’re struggling to even find her on paper, but it’s probably just part of her scam. You get that, right?”
“Yep.” It’s a dry sound, though. I’ve been thinking about it all week. I used one of those pregnancy trackers. It doesn’t look good for me. She’d be a month away from having the baby if it’s mine, so there’s not a big window there if it’s someone else’s.
“You told me she wasn’t drinking that night at the convention, right? Like she knew she was pregnant.”
I set that frying pan on the counter, pick up the steak, march right outside with it. “She was high, Andy.”
“On acid. Listen, I’m not saying it’s okay to take acid while pregnant, but it’s not like alcohol.
She probably got knocked up by her boyfriend, he freaked, and she figured she could pull a fast one on some sucker.
Or she was just out to party, and then you left her all that money like a fucking idiot, and she saw a cash grab. ”
“Thanks, uhh, thanks for that victim-blaming, I guess.” I turn the knob on the gas grill, but I’m eyeing up that fire pit. Now that I’ve got some money coming in, the urge to set the steak on fire, just to see if I can, and then order my weight in sushi is strong.
“I’m telling you, as soon as that baby pops out, she’s gonna be coming at you for child support. Just stay away from her, Blaise. See what happens. And don’t give her another fucking penny until you talk to me first.”
It’s sobering enough that I decide I shouldn’t just assume that whiskey money is going in my bank account and throw the steak on the grill. “You got it, man. You get me that stadium.”
“You stay out of trouble. I mean it this time.”
I crack a smile. He’s said it so many times it’s a joke now, but I don’t know how much it even matters anymore. Tilly is going to ruin me, I feel it in my gut.
I overcook the steak, but on purpose. Not that I like steaks well done, I’m not a heathen, I just feel like chewing through a boot.
And as much as yeah, I do have all the ingredients to make a good salad, I stick with the generic, dumping the contents of the bag in a bowl and half-heartedly stirring in half a gallon of Vedder’s ranch dressing while I sit in front of the TV.
I put on some anime, picking a subbed one instead of a dub. It’s been my preferred lately, since I have to focus so hard on the words. I’m so focused that I manage to scare myself when my phone rings.
It’s Gabe, asking me to check in on Tilly because she just told Joss she isn’t feeling well but won’t go to the hospital.
I should say no. Andy just told me to stay away from her. But if they’re asking me, it means there’s no one else around. This is my chance to have a one-on-one with her. I’d rather just confront her now than wonder what her next move is going to be.
When I ask Gabe if I can borrow his car, he doesn’t ask me why.
Which means I don’t have to tell him I sold mine today.