False Start: A Fake Dating Sports Romance (Red Zone Rivals)

There was something about seeing Madelyn in that hammock that put me in a wild state of being.

My eyes had laid upon many attractive women, but none so gorgeous as Madelyn James — because fuck if I was ever going to use that man’s last name on her again — right here, right now, in this moment.

Her bright copper hair was pulled up into a high ponytail, the edges of it sweaty and greasy from sunscreen. Those strands stuck to her forehead and neck in little swirls of metallic orange. I was particularly drawn to one strand that was clinging to her plump, pink bottom lip. Her skin was freshly bronzed and sporting new freckles — ones I took a lot of pleasure in peppering with welcome kisses each evening when we climbed into bed.

She wore an oversized pair of sunglasses and a black bikini, the triangle top of which struggled to contain her breasts, and the skimpy bottom of which was barely visible under her swollen belly.

And that was what turned me on the most.

How fucking cliché, I know.

I’d read it in a dozen baby books already, how expecting fathers have their own hormones running rampant — mostly when they looked at their partners and saw evidence that they’d impregnated them. It was so caveman, so fucking brute-like to think that I was being run by an archaic, natural instinct.

But fuck… I really was.

There was nothing sexier than Madelyn growing rounder each day. Any time she wore something tight-fitting or took her clothes off, I had to bite my knuckles and groan at the sight. I always made sure she was open to touching before I attempted — because I know if anyone tried to touch me while I was two seconds away from vomiting, I’d fucking deck them.

But the second trimester had been kinder to us, and now we were just entering the third, and Madelyn seemed to want my touches as much as I wanted to give them to her.

I relished every rub of her belly, every little kick I felt against my palm, every smile that graced Madelyn’s beautiful face when she saw me reacting to our daughter inside her.

I massaged her feet, her legs, her back, her neck — anything I could do to bring her relief. I even watched a fucking YouTube video on how to relieve some of the pressure from the baby. So, my new favorite thing was walking up behind Madelyn and wrapping my hands under her belly. I’d lift and hold the baby, the weight, while Madelyn moaned and sank into me like it was the best gift in the world.

This woman… this goddamn goddess. She was growing a human inside her, all while continuing to care for me, for Sebastian, for our home, for our lives.

She was fucking incredible.

I watched her from where I was situating a tray of fruit inside our private, over-the-water villa. The turquoise water of the Maldives spread out before us, making the sight of my pregnant, soon-to-be wife that much more picturesque. She had a notebook balanced on her knees, a pen scribbling lazily over the pages as she tapped her foot to the soft reggae music playing from the speaker I’d put out for her this morning.

This trip was for her.

In fact, I was pretty sure that sometime in the last several months, I’d silently decided that everything in my life was for her.

I’d pampered her with massages and facials and sound baths on this trip. I’d made sure she had any and all food she wanted — usually more at my insistence than hers. I’d waited on her as if I worked at this luxury fucking resort, and I didn’t care if it was the kind of behavior that would make my teammates call me a simp and rag on me endlessly.

She was literally carrying my daughter, making a human’s organs and body, creating a life.

It blew my fucking mind.

And, let’s be honest, I wasn’t immune to that part of a man who looked at his woman and thought fuck yeah, I put a baby in her.

Once the tray of fruit looked like something out of a goddamn food magazine, I carried it out onto our private wooden deck on one hand held high above my head, the other wrapped behind my back as if I were a butler.

“Madam, your afternoon snack,” I said, waving my free hand in a flourish before bowing and presenting the tray to her.

Madelyn smirked and sat up as much as she could in the sunken hammock, the netted one hanging just off the side of the wooden deck and over the water. She shut her notebook and slid the pen into the spiral that bound it as I sat the tray on the edge of the dock closest to her. I offered to take the notebook from her, and only once it was safely placed did I grab a chunk of pineapple and tumble into the hammock with her.

She giggled as I rolled down like a kid going down a hill, and I landed perfectly on my elbow, facing her, and waggled my brows as I offered her the piece of pineapple right at the edge of her pretty pink lips.

She shook her head and slid her sunglasses up so I could see her roll her eyes, but then she opened like a good girl, eating the pineapple and wiping the juice from the corner of her mouth.

Instantly, she moaned.

“Good?” I teased.

“Why is fruit so amazing when you’re pregnant?” She shook her head, motioning to the tray for another bite. I rolled enough to grab a strawberry and a couple slices of kiwi for her, and thoroughly enjoyed feeding her each one and hearing the resulting groans of ecstasy.

“Why is fruit so sexy when a pregnant woman is eating it?” I countered.

She swatted me with a grin, sliding her glasses back down and resting against the hammock. “It’s such a beautiful day.”

“I checked my weather app. It’s fifty-one and raining in Seattle.”

“Suckers.”

I smirked, pulling her onto my chest despite her protests that she was gross and sweaty. As if I cared.

“I have a question,” I said after a moment.

“Shocking.”

I tickled her ribs until she was thrashing, and only once she settled into my arms again did I continue.

“What do you want from life in the next five, ten, twenty years?”

“Wow,” she said, sitting up on her elbow to face me. She struggled a bit with the movement in the hammock and her giant belly. I reached out to rub a palm over said belly as she got comfortable. “We’re getting heavy today.”

“I mean it. Everything between us happened at lightning fucking speed. We skipped over all the shit we would have gone through if we’d dated in the traditional sense, if we’d spent a year or two going to restaurants and movies and on trips before we moved in together and got married.”

She frowned. “Does it make you sad that we missed all that?”

“Not even a little bit,” I said instantly. “I fucking love this, our story, the shit we’ve been through.” I tugged at the string of her bikini bottom, not untying it, but plucking it away from her skin playfully. “I wouldn’t change a thing. I love you. I love us.”

“Cornball.”

“You love it.”

She smiled, no denial.

“I know a lot about your past because I was there. We’ve caught up on what happened since then — what you’ve been through, what I’ve been through. I know there will be moments when we’re just hanging out and a little story will come up and you’ll tell me about a drunk night out with your friends, or a funny story when Sebastian was little. And I’ll tell you about a wild night out with the team, or the time I almost got expelled because I tried to sleep with my professor to get a better grade.”

Her eyebrows shot into her hairline at that. “Excuse me?”

I waved her off. “Not important.”

“You are such a menace,” she said on a laugh, shoving me away playfully.

But she pulled me right back into her, as if to say silently to that professor he’s mine now, bitch.

“I want to know what you want from here on out,” I repeated, bringing us back to the question at hand. “Tell me your dreams, Madelyn.”

She sighed, watching where her finger was drawing circles on my chest. “Well, first and foremost, I want to deliver a healthy baby girl.”

I smiled, running my palm over her stomach. “Our little Raven.”

“We are not naming our daughter after your favorite childhood football team.”

“Come on!” I protested. “Raven is adorable. No one will know but us.”

“And everyone you brag to.”

“Fine,” I conceded, rubbing her belly again. “Our little Raylyn.”

Madelyn flattened her lips. “Because Ray Lewis?”

“No one would know.”

Apparently done with my antics, Madelyn ignored that suggestion altogether and continued answering my question. “After our healthy baby girl — who will not be named either of those things — is born, then… I’m not sure.” She shrugged. “I mean, I would love to be home with her and Sebastian for at least a year or two, I think.”

“You would?”

She nodded, her cheeks tingeing pink. “Is that old fashioned?”

“Not at all.” I held up a pointed finger. “Feminism celebrates the woman’s choice. If this is what you want, then fuck yeah, let’s do it. But I also want you to know that if it’s not what you want, we can hire help. I can help — especially in the offseason. We can figure it out.”

“Oh, you’re definitely helping. Better get diaper duty lessons from Clay.”

“Psh, lessons?” I sucked my teeth. “He’ll need lessons from me. I’ll be Diaper Dad and Bath Time Dad and Swaddling Dad, too.”

Madelyn smiled. “I have no doubts. What about you? What do you see in the future?”

“Nuh-uh,” I argued. “This is about you. We all fucking know my plan. Play football and be the best for as many years as my body lets me. And use my shark of an agent to get me a mountain of cash for us to live on forever.”

I pecked her with a kiss then, just because I couldn’t stand not to.

“What’s next for you? After baby girl is here and you’ve had your fill of chasing a toddler and wrangling an elementary school kid.”

Madelyn sighed again, biting her bottom lip. “Well… don’t laugh, but… I’ve been writing.”

“I know,” I said instantly. “I see you with that notebook, with your laptop at home. Why would I laugh at that?”

“I’ve been writing a book.”

I blinked, surprised but in the best way. “Damn. You have? What about?”

She cringed like she was embarrassed. “About… life. My life. What happened to us, to me. Marshall and that whole ordeal. Surviving. Figuring things out as a single mom. Finding the road back to loving myself, to letting someone else love me,” she added, bowing her head a bit and looking at me through her lashes. “I doubt anyone will want to read it but—”

“Fuck you,” I said. “I want to read it. I’ll be first in line. I want the unedited copy. I want to read it now.”

“You don’t count.”

“That’s not nice.”

“I just mean even if this is just for me, I’m really enjoying it. So, speaking big dreams out loud… maybe one day I’ll write more. Maybe one day I’ll publish.”

“You better. Do you realize how many women you could help feel seen with that book alone?” I shook my head. “Madelyn, I wish my mom had someone like you in her life when she was younger. Fuck, I wish she had that now. Sometimes all it takes is one person, one book or movie or story from a stranger to make the light switch turn on in someone’s head who has been stumbling in the dark their whole life.”

“You really think so?”

“I know so. I love this plan,” I told her earnestly, pulling her hands to my lips. “And fuck, I love you.”

“You’ve said that already. Quite a few times just today, actually.”

“And I’ll say it again. I love you, I love you, I love you,” I repeated, kissing her neck in-between each word as she giggled and playfully shoved at me in a way that told me she didn’t want me to stop at all.

“Hmm… maybe the words don’t make sense to me anymore since I’ve heard them so many times,” she said, dragging her nail down my chest. “Maybe you could show me.”

Even through her sunglasses, I knew the look she had in her eyes. I knew because my body reacted without even seeing the heated gaze.

“Oh, with pleasure, fiancée,” I said, already making quick work of the string tie at her hip.

“What are you going to do when I’m your wife?”

I groaned, kissing her hard and rolling my erection into her. “Probably put another baby in you.”

“Um, hard pass.”

“You say that now…”

She laughed, but the sound died as I slid my hand between her thighs, moaning and sucking the lobe of her ear between my teeth at the same time.

“Maybe we should go inside,” she said breathlessly, but she was already rolling against my touch, swollen and wet and ready. She’d been like this so much of the pregnancy — as eager to feel me inside her as I was to be there.

“Nah,” I said, kissing behind her ear. “I got the most private villa for a reason.”

“There are boats out there,” she pointed out.

“Too far to see anything.”

“What if they have binoculars?”

“Then let them watch.”

Another sweet laugh left her lips before I was stripping the scraps of fabric she had on and flinging them on the dock. I basked in the view of her bare and spread out on that netted hammock, the bright, aqua blue water contrasting against her bronze skin like the most beautiful tropical painting.

“Gorgeous,” I whispered, hands roaming, lips tracking lines from collarbone to collarbone, from shoulder to ear, from breast to breast, and navel to hip bone until I was holding her thighs on my shoulders. I didn’t even care that my back was arching at a strange angle in the oversized hammock. I wanted her just like this. I needed her writhing in this netting and calling out my name loud enough for the next villa to hear.

She gasped when I took my first taste, fingers curling in the net as she rolled to meet the next lashing of my tongue. I knew exactly what to do now to get her to fall apart, but I took my time, enjoying every kiss and tease along the way.

Before long, her hands were in my hair, guiding me and urging me to give her what she really needed. My lips enclosed her clit, and I slipped one finger inside her, then another, curling them in tandem with the sucking rhythm of my mouth.

Usually, I would have one hand up massaging her breast, too. I’d roll and twist her nipple the way I knew she loved. But with her belly the size it was now, that wasn’t an option, so I doubled down on my efforts, tasting her like it was my full-time job, and the reason I got a healthy signing bonus.

She came quietly, whimpering and shaking and fighting back the cries I knew she wanted to let go as her legs trembled around me. I’d no sooner grinned and ran my mouth along the inside of her thigh, something I loved to do every time after I went down on her so she could feel the climax I coaxed from her, before she was grabbing me by the arms and pulling me up to kiss her.

Her moan into my mouth was urgent and needy, like tasting herself on me set her on fire and she was ready for another round. Then, she was struggling and laughing a little at herself as she maneuvered until her hands were on the dock, her knees still in the netting, her sunglasses thrown somewhere, and her pretty eyes cast over her shoulder at me.

I laid on my back and enjoyed that glorious view as I unfastened my swim trunks and slid them down to my knees, ankles, and kicked them to the side. I still didn’t move when they were gone, other than to fist myself and roll my hand over my shaft with a groan as I took in Madelyn’s beautiful, perfect fucking body.

“Are you going to fuck me with that, or am I just meant to stay like this until you finish?” she teased, arching a brow.

“So impatient.”

“Always have been when it comes to you.”

Carefully, I pushed myself up and ambled over to her, both of us laughing as we fought to steady ourselves and find balance. When I finally had her hips in my hands, I roamed her slick body again, groaning and smacking the side of her ass before I positioned myself at her entrance.

This was her new favorite position. For a while, it was her on top. Then, it was on her side, me spooning her in the early morning. But lately, she’d wanted me just like this.

She gasped and moaned as I edged my way in, and I knew she felt me deep like this because I felt her in the deepest, tightest way, too. Once I was all the way fitted inside, we both took a savoring breath, me kissing her shoulder and her leaning her head back to meet me.

Slowly, I began to move, flexing in and out and wishing I didn’t have to use my hands to hold us steady so I could grab her breasts and pull her against me and fuck her with abandon.

But there was something even hotter about the restraint, about having to take my time, hold myself up, hold her up and work her to another orgasm all at the same time. Every flex inside her was filled with sensation, my muscles working overtime as blood worked its way from each corner of my body right between my thighs.

“Fuck, Mads,” I croaked, kissing the back of her neck. “Feels so fucking good.”

“Coming,” she breathed back at me, and then in a feat that surprised me, she rested her weight on one hand so the other could dive between her legs.

I focused on making sure she was safe and supported as she worked out her second climax, and this time, she didn’t hold back. She moaned and screamed and called out my name just the way I’d wanted.

Those sounds alone sent me barreling.

I wrapped one arm around her lower waist, below her belly, and held her to me as I pumped and flexed and curled, over and over, deeper and deeper until power and numbness consumed me in equal measure.

I came with a groan and her name on my lips, with the sun shining bright above us, with the water lapping at the wood of our villa.

With her burrowing deep into my heart, my soul.

With a future so bright and beautiful it nearly made this grown fucking man sob.

Eventually, when we both had calmed, I helped Madelyn out of the hammock and carried her into our villa, into the rain shower, setting her down gently before running the water the perfectly warm temperature.

I washed her hair and her body before I did the same to mine, and then I fed her again and tucked her into our plush bed for a nap before we’d go to dinner.

While she slept, I lay beside her, watching her dream, marveling at how my entire world had shifted since she’d swung back into my life, and wondering what the fuck I ever did before her.

Soon, I would be her husband.

Soon, I would be a dad.

No.

I already was.

Sebastian was as much mine as he was Madelyn’s, even if not by blood. Even if, somehow, the adoption never went through. Even if we had to deal with that motherfucker ex-husband of Madelyn’s for the rest of our lives.

I never understood why people cared so much about their families. When I was in college, I grimaced at pro football players who had their wives and kids at every game. It was gross to me. And idiotic. All that pussy they could be getting, and they settled down with some everyday broad?

Now, I couldn’t imagine who that boy was who thought like that.

Because for the first time, I got it.

Family wasn’t what I had when I was a kid. It wasn’t a father who yelled and hit and demanded, and a mother who sat silent and complacent and scared. It wasn’t a home made of eggshells and lies. It wasn’t taking refuge in a sport because the more time you could stay away from the place you were supposed to call home — the happier you were.

Family was this.

It was a woman who filled every shattered piece of me, who fired up the need I’d never felt before to be a good man, a good caretaker, a good lover.

It was my son and my daughter, the home we would all build together, the one that was already filled with laughter and playfulness and joy.

It was knowing that no matter what came our way, we would hold hands — the four of us — and we would get through together.

And that did it.

My eyes watered so quickly, I couldn’t stop the first tear from falling, though I swiped at it as soon as it hit my jaw.

“I will be the best man I can be for you,” I whispered to my sleeping fiancée. “And for you and your brother, too,” I promised our daughter, gently rubbing the belly where she grew.

It was one of the last quiet, calm moments of my new adult life.

Because fifteen weeks later — our daughter was born.