Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
DREW
I slammed the front door harder than necessary. The sound bounced off the walls of the empty house like it was mocking me. I dropped my keys on the counter and stood there, breathing through my nose, trying to shake the frustration still sitting in my chest.
Isa was still running from me.
After everything— the way she fell apart in my arms, the way she let me touch her, the way she looked at me like maybe, just maybe, she felt it too—she still snuck out at dawn.
Still went back to chasing Tristan like I was some temporary fix she was ashamed of.
It pissed me off more than I wanted to admit.
We made sense. Same schedule. Same grind.
Same understanding of what it took to live like this.
But none of that seemed to matter to her.
My phone lit up on the counter.
Richard Bryant Montgomery.
I stared at it for a second, jaw tight. I should’ve ignored it. I always should’ve ignored it. But I picked up anyway.
“Yeah.”
There was a pause, like he was already annoyed with my tone.
“Drew,” my father said, voice smooth and cold. “You sound like you’ve been hitting the weights instead of the books. Tell me you’re not still wasting your time with this football nonsense.”
I leaned against the counter. “What do you want?”
“I want you to stop being difficult. I’ve been patient. I really have. But this Stanford football phase is becoming a liability. No one who matters goes to Stanford to play football. You should be at a real program. Tennessee. Florida. Somewhere that actually builds names.”
I let out a short laugh. “You mean somewhere your buddies can say their friend’s son plays in the SEC? You want bowl tickets at the fifty yard line?”
“Don’t be a smartass,” he snapped. “This isn’t about appearances. This is about your future. You’re not going to the NFL. We both know that. So stop pretending this is some noble pursuit and start thinking about the company. My company.”
There it was. Same speech, different day.
I rubbed a hand over my face. “I’m not transferring. And I’m not quitting football just because it doesn’t fit the image you want.”
The line went quiet for a moment. Then his voice dropped, colder.
“You don’t have the luxury of being stubborn anymore, Drew. Your brothers have made sure of that.”
I stayed silent, waiting.
“One of them took the damn boat out drunk and drove it straight into a pier like it was a parking spot. Cost me a fortune to make that disappear. The other one knocked up the mayor’s daughter — some little debutante who was supposed to be off-limits.
Now I’ve got lawyers and NDAs and a girl who thinks she’s entitled to a piece of my money because she spread her legs for my idiot son. ”
He exhaled, sharp and irritated.
“You’re the only one who hasn’t completely fucked up yet. The only one who isn’t a walking scandal. That makes you valuable. Which means I have a vested interest in making sure you don’t throw your life away playing football at some school that doesn’t even care about the sport.”
I felt my jaw clench harder.
“So that’s what this is,” I said quietly. “You don’t actually give a shit about me. You just need one son who isn’t a complete fuck-up so you can hand the company over to someone who won’t embarrass you in public.”
“Don’t twist this into some sob story,” he said. “I’ve taken care of you. Paid for your mother’s treatments when she got sick. Paid for the funeral. Paid for Stanford. You owe me some loyalty here.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Loyalty? You tried to pay my mother to abort me before I was even born. And now suddenly I’m the golden child because your other sons are disasters?”
The silence on the other end was heavy.
“You’re being emotional,” he finally said, like that was the worst thing a man could be.
“I’m offering you everything. The company.
The money. The life. All you have to do is stop playing this little game and come home.
Transfer somewhere respectable for football.
Start learning the business instead of wasting your time on a field that leads nowhere. ”
I stared out the window at nothing.
“I’m not your backup plan,” I said. “And I’m not transferring. You want an heir? Then you’re gonna have to take the one you actually have—the one who didn’t drive a boat into a pier or knock up the mayor’s daughter. But I’m doing it on my terms. Not yours.”
His voice turned icy.
“You’ll change your mind. You always do when it gets hard. Enjoy your little Stanford fantasy while it lasts, Drew. But don’t expect me to keep bankrolling a decision I don’t agree with forever.”
The line went dead.
I stood there in the kitchen, phone still in my hand, breathing hard.
Between Isa running from what we could have and my father trying to control what little freedom I had left, I felt like I was being squeezed from both sides.
And for the first time, I wasn’t sure how much longer I was willing to keep letting either of them do it.
I was still standing in the kitchen when my phone buzzed again. I figured it was another call, but it was a text.
Richard:
If I see one more video or picture of you with those girls hanging all over you, we’re going to have a serious problem.
You so much as touch one of them or knock some party girl up and I’m cutting you off.
Whatever Stanford isn’t covering, I’m not paying for that house anymore.
You better come home for Thanksgiving with someone I actually approve of.
And I mean it this time. Don’t bring some little slut to dinner like you did last year. Or don’t come home at all.
My fist clenched around the phone so hard my knuckles cracked.
Last year I’d done it on purpose. I’d gone down to Boca, picked up some girl at a bar whose name I barely remembered, and brought her home for Thanksgiving just to watch the vein in my father’s forehead throb.
She’d shown up in a dress two sizes too small, called everyone “babe,” and asked if the caviar was “that fish egg shit rich people eat.” I’d almost smiled through the whole miserable dinner.
Because at least it was better than sitting there alone while his new wife and her friends looked at me like I was something they’d scraped off their shoe.
I used to love the holidays.
Before my mom got sick, it was just the two of us.
She’d bake the turkey from scratch even though it was just us.
We’d watch football all day with the volume too loud and put up the Christmas tree the second Thanksgiving dinner was over.
It was loud and messy and smelled like real food instead of whatever overpriced catering my father’s assistants ordered now. It never felt lonely.
Now the holidays were country clubs and stiff handshakes. Ex-wives. New wives. Half-brothers who looked at me like I was the mistake that refused to disappear. Business associates who only spoke to me because they knew who my father was.
And on top of all of it, the constant pressure to change my last name.
He wanted Travers off my birth certificate.
Wanted everyone to know I was a Montgomery—that I was set to inherit millions one day.
That I wasn’t just some bruised-up football player who happened to share his blood.
He hated that I still went by my mother’s name.
Hated that I refused to let him erase her completely.
My phone buzzed again with another text.
Richard Bryant Montgomery:
I’m serious, Drew. Clean it up. Or I will.
I dropped the phone on the counter like it burned.
He didn’t actually give a shit about me.
He gave a shit about the image. About having one son who wasn’t a total fuck-up.
One son who could eventually take over the company without dragging the family name through another scandal.
That’s why he was suddenly so invested. Because the other two had already torched their chances — one with a boat and a bottle of whiskey, the other with the mayor’s daughter and a positive pregnancy test.
I was the only clean option left.
And he was going to squeeze that leverage for everything it was worth.
I ran a hand down my face and let out a rough breath.
Isa didn’t know any of this. She didn’t know about the money. She didn’t know about the name. She didn’t know I was supposed to inherit millions one day if I played my cards right and stopped pissing my father off.
And that was exactly why I liked her.
She didn’t want me for any of it.
She just didn’t want me at all.
I was already in a shit mood before the game even started.
Isa was still under my skin like a bad rash I couldn’t stop scratching.
One night. That’s all it took. One night of her falling apart in my arms, letting me touch her, letting me taste her, and now I was hooked like some pathetic addict.
She was the drug. The kind that felt good going down but left you fucked up the next morning.
I hated it.
I hated that I still wanted her even while she was out here acting like what happened between us didn’t mean shit. I hated that I kept looking for her in the stands even though I knew she probably wasn’t coming. And I really hated the shit that had been floating around the locker room all week.
The whispers about her.
Word was spreading fast— faster than I wanted it to.
Girls were saying Isa had been chasing Tristan because of his money.
That she wasn’t just some heartbroken girl who got left in the library.
That she’d been targeting him for his family name and the Vale money from the jump.
A couple of them even swore they were in the training room when they heard her say it out loud.
Something about her mom telling her to lock him down for the “six-three NBA grandbabies and the money vault.”
I didn’t want to believe it.
But the more I heard it, the more it started to make sense.