HATING THE PLAYER (Hating Him #3)

Prologue

Prologue

To take revenge halfheartedly is to court disaster: Either condemn or crown your hatred.

- Pierre Corneille

COLTON

There’s only three ways to deal with the world when about half of the English-speaking people in it know your name by heart.

And I’ve failed at all three.

It was the fame. A large part of me f*****g hated it.

I couldn’t ignore it. Couldn’t embrace it. And when I tried to dive d**k first into it and literally f**k the world, that plan fell stale, a taste that long stopped having any flavor.

That third method of coping with international stardom… is why I’m here right now.

At this event. In this very state. Standing in an overpriced pool house on an overcast grey May day, staring at myself. I meet my own smoky blue eyes in the rain-streaked glass as I try to shake off seven whole nights without sleep.

I can tell one thing: The Florida f*****g heat isn’t helping.

But the least helpful part of it all is the woman on her knees gazing up at me, her green eyes pleading, her pink mouth pressed into an “O” as she inches toward me…like a human Eureka vacuum cleaner, ready to suck me into oblivion. I stare at her, feeling the effects of the tequila in my system… and nothing more.

I’d tell her to leave, but old habits die hard. Old obsessions die even harder, and despite my need to have nothing to do with the woman currently crawling to me on the tiled floor, my c**k is still half solid, a dull passion stirring in me as I tell myself to get it over with.

My f**k fix. To quit it and head home.

I shouldn’t have come here anyway. I should be getting ready for the season. Not traveling a hundred miles to see a man who wants nothing to do with me, to a wedding I wasn’t even f*****g invited to…

Hiding out in the pool house hasn’t worked. Ol’ dustbuster on her knees found me. It’s only a matter of time before others do, including the paparazzi, whose cameras I’ve been trying to avoid for three days in the wake of another rumor about me and some stoned-out starlet—a rumor that, like the recent others, are so wrong it’s laughable.

But I can’t shake the slimy bastards. And I remember when I used to eat this s**t up, devour the adoration for breakfast, drink from the well of women, money and notoriety at night.

Such were the “perks” of stardom, the tumbles on the quest for success. A success nobody ever saw for me… including my own father. I was his bastard, his dirty little secret…

My mother was a convenient f**k for him, his mistress by proxy. Nothing more.

The great Victor Foxx barely acknowledged the other son he fathered, and on the few chances he did, this son—the brown-haired, bright-eyed boy I’d been, had worshiped him, wondering where he went every time he stepped out of the door, not knowing for years that it was to his other child—the one that mattered.

Being a family was something we never could be….

Not when one side of the family grew up as trash, and the other as royalty. I could never be a true Foxx like Brendon, Victor’s darling boy. The prince and the pauper story couldn’t have been more true. Only back then… I was the pauper. And in our father’s eyes, Brendon would always be the prince.

We were two sides of a f****d-up coin.

I barely blinked when my publicist first mentioned how the book I’m writing might bring down my very distant brother with it because truly, if that was the case, then so be it. It’s not like my “brother” ever gave a f**k. He sneered at our side of the family, and it didn’t take being ignored for years upon years to be reminded of that fact.

The truth?

I was going to get my sweet revenge against my father, Victor Foxx, either way, and if that meant that my step-brother/half-brother/whatever-the-f**k was going to take a tumble with dear old dad, well… That might even make the revenge just that more sweet.

I think of the tell-all I’ve written and find my libido again, my c**k finally stirring to stand straight up. I grab the girl as she finally slithers between my legs, pulling her to her feet, knowing I need to make this quick. She yelps as she starts to stand on her two heels, her eyes excited and wide, her exhales breathy as I turn her towards the back of the couch, sliding my body behind hers, trying to will my hard-on to stay up.

Fuck, I’m out of practice…and hoping that the present will live up to my wild past. I rumble in her ear.

“Spread your legs.” And she widens her stance, shivering. Reaching for the hem of her black pencil skirt, I slide my hands along the outside of her thighs. I’m just skimming her hips when the sound of loud laughing pulls my attention to the door, keeping it.

We’ve got some visitors, unwelcome ones at that. A man in a black tux with a bridesmaid in peach. The woman is a f*****g knockout. It’s the only thought I allow myself to have as I make a rush for the bathroom door, pinning my little blower girl behind it. I close it softly, listening to the conversation beyond it.

My breathing grows even.

“s**t,” the man curses. “That was a close one.”

“I know,” the woman breathes on a laugh. I hear rustling and couch cushions give way as the couple plops down in the main room where we just were.

“We almost got caught boning by Foxx’s batty step-mom...” The admission makes my breathing stop completely. “But what would have been worse,” the strange man continues, “is if Foxx had caught her there. I don’t care how many years it’s been. If Foxx caught his father’s other family at his wedding, he’d flip his shit.”

“But isn’t she like a mom to him?” the woman asks.

“No,” I hear from the other side. “She was his father’s mistress. Two completely different things. Foxx’s father f***s up in his affair, has a kid. Foxx’s mother leaves his cheating bastard of a dad to head back to Bumfuck, Tennessee—has a total breakdown. I met his mom from time to time, when I was growing up. f*****g meltdown city. The mistress made off with a settlement to keep quiet… and Foxx isn’t an easy one to forgive and forget.” He stops. “I don’t know even know what she was doing here.”

“Invited by the blushing bride, most likely,” she murmurs. “Man, my sister sure knows how to screw up a good time.”

“Tell me about it.” I hear the soft, muffled sound of lips touching. “I didn’t even get to make you come yet…” The voice trails off to the sounds of tittering in return. “But there’s still time before the reception...” The tittering turns to moans, and just when things start to get really interesting, the noises stop, followed by a crescendo of flutes and violins.

The reception is beginning.

“f**k. Fuckfuckfuck,” the blonde out there swears. “We’ve gotta go.”

“Dammit, Elena,” the man in the tux grits out. “Five f*****g minutes.”

“No,” she laughs.

“Three…” he pauses. “And a half.”

“Come on,” she beckons. The couch cushions groan. “We’ve gotta go before we’re missed.”

The sounds of footsteps echo outwards away from the bathroom. Heavy glass slides across the floor and with my ear to the wood, I finally hear the footsteps go faint as they head down the small hall and out the door. The screen door shuts with a clang, and I listen closer. When at last I hear nothing but the music, I make my way out into the main floor, tugging my Eureka sucker behind me.

When I walk out onto the floor, the door opens once more. And this time, it’s the man of the hour—Foxx, standing there, looking at me. His white collar is undone, his tuxedo cummerbund half-hangs as he stares in my direction, his face unmoving, his jaw twitching as he clenches his elegant black bow tie. A bow tie belonging to a groom.

Looking nothing like a man who’s just been married, I can see the anger in his eyes, his face growing hard and rigid beneath a slick blond mane that grows paler with each ticking second. His eyes flit to the woman behind me, then back at my face. He exhales with a sigh, his shoulders falling.

His voice is gritty. “Hello, Colton.”

I glare back. “Hello… brother.”