Blitzed rules of possess.., p.1
Blitzed (Rules of Possession Book 3), page 1
BLITZED
RULES OF POSSESSION
BOOK 3
S.E. HARMON
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Blitzed© 2022 by S.E. Harmon. Cover Art © 2022 by S.E. Harmon. Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.
All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, including but not limited to being stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the author.
To Angel
Bittersweet is all that remains
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
CONTENTS
1. Andrew
2. Andrew
3. Andrew
4. Andrew
5. Andrew
6. Jesse
7. Andrew
8. Jesse
9. Andrew
10. Andrew
11. Jesse
12. Jesse
13. Andrew
14. Jesse
15. Jesse
16. Andrew
17. Andrew
18. Andrew
19. Andrew
20. Jesse
21. Andrew
22. Andrew
23. Jesse
24. Andrew
25. Jesse
26. Andrew
27. Jesse
28. Jesse
29. Jesse
30. Jesse
31. Jesse
32. Jesse
33. Andrew
Epilogue
Afterword
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by S.E. Harmon
1
ANDREW
My mother was trying to get rid of me.
I watched her bustle around the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on some pot roast dish that I wasn’t allowed to touch. It wasn’t anything that she’d said, per se, but there was definitely a nice of you to drop in, oh, is that the time vibe in the air. Usually, my brother and I had to use a grapple and hook to sneak out of her house. It was always understood that one of us wasn’t going to make it out. The one who did sent pictures to his fallen comrade while drinking a beer in his honor. But not today. Today, I had a feeling she was ready to punt me to the curb.
When I first arrived, I’d let myself in like I always did, dropping the mail on the table and complaining about traffic. And even though I popped in unannounced at least once a week to check in on her, my mother had looked startled as she poked her head out of the kitchen with an, “AJ! You’re here.”
“I am,” I’d agreed.
I raised an eyebrow as she came out into the living room. She was wearing navy slacks and a frilly white blouse, an apron tied around her waist and her hair pulled up in some fancy style I couldn’t name. No usual Saturday night yoga pants. She looked lovely. And nervous?
Despite the odd vibes she was giving off, I kissed her flushed cheek and proceeded to make myself comfortable in the kitchen. After a moment, she joined me and went back to manning whatever smelled so delicious on the stove.
And just like that, the irritation of my week fell away.
The farmhouse was a bit of an anomaly for the area—most of the homes were modern with clean lines. But it was my mother’s favorite style, mostly because it reminded her of some of the best summers of her life, helping out her grandparents on their farm in Iowa. After having my realtor scour the market with no results, I had one built. It managed to be both rustic and modern, with five bedrooms and a wide wraparound porch with the requisite porch swing. My parents had lived there for five years before my father…well, just before.
So even though he wasn’t here now, it was a place that he’d been. Little touches of him still existed here, including the lemon tree that he’d planted in the backyard. He hadn’t lived to see it bear fruit, but it was still his tree. When you added all of my mother’s kitschy décor to the mix and the fact that she was always cooking something, it became a place of refuge for me. I liked my house, sure, but my father had never been there and never would.
Here, I wasn’t Andrew McAdams, starting tight end for the Aventura Outlaws. I was just AJ, the youngest of my mother’s three kids. Emma lived in Maine, so she wasn’t around that often. But when she stopped by, she still thought I was the pesky youngest who’d always ratted her out to our parents. I took great delight in proving her right. My brother Grant had been a good frenemy growing up, and we’d spent a lot of time wrestling in our backyard. I wish we could say we’d grown out of that but alas, much to my mother’s chagrin, we had not.
When I was here, no one wanted anything from me…other than to do my chores. Yes. I still had fucking chores. My mother had told me more than once that she didn’t care how much money I had or if my head brushed the doorway when I walked through it—the trash needed to be dumped and the walkway needed to be swept.
Now that I thought about it, why did I love this place again? I squinted. Oh yeah. It was a place where I could go when I needed to leave my troubles behind, however temporarily. No football. No networking. No marketing. Here I could breathe and just be.
Usually.
I eyed my mother some more. She looked like she might be wearing makeup. It was hard to tell nowadays. Apparently, the idea was to look like you weren’t wearing any…by wearing just enough? A former girlfriend explained the principle to me, all the while patiently using a wand-type thing on her already long lashes. I’d tried to make my eyes nice and wide to indicate I was listening and interested, instead of sleeping where I stood like a horse in his stall.
“You look like you always do. Beautiful.” I’d tried not to sound impatient but shit, we were late. Again. And she was still in bikini underwear and a lacy bra. “I just don’t understand how that takes a half-hour. It doesn’t look like you did anything.”
“Exactly,” she’d said, nodding sagely as she brushed her lashes again and I trotted off to make myself a drink with arsenic ice cubes.
“So honey, how’re things going?” My mother asked, giving the pot a careful stir. Looked like she was trying to keep even her apron clean, which was weird. “I’m surprised to see you here. I thought you’d be out celebrating the win with the boys.”
She sounded like she’d just picked me up from Little League practice. I would’ve smiled if I wasn’t busy mowing my way through a poundcake that I’d spied under the cake cloche.
“Nah. I didn’t feel like going out.”
What exactly would I be celebrating? That they took the W without me? It didn’t help that my backup, Keon Williams, put up some nice stats. Nothing ground-breaking. But solid. Most of us called him Texas because he was from Baylor University, and he was playing like he was never going to play again, which was…well, the smart fucking thing to do. I understood. In theory. In actuality, he was trying to replace me…which sucked big, hairy balls.
I couldn’t help but wonder if management was starting to plan their exit strategy on the mess that was Andrew McAdams. I was better than Texas, sure. But was I good enough to outweigh my recent legal troubles? My injury? How about my sexuality, which the media always had a field day with?
Only time would tell, I guess. That was tomorrow kind of thinking. Today, there was blueberry pound cake. It was my favorite, blueberry lemon with a vanilla drizzle. I reached for the other half and my mother smacked my hand with her stirring spoon. “That’s for company.”
“Hey, I make a living with these hands.” I huffed as I rubbed my injured knuckles. “And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m company.”
“You’re family, not company, and don’t you usually hang out with Everett tonight?”
My best friend, Everett James, was a running back on the team. He’d come from a small town in Georgia, and no matter how successful he got, he was still humble. His dimpled smile, brown eyes, and air of goofy puppy were an agent’s wet dream. That wasn’t just hyperbole. We had the same fucking agent and yes, he played favorites. Everett liked to downplay his engineering degree and lean into his goofy schtick, but he was smart as hell. That would serve him well when he was done in the NFL.
“Ev is out with the guys tonight,” I informed her, making another move on the pound cake. This time, she let me have it with a sigh.
“And you didn’t want to hang out with the guys?”
I tried to hide my grimace. The poundcake helped. I loved my teammates, even though they were noisy and mannerless enough to make a wolf pack stop and stare in shocked silence. But the longer I languished on injured reserve, the more cautious they became about what they were willing to say. No one wanted to talk about a future without football, or what I’d do if things didn’t work out.
Their backslaps became heartier, their platitudes more general. There was a fear
“They’re probably just partying like they always do,” I said around a mouthful of cake. “I’m kind of over it.”
“It certainly sounds like a better time than hanging out with an old woman on a Saturday night.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Well if I find an old woman, I’ll test your theory. Until then, I guess I’ll just have to hang out with you.”
She laughed and leaned over to ruffle my hair, which was the same ash brown as hers. “Charmer.”
She’d always claimed I could charm just about anyone, a fact my brother had lamented over as we were growing up. I always took great pleasure in telling him to suck it up. I didn’t even have the dimples he relied on—heavily. It wasn’t my fault he didn’t bother to work on his personality.
My nose twitched as my mother passed me and I finally separated her scent from that of the food. She smelled like something flowery, like that perfume my assistant picked out for her last birthday and insisted that I buy. She called it her special occasion perfume and she only wore it for church and holidays and….
Something finally gelled up there in the old brain and I wanted to smack my forehead. No wonder she was cooking and cleaning, dressed up and smelling good. She had a fucking date.
I sat there for a few moments, mulling that over.
Picturing her on a date with someone other than my father was a little jarring. I mean, they’d been together for over thirty years. Some naïve part of me—the part that didn’t like to think about things like mortality and shit—had thought they’d be together forever. That reality went up in a puff of smoke on a motorcycle in the rain. There was no undoing any of that. He wasn’t coming back, and Lucas and Libby McAdams were no more. I didn’t want her to just rattle around in this big house, lost in the memories of better days.
But I wasn’t sure if I knew how to deal with someone else in my father’s shoes. In his chair. In his home. In our lives. I also knew, realistically, that it wasn’t up to me. She was obviously ready to dip her toes in the dating pool…maybe she’d already been swimming in it and I just didn’t know. All that was left was for me to be supportive or an absolute dick. In the end, she was my mother and I wanted her to be happy. And if she found a guy that made her happy, then…I guess I had to get on board.
No matter how much it hurt.
“AJ.” When I looked up, my mother’s brow was creased in concern. “I’m worried about you. I know it’s hard not being on the field, honey, but—”
“It’s just a preseason game,” I said with a shrug. “Nothing to get worked up about.”
“And the DUI?”
That was like a stab to the gut, and there was no keeping the emotion off my face. That Friday—hereafter known as Fuck, I Messed Up Friday—had been rough on several fronts. First and foremost, it was the anniversary of my father’s death. Then I found out that I wasn’t cleared for the upcoming season, and they were starting Texas instead. Frustrated, I proceeded to fuck up in PT and pushed myself way too hard. Reggie had been pissed as she checked my knee, and informed me in no uncertain terms that I’d pushed back my recovery.
So yeah. I went to a bar with a couple of teammates, had one too many, and got in my car to sleep it off. I wasn’t sure how much time had passed before a cop knocked on my window and shined God’s flashlight in my face—had to be, I still had damage to my retinas. Things went sideways quickly after that.
I swallowed. “He’d be so disappointed in me.”
“Oh honey, no.” She crossed the room quickly, just a whisper of noise in her ballet flats, and reached for my hand. She squeezed it then, unexpectedly strong for someone so small. “He would be worried about you. Not disappointed.”
I swallowed. “You sure about that?”
“Of course. You’re a charming rascal, but you’ve never been afraid to roll up your sleeves and work. No matter what mistakes you’ve made, you’re going to own up to them. That’s not easy, and I’m proud of you.” She paused. “And I know he would be, too.”
I worried about that…probably more than I should. I always tried to keep in mind what he would do and how he’d do it. He’d fucking loved life—every part of it. Every time I got down in the dumps or started complaining too much, I reminded myself of how much he would’ve given for another day. I couldn’t do anything less than live this shit to the fullest.
And I was glad my mother was doing the same.
“So where’s Brooks?” She asked as she went over to the cupboards. She opened one of the doors and stared into the perfectly organized space, her hand still resting on the bar handle. “He working late tonight?”
“Something like that,” I said evasively.
Probably. Since I hadn’t spoken to or seen him in over a month, I would be the last to know. I grimaced at the thought of telling her that we’d broken up—the latest in a long line of relationships gone the way of the dodo. My mother claimed that I only hooked up with people that I knew weren’t right for me, and there was nothing Libby McAdams liked better than being right.
“He never comes with you to Sunday brunch anymore,” she said with a little laugh. “I’m starting to take it personally.”
I laughed a little too heartily. “You know Brooks,” I said casually. “Busy, busy, busy.”
She made a noise as she found the bowls she was looking for—a heavy porcelain set she’d gotten from her mother—and pulled them down carefully.
“Another one bites the dust, huh?” She shook her head. “Grant owes me a hundred bucks.”
I slouched in my chair as I protested, “It wasn’t my fault this time.”
“I never said it was.” She arched a brow. “But I did tell you it wasn’t going to work.”
Fuck, she did. She’d thought that Brooks was using me from the beginning—I’d heard her and my brother discussing it on the patio like a couple of gossipy old women. Those bastards had even taken the time to make sweet tea. I’d been determined to prove them wrong. Maybe that’s why we lasted as long as we did.
“So. You going to tell me what happened?” She asked as she crossed the room and set the bowls on the counter. She pinned me with a sympathetic gaze, clearly ready to have a heart-to-heart.
I shrugged. “We got busy. Drifted apart.”
Her face told me she knew there was more to that story, but she didn’t call me on it.
Brooks and I had made it four months which, admittedly, was a lifetime for me. But to be perfectly honest, it never felt right. Never felt like what my mom and dad had before he passed. And the less right it felt, the harder I worked to keep it. At least, I had right up until I caught him giving someone else a blowjob in a club bathroom.
I still wasn’t sure what angered me the most—that Brooks had cheated or that he hadn’t seemed to feel all that guilty about it. He’d offered to let me join, an offer that made his playmate splutter with surprise and embarrassment. I had a feeling the poor guy thought things were a little more serious than Brooks did. Easy come, easy go.
I stood and carried my plate to the sink. “Sorry I dropped in like this, but I knew you’d make time for your favorite child.”
She snorted. “Let’s go with that.”
“Ignored. And now I’m going to get out of your hair so you can finish getting ready for your date.”
“My…I’m not…well, then.” Her eyes widened as her mouth opened and closed a few times. “You’re…you’re not upset?”
