SLOAN
Relationships sucked. But it turned out that the problem with every relationship I'd ever been in was that I wasn't married.
Or maybe it was because those partners weren't Maya.
The video I posted of her got reposted by most of the guys on the team, and then it blew the fuck up. Her song was everywhere. She went from TikTok famous to straight-up a big fucking deal.
Maya's online success only continued to grow after that reel of her own music went mega-viral. Her original songs all bypassed the covers she'd done before. And she continued to post them. Each one gained more attention than the last. I couldn't keep up with the number of likes, views, and shares she had. There were entirely too many to count.
"What do I even do with all of this attention?" Maya said, pacing in the bedroom with a purple bottle of ZipZing in her hand.
I tried to focus on packing for training camp, but the weight of her uncertainty was palpable. As she continued to pace, her footsteps echoed in the room, in contrast to the silence that followed her question. Maya only paused her pacing to watch me toss in a pair of shorts and a tube of toothpaste.
I turned to look at her, her expression a mix of concern and apprehension.
"You keep being you," I said, ensuring my words were heavy with reassurance. "You've got something special. You've got a gift."
Maya's eyes met mine, a whole heap of emotions swirling within them. And then, without warning, she strode straight to me, set the bottle on the dresser, and threw her arms around me in a fierce hug. I pulled her into a tight embrace, her heartbeat thudding against mine.
She pulled back slightly. Our gazes locked.
"I'm just scared," she confessed softly, her vulnerability shining through the facade of confidence. Her fingertips grazed my jawline, her touch gentle.
I cupped her face in my hands, my thumbs tracing small circles on her cheeks.
"If you're scared, then I'm here to be scared with you," I whispered. "But, Maya, I have to be honest. If you keep pressing against me like this, I'll never make it to training camp, and then Coach is gonna be furious. I won't get a contract extension, and that won't turn out well for anyone."
She laughed, pulling away to survey my bag.
"Is that how you're doing it?" she asked, frowning. "You know you can fit so much more if you fold the pants like this." She grabbed a pair of jeans to illustrate her method. Somehow, she folded, rolled, and tucked my pants into a small cylinder. "And for bonus points, when you unroll them, they won't have any wrinkles."
"Maya?" I asked her name gently because I gave zero care to if my pants got wrinkled. But she cared, and she'd made that clear in her organization of my entire house over the past month.
"Huh?" She'd already moved onto folding, rolling, and tucking another pair of pants.
"Do you want to pack for me?" I asked. "Because I would love your help."
She glanced up from the new pants cylinder, her eyes soft. "For real?"
"Do your thing, baby," I said, leaning in and giving her a kiss on the forehead. "Maybe it'll help with the clarity you're trying to find."
She melted into my touch. It didn't suck, that was for certain.
Honestly, I should've found a closet or a tool chest or something and really messed it up for her to fix. That's a thing she'd totally get off on.
"Like twenty more people reached out to me this morning about opportunities," she said, stepping away to go back to packing. "I don't even know where to begin to sort them out." She'd moved on to the boxer briefs. I couldn't describe how she did what she did to make them fit into a space two times smaller than what I figured they needed.
Even as she did her thing and made magic with my underwear, her anxiety oozed. I got it, the weight of all the contacts reaching out and pressing down on her. After the first dozen messages she'd shown me, it'd gotten overwhelming for me, too. And I wasn't the one corresponding with them.
"You need someone who knows the industry," I said.
Sure, I'd navigated the legalities of being a professional athlete, but I didn't do it alone. I made damn certain my team—even if they drove me nuts—had my best interests in play.
Maya frowned and tilted her head back to stare at the ceiling. "I sent some messages to friends and some of the headliners I've worked with. I just… It's hard to know who is really on my team, though? You know?"
"I know a guy," I said, certain I knew the perfect person to help solve this puzzle.
If there was one thing I'd learned, when you didn't fucking know what to do, you went to people who did. Then you listened to them and did what they said.
