The term ride-or-die chick is what came to mind as Andrea and I sat on my couch for almost two days straight that weekend, hacking away bit by bit to repair my public image. I was getting my ass kicked by the mainstream media, and I never for one second doubted that Andrea would stay by my side even when just about everyone I knew had given up on me, passing me off as some kind of monster.

Combating the twenty-four-hour news cycle was relentless. A ball of stress sat in my stomach and didn’t leave. Tate was with DCFS now, and I had been through that transition many a time. The ambiguity of where you would live next, the fact that you didn’t have a real place you could call home—thinking about what Tate was going through gave me the strength to have extreme focus in spite of our lack of sleep. We both had our computers out as we tweeted, emailed, and reached out to anyone who would communicate with us.

Andrea pushed her glasses up on her nose, staring down into her laptop and typing intently. She shook her head and rolled her eyes slightly, then looked up.

“ESPN just picked up your story. Bad news—it’s a hit piece.”

“What are they saying?”

“It’s those two dumb talking heads who get paid to debate crap. Guy number one says you deserve to get released because you’re a child kidnapper. Guy number two says you don’t deserve to be making those millions that have been guaranteed to you.”

“So they agree.”

“Yes. Bastards.”

Andrea snuggled in closer to me, touching my leg to readjust her position on the couch. Since I had met her, I’d been instantly attracted to her, but there was something about seeing her working that touched me even deeper. She had the ability to throw her brain into a deep mental focus that couldn’t be broken. When I thought about how she was doing all of this for me, just to clear my good name, even after she had already been fired and was on the way out of her PR firm, it made me feel like I finally had a partner in crime.

My entire life, I’d fought as a lone wolf for what I wanted. To achieve my dreams, I relied on no one but myself. And then suddenly, I saw those dreams crumbling to the ground. For the first time, I realized that things had spun too far out of control for me to get back on track on my own.

Andrea shook her head and sighed. I knew I should be sending more emails and searching for more mid-size sports blogs and YouTube channels who might grant me an interview, but I couldn’t stop staring at her. She had on a light-blue tank top and black yoga pants. Since I’d found her at the salon two days ago, we’d been lying on the couch, working. We had taken some time to sleep and grab a quick brunch, but aside from that, all we’d been doing is trying to defeat the demons who were coming after us. My demons.

“Some of the smaller blogs we’ve been reaching out to are responding,” Andrea said as she squinted her eyes at her computer screen. “We just need to make sure we keep reaching out. Are you ready for another video interview? Maybe one more podcast today?”

I had done two hour-long video interviews from my living room this morning. The interviews went well, but each of them only had a few thousand followers, so it wasn’t like we were reaching the world at large. We had to start somewhere, though.

“If you say I should be there, I’m there.”

I sighed and gripped her thigh with my hand, then leaned over, guided her face to mine, and kissed her. We paused and made eye contact for a few seconds before we went back to work.

There was a time for play and a time for work, and now was a time for work.

The strategy Andrea had suggested was unorthodox, but it was working. We had been reaching out to independent sports blogs, podcasts, and even some gossip websites. We made sure our pitch included the hashtag #moretoJakesstory, which was starting to trend. The reality was that no one really knew the full story about Tate and me. No one knew about the complexity and depth of my relationship with Andrea. And while she could just throw Grant under the bus if she wanted to and come out about his vicious ways—it wouldn’t solve the overall issue we were facing.

Plus, it would cause Andrea a whole bunch of unwanted media attention that she had decided she didn’t want.

Also, I had firmly decided—and reached out to Grant to tell him—that if he came near Andrea again, he was toast. It was a fun conversation where I had asked him if he had ever been to the South Side. He said no. I told him if he ever wanted to come near Andrea again, I could give him a ride around the South Side of Chicago—the parts where they don’t think twice about taking a life and making it untraceable. Harsh, but I think he finally got the message.

I sighed and opened my own laptop back up. PR wasn’t my thing, but I could do my best to respond to as many personal messages as possible that were coming in, and they really were coming in.

We worked for what seemed like days. I never thought that rebuilding my image would be such a problem.

“Watch this,” Andrea said, her expression suddenly transformed from morose to satisfied.

She closed my laptop and set hers on top of it.

I glanced at her, then back to the screen. She pulled up a YouTube video that had been shared more than three million times.

The scene started on a small baseball field. The release date was a year ago, and a group of kids sat around, eating pizza. Immediately, I recognized the field.

The video was taken on 16^th Street on the South Side of the city, where I had first coached when I’d joined the team the year before and moved back to Chicago. I stood there, shit-eating grin on my face, as I brought in the first round of pizzas for the team. Some parent or coach who was in the dugout at the time had clearly filmed it. The camera turned from the dugout to me, and then stayed on Tate for a moment.

My phone had been buzzing off the hook all weekend. There had been a lot of haters calling me to tell me what a horrible person I was. I had no idea how they’d gotten my number, but for that reason, I had turned my phone off, and we were using Andrea’s phone as our one and only telephone vessel.

It rang.

“It’s a three one two area code,” she remarked. “Should we get it?”

“Why not?”

She answered the phone, put it on speaker, and set it on the coffee table.

“Hello, this is Andrea.”

“Andrea. This is Harry Yerac.”

We both gave each other a confused look. Andrea squeezed my leg as we both wondered why he’d be calling after the harsh way he ended things with me.

“Mr. Yerac. I wasn’t expecting your call.”

“I didn’t think so. But listen. I think I may have jumped the gun with releasing Jake. No one can get a hold of him. Not his agent, none of his teammates, not anyone. Have you seen him?”

Her frown morphed into a sly grin. “I…might be able to guess his whereabouts.” She ran a hand through my hair. “Why do you need to speak with him?”

Harry let out a long sigh. “I’ve had every single man on the team, including the coaching staff, stop by to tell me why they think I’m an asshole, and that I needed to find out the truth about Jake instead of listening to what the media is saying.” He paused. “So I did. And I know when I’m wrong. I’ve had my own team on finding out the truth. I’ve been listening to the podcast interviews he’s been doing. And the new YouTube video that’s gone viral as well. There’s a lot more to this story than I first saw. I need to talk with him and…hear the whole thing from him, just him and me. I know now that I should have heard him out the first time.”

There was noticeable pang of regret in Mr. Yerac’s voice.

“And his contract?” Andrea said sharply. “Are you going to reinstate him?”

Watching Andrea in her element was a huge turn on. She had handled this campaign like a boss; the grassroots stuff was all her idea. And now I had another idea. I blamed her for sitting there all smug and looking so damn sexy. A couple of strands of brown hair dangled down in front of her face. I peeled them back, leaned in, and caught her by surprise with a kiss before she could even take her glasses off.

Mr. Yerac sighed, pausing before saying his next words. As he spoke, I scattered kisses over Andrea’s face, cheeks, and neck. She didn’t resist, running both hands through my hair. She took off her glasses and reciprocated, trying to quietly kiss me without smooching so loudly that Mr. Yerac would hear on speakerphone.

“That’s what I wanted to discuss with him,” Mr. Yerac said. “But I’m sure if you’ve worked with Jake firsthand, you know that he isn’t exactly a pleasure to deal with.”

I heard the word pleasure and I couldn’t resist. I whispered, “I’m going to prove Harry wrong about this pleasure theory of his.” Then I worked my kisses further down her body until I tugged at the pajama bottoms she was wearing. She braced her shoulders on the cushions and lifted her hips up, allowing me to slip them off of her.

“Well, you know, I’ve found that Jake does require some extra attention, but once he opens up to you, he goes a lot deeper than you ever thought he would. At least, that’s been my…”

My mouth now between her thighs as I knelt on the ground, I slipped my hand under her panties, tugging them off, and rubbed my thumb ever so slightly on her clit. Her breath was starting to speed up, and she fuddled the end of her sentence, the last m syllable sounding more like a moan then a word.

“Andrea? Are you there? Everything alright?”

“Mmmm, oh yeah. Everything’s peachy,” she said and smiled down at me. “Please, Jake,” she whispered.

I arched an eyebrow at her and whispered back, “Please what?”

“I don’t know,” she said, and brought her hand down to my hair again.

“You don’t know? What don’t you know?” Mr. Yerac asked in a confused tone.

I watched as Andrea seemed to locate every available ounce of brainpower. “Harry, listen…I found Jake. But he can’t talk right now. I’ll have him call you back, though. Promise. I have to—”

I reached over to the coffee table and ended the call. “I think that conversation was about over anyways. It’s okay, I’m a jackass. I know.”

“Yeah, you kind of are. But you’re my jackass.”

I shook my head. “How did I get so lucky?”

Andrea shrugged and flashed a hazy smile my way. “Let’s talk about this later. Speaking of lucky, I would love to get lucky right now.”

“I can help you with that.”

Andrea was naked from the waist down. I stood up from the couch, and she helped me pull down my athletic shorts. Then I took my briefs off. She pulled off her shirt, and I did the same with mine. I looked at her, lying totally naked on the couch. She flashed her blue eyes at me and smiled.

For a moment I was frozen, staring at her. The woman was a masterpiece, and more than that, she was my personal masterpiece. She saw through my shit, and even threw it right back at me. She was loyal, tender, and feminine, yet fierce at the same time.

“What are you doing?” she snipped, jolting me out of my daydream.

“Looking at you,” I said in a voice that came out lower and throatier than I’d intended. I swooped down and joined her on the couch, pressing my flesh against hers. She warmed me up. Inside and out. She pulled me into her mouth for a kiss. I needed to tell her something. Something I had only told one other person in my life.

“Need to tell you something,” I growled, once again the words not coming out quite as I’d imagined them. Her eyes went wide, and she sensed the nervousness in my tone.

“What? What do you have to tell me?”

I took a deep breath to center myself. “Andrea, I know it’s only been, what, one month since we started hanging out.”

“Oh God.”

I ran my hand along her thigh and legs. There was no other way to say the words than to just say them. “It’s that…I…love…you.”

A tear formed in her eye, and she wrapped her arms and her legs and her whole body around me and kissed me with urgency. After a few moments, she pulled her mouth away. “Dammit, Napleton. You had me worried for a second.”

“Why?”

“I thought you might have something else that you were hiding from me.”

I grabbed hold of her shoulder. “Never. I never want to hide anything from you.”

“Good,” she said. “You’re a pretty big guy, anyway. It’s hard for you to hide.”

She reached down and grabbed my cock, which was rapidly becoming a steel rod. She wrapped her hand around it, then guided me in between her legs. Slowly, I pushed in, inch by inch, my chest muscles pushed up against her breasts as her heat surrounded me. Her legs wrapped around me and pulled me further into her.

“God, Andrea. Fuck. I love you,” I said as I pushed her hair back behind her ear with my hand.

She tilted her head back. “I love you too.”

I smiled and whispered in her ear as I began to thrust my hips slowly. “Damn, I love hearing you say those words.”

And then we were wordless. She tilted her hips and began to gyrate them faster, in rhythm with mine. I reached around and cupped her ass, loving the feel of her cheeks in my hands. She began to moan softly in my ear, gripping the cushion behind her for an anchor.

I rocked my body into hers, and we became one rhythmic motion as we gripped each other tightly. I kissed her again and tongued down to her breasts, pausing to flick my tongue on her nipple. Judging by the way she arched her back up and pushed her chest into me, she was loving this as much as I was.

She snapped her head forward, bringing her forehead to mine, and wrapped her hand around the back of my neck.

“I’m going to come, baby,” she whispered through moans.

Hearing her soft voice sent me soaring. She opened her eyes and stared into mine, and I peered through those sparking blue windows to her soul. Her being was full of passion and compassion, and I would never fully understand why God decided to bless me with her.

“Come, baby,” I whispered back. “Come for me.”

She screamed and dug her nails into my back, and that sent me over the edge. The heat building inside me was screaming to get out. I gripped the hot flesh of her body and yelled as I came in her.

When it was over, we lay on our sides, chests heaving, looking into each other’s eyes.

“I love how you fuck,” I panted.

She got a little red-faced. “I just go where you take me.”

I smirked a little. “Bullshit. We go there together.”

The corners of her mouth turned up in a half-smile. She ran her hand down my chest and my abs.

“Well, wherever we go, it’s pretty awesome. I love fucking you.”

I laughed. “Ha! I got you to say the F-word! You didn’t say effing!” I was joking, a little. But there was something truly fantastic about hearing Andrea’s clean mouth say the word fuck.

“Only with you, babe. Only with you.”

I wrapped my arms around her, and she scooched her body closer to me.

“Well, you better plan on saying the F-word a lot. Because I’m never letting you go.”