SWOLLEN: A Secret Baby Sports Romance (12 page)

I can’t believe this is happening.

“
All of us?”

“
Of course all of us.”

“
Him as well?”

“
Who, him?”

“
The Ass. Him.”

“
Don’t call him that, Tilly, he’s your stepbrother.”

Stepbrother. It’s always been impossible to hear that word and believe it to be true. Landon fucking Maddox is now my stepbrother. The guy is a certified prick and I have to call him family.

“
I don’t think I can.”

Star athlete, underwear model, arrogant as hell, loves himself too much to take seriously, one hundred percent womanizer. I definitely don’t want to be locked away for a week in the middle of nowhere listening to him go on and on about the string of women he’s bedded, or the amount of cocaine he’s snorted, or the vast sums of money he earns minute by minute. I don’t even know why he wants to come anyway. A family holiday in the middle of the countryside can’t be something that’s all that interesting for him.

“
Honey, this is our first holiday together as a family. Landon’s managed to get time off especially and you haven’t even met him yet, so this is a perfect opportunity for you two to get to know each other.”

“
You mean it’s the preseason, and he’s serving out a ban for the fight he got into at that club in New York.”

Mom gives me her glaring eyes.

“
It was all over the news.”

I wish I were able to say that statement and sound convincing. I feel like in doing so I’ve already weakened my argument.

“
That was a misunderstanding and Landon’s under a lot of pressure.”

Yeah, right. Trying to find a job in this climate, while having to live at home, that’s pressure. Throwing a football and taking your clothes off isn’t.

“
Hasn’t he got better things to do?”

“
Darling, anyone would think you didn’t want him to come. After years and years of complaining about being an only child - and don’t tell me you didn’t - I thought you’d finally be pleased to have someone you can call a brother. A famous one at that. Talented too.”

Mom’s waving her chopping knife at me provocatively. If she looked out over the top of her glasses any further they’d fall off her nose.

“
Maybe he’ll let you sell one of his signed jerseys.”

Or his jockstrap. The thought makes me shudder.

“
I’m nineteen years old, Mom, I’ve passed that phase.”

Mom gets married, and I have to put up with the consequences. It’s not easy seeing your stepbrother everywhere you go, every other billboard advert or metro station, every single magazine I flick through. There his is, The Donkey, perfect chest, hungry eyes, huge package just glaring down at me like he owns the world.

You’d have thought Mom was some kind of gold digger or something with the way things have turned out, but Marvin is a normal, down to earth, working class guy, absolutely nothing like his son. They met in Walmart of all places, and she didn’t know anything at all about his star studded, trouble-a-minute bad boy son, until she finally met him a year into their relationship and recognized him from one of his billboard posters. How embarrassing is that? Your future stepmother perving over your enormous bulge while flicking through Cosmopolitan. I mean, I know I’m on thin ice, but that’s definitely way worse than me doing it.

Mom’s cooking for Marvin tonight. Despite getting married, they’re not even living together yet, which I find both bizarre and comfortably reassuring. He’s coming over for dinner, which he does fairly often, after which he will either go back home or stay the night, depending on the day of the week. It’s a little odd, but I leave them to it. Marvin is way better for my mom that my real dad ever was, so as long as she’s happy, I’m happy too.

What I’m not happy about is the prospect of spending a week on lockdown so far into the countryside you can’t even get a cell phone signal.

“
Why don’t we go somewhere nice, like Toronto, or LA?”

“
Because it’s already been decided. Now, open the wine, Marvin will be here soon.”

It’s true, I’ve never met Landon, but I don’t need to have done to know what he’s like. He didn’t come to the wedding, because, apparently, a super bowl semi final is much more important. Every other opportunity before or after that moment hasn’t been good for me, or it hasn’t been good for him. I’ve been away at Uni all year and Landon, well Landon has been busy flashing his balls at everyone that happens to walk past them.

Mom may speak highly of him, but I know the truth when I see it. They may call him The Donkey because he’s hung like one and he kicks like a mule, but I know it’s really because he’s a total ass.

A different woman every week, a string of incidents, trouble on and off the field. It all speaks volumes. Not that I’ve been following his career of course. There is no way I’d know anything about him if he didn’t court publicity like an attention seeking child.

It’s people like Landon that keep the real headlines out of the news.

Landon

Off season sucks. There are two things I love to do in my life, chase women and play football, and I can’t do either of them at the moment. I’m on my final warning at the club. One more girl that sells her story, one more fight at a nightclub, my career is officially over. And that shit was self defense by the way, nothing like the papers made out, not that that matters now of course.

“
Five minutes, Landon.”

Here I am, at a studio shoot with a large number of beautiful women, and I have to keep a lid on it just in case.

It’s driving me crazy, but there is nothing I can do. This time, I know it’s serious. A written warning, a sit down meeting with the board members. If I’m not a saint throughout the summer I’ll get benched. It doesn’t matter that single handedly I nearly took Shoreville to their first super bowl in history, apparently nobody likes a trouble maker and no one player is bigger than the team. Not even The Donkey. They’ll end my career if they have to, they’ll make sure I never play again, and I can’t let that happen. Not even to get it wet.

It’s not entirely my fault. Not only do I find women irresistible, they kind of fall at my feet. Or they kneel at the very least. What’s difficult, is finding one that doesn’t want to sell her story afterwards, and if the story isn’t spicy enough, she’ll just make the rest of it up. That’s what gets me into trouble. One night stands and casual fucking doesn’t sit right with the wholesome image they want me to portray. A relationship would be different, but I’ve never been able to find a girl that can keep up with me.

“
Landon, you’re up.”

The floor manager is a cute redhead called Stephanie, with large, innocent looking eyes that perk up immediately when I take my robe off and hand it to her.

After she’s done all she can not to look at my most appealing asset, she guides me to the studio floor, where a collection of women already await us. There must be half a dozen girls of different ethnic backgrounds draped across a huge kitchen table. I’m instructed to mount it and stand like a God between them.

I get smiles and whispered hellos. Any single one of these girls I could make mine, and I’m just not allowed to. They might as well have cut my dick off entirely.

“
That’s it, Landon, just stand in the middle.”

Stand in the middle while these insanely pretty girls put their hands all over your legs. And Landon, key point, don’t fuck any of them afterwards, just in case it ends up in the papers in the morning.

It wasn’t always like this. Back in college I could fuck any girl I wanted to and no one gave two shits about it. I was just the jock with the big dick who knew how to please a girl and throw a football. Now I’m famous, all that has changed.

We do a few different poses and pause for a break while the photographer changes his set up. Some of the girls chat amongst themselves, others sit silently in the corner and one comes straight for me while I’m doing my best to mind my own business. Fuck, she’s gorgeous too.

“
Hi.”

Tall, blonde, perfect tits, athletic, definitely my type. Definitely a ticket to benchville with zero stops along the way. I can’t risk another one night stand ending in a five page spread. This girl has trouble written all over her.

“
Hey.”

I watch her eyes go down and then back up. She might as well be sticking a post it note on it.

“
I always thought they enhanced it.”

Straight to the point, I kind of like that. A quick assessment tells me she’d be fun in the sack, that she might even be able to keep up with me, but she’s definitely not worth losing my career over. I laugh off her comment.

“
They do. They just make everything else bigger too.”

She looks me up and down, her eyes wandering hungrily across my chest to my biceps and finally up to my face. Models know how to do that without feeling like they’re invading your personal space. Here I can stare all day at her tits and she won’t bat an eyelid.

“
Listen, have you got plans for after this? A couple of us are planning to get some drinks up at A Bee Zees, you wanna come?”

This is a no brainer. Supermodels, drinking, clear signs of sexual intention. Of course I want to come, but I know I can’t.

“
Let me think about it.”

She moves closer and puts her hand on my chest. She’s about to say something but the words get stolen away momentarily when Stephanie calls us back.

“
Time.”

She smiles up at me and then skips back to the table, a brief look over her shoulder to confirm I’m watching her.

“
Landon, you too.”

This was always going to happen at some point. The fame, the fallout from it. It’s just in my personality, and it always has been.

They had me tracked all the way through college and I was first draft pick three seasons ago. I was proud of that, and ready to take the professional world by storm, but despite all the preparations, despite all the practise sessions, my rookie year turned into an absolute nightmare, and none of it was my fault.

I was out injured for the majority of it with a smashed up knee that everyone thought would end my career before it had even started, and when it didn’t, and I came back in, I was slotted in as second string while they worked out what to do with me.

That injury was from a car crash after a late night out that was made to look like something I could have avoided by the papers, even though I wasn’t the one driving and I hadn’t even been drinking all that much. It was an accident that could have happened to anybody, but the club and the owners didn’t see it like that. I shouldn’t have been out that late at all was the way they saw it, and I had to work doubly hard to get them back on my side.

Second string when I knew I should have been first team elected every time, especially after breaking so many records in college? Sat on the sidelines watching team mates fuck up week in week out and knowing I could change things if only they gave me a chance? That hurts. It takes balls to get through that.

There were a lot of people who wanted to see me fail too - a lot of people who still do - none of whom I was ever going to give the chance.

You see, I’m not the kind of person that gives up easily, and when there’s something I want badly enough, I know it’s just a matter of time before the hard work I put in to get it actually begins to pay off. I busted my balls and worked my ass off in training, I laid low and kept my nose clean for as long as I needed to, and finally I got a run in a couple of games, and the right people to trust me, before things began to fall into place for me.

The team started winning - a team that had never started winning at any point in their recent history before -, and people started noticing me. I saw my name all over the place and in what seemed like overnight, I was suddenly famous.

Me. Landon Maddox. I became the star that everyone wanted a piece of. I was turning into the God that this photographer was busy casting me as now.

“
Look up towards the ceiling, Landon. Try to make it so you don’t notice those girls around your feet.”

Or my dick, right?

They began interviewing me on chat shows and throwing money at me from all angles. I got a ton of stuff for free just for being me. I still do. I can go out in expensive clothes, eat at the best restaurants in the city just to be seen there, and dance all night in member’s only clubs without even needing to spend a dime if I want to.

With all that cash and all that attention at such a young age, no wonder people started to envy me. One story led to another, and after a while I was the man everyone loved to hate. Girls started selling stories and taking photos to post on twitter. I went from being a nobody rookie with a smashed up knee to a somebody bad boy with a killer arm and a winning streak to put me in line for MVP that couldn’t stop partying. It was a dangerous, volatile combination, and it still would be if they’d let me. I’m in the papers almost every day of the week being scrutinized, both on the field and off of it and when that happens things tend to get taken out of context.