Page 59 of Are You Going to Love Me

She pulled him back off the edge.

“Listen to your bitch, muthafucka,” Rico taunted as a handful of teammates pushed him back toward the bench.

“Bet.” The gritted, one-syllable word was a promise that when Maximus saw Rico outside of this arena, it was on sight. He turned and looked at Eden, whose chest was heaving up and down. “What you need?”

“I want to go home,” Eden shared.

“Girl, fuck, him. Enjoy the game,” Staysha tried to liven her sister back up, but there was no use.

Eden swayed her head. “No, y’all enjoy the night. I’m going home.”

“Fuck that nigga, Eden,” Keon fussed, knowing what Maximus didn’t and was trying to piece together. “Mark ass nigga.”

“You want to go, we can roll,” Maximus stated, only concerned about her well-being as much as she’d been concerned about his.

“Please,” her mouth and eyes pleaded.

Maximus didn’t waste another minute as he led her out of the arena to the ClearPath area where the exclusive JoyRides awaited potential customers. “Your place or mine?”

twenty-two

. . .

“Yours,”Eden shared. “The paps know where I stay, and that’s going to make them pop back up.”

Her voice was low as her mind played the events all over again. She didn’t want to talk about it, at least not when there were listening ears and recording cameras. Inside the JoyRide, she remained quiet. Maximus allowed her time, but the moment they entered his space, and she was settled on the couch, his voice broke their silence.

“I’m not trying to force you to speak on nothing you don’t want to. But if I'm standin’ in front of you, I’d like to know what I'm fightin’ for.”

As if she’d been waiting to cry since she left the arena, she dropped her head and released a breath accompanied by hot tears. “I never slept with him. I don’t even like him.”

Maximus hadn’t ever been a man to be sympathetic to tears, but for Eden, he couldn’t take it. He moved across the large living space and sat next to her, offering her comfort without her permission.

“Eden,” he groaned, his words muffled in her hair. “Them tears gon’ hurt me and I’m going to want to put lead in that nigga.”

Eden pulled away and swiped her tears from her made-up face. “Exactly. You shouldn’t be caught up in my bullshit. This is your time, and it shouldn’t be tainted by the bullshit associated with me.”

“It’s too late for that, E,” he replied. “I’m locked in with you.”

“You really shouldn’t be,” she huffed, diving back into the place Natavia and Rico wanted to keep her in.

He watched her push the hair out of her face while urging, “Tell me.”

Eden bit her lip, finding no reason not to trust him with her baggage. “Rico is the boyfriend of my ex-best friend. They invited me out to a party, Rico got handsy, told her I wanted tofuck him and immediately after, I was dropped from my agency and lost almost all of my brand deals. They ran to the media, calling me everything but my name. For weeks. And again, you shouldn’t be involved in my shit.”

“Come here, E,” Maximus directed her back to the seat she held prior.

Her tears were back as she muttered, “I worked so hard for everything I have. Four years and in four minutes, everything was gone.”

She plopped down beside him and covered her face. “I’m sorry. Still crying over this is so fuckin’ stupid.”

Again, Maximus wrapped her in comfort while pulling her onto his lap. Wiping her face, he groaned. “You know when I see that nigga, I’m popping him in his fucking mouth like the bitch he is.”

“That’s not what I want,” Eden huffed.

“It’s what that nigga deserves.”

“I’ve seen a lot of people get a lot of things they deserved. I don’t want that on my conscience. I don’t sleep as it is already. I just want to rebuild my life without the stink of scandal.”

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