by Cross,Lexi
“You can afford all of this?” one of them asked.
“I’m frugal?” I suggested, saying it like a question. I hoped he would get the point and drop it. He didn’t want to go chasing anything down that rabbit hole. There was a lot of money down that hole, and most of it was illegal. I didn’t need anyone digging into that part of my business.
Once everyone was settled, I brought bottled water in from the kitchen for each of us. I considered bringing wine or champagne, but I decided to wait on that until after the meeting. I figured everyone would probably want a drink once we were finished in the dining room.
“You do have a nice house, Mr. Hendrix,” another of the lawyers said.
“This certainly doesn’t come from your team contract, does it?” They were all on it, trying to figure out what was going on with my money.
“No. I do have supplemental income, though. You know, endorsements and such,” I said.
“Yeah, you don’t usually see this kind of money from a player who has trouble staying with one team and doesn’t really seem to be at the top of anyone’s list,” the lead attorney said in an effort to insult me for having been traded off of my old team.
“Well, I will say this. I’ve only been traded once, and, for the record, I have enough money to hire my own legal team and not worry about someone appointed by the team to defend me in court. How’s that sound for my financial statement?” I raised my eyebrows and looked around the table. They all nervously adjusted their ties and shuffled in their chairs.
“Let’s get started,” the lead attorney said after clearing his throat.
“Yes, let’s do that,” another attorney added, watching my words make him even more uncomfortable.
“When you called, you said Ms. Cox had returned to your home this afternoon. Would you walk us through that again?” he asked.
“Sure. As you know I had the conversation this morning with Stevens and Anglin about my suspension and possibly being traded off again. When I came back to the house, Raven was waiting on me.” I told them that she asked me to sleep with her in order for her to drop the charges.
One of them laughed. “Did you take her up on the offer?”
“No, I called you clowns,” I snapped.
He shrugged. “If she threw herself at me, I would have.”
The lead attorney shot him a look, and he calmed down. “What exactly happened, Cade?” he asked.
I walked back through the incident with them and told them as much as I could. I didn’t tell them that it was all about giving her a baby. I just talked about how she wanted to sleep with me and how I really wanted to, but I felt like I couldn’t trust her. She easily could have turned right back around and told everyone I raped her again. Except, having slept with her, I would have given her better evidence to support the charge than she had before.
“Well, regardless of what anyone here would say, you did the right thing by turning her down again. It may have even been a better idea to have called us or law enforcement before you even got out of the car, but we can’t change what happened, can we?” the lead attorney said, encouraging me.
“I can’t help but get the feeling that we’re missing something,” one of the lawyers said, looking up from his notes. “Can we walk through the whole thing again, Mr. Hendrix?”
“Yes, please, take your time and tell us everything from the very start, when you and Ms. Cox started seeing each other initially,” the lead added.
“I’ve already told you everything. I don’t see what going back over it will do to help,” I argued. I didn’t want to tell them everything. I didn’t want to even think about everything.
“Well, Mr. Hendrix, your complete honesty and cooperation is necessary for us to be able to defend you properly in court,” the lead attorney reminded me.
“No, focusing on the charges themselves and how none of it happened will get me off, not rehashing every little detail about my time with Raven,” I continued to argue.
“I think there’s been enough focus on getting you off, Cade,” another of the lawyers snapped.
I took a long, deep breath. I needed a stiff drink, but I was pretty sure they would have shot that idea down as well, so I took a moment to center myself in the chair before I started talking.
“Alright, you want everything? I’ll tell you everything,” I said. “You might want to make sure your pencils are sharpened if you’re going to take all of this down.”
I started with meeting her.
“I met Raven Cox at a press conference back home, with my last team. She wasn’t a member of the press or anything. She had just shown up to watch the spectacle. She was a groupie, definitely a groupie, but she wasn’t aggressive like so many others. She sort of sat back and waited for the athletes to come to her. See, I’m not into those fans who storm the team or the players. I like the girls who sit back and wait, the ones who aren’t confident enough to approach.”
I didn’t go into detail about how her body had attracted me before she ever opened her mouth. I wondered why she didn’t have any confidence in herself, because she was so hot. Her curves were perfect, and they fit my mouth and hands the way I liked them to. I figured I was telling them enough by giving them my secret about insecure girls.
“So, of course, we started talking. We exchanged numbers and started calling and texting each other regularly,” I continued.
“What were your intentions for Ms. Cox when you met her?” one of the attorneys asked.
“Same as they are with just about every woman I meet. I wanted to sleep with her. That was my goal. You’ve seen her. Wouldn’t you want to fuck that?” I asked, realizing that since they were taking down everything I said, I probably would have been better served if I had watched my mouth a little more.
“Go on,” the lead said, shaking his head and chuckling.
“It wasn’t long before we started sleeping together. Then, it started happening more and more often. I would call her up a couple of times a week, and I’d go over there after practice to get a little of what she had to offer,” I said.
“And what exactly was that, Mr. Hendrix? You know, we need to be clear in this report because she’s also been in trouble for narcotics.”
“Right. No, I was going over just to fuck her brains out. Then, I was off to home afterwards. I didn’t even stay at her place. Maybe once or twice if we had too much to drink,” I clarified. I didn’t go into any details about how good it was or what all we did. They didn’t need those details unless they asked for them, and I didn’t see any reason for them to ask.
“What else? You started sleeping together on a regular basis. What happened next?”
“Well, at some point she started acting like it was more than just sex, so I did the same thing I usually do at that point. I cut it off. We stopped seeing each other. I don’t know what happened next for her, but the next thing I heard about her was that she had wound up in the news on drug charges,” I explained.
I was still giving them the clean version of it. I didn’t tell them about all the times I had tried to break it off only to have her call me back and beg for me to fuck her again. I always gave in. She played up the fake insecurities that turned me on, but I realized that all she was doing was trying to manipulate me, probably to get money out of me, which was about what she was succeeding in doing now.
“Okay, now, at what point did you get traded from your old team?”
“It was right after she came up on those drug charges. The tabloids were trying to connect us through them, trying to say that it was all my fault. You know, the usual,” I joked.
“Right. Now, at that point, how long had it been since you talked to her?”
“At that point, it had been about a month. After that, I spoke to her again right before the beating allegations came up,” I said.
“That’s where I have questions. What was said in that initial conversation, before all of this happened?”
I narrowed my eyes at the attor
ney who asked that question. It was like he knew that conversation was what started all of it. It was like he knew, as well, that there was something I hadn’t told them about that conversation.
“What was that conversation about, Mr. Hendrix?”
It occurred to me that the reason she had called might have been connected to the drug charges she’d been brought up on previously. That child she wanted might have been a way for her to get out of trouble with the people she was mixed up with. As much as I didn’t want to talk about her request, I realized it probably held the key to getting me off.
“She called when I was out of town with Kendra at my parents’ house. She told me she was in trouble and needed a baby to be able to get out of it,” I said.
The attorneys all shared a look, as if I had given them a very valuable and useful piece of information.
I continued. “She wanted me to give her that child. She wanted me to agree to sleep with her and get her pregnant. She said she would leave my life completely after that because she didn’t want me to have to know the baby, or the other way around. She even offered to sign a contract stating that I would never be held responsible for child support or anything else.”
“Thank you, Mr. Hendrix,” the lead attorney said, cutting me off as if I’d given them exactly what they wanted.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” one of the other attorneys asked him.
“That her request for a baby was somehow connected the drug use, and that it was all somehow connected to what really happened when she turned up black and blue?” the lead asked. “Because that’s exactly what I’m thinking.”
“Me, too,” I chimed in.
“We might be able to unlock enough of her secrets now to discredit her and get the case dropped,” the lead told me. “Thank you, Cade.”
They stood up, and each one shook my hand as they walked out of the dining room. I offered to walk them to the door but they insisted they knew the way. They hurried out of my house and left me standing there wondering what exactly it was they were about to do.
Chapter Twenty-One
Kendra
I was having shitty luck trying to track down donations to replace the money the charity had lost. No one wanted to donate more, and a lot of the donors I reached out to decided to withdraw their money simply because I had called to ask for more.
The longer I worked in the office, the more I realized that I was watching my dream fall apart around me. I had to come up with the money I owed on the mortgage and payroll right away, but I couldn’t come up with anything. The harder I worked, the more money I lost.
“You’re going to have to do it,” I told myself aloud. I didn’t want to give in and sell myself to Tommy like that. The only reason I had agreed to it was because I knew I could use it to get more time to find donations, but there were no donations to be found.
Then there was Lucky. I was going behind his back. He had no idea I had been considering the deal to begin with. Hell, I had moved in with him to avoid Tommy, to make sure Tommy didn’t show up at my apartment to try to rape me.
The only thing that seemed to slow Tommy down was that I was allowing him to think I was a willing participant. It seemed like he was going to keep coming after me no matter what, and I had a choice of letting him have me for money or always watching over my shoulder for him. At least by letting him do it, I was going to get something out of it for Older Brothers.
I hated that sex was just a business transaction for everyone. I didn’t understand how everyone kept trying to tie it to money. Tommy was willing to make a significant donation just to have sex with me, and it seemed so pointless, so empty to use sex that way.
That was one of the reasons why I hadn’t wanted to sleep with Lucky at first. Our relationship was supposed to be just business, and yet, we did everything we could to make it more than that. He did everything he could to get me in bed, but I realized when I finally gave in that what was happening between us was more than just business or just sex for him.
I smiled as I thought about the way Lucky had taken me to bed at his parents’ house, the way he had refused to fuck me, insisting on doing it tenderly instead. Even though neither one of us had admitted it to the other yet, we had made love that first time. There were emotions tied to our relationship.
Then again, that bitch Raven had probably felt the same way about him as I did. He had probably led her to believe he was in love with her as well before dumping her and moving on. I wondered if he was going to do the same thing to me. I wondered just how much time I had before it was my turn to find out it had only been just for sex from the get-go.
I wasn’t going to wait, I decided. I was going to continue doing what I always did. I was going to take matters into my own hands and make it all work the way I needed to. I couldn’t depend on these men to take care of me. I hadn’t even depended on my parents for that for any longer than I absolutely had to.
I had moved out at a pretty early age to pursue my dreams and my own personal goals. I wasn’t going to let a couple of men hold me back from continuing to do that. I wasn’t going to let my loyalty to Lucky keep me from taking care of business with the charity I was running. As soon as I sacrificed my dream to him, he would turn around and crush my heart. I could already see it happening.
Then, there was Tommy. I wasn’t just going to give Tommy what he wanted and watch him decide he wasn’t going to give me any money to help me survive. No, I was going to draw up a contract that glossed over the sexual part of our agreement enough to keep it legal, but not enough to get me out of it. I wanted to fuck him, but I wasn’t going to unless I got something out of it. I already had a man at home. I could get sex whenever I wanted, and I was pretty sure I could have convinced Lucky to do it anyway I wanted him to.
I sat down at the desk and started working on the contract. We hadn’t discussed a specific amount of money yet. And I still needed to decide how to describe what I was offering him in a way that wouldn’t land me in jail if I ever had to use the contract to get the money out of him.
“I’m offering him my companionship,” I mused to my old lonely office.
I laughed and shook my head. That wasn’t quite legal either.
“I’m agreeing to make a public appearance with him at an event,” I said. I felt like I was getting closer. If only there had been an event for us to attend on the night I had promised to give in to him.
I looked through my calendars, but there wasn’t anything.
That was when it hit me.
“In exchange for a sum of money, which I still need to determine, I agree to attend an investment dinner and any festivities related to it.” I smiled and wrote down investment dinner and related festivities so I wouldn’t forget them when it was time to draw up the contract. The dinner satisfied the public appearance aspect, and the related festivities made the companionship piece sound a little less like prostitution, I felt.
I grabbed the phone on my desk to call Tommy and see if we could agree on an amount of money. I put the phone to my ear, but the line was dead. I needed to pay the phone bill, too. I grabbed my cell phone instead and called him up.
“I take it you’ve given more thought to my offer,” Tommy said when he answered. It almost sounded like he was talking to someone else at first.
“I have. I’m working on the contract,” I told him.
“Oh, so you’re giving up on trying to get out of it, and you’re getting ready to let this happen like it should have when you first came into town?” he said, pleased with himself and proud.
“Something like that,” I agreed. “I need an amount of money to put down for your donation.”
“Why am I donating money? What are you putting in this contract as your contribution in this deal?” he asked me.
“I’m accompanying you to an investment dinner and any related functions that evening. I’m writing it up as a public appearance in exchange for payment and donations,” I told him. “That way it
doesn’t look like I’m just going out with you to fuck you. But that’s where the related functions part comes in.”
“I like it. You drive a hard bargain, Kendra Boles. I see that you’re trying to get dinner out of me now, too. Do I need to find anyone to accompany us so that it seems legit?” he asked.
“Not at all,” I said. Everything was going to look just fine on paper, and it wasn’t exactly uncommon for donors to be treated to dinner.
“Okay, how does three million sound for the donation?” he asked me.
“A three-million-dollar donation?” I asked, my jaw hitting the floor.
“Do you need more? I think that’s fair. I think it’s enough to help you recover from the last director and get the charity moving in the right direction. It should also be enough to help you distance yourself from that football player who beat his ex,” said Tommy.