Second Chance: A Dark Bad Boy Romance

by Kathryn Thomas

  Their silence and reluctance to even really look my way was something. There was something going on, and they weren’t going to tell me. That was fine. I left the room and stood by the door. They would all need to walk by me to get out of there. He, Dante, the man of the hour, would as well—unless this was the night that he was planning on spending in the locker room. I could wait. I could wait as long as they could wait. Their workday had just ended. Mine was not going to end until I had gotten something out of Dante.

  He finally looked at me. His face was drawn, like he was angry but trying to keep his cool. No more of that cocky smirk and sure of himself air. He had fucked up—and he knew it. He started towards me, and I waited. What would I ask him? How could I start? Now wasn’t a good time and here wasn’t the best place. I needed to sit down with him when we were away from the other players and the activity and the fans. I needed him to agree to talk to me alone, an exclusive.

  He had made the offer for one, but he was likely being facetious when he did. I did want one, and maybe since he had offered, though saying I would have to go out with him first, he really was open to the idea. It would have been good for him, agreeing to talk candidly about what had just happened. Once is maybe forgivable, but more than once and he was going to start developing a reputation. One that might hurt, given his existing reputation, the one he was sort of allowed to just skate by with because it wasn’t hurting his performance.

  “Some game out there today,” I said to him as he faced me.

  “Are you just here to scold me?”

  “No. You offered an exclusive, I’m here to collect.”

  “Oh yeah, TMZ?” he said. “You heard my terms. I take you out and you can ask me whatever the hell you want.”

  “I don’t know if that will work,” I said. “You are in trouble and you need to explain yourself. I’m offering you a platform to do just that.”

  “I’m offering you a platform to all this,” he said, gesturing to his body. I smiled tightly and tried not to roll my eyes. If he was rattled, which he should have been if he knew what was good for him and his precious career, he wasn’t showing it. He was back, the Dante from before whom I had met on the court. All slick talk and confidence. I felt like it was a front, but the thought that maybe the guy was being this way because he really and truly didn’t give a fuck about his actions on the court just now was scaring me a little. I knew he wasn’t like that, but then again, who was I to make that judgement about him? Maybe he was and I was just trying not to assassinate his character in my mind.

  “What do you say, hotshot? You have some explaining to do and I want to help you do it.”

  He was about to say something, make some slick comment most likely, but he was stopped when there was some commotion from down the hall. There was a woman, walking very purposefully up to us. She was in casual clothes, so she wasn’t a reporter. She didn’t seem to be a cheerleader either, and there was no discernable reason why she should be back here. I looked at her face. She looked mad. My heart dropped when I noticed the black and blue bruising around her eye.

  Chapter Four

  Dante

  What the hell was going on?

  There was yelling, and a woman’s voice was heading our way. A lady rounded the corner heading for Quinn and I. Was she a fan? What was she doing back here? How did she get back here? Where was security? Were they just letting anyone back here who wanted to come? She was walking right for us, and she looked pissed.

  Her hands were fists at her sides, and she was walking as if she was on a mission. She was short, or average height, and her face was fucked up. She had a bitch of a shiner on her eye. I wanted to ask her who she was, but she spoke first.

  “Dante Rock!” she shouted.

  I just looked at her, a little scared honestly.

  “That’s me,” I said.

  “You did this to me! What do you have to say to yourself?”

  I felt like I had just been punched in the gut. I had done what? She kept pointing at her black eye, but there were more important questions to ask. First of all, who the fuck was she? I knew I did not know her. How had she gotten back here and why was she going on and on about her fucking eye. I didn’t do it.

  “You might have me confused with someone else, lady,” I said to her.

  “Dante Rock? I had no idea there were two of you. You did this to me.”

  “That’s impossible, lady. Listen—”

  “No, you listen. You did this to me. He did this to me!” she screamed.

  It was one thing that she was yelling like that, but the shit she was actually saying? Nope. No way. She had the wrong one. I didn’t know whom she was talking about, how many other Dante Rocks were out there, but she was not referring to me. Not a chance in hell. I tried to get a good look at her. She had blonde hair that was dark at the roots, and she was dressed, just normal, jeans and a t-shirt. I couldn’t see any sort of markings that would have identified her to me, like a tattoo or whatever. I had no idea who she was.

  “Lady, I don’t even know who you are,” I said. She had drawn the attention of a few people now. I knew some of the guys were watching, and I knew that Quinn was watching. Oh shit. Quinn was watching. She was going to see this whole clusterfuck explode. Nobody was going near the woman because she looked a little unstable. I sure as shit wasn’t going near her. She was accusing me of having hit her. I wasn’t going to get close and have her scream rape or whatever.

  I looked at Quinn’s face. She was white like she had just seen a ghost. She looked at me like she didn’t know who I was. It was like a look of disgust and shock. She looked so shocked. And mad. She turned and started walking away in the direction that the woman had been taken.

  I panicked.

  Was she following her to get her to make a statement? Was this the story she was going to write about me? I couldn’t let her do that. It wasn’t even true. She wouldn’t do something like that, would she? Would she?

  I couldn’t wait to find out. I went after her. She was just walking so she hadn’t gotten very far. I caught up with her, calling her name. She wouldn’t turn around. I grabbed her arm to stop her then dropped it. A woman had just accused me of assaulting her; it wasn’t the best idea to grab this one. She stopped and turned around to face me.

  “What?” she asked simply.

  “Listen, that woman, I don’t know who she is. I haven’t seen her a day in my life.”

  She looked at me silently and crossed her arms.

  “I can give you an interview, a story, whatever you want. I don’t know who that was and I didn’t do that to her.”

  “She seemed pretty sure that you were the guy she was looking for,” she said.

  “I’m not. I don’t know her. I didn’t touch her. I swear to you. You have to believe me.”

  “I don’t have to do anything, Dante.”

  “Please do this. I didn’t touch her, and if it gets out that she thinks I did, I’m going to be in a lot of trouble.”

  “More than a lot. You might not be able to come back from something like this.”

  “So listen to me. Believe me, please.” I wanted to touch her, but I thought better of it. She looked at me, quiet. Was she really just not going to say anything? I needed to get something from her. Confirmation that she had heard me, or a slap in the face, or something. Anything.

  Instead, she turned on her heel and walked away.

  Chapter Five

  Quinn

  I followed after security, escorting the woman out. She had seemed to have quieted down. She struggled in the big man’s grip and freed herself, saying she could escort herself out. I caught up with the security guard, who watched the woman walking away. First of all, I was sure that that was incorrect protocol. I was sure that they were supposed to like, hold her for a while, get her picture, or call the police. Something. I didn’t think she was allowed to be back where the lockers were, and if she wasn’t, then that was a breach of regulation. Were they really ju
st going to let her go?

  “Excuse me, sir, who was that woman?” I asked the guard.

  “Beats me,” he said shrugging. I frowned. What did he mean he didn’t know? I looked in the direction she had gone. The woman had already left the arena when I went to check for her outside. I went back inside. It was no use. That had been a potential story, right there, and I had just lost it. I retreated to the parking garage where my car was parked.

  Well. That had been an interesting day at the office.

  Where did I even begin? The day’s events had just mounted in excitement since I had gotten here. First, I got the interview with the Yellow Jackets’ coach. A legend of a man in the sport. A man who was potentially leading the fifth team of his career to a championship if the team focused and played well the rest of the season.

  Then there had been talking to Dante. If anyone asked me out loud, I would have denied it, but Dante Rock… he was… something else. He was tall, but that was standard in the sport. He was a phenomenon. He was so skilled. Shockingly talented. We, as a nation, owed a reward to the first person who had put a basketball in Dante’s hands when he was a kid. With the way he lived, it was a miracle that he could still play at all.

  Then, the icing on the cake of what had been the most eventful day was the lady with the black eye. Wow. Just wow. I couldn’t even make this sort of thing up; it had actually happened. She had just appeared, and then she had started yelling at the guy like they knew each other.

  The jury was still out on whether or not they did know each other. He claimed that they didn’t. She claimed that they did. It was just a terrible case of he said-she said. I wish I could have heard more of what she had said because this was absolutely scandalous. In my gut, and I knew that this was not me being impartial, I wanted to defer to her. My immediate impulse was to believe the woman because so many times, women were not believed…and that was a problem. I never wanted to be the person, the woman who shut another woman down when she tried to speak up about something as egregious as this.

  Dante had had some wild headlines about him and his life, but if this one was true… Dante Rock would become the guy we talked about fondly as having been one of the greatest of all time but he had shot himself in the foot before his career really got a chance to progress to the next level.

  Athletes and generally well-loved men in the public eye recovered from a lot. This wasn’t a sex scandal. It was domestic abuse, and there was evidence, a woman with a black eye. People would likely have a lot of questions and would point fingers, maybe even siding with him, but he would never be able to go about playing the way he had before. Even in the event that his public apology was successful, and he squeezed out enough tears to get people to believe him, it would take a while for his reputation to build itself back up again.

  All this was in the event that he was actually guilty. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself. I was getting ahead of myself. There was no actual confirmation that he had done anything. The black eye was evidence of something, but it was not evidence of the exact thing that she was pointing a finger at Dante for.

  He had said that he didn’t do it, and maybe he didn’t. I didn’t disbelieve him, but I didn’t believe him either. I believed neither of them. There was a lot more that had to be uncovered on both their sides to make a decision about what was going on.

  Dante had stopped me like he was really going to tell me something, but I had just left. I couldn’t look at him just then. It was an emotional response, and maybe I was wrong about it, but I needed a minute. For a second, I let myself believe that he was guilty. I allowed myself to believe the woman when she made her accusation, and in that minute, I hated him.

  It wasn’t that far of a jump to make, that Dante Rock had beaten a woman up. That wasn’t good, but it was true. There would have been more people who believed that he had hit a woman than the number who believed that he hadn’t. He was kind of a thug. He didn’t have a good track record with women, and frankly, it wouldn’t have been that surprising if he had done something like this for real.

  “Quinn! Quinn, wait. Stop… don’t leave. I have to talk to you,” a voice called from behind me. I looked over my shoulder and spotted Dante running up to me. He had followed me, which was creepy. I walked faster and got to my car.

  “Wait,” he said, catching up and stopping at my car, resting his hand on its roof.

  “Following me around, Dante?” I asked, looking for my key.

  “You can't leave before I talk to you.”

  “That is where you are mistaken, my friend. I don’t need your permission to do anything.” I pulled my key out and stuck it in the door, pulling the door open. He slammed it shut and moved closer to me. I looked at him like he had lost his mind. I tried to open the door again and he did the same thing.

  “Let go.”

  “No. You have to listen to me. I don’t know who that woman is.”

  “I heard you the first time you said it. Leave me alone.”

  “No.” He slammed the door shut again when I pulled it open.

  “You are going to break my door.”

  “I need you to listen to me, Quinn. Please. Hear me out. I need you to listen to me. Something happened to that woman, but I had nothing to do with it. I don’t know her. I haven’t seen her before today, at the same time that you saw her. You have to believe me.”

  “Telling me like that, here in a parking garage, isn’t going to mean anything. I am not the one you need to convince. The woman seemed pretty pissed, and I would bet you anything that she is going to try and sell the story to someone.”

  “What am I supposed to do about that? Pay her?”

  “Paying her would make you seem guilty. What you have to do is release an official story explaining yourself. One that does not come from your rep, your agent, your publicist, your coach or the team. An unbiased, third-party reporter.”

  “Are you going to do it?”

  “I want it. I will listen to what you have to say and report it, but only if you can promise me that this exclusive is mine.”

  “It’s yours. I just need it to be known that I’m innocent.”

  “It will be.”

  “Thank you so much for doing this.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. There’s more.”

  I could almost see the man’s body clench in on itself. What did he think I was going to ask him for? Why did he look like he was expecting the worst? If he was expecting me to extort or blackmail him, he was mistaken.

  “You are Dante Rock, a lot of people want to get the inside story, and so do I. I want interviews, whenever I want them. You have to be available for me to interview whenever I call.”

  “How the fuck am I supposed to do that? I have a schedule. I have games and training and press.”

  “I know you have all that and those things aren't the ones that are going to be interrupted.”

  He raised his eyebrows and looked a little mystified.

  “I want you for the rest of the season. I follow if you travel, and I can help you with this image problem that you seem to be facing. You are there when I want you. I won't interrupt your work, but outside of that, if I need an interview, your schedule has to become free enough to accommodate it.”

  He winced.

  “That’s not reasonable.”

  “If we can't agree, I can just leave and let that woman say whatever she wants about you without bothering to counter it.”

  “Okay… okay, fine. But you have to help people believe me and not her.”

  “I will, but Dante… if you did it to anyone, any other woman, and I find out about it, you are done. I am going to ruin your entire life. And I will enjoy doing it.”

  He looked at me. He looked like he was between a rock and a hard place. Torn between Scylla and Charybdis. He was welcome to choose whichever option suited him. I didn’t have a dog in this fight. This was his problem. I didn’t need him. I wanted him. The story would be amazing, but he needed me. This probl
em, with the woman accusing him of violence, would only snowball if left unattended. Ignoring the accusations would be tantamount to an admission of guilt. If he knew what was good for him, he would make the right decision.

  “Fine. You’ve got it. You can have your interviews and you can write what you want about me, as long as it’s better than whatever she is going to try and do.”

  “Of course. You just show up for the interviews and leave the rest to me.”

  “Thank you, Quinn,” he said, gratefully. He put both his hands on my shoulders and looked at me, right in the face as he did, unwavering eye contact. I cocked my head to the side. That had been too easy. I had the upper hand here, and I liked it. I could technically say whatever I wanted, and he would have to acquiesce. I had Dante Rock by the balls, and there was a real perverted sense of power that came over me, thinking about it. This big, huge man was really leaving his fate in my hands, quite literally for whatever was to come of his future.